The statistics are interesting. According to official authority, in putting this vessel together seven hundred tons of rivets alone were used. About four hundred plans were made for the hull and about two hundred and fifty plans and drawings were made for the engines. These would take a force of one hundred men a year to complete.
The engines and machinery alone weigh about nine hundred tons. The smoke-stacks are about sixteen feet in diameter. Each of the main engines is so enormous that under the great frames, in the economy of space and construction, are two smaller engines, the sole mission of which is to start the big ones. There are about sixty-six separate engines for various purposes. The condensing-tubes, placed end to end, would cover a distance of twelve miles. Thirty tons of water fill her boilers, which would stand a pressure of one hundred and sixty pounds to the square inch. Three dynamos provide the electricity,—a plant which would light a town of five thousand inhabitants. There are twenty-one complete sets of speaking-tubes and twenty-four telephone stations.
The two great turrets are clad with nineteen inches of toughened steel. In each of these turrets are two 13-inch guns. Each of these guns is about fifty feet long and weighs sixty-one tons. There are eight 8-inch guns on the superstructure, in sets of twos, and amidships on the main-deck are four 6-inch rifles. In ten minutes, firing each 13-inch gun once in two minutes, and using all the other guns at their full power, the “Indiana” could fire about sixty tons of death-dealing metal.
The millennium has not yet been reached, but such awful force makes universal peace a possibility. What the immediate future holds forth in naval architecture and gunnery is a matter which excites some curiosity, for it almost seems as though perfection, according to the standard of the end of the century, has been reached. And yet we already know of certain changes, improvements, and inventions, the direct outcome of the Spanish war, which are to be made on the vessels now contracted for, which affect importantly the government of the ship; and so it may be that the next twenty years will show as great an evolution as have the two decades just past.
But whatever the future may bring, it has been a marvellous and momentous change from the old navy to the new. Since the “Monitor”–“Merrimac” fight no country has been quicker to profit by the lessons of the victory of iron over wood and steel over iron than the United States.
But the navy that is, however glorious its achievements, can never dim the glory of the navy that was, though sailor-men, old and new, know that in a test of ship and ship, and man and man, the flag of this country will continue to fly triumphant.
FARRAGUT IN MOBILE BAY
It was Friday, the 5th of August, 1864. The first violet streaks of dawn stole through the purple clouds that the wind had tossed up during the night. Admiral Farragut sat in his cabin, quietly sipping his tea, his fleet-captain, Drayton, by his side. Through the open ports they could see the dim masses of the ships of the fleet as, lashed two and two, they stretched in a long line to seaward. The wind no longer blew, and the shrill pipes and the creaking of the blocks as the light yards came down echoed clearly across the silent water.
“How is the wind, Drayton?” said the admiral, at last.