As to the remaining deck fixtures, hatches and fittings, these must be entirely a matter of speculation. Ladderways, passing scuttles, hatches, trunks, galley, heads and cabins were obviously required in a fighting ship and can only be located on the theory that, when completed, the Battery was a practical vessel.
It has been stated that the officers’ cabins were over the race; the logical place for the heads, galley, wardroom and mess also would be over the race, giving the remaining part of the gun deck for the necessary hatches, ladderways, trunks, etc., in the two hulls, space required for armament, and to sling the hammocks of a watch below. As the vessel was never fully manned, apparently, the space for hammocks is not a serious problem in a reconstruction. If the vessel had been manned as proposed by 500 men, hammocks for over 200 would have been required, which would give very crowded quarters in view of the limited space available.
Though no specific requirements were stated in the reports of the trials, it seems reasonable to suppose that additional hatches were cut in the decks to improve the fireroom ventilation. In the reconstruction drawings, these hatchways as well as the other deck openings and deck fittings—such as bilge pumps, companionways, skylights, binnacles, wheels and wheel-rope trunks, cable trunks, steampipe casings, and stack fiddleys—have been located in an effort to meet the imagined requirements of the working of a ship of this unusual form.
Figure 19.—Model of Steam Battery in the Museum of History and Technology. (Smithsonian photo 63990-E.)
Figure 20.—Lines of steamer Congo, built in 1815-1816 for the British Admiralty and converted to a sailing survey vessel. From Admiralty Collection of Draughts, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
There are some unanswered questions that arose in the preparation of the reconstruction drawings. As has been shown, the original inboard arrangement plan found in Copenhagen shows four smokestacks, while Marestier’s sketch of the vessel’s boilers shows trunked flues indicating that two stacks were used. It is possible that the boilers were first fitted so that four stacks were required; alterations made as a result of steaming trials may well have included the introduction of trunked flues and the final use of two stacks in line fore-and-aft. This would have required a rearrangement of the fiddley hatches amidships.