I apprehend that most of the anomalous cases of the solution of lead in common water, which have for so many years embarrassed the chemist, may thus receive an explanation. An eminent physician lately informed me, that some time since he was called upon to attend a family who had evidently suffered from the effects of saturnine poison, and that he well remembers there was an iron pump in the cistern that supplied the water. Upon showing the results of my experiment to a no less eminent chemist, he was immediately reminded of a circumstance which occurred at Islington, where the water was found to corrode the lead in which it was received: in this vessel there was an iron bar; and the fact would not have attracted his notice, nor have been impressed upon his recollection, but from the unusual state of corrosion in which it appeared.
I shall conclude these observations by an account of "the change which some musket balls, taken out of Shrapnell's shells, had undergone," by Mr. Faraday, and which is published in the 16th volume of the Quarterly Journal of Science, for the year 1823. This history is not only interesting on account of the high chemical character of its author, but satisfactory as being in direct opposition to previously established facts; and cannot therefore have received any bias from preconceived theory.
"Mr. Marsh of Woolwich gave me some musket balls, which had been taken out of Shrapnell's shells. The shells had lain in the bottoms of ships, and probably had sea-water amongst them. When the bullets are put in, the aperture is merely closed by a common cork. These bullets were variously acted upon: some were affected only superficially, others more deeply, and some were entirely changed. The substance produced is hard and brittle; it splits on the ball, and presents an appearance like some hard varieties of hæmatite; its colour is brown, becoming, when heated, red; it fuses on platinum foil into a yellow flaky substance like litharge. Powdered and boiled in water, no muriatic acid or lead was found in solution. It dissolved in nitric acid without leaving any residuum, and the solution gave very faint indications only of muriatic acid. It is a protoxide of lead, perhaps formed, in some way, by the galvanic action of the iron shell and the leaden ball, assisted probably by the sea-water. It would be very interesting to know the state of the shells in which a change like this has taken place to any extent. It might have been expected, that as long as any iron remained, the lead would have been preserved in the metallic state."
In one experiment, I found that a piece of lead protected by iron underwent solution in water containing nitrate of potash, while it resisted the action of very dilute nitric acid: upon this point, however, farther enquiry is necessary; for I subsequently failed in producing the same effect, owing, no doubt, to having employed too strong an acid.
Let us return from this digression to the subject of Sir Humphry Davy's Protectors. It only remains for me to relate the results which followed the practical application of the Voltaic principles which his various experiments had developed.
In the month of May 1824, directions were issued by the Lords of the Admiralty to protect, in future, the copper sheathing of all his Majesty's ships which might be taken into dock, upon the plan proposed by Sir Humphry Davy.
The protectors were bars of iron six inches wide at their base, three inches in thickness in their centre, and, in outward form, the segment of an extended circle. They were usually placed on each side of the ship in a horizontal position, viz. in midships about three feet under water—on the keel in a line with these—and the remainder in the fore and afterparts of the ship (about three feet under the line of fluitation), as far forward and abaft as the curvatures of their respective bodies would allow of their lying flat upon the surface of the copper.
As it is difficult by verbal description alone to convey a sufficiently distinct idea of this subject to persons unacquainted with naval architecture, I have introduced a sketch, exhibiting the general position of the Protectors, although they are necessarily exaggerated in size, or they would have appeared as mere specks upon the drawing.
A. A. Line of Fluitation.