The second-class protected cruiser Bristol, launched at Messrs. John Brown and Co.’s Clydebank establishment in February last, is of special interest as she embodies the introduction of yet another method of propulsion. When it became known that an experiment was to be made there was some speculation as to whether the gas system was to be tried, as the experiments in the gunboat Rattler are understood to have been successful, and it is well known that more than one engineering firm has been giving attention to the subject. The Rattler experiments did not prove that the requisite power could be developed by the method, and the Bristol experiment is an installation of the “Brown-Curtis” turbine, this vessel being the first of recent years for the British Navy in which Parsons turbines have not been placed. She is of 4850 tons displacement and is to have a speed of 25 knots. Four sister ships, also building, are fitted with Parsons turbines. The Bristol will have twelve Yarrow water-tube boilers, and the furnaces will use either coal or oil. Two other British warships, one an improved Bristol, are to be fitted with Curtis turbines, besides vessels for other Powers, and another experiment which will be watched with considerable interest is the combination of Parsons and Curtis turbines proposed to be placed in the 32-knot destroyers under construction for the Argentine Government by Cammell, Laird and Co.
Foreign Governments, the French especially, have made many experiments in warship building and designing, for the attempts to develop fixed types have failed in this country as elsewhere, as the type has been generally superseded almost before the specimen vessel has been completed. This was particularly the case with the turrets when first introduced. The barbette system has descended from it, and in turn has been subjected to numerous changes. The amount of sail carried by modern gunboats and cruisers, if any, is reduced to the smallest quantity, the masts being little else than signalling poles; while in the big battleships and cruisers the masts, which were at one time of the “military” pattern and were used as hoists for ammunition, being made hollow and of large diameter for the purpose, have in their turn given way to skeleton masts and tripods, and combinations of the two, of a strictly utilitarian character. The bringing down of a mast, fitted for wireless telegraphy, at the first round in some firing practice recently, showed that naval architects have not yet reached the last word in the development, or diminution, of the masts.
Some exceedingly powerful battleships have been built in this country for foreign nations, among the latest being the Minas Geraes, by Armstrongs on the Tyne, for Brazil, which represents all that is most modern in the construction of a warship, this vessel and her sister being two of the most powerful battleships ever designed. They show, too, what private yards can accomplish.
The “Minas Geraes,” Brazilian Navy.
Many of the vessels which defeated the Russians at the battle of Tsushima were built in this country. Both Germany and Japan, which were among Britain’s best customers for warships, now depend, entirely in the case of Germany and almost entirely in that of Japan, upon their own shipbuilding yards. The Germans have been building warships of the “Dreadnought” class and making such improvements as they thought suited to their needs, and of late years have been producing a number of vessels equal in power and speed to the British ships, and, if some people are right, of even greater fighting capacity in every way. The rise of Germany to the position of a first-rate Naval Power has been rapid, and the sacrifices the country has made to obtain its magnificent Navy have been great.
The American Navy has developed in its own way. The naval architects of the United States have been unfettered by the traditions of the navies of other countries and their products have been remarkable for the number of vessels designed to meet special circumstances. This was particularly the case during the Civil War, when all sorts of steamers, from excursion boats to tugs, were pressed into service, and many gave an exceedingly good account of themselves. A remarkable vessel which was expected to revolutionise naval warfare was the Destroyer, in which a special make of dynamite gun was fixed, but it was hopelessly outranged by other guns. The opposition to steam in the Navy was as bitter in America as in this country when the innovation was first proposed. James Kirke Paulding, a member of Van Buren’s Cabinet in 1837, disliked steamers so much that he wrote that he would “never consent to see our grand old ships supplanted by these new and ugly sea-monsters”; and elsewhere he wrote “I am steamed to death.”
In 1858 the American naval architect, John Willis Griffiths, built to the order of the American Government the gunboat Pawnee, which was fitted with twin screws and a drop bilge to increase the stability at the least expenditure of engine-power. The Pawnee carried a frigate’s battery, but it is stated to have drawn only ten feet of water. He also, in 1866, designed and constructed triple screws for great speed.
The United States decided upon a very powerful Navy a few years ago, and sent a splendid fleet on a tour round the world as an object-lesson. As it is contended that the life of a battleship as a fighting unit of the first class is only fifteen years, an extensive modernising process has been going on. The sister ships Kentucky and Kearsarge were constructed with superimposed turrets, two fore and two aft, the lower turrets having two 13-inch guns and the upper turrets two 8-inch guns each, but this method of placing the turrets has not commended itself to naval architects of other countries, and has not been repeated in the American Navy.
The warships Wilmington, Kearsarge, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, Charleston, Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware are among those built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, and several have been constructed by Messrs. Cramp at Philadelphia and by the Union Iron Works at San Francisco.