The Reina Regente will be manned by 50 officers and a crew of 350 men, all of whom will have their quarters on the main deck. Among her fittings and equipment there are three steam lifeboats and eight other boats, five of Sir William Thomson's patent compasses, and a complete electric light installation, the latter including two powerful search lights, which are placed on the bridge. All parts of the vessel are in communication by means of speaking tubes. In order to enable the vessel to turn speedily, she is fitted with the sternway rudder of Messrs. Thomson & Biles. This contrivance is a combination of a partially balanced rudder with a rudder formed as a continuation of the after lines of a ship. The partial balance tends to reduce the strains on the steering gear, and thereby enables the rudder area to be increased without unduly straining the gear.
When fitted out for actual service, this novel war cruiser will have a most formidable armament, consisting of four 24 centimeter Hontorio guns (each of 21 tons), six 12 centimeter guns (also of the Hontorio type), six 6 pounder Nordenfelt guns, fourteen small guns, and five torpedo tubes—one at the stern, two amidships, and two at the bow of the ship.
It is worthy of note that this war cruiser was constructed in fifteen months, or three months under the stipulated contract time; in fact, the official trial of the vessel took place exactly eighteen months from the signing of the contract. Not only is this the fastest war cruiser afloat, but her owners also possess in the El Destructor what is probably the simplest torpedo catcher afloat, a vessel which has attained a speed of 22½ knots, or over 26 miles, per hour.—Engineering.
OLIVER EVANS AND THE STEAM ENGINE.
A correspondent of the New York Times, deeming that far too much credit has been given to foreigners for the practical development of the steam engine, contributes the following interesting resume:
Of all the inventions of ancient or modern times none have more importantly and beneficently influenced the affairs of mankind than the double acting high pressure steam engine, the locomotive, the steam railway system, and the steamboat, all of which inventions are of American origin. The first three are directly and the last indirectly associated with a patent that was granted by the State of Maryland, in 1787, being the very year of the framing of the Constitution of the United States. In view of the momentous nature of the services which these four inventions have rendered to the material and national interests of the people of the United States, it is to be hoped that neither they nor their origin will be forgotten in the coming celebration of the centennial of the framing of the Constitution.
The high pressure steam engine in its stationary form is almost ubiquitous in America. In all great iron and steel works, in all factories, in all plants for lighting cities with electricity, in brief, wherever in the United States great power in compact form is wanted, there will be found the high pressure steam engine furnishing all the power that is required, and more, too, if more is demanded, because it appears to be equal to every human requisition. But go beyond America. Go to Great Britain, and the American steam engine—although it is not termed American in Great Britain—will be found fast superseding the English engine—in other words, James Watt's condensing engine. It is the same the world over. On all the earth there is not a steam locomotive that could turn a wheel but for the fact that, in common with every locomotive from the earliest introduction of that invention, it is simply the American steam engine put on wheels, and it was first put on wheels by its American inventor, Oliver Evans, being the same Oliver Evans to whom the State of Maryland granted the before mentioned patent of 1787.
He is the same Oliver Evans whom Elijah Galloway, the British writer on the steam engine, compared with James Watt as to the authorship of the locomotive, or rather "steam carriage," as the locomotive was in those days termed. After showing the unfitness of Mr. Watt's low pressure steam engine for locomotive purposes, Mr. Galloway, more than fifty years ago, wrote: "We have made these remarks in this place in order to set at rest the title of Mr. Watt to the invention of steam carriages. And, taking for our rule that the party who first attempted them in practice by mechanical arrangements of his own is entitled to the reputation of being their inventor, Mr. Oliver Evans, of America, appears to us to be the person to whom that honor is due." He is the same Oliver Evans whom the Mechanics' Magazine, of London, the leading journal of its kind at that period, had in mind when, in its number of September, 1830, it published the official report of the competitive trial between the steam carriages Rocket, San Pariel, Novelty, and others on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
In that trial the company's engines developed about 15 miles in an hour, and spurts of still higher speed. The Magazine points to the results of the trial, and then, under the heading of "The First Projector of Steam Traveling," it declares that all that had been accomplished had been anticipated and its feasibility practically exemplified over a quarter of a century before by Oliver Evans, an American citizen. The Magazine showed that many years before the trial Mr. Evans had offered to furnish steam carriages that, on level railways, should run at the rate of 300 miles in a day, or he would not ask pay therefor. The writer will state that this offer by Mr. Evans was made in November, 1812, at which date not a British steam carriage had yet accomplished seven miles in an hour.