[452] See evidence, Mr. Samuel Jack Mason, before the Committee of Lords on the International Communication Bill, 1872, pp. 49, 50, and 51.
[453] The trains will come in from the South Eastern Railway and the London, Chatham, and Dover systems by independent lines to a central station. They will then be run on a hydraulic hoist, eight to nine carriages at a time, and this hoist will be lowered until the rails on it are exactly level with those on the steamer; a flap is then let down completing the communication between the rails on the hoist and the rails on the steamer, and the carriages are immediately hauled on to the steamer.
When the steamer enters the dock to receive the trains, she is run between rollers, fixed two on each side of the dock and allowing the least possible movement of the paddle-boxes sideways. Movements lore and aft of the steamer are prevented by buffers (similar to ordinary locomotive buffers) fixed at her end, which butt against recesses at the end of the dock, and also by blocks fastened to the dock wall which receives her end a little further aft, ordinary mooring apparatus keeping the ship tight up against the buffers.
In rough weather there may be a slight vertical movement when the head of the ship is next the hoist, but the flap which is let down, as before described, will be sufficient to accommodate this slight difference of level, which will be little more than is met with in passing over a turntable as in many railway stations.
| No. of Question. | ||
| 49. | Length | 450 feet to 470. |
| Beam | 95′ 0′′ over paddle-boxes. | |
| 123. | Beam | 57′ 0′′ not including paddle-boxes. |
| 156. | Depth | 14 feet in hold from floor to ceiling. |
| 153. | Depth | 34½ feet inner skin to hurricane deck. |
| 50. | Draught | 12 to 13 feet. |
| 513. | Freeboard | 21′ 0′′ to hurricane deck; 8′ 6′′ main deck. |
| 51. | Power | Two independent pairs of engines, one to each paddle, collectively of 1600 to 1800 nominal horse-power, 12,000 indicated horse-power. |
| 167. | Speed | Twenty knots or 23 miles. |
| 130.} | Capacity for passengers | Seventeen carriages, containing 336 passengers; or 2000 passengers, neglecting carriages. |
| 274.} | ||
| 278.} | ||
| 132. | Cargo | 22 trucks, say 180 tons goods. |
| 68. | Cost of boats | £500,000 for three. |
| £ | ||
| 60. | Estimate for construction of harbour at Andrecelles, coast of France | 700,000 |
| 63. | Estimate for extension of Dover Harbour, &c. | 1,000,000 |
| £1,700,000 | ||
| Cost of three steamers | 500,000 (?) | |
| £2,200,000 |
[455] Such vessels are well-known to Indian navigators; and, while carrying between 100 and 200 tons, ride steadily on a heavy swell that causes a large steamer to roll its ports under water. They are extraordinary looking craft, and are frequently to be found, not merely in the vicinity of Ceylon, but about the islands of the Pacific, and along the coasts of Northern India, as well as on the shores of Java and Sumatra, though nowhere else. The Indian boat, however, so far as I can judge, most resembling the steamer which Captain Dicey has built, is the jangá (not the catamaran),—a double platform canoe of the Cochin China backwater. The pontoons at Chatham are of a similar construction. To form the jangár, a floor of boards is laid across two boats, with bamboo railings 10 to 12 feet broad and 16 feet long; in these boats, native regiments, cattle, &c., are ferried across rivers. I may add, that the catamarans proper are constructed of three logs lashed firmly together, the centre one being the largest. They are usually from 20 to 25 feet in length, and from 2½ to 3½ feet only in width.
[456] On Saturday May 8th, 1875, the Bessemer underwent what may be called her first trial—that is, she crossed from Dover to Calais and back again. It would appear from the narratives in the different journals that she had nothing to contend with, on this occasion, in the way of weather or sea, and that, starting at 11.17 A.M. and reaching Calais Harbour at 12.45, her speed was about the same as that of the ordinary boats. Her greatest novelty, the saloon, was, however, not tried on this occasion. On this point Mr. Bessemer remarked, at a dinner given to him in Calais on the same day:—“I never dared to hope that, at first, this ship would be completely successful, so much depends on skill, and you must remember that there are no means whereby absolute automatic action can be given to the saloon, because there is no absolute point of stability. Within the ship we are like Archimedes who wanted a fulcrum for the lever that was to move the world; what we want is to place our fulcrum in an absolutely quiet spot.... In port the machinery will move with a degree of steadiness that is all that can be desired, the very reverse of this will take place at sea when the vessel itself moves and the cabin is required to be quiet: and, just as we require more practice to move the cabin in still water, so we require more practice to keep the cabin still in the moving ship.”
[457] See Harper’s Weekly Illustrated Newspaper, New York, October 28th, 1858, where drawings are given. I visited the cigar ship which was built at Milwall, London, in 1864, when she was ready for launching, and inspected her carefully.