Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/584

Nov. 12, 1864.] side. Instead of those graceful stately fabrics we see a long low mass, so low indeed that her figurehead, the crowned lion of England, is raised far above her deck, and looking longer than she really is, by reason of that exceeding lowness. Her sides too project no threatening muzzles from rows of great square openings, but present one solid unbroken wall, which, on inquiry, we learn is composed of 18 inches of timber, protected on the outside by solid plates of 5½ inches of wrought iron, and coated on the inside also with a stout iron skin. Her deck too, which, as being originally the lower deck of a three-decker, is of an unusual width, not less than 63 feet, and also unusually arched, so as to give a rise in the centre of 18 inches, has an underclothing of inch iron; and, rising out of it along the centre, are four circular turrets, which contain the ship’s offensive power. They too are as solid as the sides of the ship; but in them we perceive small oval openings, one in each of the three sternmost, and two in the foremost, each of which is almost filled up with the muzzle of a huge 300-pounder Armstrong gun; the only vacant space being one of 3 inches below, and 4 inches above the gun, to give room for its occasional depression or elevation. And lest this small opening should prove a source of weakness, an extra 4½ inch iron plate is added for a space of 4 feet on each side of the port; giving a thickness there of no less than 10 inches of solid iron. The largest or 2-gun turret in the bow rises 5 feet above the deck, measures 23 feet in diameter, and weighs, including its guns, 144 tons; the three smaller turrets rise 4 feet 6 inches, measure 20 feet 6 inches in diameter, and, with their gun, weigh 103 tons each, the weight of a gun and carriage being 16 tons.

Each gun is but just clear of the deck, and, except in action, is nearly concealed from the sight of anyone outside the vessel by an iron bulwark about 3 feet high, made in compartments resting on hinges and secured by pins, the withdrawal of which—an operation that can be performed in a few seconds—leaves the gun a clear space in front for its fire. The position of the gun in the centre, coupled with that raising of the deck which has already been mentioned, enables it to be depressed so low as to strike the water at a distance of only 23 yards from the ship. The perpendicular depression of the gun, or its elevation, which by the arrangement of the carriage can be carried as high as 35 degrees, is of course effected by moving the gun itself, but the lateral training, which in the central turrets amounts to about 60 degrees each way, making an arc of 120 degrees, and which in those at the bow and stern, from their having nothing on one side of them, is much greater, is effected by revolutions given to the turrets themselves. And of them we will now speak, pausing only to remind or inform our readers that the greatest degree of lateral training of which a broadside gun is susceptible is 28 degrees, making an arc of 56 degrees, and to effect this her ports are forced to be not less than 13 square feet in size.

The entrance to the turrets is below the deck, and there also it is that they and the guns which they contain are worked, the whole crew being below, with the exception of the captain, whose place in action is in a little watch-tower, as it may be called, slightly raised above the deck, and plated as strongly as the turrets, in which, while fully protected and concealed from the sight of the enemy, he has a full view of all that is going on, and from which, by means of a set of voice pipes ingeniously placed around him, he can convey his orders to every part of the ship. Each turret is supported on a turn-table, the idea of which Captain Coles borrowed from that in ordinary use on our railways; and each turntable revolves on a gigantic pivot, two feet in diameter, made of wrought iron, hollow, with sides four inches thick, and fitted with bearings like the shaft of a paddle-wheel. The men who fight the gun have ample standing room in the turret, which, when it is desired to train it in any direction, is moved by a double set of winches, outside and inside, which, in the case of the smaller turrets, can be worked by as few as four men, though there is room for double that number if required. They can turn it with extreme rapidity or with the most deliberate slowness, and stop its revolution at a word, thus bringing the gun to bear on its object with the most perfect nicety. And this was tested and proved in the most satisfactory manner at the end of July, when the ship closed her first series of experimental firing in the open sea by destroying, with the concentrated fire of all her guns at a single discharge, a target only a foot square at a distance of 1000 yards. The trial she had then just completed of repeated and rapid firing of all her guns with full charges proving also, as Captain Coles had predicted, that very little smoke entered the turrets, and also, what was least expected, at least by the adversaries of the plan, that the concussion was less felt in them than in other parts of the ship. The gun carriages run on a kind of rail, the recoil after fire bringing the gun back within the turret sufficiently to allow of its being reloaded without any exposure of the gunners, and at the same time (from the admirable arrangement of all the gear which holds the gun) being under the most complete control, as may be