THE GREAT EASTERN STEAMSHIP.

Dunstan Times, Issue 712, 10 December 1875, Page 3

THE GREAT EASTERN STEAMSHIP.

Writing in Land and Water respecting the hull of the Great Eastern steamship, Mr Henry Lee says “So far as barnacles were concerned, 1 had been sent as completely on a wild goose chase as if I had gone in quest of the 1 barnacle geese,’of wlv'ch the said cirripedes were once supposed to bo the embryonic form. There were certainly traces of a few' barnacles (Balanus Tlntinnabulrm apparently) near the level of the water-line, especially about the sternpost and between it and the rudder and the latter itself, as well as the propolling screw, was covered with the common barnacles or ‘ cbitters’; but all the rest of the hull usually submerged was covered with an enormous multitude of mussels, clustered together in one dense and continuous deposit, extending over a surface of 02,000 square feet of iron plates, in some places six inches th’ok. Mr Beckwith had made a calculation, which 1 am able to verify with him, of the total weight of the mussels thus accumulated. It was found by careful experiment that the average weight of those on each square foot was

from 12!bs to 131hs ; therefore the vessel was encumbered with not less than three hundred tons of living marine animals adhering to her—mussels enough, in fact, to load with full cargoes, two ordinary collier brigs ! Although the mere weight, of this mass would not perhaps, much affect the

buoyancy of a vessel 23,000 tons burthen, it will be readily understood that the friction of such a rough, jagged incrustation passing through the water would materially diminish her speed. As those troublesome adherents were scraped off with shove's by workmen emp’oyed under contract to remove them, they wove carried away by boatloads and cartloads, and buried along the shore of the haven. In some localities they would have been heartily welcomed by the fishermen as valuable bait. So completely bad the mussels taken possession of overv inch of plate surface, tn the exclusion of almost every other living thing, that there was nothing fit for exhibition m aquarium but some plumose anemones (Actinoloha (UantJnm) of three varieties—orange, white, and ‘ olive—fine groups of which had attached themselves in some places to the outer layer of the crowded hivalves. These were, I found, the ‘ barnacles’ of which I had been told.”