ARMSTRONG’S.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9421, 17 April 1909, Page 2

ARMSTRONG’S.

An "article of absorbing interest just now is “The Birth of a Battleship” in Cassell’s. It describes the work at the great shipyard of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., on the Tyne, where onr Dreadnought may be built. Armstrong’s is really a town. There are over 25,000 men on the paysheet, and the workshops cover 250 acres. Secrecy and efficiency are the main characteristics of the establishment. Great precautions are taken that no information of the designs of ships shall leak out from the designing offices. Every plan is no parcelled out that it is next to impossible for a foreign agent to procure a complete design. A case was mentioned to the writer in which £IOOO was offered tor a sketch that covered a sheet of notepaper When the plan of a battleship is completed to scale, it is drawn to exact size on the floor of the mould-loft and moulds are made from thin pieces of wood, showing every detail, down to the smallest rivet-hole. The moulds are then taken to pieces, and each pioee of wood used as a guide in the building-yard, where nearly 4000 men are at work. Very fascinating is the account of the making of the great 12-inoh gnns, which dominate the naval situation to-day. This weapon is over 50ft long, weighs W tons without mountings, opn send a projectile weighing half a ton through a wroughtiron plate 20in thick as it it were paper, has a range of twelve miles, costs £IO,OOO, and takes nearly a year to build. It consists of a forged tube surrounded by steel wire wrappings, on whioh steel jackets are shrunk. - Man’s mastery over immense weights is ever becoming greater. It used to take Armstrongs three months to take a pair of gnns -and the barbette to pieces after testing and place them on a ship. Now the gnns and barbette are picked np by a crane weighing 1000 tons, lifted out of one shop, carried over another, and placed in the warship lying in the river. One may enter the huge showroom and purchase guns, from machine guns monsters, jnsfc as one buys a "pound of steak in a butcher’s shop.