THE MIANTONOMOH.

West Coast Times, Issue 326, 9 October 1866, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MIANTONOMOH.

(ritOM THE TIMES.) To say that the Americans are " a great people is but to repeat a universally acknowledged aphorism. They build a city, launch a fleet, or set an army in the field in about the same space of time it- would opcupy us in this grand, old, but slow-moving country to discuss the preliminaries. A pressing national want felt by them is supplied at once, without reference to bewildered and bewildering " select -committees." Theoretical problems, in the art of war especially, are reduced with, astonishing celerity into a practical, definite form, and work, when completed, stands forth an accomplished fact, with its virtues and its faults freely open the criticism of all Europe,- and is, und p r all conditions, a striking monument of the -energ3 r , decision, and practical business sense of the statesmen and people of

the youngest and most powerful among the World's family of nations. One of the latest conceived ancl executed of these Transatlantic prodigies is the two-turret vessel Miantonomoh, now anchored at Spithead, and in allowing this vessel to visit England at the present moment, the Government "of President Johnson has conferred upon this country a service only secondary to that so frankly rendered in the recent suppression of the miserable Fenian demonstration on the shores of the Canadian Lakes. The turret question* is just now to us .a. matter of vital importance with regard to the construction of our ironclad navy . It may be eventually that iron-clothed fleets may be composed wholly of turret or of broadsjde ships, oi'-that they maj r be composed, of both, as with the American navy, where turret ,ships occupy the position of the heavy breaching artillery of tho . fleet, the broadside ships being kept as the main body, available for general service where speed and power are bbth combined in one vessel. No opportunity for studying the whole subject with certain profit to ourselves can be afforded equal to a visit to the Miantonomoh and other turret ships of the American, navy as they may visit our shores. , The Miantonomoh is a sister vessel to

the Monaduock, now in the Pacific As a. Avar machine for close heavy fighting she seems to be perfect. The 15-

inch Rodman guns are mounted on. carriages and slides very superior *to anything before seen in England. The turrets are believed by the officers of the ship to be invulnerable to any gun that can be carried afloat. The' sides of the ship are so low in the water that.nothing remains for an enemy to

hit but the turrets, and they, with their two 450-pounders, hit very hard in return. The training power of her guns given by the revolving of beiv turrets is doubled by reversing at any time her twin screws ; she is undoubtedly as safe and as sea-worthy as any vessel that ever floated as a man-of-war ; she is, her. officers say, quite as habitable as *any ordinary vessel they ever sailed in ; and s,he is much easier at sea than a broadside guv-vessel of the same tonnage would be. As a vessel of only 1500 tons, (Carrying four ' 15inch, guns in their ponderous 10-inch iron turrets, - the speed of the vessel due from the proportion of her nominal engine power to tonnage has been sacrificed by widening and flattening the the form of the ship's bottom, but this has left her with a, speed of eight knots, mean, and is quite sufficient to enable her to fight 'any action iv her capacity of a turret ship, and make up for the want of speed in manoeuvring power given' by the reversed action of her twin screws. The first impression felt on stepping on to the'Miantonoinoh's deck at Spithead is that she would make a welcome addition to the fixed forts on the Horse

and Noman shoals for the defence of Spithead, and also that she Avould as assuredly be an efficient' Aveapon Avith which to attack the same forts am open a. passage into Spithead for an accompanying fleet of iron-clad broadside ships. Between decks the A'isitor is at first bewildered by the quantity of machinery scattered about. There are no less than seventeen steam-engines, large and small, on this deck, and all have their appprtioned work. Six of these engines drive the blowers Avhicji receiA^e the air from the main air shaft (standing between the two funnels on the upper deck, about nine feet in height), and distribute it along shaftings and up through gratings in all parts of the ship, for s at sea the ship is necessarily battened down fore and aft, and the only air-that can enter the ship then, except dojvn the main air shaft, is through the^ perforated "tops of the turrets and pilot houses. With two of th« bloAvers set slowly to*AA r ork on board yesterday there was a strong upward rush of cool air through the air gratings in the floor of the ward room and' other parts of the ship, the . thermometer in the captain* cabin previous* ■to £he blows being set moving making 75 deg. There Avas, hoAveA'er, a feeling of oppressiveness which was perhaps, due to the absence of the greater portion of the daylight, and the knowledge that air \AA r as being then breathed Avhich had been sucked into a, part of the vessel below the Avater-line by mechanical means, through an iron column communicating with the outer atmosphere. All "the officers- of the Miantonomok declare that they rather like being at sea in a closed A-essel. They get plenty of air beloAV from the bloAVers, and must do so as long as there is any steam to drive them ; and of the two, for comfort, they rather prefer for a sea Aoyage a. A r essel like their oavu to an ordinary cruiser. Indeed, the thermometer records kept on board prove

that the heat below during the voyage across the Atlantic cannot have been so would be imagine 1 by a stranger looking OA r er the ship as she lies at Spithead, and examining the means of supplying and regulating the larboard draught of .fresh air. At sea, howeA'er, the upper deck is always awash with the seas rolling OA T ei r it, and this no doubt tends to cool the atmosphere beloAV. As^ a handful of facts are, however, worth a cartload of opinions, Aye give here a copy of t^ie thermometer register of the temperature on the middle- of the berth deck on' four days, or rather nights, during the voyage across :^— ' June 12. June 13. June 14. June 15.

Deg. Deg. Deg. Deg. ' lOp.m ... 72 71 • 70 70 12 midnight 69 ' ,71 70 71 2 a.m. ... 61- 70 70 ' 68 . 4 a.m. ... 61 70 Gl 'G8 6 a.m. ... 61 70 70 67 With regard to the seaAVorthiness of the vessel, no vessel, her officers de~ clare, could have behaved better than the Miantonomoh, and there was a sufficiently stiff, breeze experienced between NeAv York and Halifax to test her ii\ than respect. The seas rolled over her deck whenever the waA-es rose, on the .quarters, the bows, or broadside, but they washed over Avithout rrffecting the ship, and the officer of the Avatch, from his roomy perch on Ac raised platform betAvcen the two turrets could

look with perfect equanimity upon the submerged hull of his vessel below. In this respect the Miautononioh only differs from many deep loaded sailing clipper" ships in having no bulwarks to hold the water on her decks. Of the exact amount of work to be got out of the 15- inch guns Jtherc appear to be no exact data available for comparison- with the work of our best present ship gun, the 12-ton 9-inch rifle, or 250-pound.r. Cojnmander Cornwall, of the Miantonomoh, who commanded a monitor before Charleston, once fired a total of 7.50 rounds from one of these guns, but the greatest number he ever fired in o}\e day was 60 rounds. No phraseology " would describe the outline of this gun so well as the accepted " soda-water bottle." Although of the immense diameter of bore of 15in. at the lnuzzle, the outer diameter there is only 2*l in., but the breech is immensely Aveightcd Avith metal. The gun, however, is so cA r enly balanced upon its trunnions that the captain of the gun can elevate or depress it Avith one of

his fmgers only on the screw lever. The elevating sere tv is four and a-half inches in diameter, and works loosely with its heel in a flat-bottomed metal cup, so as to " give" with any sudden shock from the gun. The damages are, as has been already stated, superior to anything of the kind previously seen in this country. They are simply made, and have a " continuity* of strength" throughout. The compressors are three iron plates working between four i wooden balks. The slide lies on a level with the turret floor, and is merply two iron beams 9in. by 3in., planed true on their Upper 'edge, .and connected to beams and plates at each end. Two men can run the gun iv or out - with ease, and one man can regulate the compressors. The sights ov*.r the top of the gun give a range of; 1300 yards. The extreme of the gun's elevation is 9 de"-, and of depression 3^ dogs. The turrets ?lre 9 feet* in height above the iron 3-inch deck, the 3-iuch wood deck above the iron deck being above the actual base of the turret on the- composition ring on which it rests. When fitted to the ship the under surface of the turret the places where the"y rest on the composition ring, and the ring there * itself, . are both planed- true, and are always afterwards kept well oiled and greased to reduce theiriction when the turret is revolving. Supposing that the turret is raised, as it is termed, for re-, volving, the fact is, that only about two-thirds of the weight is taken ou

the spindle, the remainder slipping round on .the composition ring. The turret is built of ten one-inch rolled iron plates, the surfaces of which are all carefully planed, and the whole then ' set up together in a cylindrical form, each plate breaking joint with its next neighbor. The bolts are " marlin-spike" shaped, of less diameter, but much more numerous than in our turrets, and their heads are clinched on the outer face of the turret, instead of being cut off, as with us. The top of the turret is closed in with iron bars, 4in, by 3in., which are again covered with iron plating of one inch, perforated. The two gunports are each 2ft wide by 3^ lOin in depth. They can be' closed when • the gun has been discharged by a 13in. iron stopper, which is pivoted ou the floor aud roof of the turret, and easily swung into and out of position. The pilothouse on the top of each turret weighs about 30 tons.

The side armor of the ship is 7ft. in deptli from the deck level to below the water line, and is formed of seven oneinch plates.

The engines of the ship are of 800horse power, nominal, on the back action principle of Mr Isherwood, „ . United States' Navy, the connecting rod working towards each cylinder head. The cylinders are 30in. in diameter, with a 26in. stroke of piston, driven at full speed at 80 revolutions, with from 35 Co 88 pounds 'steam. The screws work inwards. The average heat in the engine-room in coming over averaged 80 degrees, and in the stokehole, 120 degrees.

The main fault to be found with the Miantonomoh is that she has been constructed of wopd instead of iron. The enormous weight she has to carry in turrets, guns, side and deck armour, and -engines, must eventually tell upon a wooden hull. If we compare her with our own wooden-hulled Royal Sovereign, we find her excelling our ship in smallness of target offered to au enemy's shot, and iv manoeuvring power by the action of her twin screws. On the other hand, the^ Royal Sovereign's turrets appear to be mounted on a much .better system, by reason of the greater diameter and strength'of their central spindle and the solid wide area of support given by the frames of conical wheels tinder the turret turntable. The Royal Sovereign, too, is very much more habitable , than the Miantonoinohr On the reftitive merits of, the guns and armor of the two ships no one can give a reliable opinion. The only method by which those questions could be -satisfactorily solved would be to build two cylinders, one on the American and one on the^ English turret principle, . i. id fire with two guns at each turret, one j;un being au American 15-inch Rodman, small bore, and the other a -sine-inch English, naval 12-ton rifle. The ppwer of the two guns would thus be proved^ on each turret at opposite sides, and the principle on which the turrets are built respectively would also be satisfactorily tested. X)ne peculiar feature in the American turret was almost omitted from our noticeits ten one-inch iron plates have no " backing," The interior diameter of the Miantonomoh' s turrets is 21ft., and their height from floor to the overhead beams 6ft. 4in.