whether any mind will have the patience to follow all the windings of one who thinks equally without consistency and without weariness. A man may attack iron bars, oak doors, or stone walls, and hope with energy and perseverance to break his way through, but to follow a thin thread, which leads him through winding and slippery paths, and is always snapping at an honest touch, requires a strength of nerve and tenacity of purpose which Mr. Ruskin's writings will hardly inspire or their refutation reward. Not that we are in the least inclined to magnify the importance of unsound ideas and absurd conclusions upon the subject of art. Art, not being a direct moral agent at all, can only do real harm in proportion as it can do real good-its debasement can only be the index of a frivolous or ignorant state of society-never in any way its cause. As regards Mr. Ruskin in particular, he will mislead no mind and injure no career which would not have been misled or injured equally without him. For those who have no eyes, it matters little how entirely the pseudo moral at the end of his chapter is purchased by the flimsy fallacy at the beginning, while those who possess these organs to any purpose will soon forget both the one and the other. It would have been well, therefore, for Mr. Ruskin had he erred in nothing but what may thus be harmlessly swallowed or easily rejected; but it is the terrible penalty of the propagators of slander that their evil deeds should remain-for no evil, as no good, can fall into our moral world without fruits of which none can compute the length or the strength; in either case, in proportion to the good or evil, is the return or the recoil upon the author, and upon Mr. Ruskin the recoil has begun already. ART. V.-1. A Report of the Court of Directors of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, made to the Proprietors on the 6th of August, 1853. 2. A Treatise on Naval Gunnery. By General Sir Howard Douglas, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.C.L., F.R.S. Fourth edition, revised. London. 1854. THE voyager up and down the Thames has noticed with astonishment, during the last eighteen months, the slow growth of a huge structure on the southern extremity of the Isle of Dogs. At first a few enormous poles alone cut the sky-line, and arrested his attention; then vast plates of iron, that seemed big enough to form shields for the gods, reared themselves edgeways, at great distances apart; and as months elapsed, a wall of metal slowly arose between him and the horizon. The sooty VOL. XCVIII. NO. CXCVI. 2 F engineer, engineer, as he leans over the bulwark of Bridegroom No. 2, when questioned respecting it, tells you it is 'the Big Ship'-he knows no more. If, moved by curiosity, the voyager hails a boat and rows ashore, the sturdy oarsman can only tell you it is 'the Big Ship.' If you question Jack, whom you see coming along the road laden with a green parrot and a bundle of yams, as to what they are doing here, he will eye the huge mass for a moment, and reply with a vacant negative. Even those who are informed of its purpose doubt and argue respecting it. 'Look'ee here,' said an old salt to us, pointing with his pipe to the stem and the stern of the ship, which lie parallel with the river, here's her starn and here's her stem, and here's the water; and how they are going to launch her I can't figure noways.' The great ship, or 'Great Eastern,' as she is sometimes called, projected by the eminent engineer Mr. Brunel, the father of Transatlantic Steam Navigation, although building in the midst of the largest collection of seafaring people in the world, stands a wonder and a puzzle to them all. And indeed, the moment you are inside the works of Scott, Russell, and Co. at Millwall, you feel the reason of the strange eye with which the maritime population view the monster which is slowly growing up, and overshadowing not only the ship-yard itself, but the portion of the new town immediately in its neighbourhood. Where are the merry ship-carpenters, caulking away with monotonous, dead-sounding blows? Where are the artizans chipping with their adzes, rearing up one after another huge ribs, and laying the massive keel? Where are the bright augers gleaming in the sun, as sturdy arms work out the boltholes? None of these old accustomed sights and sounds of shipbuilding are to be found; but in their place we see the arm of steam, mightier than that of Thor, welding some iron shaft big 'the mast of some huge admiral,' or punching inch-plates of iron as quickly and as noiselessly as a lady punches card-board for a fancy fair ornament. Steel, urged by the same potent master, is seen showing its mastery over iron as the huge lathes revolve, or the planing-machine pursues steadily its resistless course, whilst, in place of the shavings of the carpenter, long ringlets of dull grey metal cumber the ground. The shipcarpenter is transmuted into a brawny smith, and the civil engineer takes the place of the marine architect. A closer inspection of this Leviathan vessel shows us how completely the employment of a new material has necessitated new ideas with respect to construction. She runs along, or rather will-for she 'is not yet quite up in frame-some seven hundred feet; those portions of her yet unfinished at stem and stern show her partitions or bulk as heads heads running nearly sixty feet in height, and standing just sixty feet apart. If we examine the outer walls of these huge partitions, we see at once that the ship has no ribs springing from a keel or back bone-none of the ordinary framework by which her bulging sides are maintained in their places; but, on closer inspection, it is found that she has a system of ribs or webs, longitudinal instead of transverse, running from stem to stern of the ship, up to eight feet above her deep water-line; and riveted on each side of these thirty-two webs or ribs, which are again subdivided at convenient lengths, are plates of iron of an inch in thickness, forming a double skin to the ship, or a dermis and epidermis. Thus her framework forms a system of cells, which, like the Menai tube, combines the minimum of weight with the maximum of strength. A glance at the transverse midship section will show at once this portion of her structure. Hitherto it has been the practice to build iron ships in exactly the same manner as regards framework as wooden ones; that is, the strength of the sides has been made gradually to lighten towards the deck, which being of wood, can offer but slight resisting power. Thus iron ships of the old method of construction are peculiarly liable to break their backs upon the application of force, either to their two ends or to the centre of their keels, just, in short, as a tube would be easily broken, one side of which was made much stronger than the other. The 'Birkenhead' iron troop-ship was a melancholy instance of this unscientific method of construction; for it will be remembered that immediately she struck, her wooden deck doubled up and snapped in two, as a stick would snap across the knee, whilst stem and stern reared for a moment high in the air, and then went down like stones into the deep. As you stand watching the process of building up this double skin, or framework of the ship, the question immediately strikes the mind, how are these unyielding plates of inch iron made to accommodate themselves to her lines, which are seen to run as finely fore and aft as those of a Thames wager-boat? How are the innumerable curves which die away into each other, to be produced by any aggregation of rectilinear pieces of flat boiler plate? In ordinary wooden ships, the planking, by its elasticity, allows itself to be modelled to the ribs: but here there are no ribs, in the true sense of the word, and the form of the vessel must depend upon the inclination given to each separate piece of iron before the fastening process is commenced. And such, in fact, is the case. Every individual plate, before being fixed in its proper position, was the subject of a separate study to the engineer. Of the ten thousand, or thereabout, that compose the framework 2 F 2 framework of the ship, only a few situated in the mid-ship section are alike either in size or in curve. For each a model in wood, or 'template,' as it is technically called, had originally to be made, and by these patterns the plates were cut into their required shapes by the huge steam shears, in exactly the same manner as a tailor cuts out the various portions of a garment. The 'list,' or inclination to be given to each plate, is the next process to be gone through; and this is produced by passing it through a system of rollers, which can be so reversed in their action, and so adjusted, as to give it any required curve. The template,' studded with holes around its margin, is then fitted to it, and a boy with a stick dipped in white lead marks through them the places upon the iron where the rivet-holes are to be punched; when this last process is completed, the plate is lettered with two or three separate letters, indicating the precise place it has to take in the ship. Thus the hull is first carefully thought out in detail, and is then regularly and mechanically put together, in much the same way as a tesselated pavement. The process of fastening the plates affords another curious contrast to the old method of bolting employed by the ship-carpenters. The holes in the plates to be held together being brought in exact apposition, bolts at a white heat are one by one introduced, and firmly riveted whilst in that condition by a group of three men, one the upholder, who holds the bolt in its position by placing a hammer against its head on the inside of the ship, whilst two sturdy Vulcans, with alternate blows, produce the rivet-head on the other. The bolts contract in cooling, and draw the plates together with the force of a vice, and hold them so for ever afterwards. The rapidity with which this process is performed strikes the spectator with astonishment. A set of three men, and a boy to shovel the hot bolts out of the furnace, will in the course of a day close up four hundred rivets; and speed in the process is requisite, when we remember that before the ship can swim three million of them must be made secure. If we clamber up the ladders which lead to her deck, some 60 feet above the ground, we perceive that her interior presents fully as strange a contrast to other vessels as the construction of her hull does. Ten perfectly water-tight bulkheads, placed 60 feet apart, having no openings whatever lower than the second deck, divide the ship transversely; whilst two longitudinal walls of iron, 36 feet apart, traverse 350 feet of the length of the ship. Thus the interior is divided, like the sides, into a system of cells or boxes. Besides these main divisions, there are a great number of sub-compartments beneath the lowest deck, devoted to the boiler-rooms, engine-rooms, coal and cargo, cargo, &c.; whilst some 40 or 50 feet of her stem and stern are rendered almost as rigid as so much solid iron by being divided by iron decks from bulwark to keel. Her upper deck is double, and is also composed of a system of cells formed by plates and angle irons. By this multiplication of rectilinear compartments, the ship is made almost as strong as if she were of solid iron, whilst, by the same system of construction, she is rendered as light and as indestructible, comparatively speaking, as a piece of bamboo. There is a separate principle of life in every distinct portion, and she could not well be destroyed even if broken into two or three pieces, since the fragments, like those of a divided worm, would be able to sustain an independent existence. A better idea perhaps of the interior of the ship can be gained at the present moment than when she has progressed farther towards completion. As you traverse her mighty deck, flush from stem to stern, the great compartments made by the transverse and longitudinal bulkheads, or parti-walls of iron, appear in the shape of a series of parallelograms, 60 feet in length by 36 in width; numerous doors in the walls of these yawning openings at once reveal that it is here that the hotels. of the steam-ship will be located. If we were to take the row of houses belonging to Mivart's and drop them down one gulf, take Farrance's' and drop it down the second, take Morley's at Charing Cross and fit it into a third, and adjust the Great Western Hotel at Paddington and the Great Northern at King's Cross into apertures four and five, we should get some faint idea of the nature of the accommodation The Great Eastern' will afford. We speak of dropping hotels down these holes, because the separate compartments will be as distinct from each other as so many different houses; each will have its splendid saloons, upper and lower, of 60 feet in length; its bedrooms or cabins, its kitchen and its bar; and the passengers will no more be able to walk from the one to the other than the inhabitants of one house in Westbourne Terrace could communicate through the parti-walls with their next-door neighbours. The only process by which visiting can be carried on will be by means of the upper deck or main thoroughfare of the ship. Nor are we using figures of speech when we compare the space which is contained in the new ship to the united accommodation afforded by several of the largest hotels in London. She is destined to carry 800 first-class, 2000 second-class, and 1200 third-class passengers, independently of the ship's complement, making a total of 4000 guests. A reference to the longitudinal and transverse sections will explain her internal economy more |