Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

9 THE BUILDING OF A BATTLESHIP. details of the ship, are marked one by one, full size. When that has been done, the curve is copied from the scrive board on the “ bending slabs,” which are plates of iron full of small holes in which steel pegs can be placed, thus, as it were, dotting in outline the curve to which the frame is to be bent. The straight length of frame or angle bar is then ready for handling. Holes are punched where they are required, this being done by measure- ment from the delineation on the scrive board ; the frame is next heated, bevelled by machinery, and brought hot to the pins which mark out the curve to which it is to be bent, and, in much less time than it takes us to write this, bent to the required shape. When bent and ready to take its place in the structure of the ship it is placed in position and rivetted. The first process when actually building up the structure of the battleship is to lay the keel plates, which are prepared to drawings and to the outline on the scrive board, exactly as are the frames. The keel plates are upon solid masses of wood, slightly inclined from bow to stern if the ship is not being built in dock, and if she will have to be launched. Building in dock 2 is quicker, cheaper, and less troublesome* because it obviates all the anxieties which attend the launch of a large vessel, but it has the serious defect of rendering it impossible to use the dock for any other purpose. To the keel plates the frames,, which are the most important factors in the ship’s structure, are bqlted with rivets,, and in the newest and most up-to-date establishments the rivetting, of which there is so much, is accomplished with great speed by the use of a hydraulic or pneumatic rivetter. The frames occur at short intervals, from stem to stern, and to them the outer shell of plating which completes the structure is secured. They are held in place in the- initial stages by strong shores of timber and “ ribband-pieces.” The deck-beams and longitudinal framing are then added; the floor-plates laid ; and the mass of metal on the stocks begins to look like a ship. All the operations of cutting plates to size,, bending and punching, are performed by machinery, which is of the simplest and most effective description. With the modern appliances it is a matter of perfect ease to shear ij^-inch steel plate, even to punch manholes at one operation. Machinery is more and more used for the transference