Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

388 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Wood decks arc dispensed with and corticine substituted, and cabin bulkheads, fittings, store-rooms, etc., are now made of non-inflam- mable material, usually sheet-steel. Automatic gun signals are fitted so as to prevent the occurrence of accidents through the cross-fire of the guns, and complete loud- speaking telephone communication is estab- lished from the conning tower to the various vital parts of the vessel. Having now indicated the salient features which must be embodied in a successful battleship design, and having dealt briefly with the offensive and defensive qualities neces- sary, it will be of inter- est to describe somewhat in detail a modern battleship, and for this purpose we have selected the Dreadnought, the great ship whose ad- vent revolutionized the views of all the great powers as to the requirements of naval warfare. The Dreadnought has been followed by the slightly larger Superb, New Téméraire, and Bellerophon ^aof^the*PS (18,600 tons displacement), the Great Powers. Vincent, Codlingwood, and Vanguard (19,250 tons), and the Neptune (20,250 tons), for the British Navy; but, so far as the particulars of these vessels have been made public, they may be regarded as improved Dread- noughts. The Dreadnought offered such a great advance in battleship design that the impression she made on the expert advisers of other naval powers may be clearly dis- cerned in the designs of the new battleships Delaware and North Dakota for the United z States Navy, the Nassau and Rheinland classes for Germany, the Danton and the five similar vessels for France, and the Aki and Satsuma for Japan. H.M.S. “ Dread = nought.” 23,000 horse- The Dreadnought is 490 feet long between perpendiculars, by 82 feet broad, and draws 26J feet of water at a displacement of 17,900 tons. Her Parsons turbine engines drive four screws, take steam from Babcock and Wil- cox water-tube boilers, and in- dicate power under natural draught. The de- signed speed of 21 knots was exceeded slightly on the trials. DISTRIBUTION OF ARMAMENT AND ARMOUR ON H.M.S. “ DREADNOUGHT.” The armament consists of ten 12-inch guns, twenty-four Q.F. anti-torpedo boat-guns, and five submerged torpedo tubes. Thus the Dreadnought is an all-big-gun ship, or, in other words, sho Dread- ß • K 4-u nought’s ” carries no 6-mch. or other Guns intermediate guns, such as were usually fitted in the earlier battle- ships. The advantages and drawbacks of the all-big-gun arrangement have been much discussed in naval circles, many contending that it is not wise to sub- stitute heavy 12-inch weapons for the equi- valent weight of intermediate guns ; but the fact that more than one of the great naval powers in their latest ships have followed the Dreadnought lead is not without signifi- cance. In the arrangement of armament adopted, which is shown on this page, six of the big guns are mounted in pairs on the centre line of the ship, and the remaining