Last year it was my pleasant privilege to lay before the readers of the Spectator a few details upon the polity of a battleship, and from the amount of interest shown in that subject, it would seem acceptable to supplement it by a few more details upon the mechanical side. First, then, as to the ship herself. Complaints are often heard of the loss of beauty and ship-like appearance consequent upon the gain of combative strength in these floating monsters. And it cannot be denied that up till a few years ago in our own Navy, and at the present date among the cuirassÉs of France, the appearance of the vessels made such a complaint well founded—such ships as the Hoche and Charlemagne, for instance, from which it may truly be said that all likeness to a ship has been removed. But in our own Navy there has been witnessed of late years a decided return to the handsome contour of vessels built, not for war, but for the peaceful pursuits of the merchant service. And this has so far been attended by the happiest results. These mighty ships of the Majestic class, on board of one of which I am now writing, have won the unstinted praise of all connected with them. This means a great deal, for there are no more severe critics of the efforts of naval architects than naval officers, as would be naturally expected. In these ships the eye is arrested at once by their beautiful lines, and the absence of any appearance of top-heaviness so painfully evident in ships like the Thunderer, the Dreadnought, and the Admirals. Their spacious freeboard, or height from the water-line to the edge of the upper deck, catches a seaman’s eye at once, for a good freeboard means not only a fairly dry ship, but also plenty of fresh air below, as well as a sense of security in heavy weather. It is not, however, until their testing time comes, in a heavy gale of wind on the wide Atlantic, that their other virtues appear. Then one is never weary of wondering at their splendid stability and freedom from rolling, which makes them unique fighting platforms under the worst weather conditions. They steer perfectly, a range of over three and a half degrees on either side of their course being sufficient to bring down heavy censure upon the quartermaster. They have not Belleville boilers, and so enjoy almost complete immunity from breakdowns, maintaining their speed in a manner that is not approached by any other men-of-war afloat. In addition to great economy of coal usage they have, for a ship of war, very large coal bunkerage. In fact, in this respect their qualifications are so high that there is danger of being disbelieved in giving the plain facts. On a coal consumption of 50 tons per day for all purposes a speed of eight knots per hour can be maintained for forty days. Of course, with each extra knot of speed the coal consumption increases enormously, reaching a maximum of 220 tons a day for a speed of fifteen knots with forced draught. It is necessary to italicise all purposes, for it must always be remembered that there is quite a host of auxiliary engines always at work in these ships for the supply of electric light, ventilation, steering, distilling, &c. And this brings me to a most important detail of the economy of modern ships of war—their utter dependence for efficient working upon modern inventions, all highly complicated, and liable to get out of order. As, for instance, the lighting. It is quite true that the work of the ship can be carried on without electric light, but when one considers the bewildering ramifications of utterly dark passages in the bowels of these huge ships, and remembers how accustomed the workers become to the flood of light given by a host of electric lamps, it needs no active exercise of the imagination to picture the condition of things when that great illumination is replaced by the feeble glimmer of candles or colomb lights. Truly they only punctuate the darkness, they do not dispel it, and work is carried on at great risk because of its necessary haste. Then there is the steering. Under ordinary circumstances one man stands at a baby wheel upon a lofty bridge, whence he has a view from beam to beam of all that is going on, of the surrounding sea. At a touch of his hand the obedient monster of 150 horse-power, far down in the tiller-room aft, responds by exerting its great force upon the rudder, and the ship is handled with ridiculous ease. Use accustoms one to the marvel, and no wonder is ever evinced at the way in which one man can keep that giant of 15,000 tons so steady on her course. But of late we have had an object-lesson upon the difference there is between steering by hand without the intervention of machinery and steering with its aid. In the next water-tight compartment forward of the tiller-room, there are four wheels, each 5 feet in diameter, and of great strength of construction. Some distance in front of these there is an indicator—a brass pointer moving along a horizontal scale marked in degrees. Forward of this again, but about 2 feet to port of it, there is a compass, and how any compass, however buttressed by compensators, can keep its polarity in the midst of such an immense assemblage of iron and steel furniture is almost miraculous. By the side of the compass is a voice-tube communicating with the pilot-bridge forward. To each of the wheels four men are allotted, sixteen in all. A quartermaster watches, with eyes that never remove their gaze, the indicator, which, actuated from the pilot-bridge 300 feet away, tells him how many degrees of helm are needed, and he immediately gives his orders accordingly. One man watches the compass, another attends the voice-tube, listening intently for orders that may come in that way from the officer responsible for the handling of the ship. Two men also watch in the tiller-room for possible complications arising there. Total, twenty-one men for the purpose of steering the ship alone, or a crew equal to that of a sailing-ship of 2000 tons, or the deck hands of a steamship of 6000 tons. Yet this steering crew is only for one watch. Of course, this steering by hand is a last resource. The engines which move the rudder are in duplicate, and there are seven other stations from which they can be worked—viz., one on the upper bridge, one in each of the conning-towers, one at each steering-engine, and two others on different decks in the lower fore-part of the ship. It is certainly true that some of these wheels actuate the same connection, so that one break may disable two, or even three, wheels; but even granting that, there still remains a considerable margin of chances against the possibility of ever being compelled to use the hand steering-gear. Those awful weapons of war, the barbette guns, may also be handled by manual labour, but it is instructive to compare the swift ease with which they, their containing barbettes (each weighing complete 250 tons), their huge cartridges of cordite and 850 lb. shells, are handled by hydraulic power, and the same processes carried out by hand. And so with all other serious operations, such as weighing anchor, hoisting steamboats, &c. The masses of weight to be dealt with are so great that the veriest novice may see at one glance that to be compelled to use hand labour for their manipulation in actual warfare would be equivalent to leaving the ship helpless, at the mercy of another ship of any enemy’s not so situated. Yes, these ships are good, so good that it is a pity they are not better. In the opinion of those best qualified to know, they have still a great deal too much useless top-hamper—nay, worse than useless, because in action its destruction by shell-fire and consequent mass of dÉbris would not only mean the needless loss of many lives, but would pile up a mountain of obstacles in the way of the ship’s efficient working. Also, the amount of unnecessary woodwork with which these vessels are cumbered is very great, constituting a danger so serious that on going into action it would be imperative to put a tremendous strain upon the crew in tearing it from its positions and flinging it overboard. Upper works of course there must be, but they should be reduced to their simplest and most easily removable expression, and on no account should there be, as there now is, any battery that in action would be unworkable, and consequently only so much lumber in the way. Remembering the enormous cost of the flotilla of boats carried by these ships, three of them being steamers of high speed, it comes as somewhat of a shock to learn that upon going into action one of the first things necessary would be to launch them all overboard and let them go secured together so that they might possibly be picked up again, although not easily by the ship to which they belonged. It is only another lurid glimpse of the prospective horror of modern naval warfare. There will be no means of escape in case of defeat and sinking, for nothing will be left to float. Finally, after all criticisms have been made it remains to be said that it is much to be regretted that we have not double the number of these splendid battleships furnished with boilers that can be relied upon as the present boilers can. Other ships of their stamp are being built, but with Belleville boilers, of which the best that can be said is that our most dangerous prospective foe is using them exclusively also. But she, again, is rushing blindly upon certain disaster in the direction of accumulating enormous superstructures which are certain to be destroyed early in any engagement, and being destroyed will leave the ship a helpless wreck. We have shown our wisdom by reducing these dreadfully disabling erections, and shall yet reduce them more. Why not go a step farther, and refuse longer to load our engineers with the horrible incubus of boilers that have not a single workable virtue but that of raising steam quickly, and have every vice that a vehicle for generating steam can possibly possess?