I paid a
visit to the navy yard and inspected two battleships that were
undergoing some slight repairs to their machinery.
One was a second-class battleship and her dimensions and armament were
as follows: Length five hundred and twenty-five feet, breadth of beam
seventy-five feet, draught of water twenty feet and six inches, height
of gun deck from the water line twelve feet; armament: ten twelve-inch
caliber guns mounted in turrets on the center line of the ship. The
turrets were bolted to the deck, five of them forward and five aft, and
were eighteen feet in diameter, eight feet high, with a slope from deck
to parapet of thirty degrees and made of armor steel twelve inches
thick. One gun in each turret and the guns could swing around on
four-fifths of the circle, so that every gun could be brought to bear on
an enemy either to port or starboard. No other guns were carried in time
of war and no cruisers, torpedo boats, or torpedoes were used, for
experience in war had shown that they were useless waste of men and
money. The battleship was propelled by rotary engines developing fifty
thousand horsepower, driving the ship at a sustained speed of thirty
knots an hour.
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