The ship had four propellers, two on each side at the
stern, and the boilers were heated by petroleum with automatic feed. The
engineer informed me that they had tried gasoline and other explosives
(for the rotary engines worked well with them) but they endangered the
safety of the ship and the lives of the crew. There were only two decks
in the ship, the lower deck just above the waterline and the gun deck;
the lower deck floor was two-inch steel and was not divided into
compartments, having no partitions, so that if solid shot or shell
entered the side of the ship it could not scatter a shower of steel
splinters to kill or wound the men, and for further protection against
fragments of shell heavy woolen blankets were hung on the inside from
the ceiling. A double partition of two-inch steel ran bow to stern
through the center of the ship, reaching from the floor of the hold to
the lower deck, with a space between the partitions of four inches
filled in with concrete, and the gun deck was supported by heavy steel
pillars, as the space between the lower deck and the gun deck was twelve
feet. A fireproof platform four feet wide with a railing four feet high
of netting, encircled the smokestack about twenty feet above the gun and
connected with it by a rope ladder.
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