however, formidable ships, and in deep water, with ample sea-room, must be most powerful antagonists.

The importance attached by England to mail-clad steamers may be inferred from the debates in the House of Lords on the 11th and 14th of June, 1861, in which it was officially stated that the Government had not authorized the construction of a single wooden three-decker since 1855, nor one wooden two-decker since 1859, although it had launched a few upon the stocks for the purpose of clearing the yards, and that it now contemplated cutting down a number of the largest wooden steamships of the line for the purpose of plating them with iron, while it was constructing nothing but iron ships, except a few light despatch frigates, corvettes, and gun-boats.

In the same debate it was stated that bolts of steel had been forced by improved Armstrong cannon through an eightinch mail composed of iron bars dovetailed together; but the quality of the iron and the mode of fastening were both questioned. These experiments did not deter the Government from constructing mail-clad steamships. Indeed, it must be obvious that the great cost of Armstrong cannon, fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars each, together with the cost of steel bolts, combined with the fact that this description of cannon is easily shattered, if struck by a ball from the adversary, must long prevent its introduction into use; and should it eventually succeed, it must prove far more destructive to wooden walls than to iron-clad vessels.

It has, however, been urged in England against iron ships of all descriptions, but more as a theory than as an ascertained fact, that a solid shot would make a large and irregular aperture, if it entered the side of a vessel, and a much larger orifice as it passed out on the opposite side. To this theory, however, there are two answers: first, that a solid ball can neither enter nor pass out of the sides of a mailclad steamer; second, that, when it enters a common iron ship, there is evidence that it does less damage than would be

suffered by a wooden vessel. Captain Charlewood, of the Royal Navy, who recently commanded the iron frigate Guadaloupe in the service of Mexico, testified before a Committee of the British Parliament, that "his ship was under fire almost daily for four or five months," that "the damage by shot was considerably less than that usually suffered by a wooden vessel, and that there was nothing like the number of splinters which are generally forced out by a shot sent through a wooden vessel's side"; that "the vessel was hulled once in the mid ship part at about one thousand yards," and the effect 'was "that the shot passed through the iron, making a round hole in the iron "; "that at two feet below water" another shot passed through the vessel's side and one or two casks of provisions, and that the hole was simply plugged by the engineer at the time." He testified also that none of the shot disturbed any rivets. His evidence is the more valuable as it relates to an inferior vessel, whose plates were probably not more than half an inch thick.

He

The testimony of Captain W. H. Hall, R. N., in command of the iron frigate Nemesis, in the Chinese war, was still more conclusive in favor of iron. stated, "that in one action the Nemesis was hit fourteen times," and that one shot "went in at one side and came out at the other, and there were no splinters; in case of that shot, it went through just as if you put your finger through a piece of paper: nothing could have been more easily stopped than I could have stopped that shot in the Nemesis "; that "several wooden steamers were employed in that service, and they were invariably obliged to lie up for repairs, whilst I could repair the Nemesis in twenty-four hours and have her always ready for service." The Nemesis was a common iron steamer, and not a mail-clad steamship.

As respects the strength and durability of these steamers, although accidents have occurred from defective materials, it is in proof that the Tyne and Great Britain ran ashore and remained for months ex

posed to the open sea without going to pieces, and were finally rescued,- that the Persia struck on an iceberg, filled one of her compartments with water, and came safe to port,- that the North America and Edinburgh went at full speed upon the rocks near Cape Race and yet escaped, and that the Sarah Sands, while transporting troops to India, took fire, that in consequence the interior and contents of one of her compartments were entirely consumed, that her magazine exploded, and that she then encountered a ten days' gale, and after this exposure to such a series of calamities she reached her port without losing one of her crew or pas

sengers.

The ambition of England to maintain her ascendancy upon the deep has led her to disregard the advice of her Defence Commissioners, who recommended a different class of mail-clad steamers, to measure but two thousand tons and to draw but sixteen feet of water, a class admirably adapted to the sea-ports and requirements of the United States. And singular as it may appear, by some coincidence at a moment when our country requires this class of steamers, the enterprise of Boston is completing two iron steamers whose dimensions and draught of water conform to the recommendation of the British Commissioners, - steamers which are nearly ready for launching, but which, if they can receive, before they leave the stocks, additional plates of iron, would doubtless prove the most useful and efficient mail-clad vessels which have yet been constructed.

The stranger who would inspect these beautiful vessels may seat himself at almost any hour of the day in the cars at the foot of Summer Street, and in twenty minutes find himself at a point a little north of the Perkins Asylum for the Blind. A walk of five minutes more will bring him to a secluded yard sloping gently towards the water, where he will find extensive offices, and two large buildings which cover the vessels upon the stocks.

As he approaches these structures, he

will notice many plates of superior iron from the rolling-mills of Baltimore, combining the toughness and strength and other excellences of the best Pennsylvania iron; he will notice, too, immense ribs and beams of iron, and hear the incessant din of hammers riveting the sides and boilers.

Under each of these sheds he will find an iron steamship, two hundred and seventy-five feet in length by twenty-three in depth, exquisitely proportioned; he will be struck by the fine entrance and run. The extreme sharpness of the stem and stern, combined with great capacity, seems to answer every requirement; and he will be surprised to learn that the draught of these steamers is but sixteen feet when deeply laden, and that their engines of thirteen hundred horse-power are expected to give them a speed of fifteen knots per hour. When they reach their destined element and have received their lading, the height from the waterline to the deck will be but seven feet; hence it is apparent that a belt of iron plates carried around them of eight feet four inches in height would protect them from the deck to a point sixteen inches below the water-line, or from the bottom of the deck-beams to a point two feet below the water-line.

The iron plates which form the sides of these ships range in thickness from one inch below the water-line to threefourths of an inch above it. And if we allow for the superior strength and toughness of American iron, an additional plate of three inches in thickness would suffice to give them more strength than that of either the French or English mail-clad

steamers.

By careful computation we have ascertained that each vessel might be encircled by such plates, weighing but one hundred and twenty pounds per superficial foot, and have her bulwarks plated also, without adding more than three hun dred tons to her weight,-actually less than one-third of the cargo she was designed to carry. With an extra planking within, and an armament of twenty

four rifled fifty-pounders or Whitworth cannon, and select crews, such vessels need fear no antagonists upon the deep. Low in the hull, they would offer but little surface to the fire of the enemy, and their sides would be impervious to shot and shell. Beneath the decks they could carry in safety a whole regiment of troops. Selecting their position by superior speed, they could destroy a fleet of wooden steamers or ships-of-the-line. Entering any of our large seaports, they could pass the fortress at the entrance uninjured, and lay cities under contribution, or destroy their ports, without being, like Achilles, or the English "Warrior," vulnerable in the heel.

When such steamers come into general use, we shall hear no more of the wooden walls of Greece or England, or of those modern platforms which had not a stick of sound oak timber in them, nothing, indeed, but pitch-pine and cypress. Oak, pine, and cypress would fall into the same category, when contrasted with the imperishable iron. Some new agency of steel must be invented to cope with the adamantine iron. And it becomes our Government, both for the armament of our ships and for defence against iron steamers, to adopt at the earliest moment every improvement in rifled can

non.

The Navy Department has recently put under contract seven steamships and several steam gun-boats. They have intrusted the latter to some of the ablest ship-builders of the country, and it is well understood that most of these vessels are to be completed the present season. This measure, as far as it goes, is eminently wise; but our navy must still be below the requirements of the nation, and entirely disproportioned to the extent both of our commerce and of our sea-coast. At a low estimate, our country requires an additional supply of at least six mailclad steam frigates, twelve steam sloopsof-war, and twelve steam gun-boats, with similar armor. It will require also for long voyages and distant stations a dozen steam frigates of wood, and as many steam

sloops-of-war, like the best now in our service; and, with the materials and armament now on hand, an outlay of twentyfive or thirty millions well applied may suffice for the construction of the whole. With such a provision we need feel no solicitude as to the intervention of England or France in our domestic affairs.

The lighter steamships of wood will answer for long voyages to the Mediterranean, the coast of Africa, India, and the Pacific, and will protect our grain, flour, and corn, on their way from the West to Europe. Our iron steamers will defend our commercial cities from attack or blockade; they will level all rebel batteries on the waters of the Chesapeake; they can batter down the fortresses of the Southern coast, and restore to commerce the ports of Charleston, Savannah, Pensacola, Mobile, Apalachicola, New Orleans, and Galveston.

Most fortunately for our country, at a moment when we cannot immediately command the live oak of Georgia and Florida, the oak plank of Virginia, or the yellow pine of the Carolinas, we have the most abundant supplies of iron easily accessible, and now, relieved from the demands of railways and factories, ready for the construction of our iron navy. The iron plates of Pennsylvania and Maryland in strength and toughness know no superior. The iron mountain near St. Louis and the mines on Lake Champlain furnish also an article of great purity and excellence. But, choice as are these deposits of iron, they are all surpassed by the more recent discoveries on Lake Superior, now opened by the ship-canal at the Straits of St. Mary. There Nature has stored an inexhaustible amount of the richest iron ore, free from sulphur, phosphorus, arsenic, and other deleteri ous substances, protruding above the surface of hillocks and underlying the country for miles in extent. This ore is of the specular and magnetic kind, yields sixty-five per cent. of iron of remarkable purity, is easily mined and transported to the Lake, and is shipped in vast quantities to the ports of Lake Erie, where

it meets the coal of Ohio. At least ten companies are now engaged in its shipment, which has progressed thus far with great rapidity, doubling every year. The shipments from Lake Superior, in 1858, were thirty thousand five hundred and twenty-seven tons; in 1859, eighty thousand tons; in 1860, one hundred and fifty thousand tons. So great are the magnetic powers of this iron, that, buried as it was in the depths of the forest and beneath the surface of the earth, it disturbed the compasses of the United States surveyors while engaged in the survey of Northern Michigan. For a time their needle would not work, and they were obliged temporarily to suspend their operations. Their embarrassment led to the discovery of these vast deposits of ore. It is now mingled with the inferior ore of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and extensively wrought.

Our nation has strong motives to induce it to construct an iron navy.

First. The adoption of such a navy by the great powers of Europe, - England and France, followed by Russia, Austria, and Spain. Our commerce will be in danger, if they once acquire the power of assailing us with impunity.

Second. Our urgent want of this class of vessels to recover our fortresses, repel blockades, and reopen our Southern ports, without wearisome sieges, costly both in blood and treasure.

Third. Our inability to command our customary supplies of durable timber.

Fourth. The abundance of iron, unrivalled in any part of the world.

Fifth. The durability of the ships constructed from iron. If well manned and piloted, they will seldom need repairs; and instead of failing, as many ships do in the sixth year, and requiring vast expenditures to discharge and dismantle them for the renewal of the decaying timber, plank, copper, and other materials, often amounting in the aggregate to more than their original cost, the mail-clad steamers built of American iron will outlive successive races of wooden steamships. The iron such a navy would require will put

"dare the very elements to strife."

How much better would it be to create such an iron navy than to expend million after million on wooden walls that must soon perish by decay or the shells of the enemy, or to lavish three or four millions upon the conversion of our superannuated ships-of-the-line into steamships! These, when converted, will still retain their age and constant tendency to decay, their models long since abandoned, their original design, height of decks, and other proportions adapted to the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounders formerly in use, which are now giving place to Dahlgren and rifled cannon carrying balls of sixtyfour to one hundred pounds weight. Such an expenditure would be like an essay to convert a Yankee shingle-palace, such as Irving described half a century ago, into a modern villa, and reminds one of a proposition made to an assembly some twenty centuries since, which still has its significance.

An orator had proposed to convert an old politician into a general; but a citizen moved an amendment to convert donkeys into horses, and when the possibility of doing so was questioned, argued that the horses were necessary for the war, and that his measure was as feasible as the other.

To prepare our nation for war, let us select the Enfield rifle, the Colt revolver, the rifled and cast-steel cannon, the mailclad steamer, and not resort to flint arrow-heads and tomahawks, or to any other fossil remains of antiquity. The policy of creating an iron navy has been repeatedly urged of late in the foreign journals. It has also been advocated with signal