The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-31 00:00:00

THE MINOTAITR IRON FRIGATE.

The hasty vaunts at the success of his own iron-
clads, and characteristic sneers at English efforts of
the same kind, had hardly passed the lips of the
Federal Secretary Welles, when the Monitor, get-
ting into a seaway, went down with all hands on
board. The result might have shocked, but it
could not have surprised the Federals, who are ex-
cellent judges of what sea-going models should be,
.and who knew even better than ourselves that
the Monitor had not a single point to recommend
her either for emulation abroad or reproduction
at home. The secret of her popularity lay en-
tirely in the fact that out of a very large
and most costly fleet she was the only vessel
that had distinguished herself against the-enemy; ,
hence her notorious defects were never can-
vassed, and she was taken by universal consent to
be the type and model of an iron-clad, though she
neither steamed nor steered well, carried only two
guns, and, above all, was believed to be as unsea-
worthy as she has since proved. Yet, it is not too
much to say that when this vessel gained her first
and only:success the American journals lauded their
own surpassing ingenuity, and threatened helpless
England as if iron ships were peculiar to the Ame-
ricans alone, and as if England had not already
sent to sea, in the Warrior, the finest, fastest, and
strongest vessel of this class the world has yet seen,
before a rivet was driven in the Monitor's hull.
Already this rage for vessels of the Monitor class
has acted most prejudically on the infant iron navy
of the Federal States. Of the three types which
they then hastily adopted, the representative of one,
the Galena, has proved an utter failure, the Moni-
tor has gone down in the first broken water she
met with, and the Ironsides, the type of the third
class, has not yet been tested, and, after the expe-
rience gained by the Monitor, is never likely to be
tested, in deep water. In the meantime, we hive
have gone on slowly rectifying what was wrong,
and extending and enlarging upon plans which we
had ourselves proved to be right until we are gather-
ing round us an iron fleet admitted now even in
America to be perfect models of what such ships
should be. We have stepped cautiously from
vessels like the Resistance and Defence to vessels
like the Valiant, from the Valiant to such frigates
as the Warrior and Black Prince, and now again
from these to the improved Warriors, 7,000-ton
ships of the Minotaur, Northumberland, and Agin-
court class.

Our readers who are curious to judge for
themselves of these noble frigates should pay a
visit to the works of the Thames Iron Com-
pany at Blackwall, where they will find one of
the most forward of them, the Minotaur, far ad-
vanced towards completion, and where they will
have the additional advantage of comparing her
size, strength, and symmetry with the iron frigates
which are being built for the Russian, Turkish, and
Spanish Governments by the same company. A
single comparative glance at the different hulls will
show how immeasurably the English Government
keeps ahead of its imitators in the construction of
these ships. The rapidity with which the young
science of armour-ship building has advanced is,
perhaps, best shown by the statement that even the
Warrior model, only a year ago considered perfect,
is now found to be capable of important improve-
ments, both as regards her hull, her rig, and her
armour. The Warrior and Black Prince are only
armour-coated over 220 feet of their broadsides.
The stem and stern sre not protected, they have no
means of using water ballast to keep them down in
the water as the coals are consumed, their rig is the
old-fashioned three wooden masts, they have not suf-
ficient displacement to enable them to carry armour
throughout and what they have got is only 41 inches
thick. In the new vessels, of which the Minotaur is
a splendid bpeeimpn, every one of these defects is
remedied. The length of the Warrior between the
perpendiculars is 380 ft ; that of the Minotaur and
her sisters is 400 ft. The breadth of the Warrior is
58ft ; that of the Minotaur is 59ft 3-1-in., and her
tonnage is 6,900, against 6,000 of the Warrior. It
is exactly this extra 900 tons which the Warrior
wanted to enable her to carry armour from stem to
stern. The floor of the Minotaur also is consider-
ably flatter, which gives her an increased displace-
ment of 1,043 tons, and this improvement, which
gives a slight additional stowage for coals, also, of
course, increases the bulk that has to be driven
through the waves, and necessitates an increase
of horse power from 1,250, the power of the War-
rior, to 1,350 in the new shins.
Another most important improvement is in the
arrangements for adding water ballast. For a cer-
tain space on each side of the inner keelson, both in
the Warrior and Minotaur, the bottom of the ships
are double, and the space between the skins which
is not used in the Warrior has:in the Minotaur been
utilised for the purpose of water ballasting. By
this means and by the sub-divisions caused by the
numerous vertical webs which pass between the
main longitudinal and cross girders between the
skins any part of the Minotaur can be ballasted with
water independently of the other. Thus she can at
will be " trimmed" with a " list" to port or to star-
board, trimmed down by the head or stern, or, in
case of being lightened by the expenditure of all her
fuel, be brought down in an hour to her proper load
water line so as to keep her armour always at the
required depth of sft. below the surface. The
height of the portsills from the sea is the same as
in the Warrior, 9ft. 6in., or 3ft. Bin. higher than
the portsills of the French vessels of La Gloire class.
In the Minotaur the stern will be strengthened by
dispensing with the screw well and not having the
screws to lift, while the bows will be altered from
the taper lines and concealed beak of the Warrior
to a receding and rather round shaped bow above
water, with a slight swan-breast projection beneath,
to strike her adversary below the water line, if ever
she should be used as a ram, which is far from
likely. She is to be pierced for 23 guns on each
side on the main deck, with two immense pieces of
ordnance pointing forward through a shield we
shall presently explain. The broadside ports are to
he as narrow as those of the Warrior, and there are
to be 12 guns on deck, 60 in all, instead of the War-
rior's 42, and lastly each vessel of the new class is
to have five iron masts in place of tnree wooden
ones.
as the
Thus, then, as far as our
find that
Warrior with the Minotaur has gone,
eveget larger
in the latter new class of ironosridtions,
and comparison
withes
gplesetaerecmovaedre-
n r
ma
rn e greaternt,
ships of improved rig
power and not less speed, wi
is especially in this latterchc:nra.
ing of armour. It proportions,
heavier
and above all a stronger anrdeamteosrte.
all-
important point that the g
in the Minotaur class. The armour of the Warrior
is 4in. thick, with a teak backing of double beams
laid transversely to a thickness of 18in. over the
inner skin. This tremendous covering, though, as
we know, only over part of the broadside,•
weighs
950 tons of iron and 350 tons of teak-1,300 tons in
all. The thickness of the 111-
inotaues armour is to
be 51in., and she is to be coated with
it from end