The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-29 00:00:00

TAUNTON.

The candidates who will contest this borough at
the next election are Mr. Mills and Mr. E. W. Cox
(Conservatives), and Lord Hay and Mr. Barclay
(Liberals). The contest is expected to be severe.
Mr. Cox is a native of Taunton. He is niost san-
guine as to the result of the contest, for in answer to
an elector, inquiring whether there was any truth in
in a rumour circulated that it was not his intention
to offer himself, he says :
I hasten to answer your question. I have no intention
whatever to retire. On the contrary, I intend positively to
go to the poll, and to poll to the last man ; and, more, I
shall win by a large majority. I shall be obliged by your so
informing your friends. You may on my authority give the
most decided and unequivocal contradiction to the report
of which you so kindly notify me.

Launch of the Ironclad Frigate Lord

Warden,

On Saturday last another important addition was
made to our fleet of iron-clad vessels of war by the
launch from Chatham dockyard of the fine wooden
armour-plated frigate Lord Warden. The ceremony
attracted an unusually large concourse of spectators.
Minute descriptions of the Lord Warden and the
improved plans on which she has been built by her
designer 7 Mr. E. J. Reed, the Chief Constructor of
0
the Navy, have so frequently appeared in The Sun,
that it will only be necessary on the present occa-
sion to recapitulate the leading particulars connected
with her, and the improvements which have been
introduced during the vessel's progress under her
builders' hands. Glancing at the Lord Warden, as
her hull towered above the thousands of -spectators
who crowded on each side of her, the first thing
which struck the visitor was her general appearance
which differs from that of any other vessel yet in-
troduced into the navy, with, perhaps, the single
exception of her sister ship, the Lord Clyde, recently
launched at Pembroke; and the Bellerophon just
completed at Chatham. The midship section of the
Lord Warden, for example, is utterly unlike any
seen in the British navy since the time of Sir
William Symonds, the designer of all those " crack"
frigates which may now be seen rotting at Chatham
and our other ports. Until recently the Admiralty
have maintained, with the utmost pertinacity, the
sharp section and rising floor in the face of an
unanimous condemnation of the principle on the
part of all our naval architects, and long after it
was discarded by other nations. Even when iron
armour was introduced for the protection of ships
of war, and naval constructors seemed driven to the
adoption of flat floors, the old principle was adhered
to, and the Warrior's bottom, if not one of the
sharpest in the navy, is certainly devoid of every-
thing like an approach to flatness. In the Lord
Warden, however, all this is reversed, and the navy
has now obtained, what has long been sought—
namely, a very broad, flat floor, well calculated to
sustain the ponderous armour encasing the sides of
the ship, and one which can hardly fail—if the naval
view of the subject is correct—to keep her upright
and steady even in a beam sea, when vessels of the
old type would be rolling violently. This important
change in the vertical sections of the Lord Warden,
which may be described as being constructed on the
U, in contradistinction to the V shaped principle—
renders it obvious that in a plunging sea the vessel
will be greatly obstructed by the water in its descent,
while vessels formed with V sections will cleave it
like a hatchet. But perhaps the chief novelty
noticeable in the Lord Warden, as she lay on her
cradle, was her long bow, thrust out far in advance
of the stem of the frigate. But for the recent un-
toward accident in the dockyard this feature would
have been more striking, as the bow would have
exhibited the enormous metal cleaver with which it
is to be covered. This protecting prow, hidden as
it will be under the water, will take fatal effect
on any ship with which the Lord Warden may be
brought into contact should she ever be used as aram
for running-down purposes, for which her enormous
size, weight, and strength eminently fit her. This
projecting prow, while adapted for offensive pur-,
poses, also plays the double part of giving strength
and buoyancy to the heavy bow above the water, on
which is placed a battery, which again is a new fea-
tnre introduced into this vessel. Hitherto it has
been the practice to give greal bluffness to the bows
of our ships of war above the water, for the purpose
of affording the necessary space there for guns cap-
able of firing ahead, while the ship's lines were fined
away almost to nothing belowthe water immediately
beneath the heavy bow, in order to obtain a fine en-
trance for speed. The consequence of this has no-
toriously been a great disposition to plunge in all our
war ships, and in none more so than in most of our
iron-plated frigates, especially those of the Prince
Consort and Hector class, in which the full bow
above, unlike that of the Warrior, for instance, is
burdened with armour. In the Lord Warden, how-
ever, all this has been corrected by the introduction
of the long under-water bow. It possesses such
buoyancy that although the armour is to be carried
all round the bow aloft, and over two decks, so that
no less than four 110-pounder guns firing right
ahead are protected, yet the entire fore part of the
ship is probably more satisfactorily " water-borne"
than the bows even of those frigates which carry no
armour at all. Unlike most of the iron-clad frigates
hitherto constructed, the Lord Warden was launched
on Saturday with a considerable portion of her
armour-plating already bolted to her sides. The
remainder will be placed in the frigate as soon as sho
is docked. The whole of it, supplied by the firm of
Messrs. John Brown and Co., of the Atlas Works,
Sheffield, is of the best description of rolled iron
yet sent out by that firm. It is the heaviest hitherto
applied to a wooden sea-going vessel of war.
Hitherto the difficulty of supporting the armour of
our iron-plated frigates, by giving
the requisite
displacement to the ship, while retaining other es-
sential qualities, has been so great that the de-
signers have been glad to reduce the quantity of
it in every possible manner. Hence it has been car-
ried but little below the water, the ports have been
kept as low as possible, and the armour has been
saved in every other practicable way. In the Lord
Warden, however, provision is made for plating the
hull well down under water, the port sills being

nowhere less than Bft. bin. above the load line, and
alnaost the full thickness of armour will be main-
tained all round the bow. The armour-plating itself
is sfin. inthicknessfrom the lower edge to 2ft. above
the water's surface, and all round the battery, where
the usual 4fin. armour is placed, an extra iron skin-
plating, an inch and a half in thickness, has been
worked upon the frames of the ship behind the
outer planking. The total thickness of the sides of
Lord Warden, therefore, along her broadsides is
37in., or nearly half a foot greater than that of any
other armoured frigate yet constructed. This thick-
ness of wood and iron is obtained by 5/in. of iron,
10in. of teak planting, 131 in. of solid oak frame,
and Bin. of wood planking. The thickness of the
sides in the wake of the gun-battery is 33in., which
is thus obtained-4in. of armour plating, 9in. of
wood backing, liin. of iron plate, 12in. of solid oak
frame, and, lastly, 6in. of planking. It will thus be
seen that the Lord Warden, from the experiments
made on the Lord Warden target at Shoeburyness,
is capable of resisting any ordinary gun brought
against her, for it willbe remembered that, although
the target mentioned was ultimately knocked to
pieces by ponderous ordnance of a kind not likely
to be used in actual warfare, it was found capable of
withstanding even the 300-pounder Armstrong gun
firing round solid steel shot with 501 b. of powder.
As thereis no gun at all approaching in efficacy this
weapon in:use in:the:French navy, nd as thelargest
Federal guns proved ineffective against iron-plat-
ing, it cannot be doubted that the Lord Warden will
be perfectly impregnable to the existing ordnance of
other nations ; while she herself is capable of carry-
ing the largest guns yet in use. The total quantity
of armour which the Lord Warden will carry
will be about 1,400 tons. Notwithstanding this
enormous weight, the important element of speed
has not been sacrificed. On the contrary, her speed
is to exceed that of any wooden-built frigate yet
afloat, whether with or without armour, the stipu-
lations of her designer being that she shall average,
at a trial speed, 14 knots per hour. Her engines,
which are now in course of manufacture, are to be
of a nominal horse-power of 1,000, but to be cap-
able of being worked up to six times that power, or,
in other words, are expected to develope no less than
6,000 indicated horse-power, which is equal to en-
gines of 1,500 horse-power constructed on the old
model. This large increase of power will be pro-
cured by means of great expansion, surface conden-
sation, super-heating, and other modern steam-
-1 engine improvements never before applied to an
armour-plated frigate in this country. There seems,
therefore, no reason whatever to doubt that the
Lord Warden with these advantages will be supe-
; rior in point of speed to the entire ironclad fleet of
this country, with the exception of vessels of the
Warrior and the Achilles classes, which are very
much larger. It must be remembered, however,
that the Lord Warden is a wooden ship, and the
'placing of such powerful engines in a wooden hull
would have been a very doubtful and even danger-
ous measure, if the ordinary modes of strengthen-
ing the stern had alone been resorted to. This con-
sideration has not been lost sight of by Mr. Reed ;
on the contrary, the after part of the ship has .been
braced and strengthened by a system of iron decks,
knees, bulkheads, and flats, so arranged as to add
enormously to the security of this portion of the
hull, rendering it, in fact, nearly as stiff and rigid
as an iron vessel. The . bow of the ship—which,
being built on the ' tumble-home" principle, gives
the frigate an exceedingly unsightly appearance—
has
likewise been- greatly strengthened by the
introduction of enormous masses of timber,
braces, beams, and iron. knees. We a short time
since pointed out the 'extraordinary rapidity with
which the iron frigate Bellerophon had been con-
structed at Chatham Dockyards, and the same re-
marks would also apply to the Lord Warden, which
has been built and launched in little more than 16
months, a rate of production the .more remarkable
when it is remembered that within, the same period
an iron vessel of equally large dimensions has been
completed and sent afloat from the same establish-
ment. The launch of the Lord Warden was fixed to
take place at 2.30, but long before that time the gal-
leries erected at the head and sides of the vessel were
crowded with spectators, who occupied every inch of
ground from which a sight of the vessel could be ob-
tained, the concourse of spectators being computed
at about 20,000, the greatest number ever recollected
to have been present at a launch at Chatham. Among
the distinguished visitors for whom special accom-
modation had been provided were the Dowager
Countess Mount-Edgecmnbe, Viscount Sydney,
G.C.8., Lord Chamberlain; the Earl of Albemarle,
the Earl of Darnley, Lady Plumridge, Vice-Admi-
ral Sir C. Talbot, K.C.8., Naval Commander-in-
Chief at the Nore ; Major-Gen. Sir Robt. Walpole,
K.C.8., Admiral S. R. Robinson, Controller of the.
Navy; Capt. Stewart, C. 8., Superintendent of Chat-
ham Dockyard; Col.-Commandant J. 0. Travers,
C. 8., and others. As the tide:rose to its full height
the operations of the master shipwrights' staff, under
Mr. Thornton and Mr. Dawson, for splitting away
the remaining blocks of the frigate, werehurried for-
ward. They were completed by 2.30, when Mr.
Thornton, the master shipwright, who has ably supe-
rintended the construction of the frigate, led Lady
Geraldine Edgecumbe, sister of Lord Mount-Edge-
cumbe, to the prow of the vessel, and explained to
her the ceremony of launching the ship. Her lady-
ship then severed the cord which held the last remain-
ing shores, and these, falling, released the huge
mass, which instantly commenced moving down
the ways into the water, amid the cheers of the
spectators, repeated again and again. A large
bower anchor checked the further progress of
the vessel, and ;:she was subsequently brought
up alongside the Chatham hulk. In proof of the
solidity of her construction it may be mentioned
that her " break" at launching was represented by
the smallest fraction. The following are the prin-
cipal dimensions, &c., of the vessel :

Ft. In.
Length between perpendiculars 2BO 0
Length of keel for tonnage 233 111
Breadth, extreme
Breadth for tonnage 57 2
Breadth moulded 56 4
Depth in hold
Distance between ports
Height of midship ports
Bin don, 4,067 26-94 tons; displacement, 7,675 tons.

The Lord Warden will immediately receive her
iron masts, which have been manufactured by the
Woodside Graving Dock Company, and also her
boilers, condensers, and other heavy portions of her
engines and machinery, after which she will be
placed in one of the vacant docks at Chatham, to
have the remainder of her armour-plating bolted to
her sides, and to be equipped for sea, an operation
which will occupy from four to six months. One of
thenew class of Amazon steam frigates, unarmoured,
to be named the Blanche, is to be commenced on
the slip at Chatham Dockyard from which the Lord
Warden was launched.