The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-11 00:00:00

IRON-CASED SHIPS OF WAR.

Mr, J. Scott Russell, in a letter to the Times,
says :—I should not have ventured to join in a dis-
cussion on a subject in which I have been too long
and deeply interested to give the evidence of a neu-
tral party, except for the accident of finding my
name mixed up with that of my distinguished
friend M. Dupuis de Lome. Your very able corre-
spondent of yesterday, "N. S. M.," calls him my
" pupil." Now, as M. Dupuis de Lome and myself
are nearly of the same age and standing in our pro-
fession as naval architects, it is unfair to him to call
him my " pupil," our whole professional intercourse
having been one of perfect equality. Some 20 years
ago, when I was engaged in my experiments on the
theory and practical construction of vessels, which
led to the establishment of the wave princi-
ple As a scientific method of construction, and
subsequently to its general adoption as the
best mode of obtaining high speed in
union with great capacity and power, M. Dupuis
de Lome visited me at Greenock, and threw him-
self with all the enthusiasm of a young man into
this new region of science, and from that day to
this we have been on terms of free and open pro-
fessional intercourse. But in this intercourse I
frankly confess that I have received at least as
much benefit as I have given, for M. Dupuis de
Lome has also carried out original scientific re-
searches on a large scale with the ample means
placed at his disposal by the wise liberality of the
French Admiralty. These researches have led him
to important practical results, which are by me
reckoned quite as valuable as anything I may ever
have communicated to him.

Thus much justice requires me to state on a per.
sonal question.
In regard to the Gloiro herself, I may take this
opportunity of correcting some of the information
which has been given to the public respecting that
vessel. We have been told that the Gloire is steel
plated. She is not. Her plating, like that used
in this country, is merely good hammered from
4 inches thick. The plates are of similar dimen-
sions to those of the Trusty, and, like those of the
Trusty, have been penetrated by steel bolts ; and I
can entirely bear out the testimony of your cor-
respondents, Captain Halstead and Captain Sherard
Osborne, by stating that the experiments made in
France, as well as those made on the Trusty, the
results of which I have carefully examined, prove
that the plates are penetrable, but penetrable under
rare and exceptional circumstances, so as to be
practically shot-proof, and I believe in all cases
perfectly shell-proof, which, after all, as your third
naval correspondent says, is the important point.
Another of your correspondents, Mr. Whitworth,
after stating the ability of hi's shot and gun
to penetrate such plates—a fact which no one
who knows both can doubt—proceeds to say
that "ships hampered by the weight of enor-
mom; plates must be unfit to carry a broadside
of guns heavy enough," and also " cannot be driven
at the high speed which must hereafter give the
superiority in naval warfare." On both points
allow me to give an opposite opinion. Tho Gloire
has been built. by M. Dupuis de Lome after a most
exact calculation of the effect of such plates both
upon the weight and speed of the vessel ; she is
perfectly fit to carry a broadside of guns of as heavy
a calibre as any that can be carried and worked in
our own wooden ships; and she is driven at as
least as high a speed as any vessel of similar dimen-
sions in our own service. She has, therefore, proved
that an exact scientific calculation can be made
beforehand of the power of a ship to carry such a
load, and of the velocity at which a given power I
will propel her. I have yet to learn that either aI,