The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-31 00:00:00

LAUNCH OF THE WARRIOR.

The formidable iron-cased frigate, tlh,esoloartgoensts
man-of-war ever built, and more than
world after the
larger than the largest vessel in the
launched into the river
Great Eastern, was safely
on Saturday. The launch of one vessel is like the launch of every other—the same first
steady and
then hurried rush into " the native element," and
it is finished. The Warrior was not expected to
offer any very peculiar feature in her first taking
to the water, but, nevertheless, the ceremony ,
seemed to excite unusual interest, and so, in spite
of the intense cold and thick snow which lay over
everything, the yard of the Thames Shipbuilding
Company was crowded with many hundreds of
ladies and gentlemen anxious to see the first start
of this invulnerable frigate. At one time it seemed
extremely probable that all these anxious specta-
tors would be disappointed of the expected cere-
mony, far the Warrior not only did not go off the slip
at once, but was only got to move at all after some
delay, and the exertion of all sorts of compulsion.
Sir I. Pakington himself named the ship—the first
time, we believe, since the launch of the Thunderer,
that the ceremony has ever been performed to a
man-of-war except by a lady. The vessel was duly
named and told to go to its element, but this the
Warrior seemed most reluctant to do. The intense
frost of the previous night had, in fact, frozen her
down to the " ways" so firmly that nothing would
move her. Hydraulic presses, which are always
kept fixed and ready in case of such contretemps,
were worked and pumped to the utmost they would
bear, a heavy gun was fired on her upper deck to
start her by concussion, but in vain ; she only
moved slowly for a few inches, when the frozen
grease on the slips brought her up again fast as
ever. The tide was at its height, and it was evident
that if she did not start in a few minutes she could
not be launched till the next spring tides. A
hawser was made fast to a powerful tug, hun-
dreds of hammers made the ways vibrate, while
the men on board ran from side to side to start her,
but all to no purpose. At last two other tugs came
to the assistance of the first, and fortunately their
united efforts were successful, The Warrior moved
a little slowly, then stopped, then started again,
and, gaining momentum as she descended, slid
rapidly down into the water, and was safely afloat
just as the tide began to fall.
Of course, in her present extremely light draught
of water, it is difficult to judge how she will appear
when brought down to her load line. As far, how-
ever, as can now be seen, she will, when finished,
be one of the most superb, and, from her extremely
fine lines fore and aft, one of the lightest looking
frigates in the world. When in seagoing trim her
main deck portsills will be about 81 feet from the
water, and in this respect she possesses an immense
advantage over her French rival La Gloire, whose
ports are only 5 feet 9 inches—much too near the
water to make her guns of any use in a sea way.
In point of speed, also, the Warrior will probably
be unrivalled even by that wonderfully fast frigate
the Ariadne, or her sister the Galatea. Among
other improvements the Warrior will inaugurate
is one which has been most urgently needed for
years—an improvement on tie present cumbrous
and awkward ship's gun carriage. Those which
will be furnished to her have the stands fixed, the
gun running backwards and forwards in a slide,
with a pivot for training the gun fore and aft
placed about the centre of the gun. The advantage
of this is that it will allow the present wide port-
holes to be reduced to half their width, without at
all interfering with the range of the gun fore and
aft. Thus the portholes of the Warrior will be three
feet seven inches high, and only two wide instead
of four—a reduction which, of course, diminishes
by one-half the chance of a shot or shell entering
the aperture. For the space of nearly two feet,
also, all round the ports, the armour plates are
seven inches thick, instead of 411.
The result of the experiments made by Mr.Whit-
worth with his 90 pounder gun and flat-headed
shot against the iron sides of the floating battery
Trusty showed that under favourable circumstances
as to steadiness of ship and point blank range he
could send the projectile through the side of a four-
inch iron vessel. Many shots were fired on that
occasion. One, owing to a very trifling motion of
the Trusty, which was moored at Southend, glanced
from her side in a flame of fire, turned up, and went
clear over her. The others all went through the
four-inch iron, but only one went so completely
through the oak timbers inside as to fall dead on
the main deck. Yet these oak timbers were a
merely nominal protection, inasmuch as they were
rotten to powder, and the " beams" could be torn
away in handfulls of yellow dust. This rapid
delay always takes place when armour plates are
laid over wood. Rotten as they were, however,
so much had the passing through of the four-inch
iron stopped the momentum of the projectiles that
they quite sufficed to prevent it going through into
the main deck. Mr. Whitworth himself admits
that through five-inch iron plates, backed up by 20
inches of solid teak, it would be almost impossible
to send a shot, and it is not unfair therefore to con-
elude that the sides of the Warrior are practically
invulnerable to any artillery yet known that can be
brought against them. The slope inwards, or
" tumble home," as it is termed, of the Warrior's
sides, is only two feet,—aa incline little, if at all,
over a slope of 15 degrees. Every recent experi-
ment shows that this is not enough. In the model
sent in to the Admiraltyby the Thames Ship Build-
ing Company the incline of the side was more than
26 degrees. The value of such an incline was shown
when Mr. Whitworth was firing at the Trusty, a
little movement in which sent the shot glancing
up and over her. It is true that shot, and above
all spherical shot, will not go through the sides of
the Warrior, whether inclined or vertical ; but it
is equally beyond a doubt that several shots striking
the same plate would smash it, in addition to se-
riously injuring the woodwork behind, which, of
course, bears the whole force of the tremendous
concussion. Impressed with the vulnerjnaobielistylaostf
iron-cased frigates in this respect, Mr.
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A plate manufactured by the Mersey Iron Works
took 17 blows in a space of Sift. by 2lft. before
any part of it was removed, and then the iron was
not effectually penetrated, nor the woodwork be-
hind it much injured. This plate, in fact, stood
wonderfully, receiving blow after blow from 68-
pound shot, almost on the same spot, and it was
some time before it showed any symptom of weak-