The Sun.
London, England, 1858-07-06 00:00:00

STEEL SHIPS.

Considerable interest was excited on the Mersey
on Saturday by the appearance on its waters of a
smatt rakish-looking screw steamer, of about 170
tons burden. She sailed smoothly and rapidly to-
wards the channel, her steam pipe emitting the
energetic snort peculiar to a railway locomotive,
proving that she was fitted with a high pressure
engine. The interest created by the appearance of
the steamer was increased when it became known
that she was a new exploration steamer, in con-
nexion with the Niger expedition, and that she
had been constructed of the new puddled-steel
plates, manufactured at the Mersey Works under
the direction of Mr. Win. Clay. She was about
to make her official trial trip, the r:sults of which
had been anxiously looked for, inasmuch as she was
tbe first vessel of any size to which this principle of
steel plates had been applied. The steamer, which
has been named the 'Rainbow, was latinched from
the shipbuilding yard of Mr. John Laird, at Bir-
kenhead, having been constructed for Mr. Mac-
gregor Laird for the exploration of tbe river Niger,
under his contract with her Majesty's Government,
and she is to sail for Africa early this week. Her
dimensions are :—Length, 130 ; beam, 16 feet.
The bull is subdivided, by athwartihip and longi-
tudinal bulkheads, into 10 or 12 watertight com-
partments, for the purpose of giving greater
strengt and rendering her more secure against
accidents.
.The high-pressure engine is of 60-horse
power, working up to 200-horse power, indicated ;
and the boilers, which have also been made of Mr.
Clay's puddled steel plates, have been proved up to
200 h b. on the square inch, though they will only
require to be worked at 50 to 6U lb. The engine
and boiler,' as well as the hull, have been con-
etruc'ed by Mr. Laird. The advantage of employ..
ing this material over the ordinary iron plates is
that, with about half the thickness, they give equal
strength with the best iron boiler plates, so tbat
. vessels of considerably lighter draught of water
are able to be constructed than formerly,.
aresult
which is likely to be of incalculable benefit in the
navigation of the shallow rivers of Africa and
India. It will be remembered that Dr. Livingstone
took out a small steam yacht, the plates of whicl
were formed of the patent homogeneous metal,
manufactured by Messrs. Shortridge, Howell
and Jessop, of Sheffield. The advantage claimed
for the puddled steel .is that, while possessitig
equal strength and adaptability for the purposes of
shipbuilding, it can be more economically produced.
Indeed, it is said of the puddled steel that the pro-
cess of manufacture is so simple and the cost so
little in excess of that of ordinary iron that, by the
saving of weight in the material, as compared with
iron of equal strength, it will become absolutely
cheaper. .Apropos of the etrength of this puddled
steel, we may state that recent experiments made
by Mr. Clay in testing, at the Liverpool Corpora-
tion chain-proving machine, some samples of pud-
dled steel bars manufactured at the Mersey Works,
showed that their average tensile strength was
160,832 per square inch, while the strength of Rus-
sian iron is only 62,644 ; of English rolled iron,
56,532 ; Lowmoor, 56,103 ; American hammered,
53,913 ;of tempered cast steel, 150,000, dec. We
should perhaps state that the patent for this pro-
cess of making puddled steel was taken out by Mr.
Ewald Riepe in 1850, but since that time it has
been allowed to remain almost entirely unknown
in this country, until brought prominently into
notice by the successful experiments of Mr. Clay.
The trial trip proved highly successful, the average
speed attained being 12 to 13 miles per hour, while
there was alai,: s: entire a',sence of vibration, which
is especially noteworthy of a vo2sel constructed of
steel plates of only 1-Bth of an inch thick. She
had all the stiffness and rigidity of a strong ship,
and her
.performance was d: Glared to be exceed-.
ingly satisfactory. Messrs. Hughes and Lake, Ad-
miralty survej ore, were on board during the trip.

PACIFIC COAST OF AMERTCA.—Ten years ago there
were only three small steamers plying along the western
coast of Amer;ca ; now there are 40 steamers, some of
them of 3,000 tons burden each. A new line of steamers
has just been projected to run on, the South Vaeiee
corset, towards the establishment of which the drreeors
of the Panama Railway Cone oeny have subscribed. Tire
discovery of geld in the neighbor:2'lloo4 of "Sranaouvees
Idand will, it is expected, canes more reamers to Ls put
on the North Pacific coast. The Paci6c Mail Steamship
Company, which runs st:amers between Panama and
Calif emia, is one of the richest in the world.. IndeP, 114
dently of the enormous passenger and specie traffic on
the west coast steam-lines, vast quantities ef coffee, in-
digo, cochineal, bark, cocoa, copper ore, and peafl
shells are brought from Central and South America in
the steamers to Patatroa to be tent to Europe via tha
rhasuff,