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
swat t rakish-lcoking 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,
. .

provng that she was fitted with a high pressure
engine. The interest created by ihe appeazance of
the stenner wa3 increased when it became known

that sae 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. Wm. Clay. She was about
to make her (Aida'', trial trip, the results of which
had been anxiously looked for, inasmuch as she was
the first vessel of any size to which this principle of
steel plates bad been applied. The steamer, which
has been named the Rainbow, was launched from
the shipbuilding yard of Mr. John Laird, at Bir-
kenhead, having been constructed for Mr. Mac-
gregor bait d for the exploration of the 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 hull is subdivided, by athwart hip and longi-
tudinal bulkheads, into 10 or 12 watertight com-
partments, for the purpose of giving greater
strength and rendering her more secure agaiust
accidents. The high-pressure engine is of 60-horse
power, working up to 200-horse power, indicated ;
and the boilers, wnich have also been made of Mr.
Clay's puddled steel plates, have been proved up to
200:b. on the square inch, though they will only
require to be worked at 50 to 6u lb. The Engine
anti boiler, as well as the hull, have been con-
structed by Mr. Laird. The advantage of e'rploy-
ing this material over ft,,,. ei rj iaonplatee is
that, 'with :' ..;z h t rigs
tstrength with the best iron boiler pila'y equalgites,vseo that
vessels of considerably ir2hter draught of water
are able to be constructed than formerly, a result
which is like'y to be of incalculable benefit in the
i
navigation
tof the shallow rivers of Africa and
dl Inwill be remembered that Dr Livingstone
look out a small stea'u yacht, the plates of which
were formed of the patent homegeneous metal,
manufactured by Messrs. Shorts idge, Howell
and Jeesop, of `,-.lefileld. The advantage claimed
for the pudslled steel is that, while possessing
equal strength and adaptability fsr the purposes of
shipbuilding, it can be more economically produced.
Indeed, it is s:iid of the puddled steel that the pro-
C3S3 of manufacture is so simple and the cost so
little in excess of that of ordinary iron that, by the
saving of weight iu the material, as compared with
iron ef equal strength, it will become absolutely
cheaper. Apropos of the strength 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-
died 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, &c. 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
spi el attained being 12 to 13 miles per hour, while
there was slur s entire al.sence of vibration, which
is especially noteworthy of a vessel constructed of
steel plates of only 1-Bth of an inch thick. She
hsd all the stiffness alit rigidity of a strong ship,
and her performance was declared to be exceed-
ingly satisfactory. Messrs. Hughes and Lake, Ad-
miralty surveyors, were on board during the trip.

PACIFIC COAST OF A mnicA.--Ten yews ago there
were only three small steamers plying along the western
uAorfhnoeowd whichloinf etvhoefa
nridteleoraeuill:Oe :1711.
coast of America ; now there are 40 steamers, Some of
Company have
more
evset
es
au
mb geerisi bt
oe db.
b• put
tb(m of 3,000 tonsnebauttahrdbeeiiiheiginahoehnb.ot
has just been projected to run on the South Pacific
cdoisacsot,vte:ywaorfdysotihlle
passenger of the Panatnitaiiwilaipl
ohnlatnhde Nwielrl,th Pacific coast. The Pacific Mail Steamship
Company, which runs steamers between Panama and
Calif ,rnia, is cue of the richest in the world. Indepen-
evicatYedC,
ger and specie traffic on
dently of the enormous
vast quantities of coffee, in.
the west coast steam liner,
dig.), cochineal, -aal- 1.., cocoa, copper ore
shells are trouglilaftm
r
..
aomato b
Centrale en
dent
to EuropedSouth and pearl
A via themericain
the SteatnetB to
latlnue.