The Sun.
London, England, 1866-07-13 00:00:00

The Loss of the Amazon.

The Amazon was not only a perfectly new ship,
but was the first of so novel and interesting a class
of vessels, that the following particulars of her con-
struction and armament will be read with interest.
She was designed about two years ago by Mr. E. J.
Reed, Chief Constructor of the Navy, in obedience
to the directions of the Board of Admiralty and
Controller of the Navy, for the purpose of replacing
the slow and weakly-armed sloops of the Royal
Navy with vessels of higher speed and more power-
ful guns, and in a very early stage of her progress
she obtained considerable notice from the circum-
stance of Lord Clarence Paget, who was then the
organ of the Admiralty in the House of Commons,
stating in Parliament that she was the first of what
he was pleased to call the "Alabama class" of our
men-of-war, the fact being, however, that the Ama-
zon really differed in all essential respects from the
Alabama much more than the latter vessel differed
from the existing types of Admiralty sloops:
The first thing aimed at in the design of the Ama-
zon, which was an unarmoured ship, was a speed
superior to that of the Rinaldo and Roebuck
classes, whose maximum speed was 10.25 and
IFI knots respectively. The speed of the Ama-
zon proved to be 12.4, or very nearly 12i knots,
and in a valuable Parliamentary paper, printed by
order of the House of Commons on the 23d of
March last, on the motion of Mr. Graves, the Con-
troller of the Navy shows that a speed of even
13 knots, in this vessel of only 1,080 tons, would
have been obtained but for an increase in the weight
of her armament and complement, and the sub-
mergence of the " counter" of the ship, intended
to screen the rudder-head. With these drawbacks,
however, the speed of the Amazon greatly ex-
ceeded that of all previous men-of-war of her size,
at load draught, and placed in this respect among
the fastest of our unarmoured frigates.

The next peculiarity in the Amazon's design was
the adoption of what is known as the economical
class of propelling engine, which had been adopted
with great success, as regards economy of fuel, in
the Enterprise, Pallas, Bellerophon, and other ar-
mour plated ships, and in the experimental wooden
frigates, but which was not in use in any wooden
sloop of war belonging to the Royal Navy. The
adoption of this class of engine, in association with
the French form of screw propeller, led to some very
singular and unexpected results in the early trials of
the Amazon, all of which are set forth, in the detail
that professional men require, in the parliamentary
paper before referred to. The characteristic feature
of these engines is the employment of very small
boilers, and consequently the consumption of very
little fuel, in proportion to the power developed by
the engines, the large development of power being
secured by the great expansion of the steam, the use
of surface condensers, and the system of super heat-
ing the steam on its way from the boilers to the
engines. The machinery of the Amazon was made
by Messrs. Ravenhill, Salkeld, and Co., and although
in this case, as in that of the Pallas and the Belle-
rophon, the usual excess of power over and above the
contract power was not developed, the result of the
experiment was highly satisfactory, and the con-
sumption of coal for the speed of the ship proved
exceedingly small. Perhaps the most interesting
changes made in the hull of the Amazon depended
in some measure upon the great indicated power
which it was proposed to develope in her engines.
The bow was formed with greater length below than
above the water, somewhat in the form of a swan's
breast, not, as some of our contemporaries are pre- I
suming, to adapt the vessel for uses a "ram," but
with a view to superior speed and behaviour in a sea-
way, exactly in the same manner and for the same
reason as the Helicon paddle-steamer was formed at
the bow, with an obvious advantage in point of
speed. There was no iron forging or casting upon
the stem, as some accounts have represented, but
merely a light brass cutwater to cleave the water
smoothly and easily, as in the case of the Helicon,
when the vessel was driven at the high speed con-
templated. It may be added that the bow of the
Amazon received none of those interior bracings
and strengthenings which were fitted to the Pallas
and other wood-built " rams," the use for ramming
purposes of so light a vessel, built without armour,
forming no part of the intentions either of the Ad-
miralty or of Mr. Reed, her constructor. At the
stern of the vessel, on the contrary, where it was
known that the great strain of her engines must
come, an entirely new system of iron bracing was
expressly introduced, under the personal directions
of Mr. Reed, the power to withstand the strain of
her engines and screw at that part being the crucial
test of a wood-built ship of great engine power, and
this difficulty being enhanced in the case of the
Amazon by the submersion of the " counter" before
referred to. As other vessels of the Amazon class
are coming forward, it is satisfactory to know that
the stern of the Amazon, with the new system of
strengthening, proved fully able to withstand all the
strain brought upon it even when the engines and
screw were running for many hours together at their
greatest speed.
The armament of the Amazon consisted of four
guns, two of them being 61 tons weight, and firing
100 lb. round shot, with 251 b. charges of powder.
These formidable guns were carried in the centre
of the ship, and by a new arrangement of the gun-
slides and pivots were so contrived that both of
them could quickly be brought to bear and fought
On either side of the ship—a system which has also
been carried out in most of our sloops of war that
have undergone a refit since the Amazon was de-
signed: In addition to these two heavy guns amid-
ships the Amazon carried a revolving 64-pounder
rifled gun at the bow, and another at the stern,
each capable, like the central pivot guns, of
being fought on either side. By these devices the
Amazon was enabled not only to steam after an
enemy at an unusually high speed, but also to engage
her with an armament far more formidable than any
sloop of like size had previously borne into action.

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