The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-30 00:00:00

Naval and Military Intelligence.

The partially iron-cased screw frigate Bellerophon,
14, 4,270 tons, 1,000-horse power, Captain Edward
Tatham, in accordance with instructions from the
Admiralty, steamed out of Portsmouth harbour yes-
terday morning, and gave her machinery a four
hours' trial under full-boiler power, not over the
measured mile, to ascertain the amount of indicated
horse-power of the engines and the maximum num-
ber of their revolutions with her two funnels short-
ened of the extra 16 feet lengths given them tempo-
rarily by Mr. Penn to remedy a supposed defect in
the draughts of the furnaces. It will be fresh in
the memory of the reader that this course has been
adopted by the Admiralty in consequence of the ob-
servations of Sir John Pakington and the motion
of Mr. Graves on the subject in the House of Com-
mons. The trial of the ship's machinery was to afford,
by a comparison of the maximum number of the en-
gines' revolutions and their indicated horse-power, a
certain means of judging how far the speed of the
ship might have been affected by the somewhat excep-
tional circumstances of lengthened funnels to her
furnaces on her trial of speed over the measured mile
on the 19th inst. The ship when she left Portsmouth
harbour yesterday morning drew the same depth of
water forward and aft, burnt the same description
of hand-picked coal, and had the mine detachment
of steam factory stokers in charge of the furnaces
as on her trial of speed ; the conditions being thus
rendered as nearly equal as possible, with the excep-
tion that yesterday it was plain steaming to and fro
through Spithead to enable the engines to work up
to their maximum strength without timing the speed
of the ship, whereas on the previous occasion it was
purely a trial of the ship's speed. The ship was un-
der way yesterday four hours, and in working out
the indicator diagrams after her return to harbour
the indicated horse power of the engines was
found to be 6019.110, the maximum revolutions
of the engines being 72. On the previous trial the
indicated power of the engines was 6048, and
the maximum revolutions of the engines 70.5.
The lengthened funnels, therefore, may be
charged with a gain of 29 horse over the short ones,
but with a loss of 1.5 revolutions of the engines.
This difference, however, is so trifling that its actual
existence may be due more to the manner in which
the calculations were made than to any variation in
the working of the engines. One great fact, at all
events, is fully established—that Mr. Penn's machi-
nery is proved to be fully equal in all respects to the
anticipations expressed by him, and more than equal
to the terms of his contract with the Admiralty.
The character of the ship for speed when she has
been brought down to her seagoing trim, therefore,
now depends entirely on herself, on the suitability
of her length and lines for high rates of speed—a
suitability claimed for her as her due by her designer
and many other persons, but denied to her by others,
and on this point is concentrated the public interest
in the ultimate results of the ship's trials. The
Bellerophon represents the bluff spoon-bow form of
ship by which Mr. E. J. Reed, Chief Constructor
of the Navy, endeavours to combine the speed of a
long ship with the handiness and manoeuvring power
of a short one, and the fairest comparison that can
be made by which to judge how far he will succeed

in his endeavours lies in the selection of the Achilles
as the competitive ship, a vessel designed with the
hatchet-shaped bow of the Watts-Lang school, and
in which her designers have given her length in order
to secure speed. The Achilles has been tried at both
light and deep draught, the Bellerophon only at
light draught. The Achilles, at Maplin Sands' mile,
at light draught, on the 24th of April, 1864, gave
the following results :—Displacement, 7,895 tons ;
area of midship section, 1,120 square feet; indicated
horse-power, 5,035 ; speed, 14.358 knots. .The
Bellerophon, at Stokes Bay mile, at light draught,
on the 19th of March, 1865, gave the following :
Displacement, 6,372 tons ; area of midship section,
1,055 square feet; indicated horse-power, 6,048;
speed, 14.227 knots. The Achilles, at Stokes Bay
mile, at deep draught, on March 15, 1865, gave the
following :—Displacement, 9,487 tons ; area of
midship section, 1,307 square feet ; indicated
horse-power, 5,722 ; speed, 14.322 knots. Messrs.
John Penn, senior and junior, together with Mr.
Anderson, Mr. Penn's chief assistant, were on board
the Bellerophon during yesterday's trial, Mr. An-
derson being in charge of the machinery. Mr. Ward,
Chief Assistant-Engineer of Portsmouth dockyard,
was the Admiralty officer superintending the trial.
The paddle sloop Gladiator, 6, Capt. Aplin,
arrived at Portsmouth yesterday morning from Ply-
mouth, with a detachment of the 66th Regt. on
board, which was subsequently disembarked at the
dockyard and forwarded by South Western Railway
to Aldershot, via Farnborough.
The Liverpool, screw unarmoured frigate, 34
guns, 600 horse power, Capt. Seccombe, steamed
into Portsmouth harbour yesterday from Spithead,
and was berthed alongside the dockyard for repairs
and refit.

The hired troopship Cospatrick yesterday arrived
at Woolwich from Bombay, 95 days out, bringing
detachments of invalids and time-expired men from
various regiments—namely, the Royal Artillery,
Royal Engineers, Ist Royals, the 10th, 44th, and
56th Infantry, 72d Highlanders, 102 d Royal Madras
Fusiliers, and 108th Madras Infantry. They were
in command of Capt. Martin, R.A. ; Capt. Ogilvie,
R.A. ; Second Capt. Moncton, R.A. ; Lieut. Rooke,
Ist Royals; Cornet Collette, 4th Dragoons ; Quar-
termaster M'Gee, Ist Royals ; Lieut. Knox, R.A. ;
and Dr. Green, 44th Regt. The total amounted to
256 non-commissioned officers and men, 17 women,
and nine children. Six deaths happened during the
passage home.
The launch of the improved wooden unarmoured
screw corvette Reindeer, the last of that description I
of vessel which, in all probability, will ever be con-
structed for the English navy, was effected at Cha-
tham dockyard shortly after noon yesterday, in the
presence of a large concourse of spectators. The
Reindeer was commenced as far back as the year
1860, just at the period when iron was begin-
ning to supersede wood as a material for our ves-
sels of war, and was intended to be constructed
as one of the smaller class of corvettes, to mount
17 guns, for which description of vessel there had
been for some years previously a steady demand.
She was laid down and commenced under the super-
intendence of Mr. 0. W. Lang, the then master
shipbuilder of Chatham dockyard, and was only
about half-completed, when an order from the
Admiralty directed all further work on board to be
discontinued, the whole of the hands being at the
same time withdrawn and placed on the Achilles and
other ironclad ships which were just then being
built as rapidly as the resources of the establishment
would permit. Towards the close of last year she
was surveyed by the Admiralty officials, and a deter-
mination arrived at to complete her as an improved
corvette, to carry a few heavy guns of the most
powerful description which a vessel of her class could
safely mount. Plans were accordingly prepared
and submitted to the Admiralty by Mr. Thornton,
the present master-shipwright, under whose direc-
tion and superintendence the Reindeer has been
completed. In order to increase her strength, and
at the same time to impart additional stiffness and
rigidity to the vessel, Mr. Thornton has introduced,
as far as practicable, his composite system of ship-
building, the leading features of which are the in-
troduction of iron-plated bulkheads, instead of
wood, and wrought-iron deck beams, in lieu of
wooden beams. Massive stringer plates worked into
the vessel where necessary impart increased strength
to the ship's frame, and enable her to resist the eon.