The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-12 00:00:00

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L.-- ----‘2-0..- .42

NEWSPAPER ..
ITHE LAP-,.E:ri-W.<„
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The shareholders of t"%, ... . ..iii.',
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be sure, they cannot he . 1'i.,7 - . it. -it ..,:fi fr--41.e. em° .
barked in a struggle wit '3l734:grisikearAg. ' .. a tcfiorte:
tous power in nature--th Vli# ifiePtirerch .-y must
carry out. It is another . .. of theist- e. of Sdhastopol.
But the siege of Sebastopol ire ifil has itot, ifier all, the
naked dignity of a war with simple tonnage—that paimorsi
dial and ancient power whicli'exiSted before the Cyclops,
before the Pelasgi, before the very giants who hurled ?ellen
and Ossa at the Gods. And in proportion to the dignity.
of the contest is the patience which it demands. - There
are those shareholders of the Leviathan standing round in
solemn silence, witnessing an awful • silent contest
they feel the consciousness of tremendous fences at
work, of pressure and weight in dreadful antagonism like
two strong opposing wills, of a mighty contest of, which
they see the outside in the shape of timbers, hyd,raulie
engines, rains, and cradles, but which is itself aslidden
and invisible as the action of the magnet or the jouruse of
the electric messenger. There they are, standing tonna
and watching for the visible effects of this invisible Strug-
gle ; hours and hours and days and days roll on, andsmalf
indeed and gradual is the fruit. The Leviathan is ei true
water, but
utto y
sohue has
instance of the proverb that " You may bring a horse
—at
ttbuleawstate can't
make
effectually
drank,"resisted.
There she lies on the very bank of the noble river that
is to convey her to the ocean, but she will not as yet wet
her lips. For hours and hours it is pressure—pressure--
pressure, and sometimes she does riot mem) a bit, then
with a sullen noise she slips a foot, her caprices alarm the
engineers, and a slip of several feet seems to threaten a
second deluge. Nobody can understand her ways. Theis
all is still again and motionless ; the cylinders beret, the
timbers crack, and she will not stir an inch. . .
We are now in the middle of this contest, and, grand as
it is, the-shareholders of the Leviathan must sometimes
revert in thought to the disagreeable subject of its enor-
mous cost. This straggle of hydraulic power with the
Leviathan has already cost 70,000/ , and nobody .knows
how much more it will cost. We cannot . understand
how, with the full data before it, the number of tens to be
moved, the angle of the incline, and an ascertained rate Of
friction, dynamic science could not have calculated before-
hand with substantial certainty and accuracy the amount
of force which would be required to move the Leviathan.
As it is, there has net .been an approximation to a correct
estimate of it,—the force has been doubled since the com-
menceinent of the process, additions being made from time
•
to time simply as the course of the experiment and as the
motionless condition of the hulk made it necessary, and lot
at all apparently upon any basis of previous calculation.
There have been endless speculations as to how -Stone-
henge was erected, a 3 to how the Cyclopean buildings in
Bceatia, Argolis, and elsewhere were enacted; but no
theory, and hardly any legend, about Cyclops and races of
giants, and their application of rude enormous strengtlito
the uplifting of huge stones, ever raised -a more awkward
picture .of vie consili expers than this experiment
upon the Leviathan. The engines for producing motion
have been scientific, but the use of them has been as rash
awl uncalculating as if we had been depending on primitive
and uninstructed nature. There have been omissions which
it is difficult to account for;—the necessity even of pro-
viding a fulcrum from wich the rams might act was
not foreseen; and when that defect was supplied, and
the ship began to move, the ramie which ought tb: have
moved with it, Were stationary, and obliged to act upon
the ship by long beanie, which were constantly breaking,
and Which were always used with a sacrifice of power. Even
shareholders' money was never more oonspicuously wasted
than in this blind, uncalculating struggle with this enor-
mous hulk. The question has been very naturally asked,
" Why was not the Leviathan built, to begin with, in a
dry dock of her own, which would upon the water
being let iu have itself floated her without further
trouble into the Thames ?" Had the expenses
of this ultra-scientific machinery for motion been
at all foreseen such a plan must have struck
any one as far the cheaper on). But,'at. any rale why
build her so far from the river, and interpose quite mine.
cessarily so great a distance between her and the water
that was to receive her? This was a great oversight, if
anything like the present costliness of the process was
anticipated, for which we find every foot of motion costs
nearly a thousand pounds, we may well begin to grumble
at every extra foot which is gratuitous and unneces-
Aary. The whole experiment, indeed, bears the look of
the grossest miscalculation, as if the obvious and com-
paratively cheap expedient of a dry dock had been put
aside, and even distance from the river thought of no con-
sequence, on the strength of some great forthcoming ex-
ploit of mechanical power, which exploit, when the time
comes, whclly fails. The engineer would seem purposely
to have loft difficulties in order that he might show the
-easy triumph which he could achieve over them, but when
it comes to the trial the difficulties have triumphed a good
deal more than the engineer. Science has seldom; indeed,
looked less like It raelf, and more like rude, awkward, pr.-
newval nature, than iu this unfortunate experiment, which
will, before it is over, make the cost of the launch an ut-
terly unheard-of proportion of the cost of the whole ship.