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

• ' NEWSPAPER
- - TliE LEVIA 'jsiel -All
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The shareholders of . the L • t 'pe - • -fitrent. riateL
..te 7.
evia . • e
b 3 sure, they cannot help theme. r)- - a. w ; they srs- sff'44
barked in a struggle with that g:to s e`-d most
tons power in nature—the via iner :• ' FiliCh the-fittest
carry out. It is another form of the sieof Sebastopol.
But the siege of Sebastopol itself has not, after all, the
naked dignity of a war with simple tonnage—that primor-
dial and ancient power which existed before the Cyclops,
before the Pelasgi, before the very giants who hurled Alien
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 :
thee' feel the consciousness of tremendous forces at
- secure and weight in dreadful antagonism like
ng opposing wills, of a mighty contest of which
they see the outside in-the shape of timbers, hydraulic
engines, rams, and cradles, but which is itself as hidden
and invisible as the action of the magnet or the journey of
the electric messenger. There they are, standing round
and watching for the visible effects of this invisible strug-
gle ; hours and hours and days and days roll on, andsmall
indeed and gradual is the fruit. The Leviathan is a true
instance of the proverb that " Yon may bring a horse
to the water, but you can't make him drink,"
—at least hitherto she has effectually resisted.
There she lies on the very bank of the noble river that
here—
movethensullen capricess
engineers, and a slip of several feet seems to threaten' alarm
a
second deluge. Nobody can understand her ways. Then
all is still again and motionless; the cylinders burst the
timbers crack, and she will not stir an inch. '
We are now in the middle of this contest, arta, grand as
it is, the-shareholders of the Leviathan must sometimes
'overt in thought to the disagreeable subject of its enor-
mous cost. This struggle of hydraulic power with tho
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
inoved, the angle of the incline, and an ascertained rate of
friction, dynamic science could not have calculsted before-
hand with substantial certainty and accuracy the amount
of force which would be required to move the Leviathan.
As it is, there has not been an approximation to a correct
estimate of it.—the force has been doubled since the com-
mencement of the process, additions beingenade from time
to time simply as the course of the experiment and as the
motionless condition of the hulk made it necessary, and not
at all apparently upon any basis of previous calculation.
There have - been endless speculations as to how Stone-
henge was erected, as to how the Cyclopean buildings in
Boestia, Argolis, and elsewhere were erected • but no
theory, and hardly any legend, abet* Cyclops and races of
giants, and their application of rude enormous strength to --
the nplifting of huge stones, ever raised a more awkward
picture of via consili capers than this experiment
upon the Leviathan. The engines for producing motion
have been scientific, but the use of them has been as rash
and uucalculatini, as if we had been depending on primitive
and uninstructe:rnature. There have been omissions which
it is difficult to account for '•—the necessity even of pros
siding a fulcrum from which the rams might act was
not foreseen; and when that defect was supplied, and.
the ship began to move, the rams, which ought to have
moved with it, were stationary, and obliged to act upon
the ship by long beams, which were constantly breaking,
and which were always need with a sacrifice of power. Even
shareholders' money was never more conspicuously 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
trout lo into the Thames ?" Had the expenses
of this ultra-scientific machinery for motion been
at all foreseen such a plan mast have struck
any one as far the cheaper cne. But, at any rate why
build her so far from the river, and interpose quite unne-
cessarily s ) great a distance between her and the water
that wag 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 pound., we may well begin to grumble
at every extra foot which is grstuitons and unneces-
sary. 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, wren the time
comes, wholly fails. The engineer would seem purposely
to have left 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 herself, an i more like rude, awkward, pri-
maeval nature, than in 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.