St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-06-26
American Naval Officers MAX
ing a Study Of the Lost
Victoria.
Admiral Gherardi Thinks the
Steering Gear May
Have Failed.
He Instances the Cases of a
Couple Of American
Cruisers.
Discussion Of the Closing Of
Water Tight Doors in the
Compartments.

WASHINGTON, D. c., June Pin the
continued absence of authentic infor-
nation as to the exact cause Of the Vic
toria catastrophe. our naval experts are
theorizng and seeking to read the les
son taught by this great naval disaster.
The opinions vary between defective
steering gear and misunderstood Sig
halls. Admiral Gherardi is one of the
high naval lights who incline to the
belief that the steering gear failed. He
recalls the fact that IN the course of the
voyage of the vessels of the naval re-
view fleet from the Pacific to Hampton
Roads his flagship oh two occasions was
abruptly signaled, once by the San
Francisco and once by the Charleston,
and informed that the steam steering
apparatus had utterly failed. Had this
happened when the vessels of the. fleet
were in close formation, the results
might have been disastrous collisions.
In modern naval construction every
possible precaution is taken to insure
the efficiency of
The Steering Gear.
but even then accidents will happen.
All naval vessels are now handled alto
gether by steam steering gear, as the
weight and speed Of the great crafts
make it almost impossible to handle
them quickly by hand. Still. they are
fitted with auxiliary hand steering
wheels for use in case of accident to the
steam plant. Surprise has been eX-
pressed in some quarters at the fact
that the vessel was not saved from
sinking by the water-tight compart-
ments into which she was divided. But
the naval constructors say too much
dependence has been placed on these
compartments. They are unquestion-
ably Of great service, as was strikingly
shown in the case Of the City OF Paris,
when she succeeded in reaching port
with both of the large compartments
containing her engines full of water.
Had the Victoria been struck at either
end, she might still have fioated: and, in
fact, the Camperdown, which crashed
into the Victoria, undoubtedly owes her
own escape from immediate laundering
to the fact that her forward compart-
ment bulkhead kept the enormous Hood
of water which PROBABLY poured through
her torn bow from flooding the vessel.
Also
The Mldship BuIkheads
may be of inestimable service in case
of heavy leaks, which can be confined
to one compartment Commodore Far
ouhar, the hero of the Samoan wreck,
speaking on this point. said: "You never
hear OF vessel struck amidship sur
viving the blow. They are bound to fill;
the shock is so great that everything
substantial that Is not cut down is
wrenched or torn apart"
The naval constructors have been ex-
aiming. the plans of the Inflated ship.
and making some rough measurements
based Oh the information respecting the
collision that has reached the depart
ment, and they find that the keen Fam
of the Camperdown must have entered
the hull of the Victoria just below the
protective deck. crumpling it up, filling
the second large compartment at once.
and. through the heavy leaks caused by
tearing up the protective deck, also fill
ing the adjoining compartments. Had
the blow been a little higher and di-
rectly upon the edge of, or above the
heavy steel plates of the protective
deck, the great strength of that deck
might have materially reduced the size
of the aperture through which the water
flowed. But hole, and great one at
that, was inevitable, say the construct
ors. and on this point Chief Constructor
Hichborn has made an interesting cal
culation to show i'll graphic manner
the enormous
Force of the Blow
that the Camperdown dealt upon the
hull of the Victoria. He says: "The
Camperdown has weight of 10000
tons, and was moving at the rate of ten
knots per hour. or 1888 feet per Sec
ond. This would give an impact of 49,
900 foot tons delivered by the sharp ram
OF the Camperdown. That is equivalent
to the blow that would be struck by a
railroad train consisting OF six Pullman
cars drawn by the heaviest of locomo-
tives, say one of the Bottoms, running
at speed of fifty miles per hour"
Naval officers say that the compart-
ments sometimes fail of their purpose
because the water-tight doors are not
closed in time to keep out the water
from the damaged portion. Admiral
Gherardi says that it is absolutely
necessary to keep these doors open
most Of the time, owing to the lmposSl-
bility of securing air to breathe when
they are closed, especially in tropical
climates. 1t is reported that the Vic
torla'S sailors were endeav0ring to close
these doors when the ship went down.
This has led to the suggestion that by
electrical or other appliances the doors
might be
Closed Automatically
upou signal of danger. But there are
said to be many practical difficulties in
the way of such device, not the least
being the, danger of decapitatilg or
crushing the sailors who might be
caught beneath the doors when they
were snapped together. One result Of
the catastrophe has been to bring to the
front numbers OF advocates OF the ram,
pure ana simple, as weapon Ol o.
Tense, and attention has been called
anew to paper prepared on the sub
ject by Admiral Amman, the designer
of a unique vessel of this type. called
the Katahdin, now being built at Bath,
Me-, for the navy. But naval con-
structors do not attach much i'm
portance to this vessel, mainly be-
cause of the fact that by reason
of the weight Of her armor she will be
too slow to catch up with most OF tue
modern war vessels. Then they argue
that most of the American naval vessles
have ram bows and would be quite as
efficient as a specially designed ram.
They also say that the efficiency of The
ram NAV easily be Oyerestimated, for
actual experience in warfare has proven
that 1t is exceedingly difficult and in
| mos. cases impossible to ram an altag-
onist that is fully aware of the purposes