The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-05-14
SHIP OF BRICK And MORTAR
The United States Cruiser ILL
nOiS, at the Worlds Fair.

contains Very Complete Naval Ex-
hibit-Guns, Cutlasses and Marines
Drills in Torpedo Work-Her Crew
Perform Evolutions ThatGive Lands
men an Insight Into Sailors Work.
From the New York Herald
The naval exhibit of the United States
government at the worlds fair is nearly
all contained in the composite battleship
Illinois, which stands in Lake Michigan
almost in front of the huge building de
voted to manufactures. Few people who
sec the formidable guns and turret of the
Illinois, which seems to stand guard over
the fair grounds and protect them from
invasion by water, will realize until they
come very close to her that she is not a
floating ship of war. This brick ship was
the idea of Commodore r. w. Meade.
Her gatiing and Hotchkiss guns, of
which she has battery, seem to stand
upon decks that have been washed with
the spray of the ocean Steam and smoke
issue from her funnel, her steam whistle
blows as if to warn adjacent craft that
she Is about to sheer off from the wharf
and real naval officers in full uniform
pace her quarter deck. In spite of that
fact she is firmly built into the mud of
the lake and couldn't be moved with a
derrick. She would not float even if
bricks and mortar foated, for she has no
bottom.
So realistic is the deception that one of
the wOrkmen who was putting in the
stoves in the ships galley and who was
busy clamping them down, as is done in
ships to prevent them from cutting loose
and sliding around the deck in scaway,
complained that the fastCnings he had
made were not firm enough. IF she goes
outside in d blow" he said to Naval
Architect f. w. Grogan, Pm afraid
those stoves may cut adrift." He thought
he had been working on a real man-of-
war.
Lieutenant Commander TaUssig, u. S.
N, is in charge of the Illinois. and his
commission has been as carefully worded
as if he were to take her to the Mediter-
ranean. All the formalities and rules of
naval etiquette are observed. There is
an officer of the deck and a watch to call
out "A light on the starboard bowr' The
time is calculated by bells, and officers
cannot leave the craft without permission.
About twenty officers and men will be on
board when they all arrive, and fifty
marines from the navy yards for police
duty. The crew were taken almost en-
tirely from the revenue cutter Michigan,
that docs duty ON the lake.
FINE BUT FRAIL.
She is as fine battleship to the eye as
there is in the navy, but an angry man
with crOwbar could do her lot of in
jury. She is modelled after the Massa-
chusetts, Indiana and Oregon and is of
ia, 800 tons measurement, but unlike those
vessels she cost only $4,000 to build
which, of course, is exclusive of her guns
and the exhibits she contains. She is 348
feet long and has a beam or breadth of
60 feet. Her beams are of steel and she
has calked deck planl1s, matches. winches,
cable nippers and such attachments, of
iron in some cases and in others of plaster.
The big crane which hOists the enormous
black anchors cement is partly cast iron
and partly lath and plaster.
All the appurtenances of the forward
main deck have a realistic look Under
the wheelhouse is the cooking galley, an
exhibit by a New York firm in which all
the food of the men is prepared. Back of
this and occupying places a little forward
of amidships are the 6l5 inch gums, two
on each side. After the exhibition is over
these weapons, which are the real thing.
will be placed on board the new cruisers
now building in San Francisco. The guns
use 80 pounds of powder and carry 100
pound shell six miles Those versed in
questions of artillery calculated that the
shell should weigh twice as much as the
powder, and that each inch of diameter
is good for an extra mile. Thus a 9-inch
gun built according to The proper scale of
proportion, will send proiectile nine
miles, and the 13-inch gun, of which there
is a dummy on the Illinois, should shoot
thirteen miles
On the carriages of the 615-inch guns
arc the perforations made by the shell
from a 6-pOund HotchkisS rife No car
riage for artillery in the navy is accepted
until the gunnerS have had a shot at il to
test it. If the shell goes clean through
without cracking the metal, only making
a hole the gun carriage is good enough
for Uncle Sam. The guns and shells with
which these tests are made are also
shown.
The 13-inch gun, of which a dummy is
shown in the turrot, is beauty. 1t burns
$50 pounds of powder, and 10 would send
a shell weighing 100 pounds from the
Battery to One Hundred and Fifty-ffth
street in New York, and still have
enough impetus when it reached there to
bowl over almost anything that stoo6 in
its way. Exhibits Of the real shells are
to be found in the ship In the powder
magazine, which is a most interesting
place, are the ammunition cages. made of
copper and about four feet high, in which
the powder is stored. The charges are
hoisted by machinery, placed in the gnu
and rammed home, the process being
shown almost completely.
REAL OFFICERS LIVE THERE.
An officers ward room little farther
aft, in which real officers live is exhib-
tied to astonish people from inland points.
This is shown under certain restrictions,
of course, the sign mo Admittauce" be-
ing put up at meal times and at bed
times. There is fine lavatOry and bath
room for the officers and another one for
the captain. All the furniture is real,
and it win be used some day with some
of the other fittings on a genuine battle
ship.
Upon the berth deck there is no ma
chinery such as would be used to propel a
vessel like the Illinois. Only a compar-
atively small section of coal bunker is
shown. but there IS enough to demonstrate
the water-tight compartment ideas and
the means by which the firemen escape
from the bunkers in case of an influx Of
water and the closing of the compart-
ments. A space which in a real ship
would be given up to bunkers is occupied
by the steam engineering exhibit, show
ing the types Of boilers and engines of
different periods in model form, as well
as the patterns of various kinds of pro-
pellers.
Underneath one of the turrcts for the
l3-inch guns is the ordnance museum.
The after turret has not been carried out
below the main deck. In the museum are
portraits Of heroes OF the navy and relics