Omaha daily bee., 1899-05-07


Bell in the river Scheldt, hoping to an
initiate the Spaniards.
The Dolphin, the first steel war ship the
United States ever owned, was also the
first steel propeller built in this country.
Yet the Dolphin-now in admirable trim
although it made a single voyage Of 90, 1000
miles, the longest on record, without an
hours delay for repairs of any kind. was
not even authorized by congress until March
IS, 1888, but little over sixteen years ago.
1t is owing to our mastery of steel working
in the last twenty years that the steel ship
is now the accepted type of all marine
architecture.
The practical differences between the iron
plates in use on ships for many years pre-
vious and the steel plates now universally
adopted are so vital as to be understood
even by a non-expert. Yet there are doubt
less few, save those who have made the sub
ject a special study since boyhood, with
abundant opportunities Of working out
practical problems, who realize the romance
in the history of the metal ship. There is
no more splendid example of mans triumph
over the forces of nature. The idea of an
iron shop, n structure requiring the greatest
buoyancy, made out of metal CT the greatest
| gravity, would have been considered by the
ancients a contradiction in terms. Yet they
| NeIe lne WUIhtIS III lItlilS ANU very SuC-
cessful shipbuilders after their own ideas.
An Iron Plated wooden Fortress.
When the Dutch conceived the idea Of
building a floating wooden fortress and then
plating it over with iron they made a brill
liant but unsuccessful start in the right
direction. The FINS Belli had no steam to
move it and became manageable. By
and by there was a steam war ship built,
the Fulton, or Demologos, in 1914, but i:
had nc ton plates and it's deck vas
sheathed with nothing more formidable
than heavy scantling. Yet the idea of
sheathing was still in evidence. When
Ericsson invented the propeller in 1887 it
was inevitable that there would be a screw
war ship and the Princeton was launched
in 1889. Then in 1912 John Stevens built
his floating fort, sheathed it with iron and
put heavy guns aboard, going back to the
idea Of the Dutch, but nothing practical
came of it.
The civil war naturally stimulated ship
building to renewed activity. John Roach,
my father, had already one of the best
| equipped foundries and engine works in the
| country. l can speak from my own knowl-
| edge, for | had served my apprenticeship
under him in the Aetna Iron works and
later in the Morgan Iron works, and as a
boy, even, had carried his dinner basket to
him when he was q workman III inc Olu
| Allaire works in New York, all of which
he afterward owned. When he purchased
what has since been Roach's shipyard, at
Chester, Pa, in 1871, l took an executive
position there and since his death, in 1887,
have had charge of the works.
First Iron GunbOat.
In the sixties in this yard there had been
built for the United States government the
monitors Lehigh, Sangamon and Junxis, at
least one of which was again made ready
for harbor defense last summer, when 1t
was feared that Cervera's mysterious fleet
was about to attack our coast. 1t Is of more
| value in the evolution of the modern steel
ship that the Wateree, the first iron gun
| boat, had been built in this yard in 1868.
! While this was going on along the Delaware
my father had built engines in New York
for the great Sound steamers Bristol and
| Providence; for the iron ram Dunderberg,
built by Webb for our government, but not
finished in war time, and afterwards sold
to the French, who christened 1t the Roch-
ambeau.
The engagement in Hampton Roads be-
tween Erisccon's Monitor and the Merrimac
had not only drawn the attention of France
and other foreign governments to the inn
provements made in iron war ships in the
United States, but resulted also in our gov
eminent ordering the construction OF the
iron Canonicus and Mahopac and the other
"9O-day boats" 1t was now evident that
France, indeed, in 1854 had built the monitor
Great Britain in 1859 authorized the build