The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-12-17
PROPOSED RECRUITS
TO OUR SEA CAVALRY

washington Cor of Globe-Democrat)
Scouting is as much part of naval
warfare as it is feature of fight
ing on land, and to the armored cruiser
will fall in future hostile work the
task first of finding the enemy, observ-
ing his movements. and, If possible,
giving him some pretty severe raps be-
fore falling back upon the support OF
the heavy hitters-the slower and more
powerful line of battle ships, which are
to bear the bTunt of the hardest work
When our New York was succeeded
by the Brooklyn. we thought we had
evolved type of armored cruiser that
would stand as an example for years
TO come: but foreign powers decided
differently, and at once began fashion
ing ships of that type but one bit re-
moved from ve=itable battleships. VIII lie
giving them a speed not practicable in
the heavier craft bearing larger guns
and thicker armOr protection. These
vessels have gone long way ahead of
our two earlier armored cruisers in
fighting efficiency and hull protection.
but we might still have halted had not
Cervera brought those truly fine ar
mOred cruisers against US. The work
they might have done if properly
manned and equipped is something for
speculation OnIy-certainly much more
than they did, but they showed US
fOrcibly what other European powers
were fabTicating and improving upon.
The six armOTed cruisers authorized
by congress last year and this are sub
stantial recognition Of our needs. and
three of them ships just designed
those with wood sheathing and copper
ing-will be the peers of anything
building or now contemplated abroad,
while the three others will be nearly
as good, differing only in the absence
of that anti-fouling coating of wood
and copper, which makes the mainten-
ance of speed at all times, and after
months away from docks, something
not possible in a fouled steel bottom.
The six ships will bear the following
names: California, Colorado. Nebras-
ka, West Virginia, Maryland, and
South Dakota, and except for the diff
ferences of a slightly increased beam
for the sneathed ships and less weight
by 400 tons in the vessels r0t so COW
cred, all six of the armored cruisers
will be alike.
Imagine a great steel fabrication, the
main body of which is quite 500 feet
long-nearly a tenth of a mile, with
height of fifty feet-not counting the
added altitude of bridges, sOmestacks
and towering masts, and a maximum
breadth of seventy feet, more than the
width of the average city street, and
you get only a restricted notion of the
magnitude of such a craft as one of
these armOred cruisers. When ready
for sea, she viii weigh hard on TO 10, 600
tons. mass that might more graphi-
cally be represented by the loads borne
by string of one ton carts quite forty
miles long. The mind can't grasp the
significance of so much weight and
even the designers Of such ships must
content themselves with formulate rath-
er than with an intimate estimate of
masses of that sort. II is fair to say
that such a ship represents the com
bined weight of the structures on the
four sides of three average business
blocks in the run of big cities. The
work cut out for the driving engine s
Of these vessels is to prOpel them even
against a troubled sea at the rate of
twenty-five knots an hour-the nauti-
cal equivalent of quite twenty-five and
One-thiTd statute miles. What this
means can better be understood by
bringing il down to a comparison with
conditions familiar to most of us. The
average freight train of thirty cars
loaded. does not exceed in weight more
than 400 tons, and all of US can re-
member the sense of mass with which
we were impressed as such a train
went laundering by at a speed of
twenty miles an hOur-a good round
jog for a freighter. Now, fancy a
train nearly twenty-five times as
long, drawn by twenty-five locomo-
tives. and you are still short by five
miles of the power developed by the
armOred cruisers propelling engines
Could the ship be put on wheels and on
track with drivers as big as each Of
her two sixteen-foOt propellOrs, she
would go overland at the rate of fully
seVenty-six miles an hOur-her screws
turning at the same velocity they do
when sending the ship through the
water at twenty-five knots an hour
To accomplish all this the vessels
are each driven by two big triple-ex-
pansiOn engines. which, when working
at top speed. develop no less than %. 600
indicated horse power, the mechanical
equivalent of a force required to raise
759 600, 900 pounds one foot every minute
and each one of the propellers cuts its
way through the water al a rate of 1913
turns in that interval 1t doesn't re-
quire a particularly vivid imagination
to picture the task of looking out for
the moving parts of an engine that
makes no fewer than two moves to ev-
cry turn of the propeller.
To supply these engines with steam
and feed also the numerous mechani-
cal auxiliaries,. each ship will carry as
many as thirty big boilers of the strict
~ modern water-tube type-boilers that
can eat water at the rate of tons a