The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-12-06
THE BIGGEST BATTLEsHIP.
She is for Japan and Has Just Beer
 Launched in England,


 She is for Japan and Has Just Beer
 Launched in England.
 A new Japanese battleship, which is
 to be named Mikasa, and which, wher
 completed for sea, will be the largest
 and most powerful battleship afloat
 will be launched to-day from the yards
 of Vickers Sons & Maxim, Barrow-on'
 Furness. She is, roughly speaking, a
 sister ship of the Asahi and Hatsuse which ships she resembles in the mater
 of displacement and dimensions and
 armament though there are important divergencies which tend to make her of special interest. Her dimensions are as
 follows: Length between perpendicu- lars. 400 feet, the overall length being
 4S2 feet her beam is 76 feet, and at a
 draught of 27 feet inches her displace-
 ment is about 15,150 tons. The engines
 will develop 1000 horse power, calcu-
 lated to obtain her a speed of eighteen knots. Her normal coal supply will be
 TOO tons, with capacity for 1,400 tons,
 which will allow her travelling about | 9, 900 miles at a speed of ten knots be-
 fore replenishing her bunkers. The en- | zines will be of the triple expansion | type, with three cylinders and there will be twenty-five Belleville boilers, with econofnizers fitted to each.
 The Mikasa is protected by a com plete armored belt, consisting of Har- veyized nickel steel of Vickers manu- facture of nine inches thickness, over space of 156 feet amidship, covering the it,1 1f +la 1l.te continued fore and aft by armor taper ing from seven inches to four inches, terminated at the after end by six inch bulkhead thus forming a complete protection over the entire water line of the ship. The belt extends from five feet three inches below the water line to two feet six inches above, and is there met by the six inch citadel armor, which continues the protection from the top of the belt to the upper deck. The citadel comprises the chief departure from the ordinary practice in the design of this ship, as besides protecting the space between the belt and the main deck battery it takes the place of the ordinary arrangement of casemates us- ually found in British and foreign bat tleships, and entirely protects the six inch guns on the fighting deck.
 The advantage of the arrangement oyer casemates will be seen when it is considered that throughout the whole | of the center portion of the ship the l crew are protected from injury when l the guns while the gun posit- ! ion themselves are equally protected in ! front as in the casemate arrangement, | and are infinitely less vulnerable in the | rears, which are protected now by the | six-inch armor on the opposite side of | the ship, as well as by the thick steel | bulkheads which divide the gun posit- | tower is protected by fourteen-inch | armor, and the observer tower aft by | three inches of armor.
 In addition to the above protection there is protective deck below the main deck, which extends throughout the whole length of the ship, and con- aists of two inches of armor on the flats md three inches on the slopes. The l leavy armament is represented by four .welve-inch breechloading guns mount .d in pairs fore and aft. These are , placed in armored barbetts fourteen nches thick above the upper deck, and en inches below, where they are cov- ,red by the screen bulkhead. The heavy lucl firing armament is composed of ourteen siX-inch guns, ten of them mounted in the armored citadel above described, and four of them mounted on he upper deck in casemates. In addit- on to these there are twenty twelve eight three-pounders and our two ne-half-pounders. all quick ring guns; and the torpedo equipment onsists of four submerged tubes, two onward and two aft The weight of netal discharged by this armament in ne minute is eleven and one-half tons,