The Alaska citizen., 1911-04-24
WEAR
 UNDERCLQTHES
AN Up.TO.DATE MAk-OF-WAR WEARS MORE THAN ONE
 SUIT OF CLOTHES.

Battleships wear coats of stout armor plate, as everybody knows, but everybody does net know 'hai they wear undergarments which are produced chiefly from cOcoanuts. Your most powerful man-of-war is really a very delicate object and requires special underclothing 90 that some vital parts of it's anatomy may not become too c0:i ani - that other equally vital portions may not become to hot
 From stem to stern, which is an other way of saying from head 10 toe, your enormous super-Dreadn ugh is enveloped in an undergarmen' placed immediately behind is top coat or armor plate. This IS is special macintosh, or, rather, water proof which acts as a protection from water as we'll as from fire.
 In the ordinary way, if a shot pierced the side of a battleship wa ter would pour in at the hole and possibly the ship might sink, but this Is obviated by providing q DdcklilS to tHt al i!lol' t'-'' ~ crecy is kept in the various navies regarding the material used and it's arrangements.
 In many of the latest battle ships. however, the coating is made of cellulose, which again is obtain ed from the fibrous cocoanut rind. Cellulose possesses the peculiar prop erty of swelling immediately if it comes in contact with salt water. Therefore the moment that water pours in at a hole at the ships side the cellulose almost instant oxpands and so closes the aperture. Of course the cellulose is especially treated in order to render 1t fire proof.
 A man-of-war has it's vitality enor- mously diminished if certain p0f tions of 1t become too cold in much the same way as its human ten ants. Accordingly its boiler and steam pipes are clothed with 'jac- kets." In some cases the jackets are made of ordinary blanketing others of a fibrous clay-like compost tion or even of close grained wood. In general the material used for a ships underclothing of this de scription consists of mineral wool.
 However, the great ship Is more likely to suffer from the effects o1 heat than from those of cold. There is always the danger owing to the newer type of machinery employed that the powder magazines may get too hot.
 In the latest man-Of-War the stores are surrounded by a thick coating of mineral wool Mineral wool, by the way, has nothing to do what ever with wool, as it consists of a mass of snowy threads Of kind of glass. It is made by blowing jets of high pressure steam through the furnaces in the manufacture Of iron and steel.
 Enormous quantities of this strange variety of wool are used on board for the purposes of undercloth- ing and the bulkheads and the more delicate portions of the ships body. This invaluable substance acts equally we'll as a protector for heat and from cold. It Is such re markable nonconductor of heat that it Is used for covering the refrlger- ators and the cold storage chambers and therefore the explosive stores
 In the dockyards all men who are employed in packing the minera! wool in the spaces on the ships are obliged to wear masks. IhlS Is to prevent the sharp needlelike par ticles from being inhaled and caus- ing chest troubles of fatal charac- ter.
 The ammunition rooms themselves are kept cool by refrigerat1ng plant in addition to being clothed in mineral wool, the same applying to the ammunition passages. The wool is also packed between the double bulkheads which separate the boiler spaces from the other portions of the vessel. Altogether the uses of the mineral wool on board are extremely numerous. Even reindeer hair is to be met with on board in the capacity of particular sort of underclothing. This material is very light-considerable lighter than cork, for instance-and it is not SO subject to decay. For this reason among its many uses it Is of great value as filling for the life puoys. Boston Transcript.