Year: 1866

very important experiment has lately been
tried in England to test the question whether
the turrets to be placed on the new ship which
Captain Coles has been authorized by the Brit
ish Admiralty to build would be thrown out of
gear and prevented from revolving by being
struck by heavy shot. During our war the tur-
rets on our monitors were frequently made use
less by being thus damned - as it is termed
We are not aware that any improvements have
been made in the revolving machinery of the
Monadnock and MiantonomOh, completed since
the war. Captain Coles has always contended
that his turrets are not like those of the Amer
ican monitors, aud not subject to the same
risks Of arrangement. The result of the late
trials in England seems to prove that be was
right. The turreted vessel was anchored at a
distance of two hundred yards from the frigate
Bellerophon. The turret was constructed with
double coating of iron, in two plates four
and half and FIVE and half inches thick The
gun of the Bellerophon weighed twelve and a
half tons, Mad a nine-inch rihed bore and
threw steel shot of two hundred and fifty
pounds, with charge of forty three pounds Of
powder. Three shots were fired. The first
passed through the iron armor of the turret and
the wooden backing, destroyed the wooden gun
placed to represent the battery, and fell on the
floor inside. The second pierced the iron at-
NOR and lodged in the wooden backing, starting
and loosening more than one Of the iron plates.
The third was fred at the ships deck, which
had been considered as especially invulnerable.
1t glanced along the deck and made deep
groove along the face of the turret, but did not
pierce it. But after each of these shots it was
found that the turret revolved without the least
impediment. 1t must be admitted that in this
very material quality of an efficient turret, Cap
tain Coles turret unquestionably has the ad-
vantage of many, if not all, of the American
turrets, which have so often had their eficieu-
cy destroyed, not BY the penetrating effect Of
hostile shot, but by the arrangement of the re-
vOlTing apparatus, without the use of which
they are poor indeed. On the other hnnd, it
would appear from these experiments in Great
Britain that Off turrets not easily pierced
as those of Captain Coles. Indeed, we believe
no one of them has ever been penetrated by
shot, whereas the experimental turret Of Captain
Coles was easily penetrated. In answer to the
possible supposition that Coles turret was
piercd because of the superiority Of the British
gun that attacked it to any which our turrets
had to encounter in our war, it may be retorted
with truth that our monitors at Charleston and
elsewhere frequently received the FIRE of the best
British guns, furnished by the kind neutrality
Of the British people, but that they withstood
them all. Our turrets, therefore, are wholly
impenetrable, but they have the sad fault Of
getting out of order under the effect of heavy
ffe. This Is indeed grievous fault, for a sin
gle shot might disarm one of.our most powerful
vessels in action but perhaps it is counterbal-
anced by the probability that the enormously
heavy armament of our turret ships would
bring destruction to hostile ship before any
single hostile shot could have the chance to do
mischief Washington Globe