Image TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage Tile
Image size: 5632x7680 Scale: 35% - PanoJS3
Page overview thumbnail

Article text

ENGLISH.
(From our September files.)
ASTOUNDING PROJECT.
Within the last quarter of a century we have
made great progress in locomotion, but certainly
we were not prepared for the startling project
of Mr. D. S. Brown, who proposes to reach
America in forty-eight hours, and to make the
voyage to India and back in a fortnight. Mr.
Brown says '" the events of a year in the present
age are equal to the occurrences of a
century in the past ; projects which a short
time ago were received with ridicule have long
since passed into" realities, and no longer
excite our wonder ; such has been the case with
railways and steam navigation.'' Our correspondent
sends to put his theory into practice
by vessels of quite different construction to those
at present in use. Giving them a greater
depth of beam, he proposes to make the under
surface of the vessel, which is flat, of two inclined
planes ; the effect of this will be, when the
ship is in motion, to raise her whole hull to the
surface of the water, thereby removing entirely
the resistance at the bowl, which is stated to be
the great obstacle of her progress, being an
illustration of the principle well known to every
school-boy who has thrown a stone planting
on the surface of the water, making what is
vulgarly called a " duck and drake' By
reducing the angles of the inclined plane, speed
could be added to the vessel, which could be
increased from thirty as" sixty miles per hour
and a ship so constructed would be s.ettle
affected by the ordinary waves of the atlantic'
as a Gravesend steamboat is by a Thames ribpW
The hull of the vessel ' is of a square tubular
form ; the deck, bottom and sides being of great
thickness, and in order to combine lightness
with strength, they are intersected throughout
with hollow cells or cavities, consisting of a
series of central cells, surrounded by another
series of smaller cells ; by rr¡eajyi..of. these the
weight of the vessel would be reduced to one
eighth of the amount, according to the number
of series employed, and still have nearly all
the advantages of solidity; whilst the form in
which the hull is made gives to it the strength
of a tube, enabling it to be made of almost any
length with perfect safety. If water obtains its
wonted superiority as a mode of locomotion,
the velocity of a steamship might as much exceed
that of a railway-carriage as the railway
carriage now does the steamship. Unseen rocks
could not endanger a ship whose path was on
the surface, seasickness could not take place
where there was no oscillation, and the size of
the vessel would place her beyond the mercy of
the wind and waves. In conclusion, Mr. Brown
hopes that the numerous advantages to be
adduced are a sufficent excuse for this attempt
.. to add another feather to our wing, by projecting
a ship worthy of the ocean she is to
traverse, and the two worlds which she is to
unite; and that the scheme will receive the
attention that it merits, and which the importance
of the subject with which it is identified as a
right to demand. English paper.
$