BUILDING A DREADNOUGHT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 119, 18 May 1909, Page 3

BUILDING A DREADNOUGHT.

THE CREATPN OF A MODERN $J.TTLESHIP.

(By "S,,V in The Daily Mail.) - Long, before a Dreadnought is actually laid 7down at least one hundred gres^ firms, m all parts of the country £aV© been spurred into unusual acuity. Thirty or forty dis T tinct trade? are engaged m the work; five or perhaps six thousand men are employed. .„ • : Eight "Dreadnoughts, if under construction Simultaneously, wo^lr mean employment for. almost 48,000 men, and counting *h© families of the workers on i a low estimate, it is fairly safe to say that a community ot

• nearly 200,000 ' persons—about .the population of Bradford: —could be supported by the wages paid to Dreadnought builders during the period of construction. If we could imagine all the workers gathered together into one large town, we should find among them men of nearly every trade. Besides the steel workers, the builders of enormously powerful machinery, and pi apparatus put together with the refined delicacy of the watchmaker, there would be carpenters, cabinetmakers, polishers, leather workers, electricians, chemical workers, optical workers, painters, plumbers; glaziers, upholsterers, gilders, ropemakers, workers who deal with cork, indiarubber, and almost every substance known to man. They would all find work in Dreadnought town. Now, let us see how all these workers actually build one of these great ships. The first step is the construction of a small model. This model is made of paraffin wax, and is subjected to a , series of tests in an experimental tank. It is drawn through the water at various speeds; and by the most minute calculations of the resistance it offers the designers discover data which enable them to determine the speed the completed vessel will be able to attain, as well as many other matters. So much importance is attached to these trials, which take place in the experimental tanks at Haslar, that only experts actually engaged in the work are allowed to enter the building. After these experiments the drawings are made, which are equivalent to an architect's plans. The preparation of these drawings alone is an immense task. The next scene is laid in an enormous building known as a "mould loft." Here wooden models'of various portions of the, ship are put together. , LAYING THE KEEL. If you could get a glimpse into one of the great mould lofts of a royal dockyard you would see the floor; of the building marked out with, sections of the new ship for the guidance of the shipwrights who will actually ; put the vessel together. Work in these departments goes^n for months before the actual building is begun. r Officially the building of a ship commences from the time the keel is laid, and the time occupied in construction is always calculated from this .point—when she is "laid down." There is generally a picturesque little ceremony connected with this official start. ' ... Nowadays every naval leviathan is constructed on a slip—that is, a sloping way that leads direct into the water. ■ ; . ■..

Right from the water to the head of the slip puns a row of huge blocks. On one side of the slip is placed the keel-piato hi the new leviathan. A l a dy_-usually the wife,of an admiral —touches an electric button and the keel slides slowly into its place on the blocks amid the cheers of the ast sembled workmen. The keel is "laid" and the building of the ship begun. From this time until the day of launching the place is a- scene or'incessant activity. Hundreds of .workmen awarm all over the slowly growi ing, monsterj and the noise of pneumatic, riveting and drilling machines is deafening. Every part is marked for position before it is fixed/ and every pound of material built £nto the ship- is carefully weighed, an official, termed ' 'Recorder of Weights,'' being appointed for this purpose. ' WithjiTa few days of the keel being bolted together, the task of affixing the ribs begins, and at this period in he)* growth the battleship looks strikingly like the skeleton of a huge •ivjaale, for the>bare ribs arch over just /Jjieneath the protection deck. The ribs, however, do not long remain exposed. By means of 'derricks plates are swung up one after the other and fixed along the ' vessels' s side. Roughly bolted into position at first, they are quickly sewn together by thousands of steel rivets punched in by a pneumatic? machine, j Water-tight compartments, ' coalbunkers, magazine fiats, and the many other apartments into which the interior of a warship is divided come, quickly jnto • being j and within about six months the hull is comv pleted as far as the upper deck. •By the time about 6000 tons of material have been 'built into the ship she is ready for launching, but when that ceremony has been accomplished the new warship is far from being completed. Her armour-plating has now to be put on, and this is an immense task, as the plates weigh many tons each, and are, by the way, so hard' that ordinary tools will make no impression oh them. BORN AMID THUNDER. They are put on in strakes (i.e., tiers) by one set of men, while others

are busy fitting the engines and boilers. • The eternal clang, clang, clang of hammers, the roar of forges, and the rumble of moving. machinery goes on : month after month. ,■ :-:\ A warship 'is ■ born amid thunder. To place the boilers and engines into position a huge pair of "sheerlegs" is used ,and truckload after trucklqacl of engine parts, tubes, and steel shafts are swung high up into the air .and lowered into the enginerooms, and stokeholds. . . _ Anyone who has not seen it wouldbarely the enormous quan;btty of material that goeis into the propelling and other machinery of a warship' Besides all this .there are the miles and miles of wires to be installed for electric lighting 'and telephones. Then ithe huge funnels,, through.-which .'.& coach and four might easily drive, are hoisted aboard, the masts are stepped, the guns are put in, and the new Dreadnought is ready to go to sea for her gun, and machinery trials-^the end of her progress so fau as the purpose of this brief article is concerned. v