Floating batteries.
The first Amercan floating battery was seen in the
Charles River, at
Boston, in October, 1775.
Washington had ordered the construction of two, to assist in the siege of the
New England capital.
They were armed and manned, and on Oct. 26 opened fire on the town, producing much consternation.
They appear to have been made of strong planks, pierced near the water-line for oars, and further up were port-holes for musketry and the admission of light.
A heavy gun was placed in each end, and upon the top were four swivels.
The ensign was the pine-tree flag.
Colonel Reed, writing to
Colonel Moylan, on Oct. 20, 1775, said: “Please to fix some particular color for a flag and a signal, by which our vessels may know each other.
What do you think of a flag with a white ground, a tree in the middle, and the motto ‘An Appeal to Heaven?’
This is the flag of our floating batteries.”
When the
War of 1812-15 broke out, the subject of harbor defences occupied much of the attention of citizens of the
American coast towns, especially in the
city of New York.
Among the scientific men of the day,
John Stevens and
Robert Fulton appear conspicuous in proposing plans for that purpose.
Earlier than this (in 1807),
Abraham Bloodgood, of
Albany, suggested the construction of a floating revolving battery not unlike, in its essential character, the revolving turret built by
Captain Ericsson in the winter of 1861-62.
In March, 1814,
Thomas Gregg, of
Pennsylvania, obtained a patent for a proposed ironclad steam vessel-of-war, resembling in figure the gunboats and rams used during the
Civil War.
At about the same time a plan of a
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The first American floating battery. |
floating battery submitted by
Robert Fulton was approved by naval officers.
It was in the form of a steamship of peculiar construction, that might move at the rate of 4 miles an hour, and furnished, in addition to its regular armament, with submarine guns.
Her construction was ordered by Congress, and she was built at the ship-yard of
Adam and
Noah Brown, at
Corlear's Hook, New York, under the supervision of
Fulton.
She was launched Oct. 29, 1814.
Her machinery was tested in May following, and on July 4, 1815, she made a trial-trip of 53 miles to the ocean and back, going at the rate of 6 miles an hour.
This vessel was called
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Fulton the First.
She measured 145 feet on deck and 55 feet breadth of beam; drew only 8 feet of water; mounted thirty 32-pounder carronades, and two columbiads of 100 lbs. each.
She was to be commanded by
Captain Porter.
It was a structure resting upon two boats on keels, separated from end to end by a channel 15 feet wide and 60 feet long.
One boat contained the boiler for generating steam, which was made of copper.
The machinery occupied the other boat.
The waterwheel (A) revolved in the space between them.
The main or gun deck supported the armament, and was protected by a parapet 4 feet 10 inches thick, of solid timber, pierced by embrasures.
Through twenty-five port-holes were as many 32-pounders, intended to fire redhot shot, which could be heated with great safety and convenience.
Her upper or spar deck, upon which many hundred men might parade, was encompassed with a bulwark for safety.
She was rigged with two stout masts, each of which supported a large lateen-yard and sails.
She had two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders, one at each extremity of each boat, so that she might be steered with either end foremost.
Her machinery was calculated for an additional engine, which might discharge an immense volume of water which it was intended to throw upon the decks and through the portholes of an enemy, and thereby deluge her armament and ammunition.
The most extravagant stories concerning this monster of the deep went forth at about the time of her being launched.
In a treatise on steam vessels, published in
Scotland soon afterwards, the author said: “Her length
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Section of the floating battery Fulton. |
is 300 feet; breadth, 200 feet; thickness of her sides, 13 feet, of alternate oak plank and cork-wood; carries forty-four guns, four of which are 100-pounders; can
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Gregg's iron-clad vessel in 1814. |
discharge 100 gallons of boiling water in a few minutes, and by mechanism brandishes 300 cutlasses with the utmost regularity over her gunwales; works, also, an equal number of pikes of great length, darting them from her sides with prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute.”
The Confederates of
South Carolina constructed a floating battery in
Charleston harbor in the winter of 1861.
It was a curious monster, made of heavy pine timber, filled in with palmetto-logs, and covered with a double layer of
railroad iron.
It appeared like an immense shed, 25 feet in width, and, with its appendage, about 100 feet in length.
It mounted in its front (which sloped inwards from its iron-clad roof) four enormous siege-guns.
The powder magazine was in the rear, below the water-line, and at its extremity was a platform covered with sand-bags, to protect its men and balance the heavy guns.
Attached to it was a floating hospital.
It was intended to tow this monster to a position so as to bring its guns to bear on
Fort Sumter.
Stevens's floating battery was a more formidable structure.
This battery had been in process of construction by
Messrs. Stevens, of
Hoboken, N. J., for several years before the
Civil War. It was intended solely for harbor defence.
Already there had been about $1,000,000 spent upon it, chiefly by the
United States
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Floating battery Fulton the first. |
government, and yet it was not completed.
Until just before the war it had been shut in from the public eye. It was to be 700 feet in length, covered with iron plates, so as to be proof against shot and shell of every kind.
It was to be moved by
steam-engines of sufficient strength to give it a momentum that would cause it, as a “ram,” to cut in two any ship-of-war then known when it should strike her at the waist.
It was intended for a battery of sixteen heavy rifled cannon in bomb-proof casemates, and two heavy columbiads for throwing shells.
The latter were to be on deck, fore and aft. The smoke-stack was to be constructed in sliding sections, like a telescope, for obvious purposes; and the vessel was so constructed that it might be sunk to the level of the water.
Its burden was rated at 6,000 tons.
It was not completed when the Civil War ended.
The following is a portion of the specific a tion: “The boat is framed on an angle of about eighteen degrees all round the vessel, where the top timbers elevate the balls, and the lower ones direct them under her. The top deck, which glances the ball, may be hung on a mass of hinges near the ports.
Said deck is supported by knees and cross-timbers on the lower sides, so that it may be sprung with powder, if required (when boarded by the enemy), to a perpendicular, when the said deck will be checked by stays, while the power of powder will be exhausted in the open air, and then
fall or
spring to the centre of the deck again.
The aforesaid deck will run up and down with the angle, which may be coppered or laid with iron.
The gun-deck may be bored at pleasure, to give room, if required, as the men and guns are under said deck.
The power is applied between her keels, where there is a concave formed to receive them from the bow to the stern, except a small distance in each end, form-
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ing an eddy.
The power may be reversed to propel her either way. Said power is connected to upright levers, to make horizontal strokes alternately.”
This project was abandoned, and the battery was sold at auction in 1880.
See
Stevens, John.
