stern, and then one can perceive that the
object before us is really intended for a ship.

Standing on the banks of the river Thames,
with a vast open space on one side and
Greenwich Hospital on the other, it is not
easy to form a just conception of this marine
monster, which, for want of a better name,
we call the Leviathan. It is being built by
Scott Russell and Company, from designs
by Mr. Brunel, the engineer, whose
conception the entire fabric is. When we
remind our readers that the Royal Albert
line-of-battle ship, of one hundred and twenty
guns, is something under four thousand
tons, and about two hundred and twenty
feet in length; and that the Simla and Himalaya,
at present the largest steamers afloat,
are only three hundred and twenty feet in
length, or thereabouts; they may form some
idea of the proportions of this Eastern Steam
Navigation Company's ship, when they are
told that it will be six hundred and eighty
feet in length and of twenty-five thousand
tons burthen; in other words, of more than
six times the capacity of our largest men-of-
war, and above double the length of the
largest steam-ship afloat.

Our readers will have frequently heard
discussions as to the relative merits of paddles
and screws. In the Leviathan, the screw
will be combined with the paddle, worked by
engines nominally of two thousand six hundred
horse power, but in reality capable of being
worked up to ten thousand horse power. To
guard against accidents at sea to machinery,
and to prevent any detention from such a
cause, the paddle-wheels will not only be
perfectly distinct from each other in their
working, but each will be set in motion by
several sets of machinery of superabundant
power, so that at all times derangements or
cleaning of one or two cylinders or boilers
will not interfere with the progress of the ship.

Steam will be the sole propelling power, no
canvas being contemplated in this vessel. In.
fixing the great size of the Leviathan, its
projector believes that he has obtained the
elements of a speed hitherto unknown in ocean-
going steamers. It is confidently predicted
that by the great length of the Leviathan she
will be enabled to pass through the water at
an average speed in all weathers of fifteen
knots an hour, with a smaller power in
proportion to tonnage than ordinary vessels
now require to make ten knots. The
contract speed of most ocean mail-carrying
steamers is eight knots.

We believe that the Eastern Steam
Navigation Company intend making their first
voyage to Australia. The actual distance
from Milford Haven, the company's starting-
point, to Port Philip, is less than twelve
thousand miles, if no ports be touched at. A
speed of fifteen knots or miles an hour
averaged from land to land would take the
Leviathan to the golden colony in about
thirty-two days. This can only be
accomplished, even at that high speed, by avoiding
all stoppages for coals, which, besides detaining
a ship many days in the different ports,
carries her a great distance out of the direct
steaming course. Here we find another
novelty brought to bear by Mr. Brunel. A
ship of this huge capacity can carry twelve
thousand tons of coals: quite sufficient, it is
stated, for her consumption on the outward
and homeward voyages. Space will still be
left for five thousand tons of cargo, the
massive machinery, and four thousand passengers
with their luggage and all necessary stores for
use.

The advantage of this arrangement is
twofold. Besides the avoidance of stoppages for
coalings on the voyage, the ship earns all the
freight which must otherwise have been paid
to sailing vessels for the conveyance of the
fuel to the coaling depots, which, on three-
fourths of the quantity consumed on one
voyage would amount to a sum sufficient to
build and equip a steamer of two or three
hundred tons. In order to compensate for
the great loss of weight caused by all this
enormous consumption of fuel, and to maintain
an equal immersion of the paddles, the
coal will, to a certain extent, be replaced by
water pumped into the water-tight compartments
forming the skin of the ship, and of
which we shall presently have occasion to
speak. In addition to this arrangement the
paddles have been so adjusted on the wheels
as to be as efficient at one draught of water
as at another.

It is impossible to judge of the future
finish or accommodation of such a gigantic
ship as the Leviathan from the present state
of the iron hull. Immense divisions of metal
plates, reaching to an incredible height, with
sub-compartments at right angles, appear to
divide the monster fabric into a number of
square and oblong spaces, each of which
would contain an eight-roomed house of
Camden Town build, or a semi-detached villa
from Stockwell, at forty-pounds per annum.

We inspected a model of the ship in wood,
and could scarcely believe that the unsightly
mass of iron plates, rivets, and joints, just
beheld, could by any possible ingenuity be
wrought into anything so beautifully
symmetrical as the long, arrow-like little craft before
us, tapering off forward as sharply as a
woodman's hatchet or a Thames wherry.
From that model we were enabled to
understand where the engines, coals, stores, and
cargo would be placed, and moreover, where
the two thousand first-class passengers would
be berthed, in their five hundred state cabins,
and where the two thousand second-class and
steerage passengers would be placed, without
nearly as much crowding as in an ordinary
passenger or emigrant ship.

Large indeed must that steamer be which
can provide a main-deck saloon sixty feet in
length, and forty in width, and fifteen in
height: with a second-class saloon only twenty