feet shorter, and a foot or two less in height.
The Leviathan has these, and they appear
but as small compartments of the huge
interior.

It would prove a fortunate circumstance
for our military authorities, who are so much
in want of steam transports to the seat of
war, if this monster ship were ready for sea
at the present moment. There are just now
two divisions of the French army, of ten
thousand men each, ready to be conveyed to
the scenes of their future operations. The
Leviathan, with just sufficient fuel for so
short a voyage, could take on board one of
those divisions entire, with horses, fodder,
artillery, and ammunition; it could land
those ten thousand men, with proper arrangements,
in the Crimea; could return and carry
the second of those small armies; and could
arrive back at Marseilles for the second time
within one month from her first starting.

It has been deemed an achievement worthy
of mention, to convey an entire regiment of
light cavalry from Bombay to the Crimea, by
way of the Red Sea and Egypt, in about two
months. If the calculations as to speed of the
Leviathan be correct—which more learned
heads than ours declare them to be—then
the iron ship could have conveyed at least
half a dozen regiments of cavalry from Bombay
to Balaklava, by way of the Cape of Good
Hope and the Straits of Gibraltar, in two-
thirds of the time, and at not much greater
cost than was required for the one regiment
conveyed through Egypt.

Had the old system of ship-building still
prevailed with regard to sea-going steamers,
—had our shipwrights worked on the wooden-
wall principle instead of the plate-and-rivet
method, we should never have possessed such
noble steam-ships as are owned by our large
commercial companies. Certain it is that the
Leviathan could not have been built, on the
wooden system. The mightiest giants of
Indian forests, of fabulous age, in countless
numbers, would not have sufficed to produce
a ship of half her size. Strength enough
could not have been obtained with the most
ponderous masses of timber-work, braced as
they might have been with iron and copper,
to have floated so mighty a load of cargo,
machinery, and living beings. Yet the monster
of which we are now writing, so new in its
various appliances of power, so wonderful
in its unheard-of capacity, is composed of
plates of iron, less than one inch in thickness.

The secret of the great strength attained
by this comparatively small amount of metal
is in the peculiar structure of the hull. It is
built throughout, in distinct compartments,
on the principle of the Britannia Tubular
Bridge, and when finished will be in fact a
huge tubular ship. The principles of that
structure need not here be dwelt upon. It
will suffice to explain that the whole of this
vessel will be divided into ten huge, watertight
compartments, by means of iron-plate
bulkheads carried up to the upper deck,
thereby extending far above the water-line.
In addition to this great safeguard against
accident, the whole length of the ship, except
where she tapers off at either end, is protected
by a double skin of metal plating, the outer
one being distant three feet from the interior.
These double tubular sides are carried to far
above the deepest water-mark, and inasmuch
as the transverse bulkheads extend to the
outer of these skins, they are divided into
many watertight subdivisions, any one or
two of which, though torn or fractured, and
filled with water, would not affect the
buoyancy or safety of the ship.

Besides the great transverse divisions
before alluded to, there are two enormously
strong longitudinal bulkheads of iron running
from stem to stern, each forty feet from the
inner skin, and carried to the upper deck:
adding greatly to the solidity and safety of
the vessel. The main compartments thus
formed by the bulkheads, have a means of
communication by iron sliding doors near the
top, easily and effectually closed in time of
need. In this way, not only are all the
most exposed portions of the ship double-
skinned, but the body is cut up into a great
number of very large but perfectly distinct
fire-and-water-proof compartments, forming,
indeed, so many colossal iron safes. If we
can imagine a rock to penetrate the double
skin, and make its sharp way into any one
of these compartments, it might fill with
water without any detriment to the rest of
the ship.

One of the most terrible calamities that
can befall a vessel at sea is undoubtedly a fire.
The iron water-tight bulkheads would seem
to defy that destructive element sufficiently;
but, in order to make assurance doubly sure,
the builders are experimenting with a view
to employing only prepared uninflammable
wood for the interior fittings.

Such is the Leviathan. She is to be
launched, unlike any other ship, broadside on
to the water by means of hydraulic power,
and early in next spring, is expected to make
a trial trip to the United States and back,
in less than a fortnight. In contemplating
this Brobdingnag vessel, our small acquaintance
with things nautical, dwarfs down to
Lilliputian insignificance. Before reaching
the isle of Dogs, we had imagined that we
possessed some acquaintance with ship-building
and marine engineering. One of the
Leviathan cylinders was sufficient to
extinguish our pretensions.

With a Brunel for designer; with a
Stephenson for approver; a Scott Russell for
builder; with Professor Airey in charge of
the compasses, and Sir W. S. Harris looking
after the lightning conductors; the Leviathan
may well be expected to turn out the floating
marvel of the age. Fancy the astonishment
of the South Sea islanders when they behold
her, rushing past their coral homes!