"These plans were for a huge cylindrical vessel, sitting upright in the water, and surmounted by a tower one hundred feet above the water line. The vessel proper was a cylinder; its base, a plane; its top, the frustum of a cone, surmounted by a tower upon a tower. The cylinder was eighty-three feet in length to the water line, the cone nine feet high, the first tower fifty one feet above the frustum of the cone, and the second tower forty feet above this. The cylinder was made of boiler iron in three layers of one-inch plates, and covered on the outside with aluminum plates a quarter of an inch thick; the diameter was thirty feet, and the vessel was divided into eight stories by floors of one-inch steel. The first, or lower, and second chambers were fourteen feet high; the next twelve; the four following, ten; while the top chamber, under the cone, was twelve feet to the frustum. All of these chambers, except the first, were divided into water-tight compartments by steel bulkheads. The second chamber had eight compartments; the third, two; the fourth, fifth and sixth, four; the seventh and eighth two. The first, or main tower extended down through the cylinder to the top of the third chamber, and was eight feet in diameter. It was necessary to pass through this tube to gain entrance to any of the floors. Access to the different compartments of each floor was by means of doors closing water-tight. The chambers were for use as follows: the first contained 10,000 cubic feet of fine sand--1,300,000 pounds--or so much of it as was needed to bring the surface of the water to within three feet of the cone. This chamber was peculiarly constructed; water-holes permitted free access to the surrounding water, causing the sand to be saturated. Ten capped openings in the bottom were manipulated from the engine-room and office, and by means of which any amount of sand could be quickly dropped from the chamber into the ocean, thus decreasing the weight and increasing the buoyancy. "The second chamber was the water-chamber, and was divided into eight separate compartments. Water could be admitted into any one, or all, by suitable levers worked in the engine-room. Pipes from each compartment were connected to the pumps in the engine-room, thus permitting of the compartment being quickly emptied of its water. The capacity of the eight compartments was 10,000 cubic feet, or 64,000 pounds of water.