[Illustration: Figure 18.--SAIL PLAN OF FULTON'S _Steam Battery_ as
reconstructed for model in the Museum of History and Technology.]
As to the remaining deck fixtures, hatches and fittings, these must be
entirely a matter of speculation. Ladderways, passing scuttles, hatches,
trunks, galley, heads and cabins were obviously required in a fighting
ship and can only be located on the theory that, when completed, the
_Battery_ was a practical vessel.
It has been stated that the officers' cabins were over the race; the
logical place for the heads, galley, wardroom and mess also would be
over the race, giving the remaining part of the gun deck for the
necessary hatches, ladderways, trunks, etc., in the two hulls, space
required for armament, and to sling the hammocks of a watch below. As
the vessel was never fully manned, apparently, the space for hammocks is
not a serious problem in a reconstruction. If the vessel had been manned
as proposed by 500 men, hammocks for over 200 would have been required,
which would give very crowded quarters in view of the limited space
available.
Though no specific requirements were stated in the reports of the
trials, it seems reasonable to suppose that additional hatches were cut
in the decks to improve the fireroom ventilation. In the reconstruction
drawings, these hatchways as well as the other deck openings and deck
fittings--such as bilge pumps, companionways, skylights, binnacles,
wheels and wheel-rope trunks, cable trunks, steampipe casings, and stack
fiddleys--have been located in an effort to meet the imagined
requirements of the working of a ship of this unusual form.
[Illustration: Figure 19.--MODEL OF _Steam Battery_ in the Museum of
History and Technology. (Smithsonian photo 63990-E.)]
[Illustration: Figure 20.--LINES OF STEAMER _Congo_, built in 1815-1816
for the British Admiralty and converted to a sailing survey vessel. From
Admiralty Collection of Draughts, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.]
There are some unanswered questions that arose in the preparation of
the reconstruction drawings. As has been shown, the original inboard
arrangement plan found in Copenhagen shows four smokestacks, while
Marestier's sketch of the vessel's boilers shows trunked flues
indicating that two stacks were used. It is possible that the boilers
were first fitted so that four stacks were required; alterations made as
a result of steaming trials may well have included the introduction of
trunked flues and the final use of two stacks in line fore-and-aft. This
would have required a rearrangement of the fiddley hatches amidships.
Another troublesome question was the doubtful arrangement of the four
companionways on the spar deck. Perhaps only two were fitted, one on
each side of the officers' staterooms while the ladderways at the crew's
end of the ship were simple ladder hatches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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