Читать книгу Champions of the Fleet. Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empire онлайн

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The Dreadnought’s gun-ports should open some four feet clear of the water. People have not forgotten the horror of the Mary Rose; what happened to her; how she came to go down one summer’s day at Spithead. The waist bulwarks of the Dreadnought, if she swims as she ought, will be some twenty feet above the water-line. Nearly four hundred tons in burden is our new man-of-war—five tons heavier than the Swiftsure, than which ship too she is six feet longer, though the pair reckon as sister ships. Upwards of six thousand pounds out of Queen Elizabeth’s treasury (about £30,000 at present day value) will have been the cost of the Dreadnought when she leaves Deptford dockyard.

We will go on board for a brief look round the Dreadnought within. As we enter the ship we note how both the half-deck and the fore and aft castles are loopholed for both arrow-fire and musketry, so as to sweep the waist should an enemy board and get a footing amidships. Some of the lighter guns would be able to help. The heavier guns are mostly on the broadside, and are mounted on the decks below in a double tier. The Dreadnought altogether carries forty-two guns. Sixteen of them are heavy guns: two “cannon-periers” of six-inch bore, hard hitters, firing twenty-four pounder stone shot; four “culverins,” seventeen and a half pounders, twelve feet long and five and half inches in the bore, firing iron shot, and able to throw a ball upwards of three miles—“random shot.” There are also ten “demi-culverins,” nine-pounders, firing four and a half inch iron shot. The lighter guns are six “sakers,” pieces nine feet long (five-pounders, of three and a half inch bore) and two “fawcons” (three-pounders). The heavier guns are all muzzle-loaders. Distributed over the upper decks are eighteen breech-loading guns, for fighting at close quarters and rapid firing: “port-pieces,” “fowlers,” and “bases,” as they are called. They are on swivel mountings, and fire stone and iron shot.