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

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These are some of the “points”—some of the leading features—of this grim mastodonte de mer of ours, His Majesty’s battleship, the Dreadnought. With her coal, ammunition, and sea stores on board, the Dreadnought weighs—or displaces in equivalent bulk of sea water, according to the present-day method of reckoning the size of men-of-war—17,800 tons.

Put the Dreadnought bodily inside St. Paul’s and she would fill the whole nave and chancel of the Cathedral from reredos to the Western doors. Her length would take up the whole of one side of Trafalgar Square. Her width would exactly fill Northumberland Avenue, leaving only some half-dozen inches between the house fronts on either side and the outside of the hull. Two Victorys and a frigate of Nelson’s day, fully manned and rigged, could be packed away within the Dreadnought’s hull.

[Our Dreadnought of to-day: deck-plan to scale; showing the disposition of the 12-in. 58-ton turret-guns and their arcs of training. (Bows to the right.)][3]

Measured from end to end, from bows to stern, the ship’s hull extends 490 feet. From forecastle to keel, measuring vertically, is a matter of some 60 feet down, equivalent to about the normal height of a church tower.