NEW-YORK. Average temperature of the week ending March 6th, being the coldest week of the season, 21.14.-Do. of the week ending March 11th, 32.25.-Do. of the week ending March 18th, 36.-Do. of the week ending March 25th, 49.54. The caprices of Nature yield us a useful lesson! How inexcusable are those who have neither an ear nor an eye for its constant admonitions,-who suffer the most extensive and the only gratuitous library of useful knowledge to remain unread! Shall I venture to call it that splendid annual, published by its Mighty Author for nearly six thousand years, every page of which furnished an inimitable picture of human life, and every line of which presents us an idea and a moral.-FLORA BRUMAL This building is situated on the south-west side of Wall street, on the corner of Hanover street, extending through to Exchange Place, having a front of about 125 feet in Wall street, and forming nearly a square. The basement story is occupied principally by the Post Office. On the principal story is the Exchange Room, which is 100 feet in length and 60 feet in width, with an arched ceiling suspended from the rafters of the building. I constantly kept well lighted, warmed, and ventilated, and is attended by a person competent to give such information as strangers may require. The other parts of the building comprise the Stock Exchange, and various other offices devoted to mercantile pursuits, which are always in request. In the dome is the Exchange Telegraph, connected with several stations in the harbor, the most remote of which is on the HighJands of Neversink, in the State of New-Jer sey, the distance of which, in a direct line, is about 27 miles. This station is situated upwards of 400 feet above the level of the sea, and in clear weather commands a prospect of the offing, upwards of 30 miles in extent. The means of communication by the Telegraph are so easy, that any information can be conveyed through the whole line in less than five minutes. In addition to the station on Staten Island, the proprietors have placed signal poles, which always show, during the day, the number of inward bound vessels in sight, and they form a guide for pilots, by whom they can be seen from the principal wharves in the city. These stations have been erected at great expense by the Company. In the Exchange Room is a book, open to the public, in which the Telegraphic communications are entered immediately they are received. 162 Ballingall's Improvements in Ship-Building. has a fair claim to be considered as himself [From the London Mechanics' Magazine.] It is now upwards of twenty years since Sir Robert Seppings introduced into the Royal Navy various improvements in ship. building, which are universally allowed to have imparted great additional strength, safe. ty, and durability, to our ships of war: yet, to use the words of Mr. Knowles, (Inquiry into the Means which have been taken to preserve the British Navy,) such is "the jea lousy incident to human nature, in properly appreciating and applying the inventions of others, or the indolence of the mind in not bringing itself to examine new methods or combinations-these improvements, while they have been eagerly grasped by foreign na tions, are but slowly introduced in the ships of our merchants, and, with an apathy hardly to be credited, are totally neglected by the first trading company in Europe (the East India Company)." The advantages of the improved system, however, are so manifest and indisputable, that all that was wanting to bring it into general use, in the mercantile navy, was, that some influential individual connected with shipping should take it up should make it his business to promote its adoption, not only by his own example, but by pressing it in every possible way on the public attention-should do, in short, for the merchants' yards, what Sir Robert Seppings We are happy to has done for the King's. say that such an individual has at length been found in Mr. Ballingall, the author of a very clever and intelligent work, which we have now before us, entitled "The Mercantile Navy Improved." Mr. Ballingall has brought to the task he has undertaken, not only all the weight of an official situation of considerable prominence, but great practical experience, combined with what seldom accompanies it in men of his class, a very earnest and clear-sighted desire of improvement. He candidly acknowledges that "the greater part" of the alterations in construction which he proposes to have adopted in merchant ships, are already "in practice in the Royal Navy;" but he has at the same time enhanced the utility of these alterations by so many new suggestions, and added so many valua ble contrivances, entirely his own, that he * The Mercantile Navy Improved; or a Plan for the Greater Safety of Lives and Property in Steam Vessels, Packets, Smacks, and Yachts, with Explanatory Drawings. By James Ballingall, Manager of the Kirkaldy and London Shipping Company, and Surveyor of Shipping for the Port of Kirkaldy, 1832. Morrison, London. an improver of the first order. We cannot undertake to give within the limits to which we must needs confine ourselves, the whole details of Mr. Ballingall's system; but we shall endeavor to place in a distinct point of view before our readers, two or three of its more important features. 1. The filling in of the timbers—that is, bringing the ribs or frames into one compact body up to the gunwale-claims, on account of the immense consequences dependent upon it, the first place in our consideration. A ship is but an arch of peculiar adaptation, and the strength of every arch is in proportion to the mutual dependance of the parts on each other; but, according to the ordinary mode of building merchant ships, not more than one-half the timbers have such a mutual dependance. Every alternate couple of ribs only is connected together, and the interme diate timbers (absurdly enough termed fillings) are entirely unconnected with each other, resting only on the outer planking, without contributing, in the smallest degree, towards the support of the general structure. This loose and dangerous mode of construction has, at the instance of Sir Robert SepEvery couple struction of our ships of war. pings, been altogether abandoned in the conof ribs, without exception, is closely connect. ed, and all the smaller interstices, as high as the floor heads, are filled in and caulked; in short, the bottom is converted into one compact solid mass, and that wholly exclusive of the outer planking. It must be evident that a ship thus constructed may sustain very considerable damage in her outer planking— lose actually a plank or two, or even her keel --and yet reach the place of her destination; while the loss of even a portion of a single plank or of the keel would be the destruction of a vessel built on the present mode. When water gets once past the outside planking of any ordinary vessel, nothing but the pumps can save it; and should these get choked, or the crew become exhausted in working them, (both very common cases,) down she must go. From numerous illustrative instances adduced by Mr. Ballingall, of the advantage which ships of war possess over merchant vessels in this respect, we quote the following: "On or about the same ledge of rocks on which the Wolf, sloop of war, struck, and lay fast for two nights and a day, in March, 1830, at the back of the Isle of Wight, the vessel at the time she struck going at a con Ballingall's Improvements in Ship-Building. 163 vessels which have been lost by foundering and collision might have been saved, if the vessels had had solid bottoms;" and there can be no question that the loss of life and property from the neglect of this mode of construction is annually immense. siderable rate through the water, at the very top of high water of a high spring tide, and with a considerable swell on, and which vessel was got off again and is now in the East Indies, having been dragged over the rocks for half a mile by assistance from Spithead, the vessel beating very hard upon the rocks with the lift 2. Caulking the whole of the ceiling or inof the sea all the time, the Carn Brea Cas- ner planking of the vessel, and thus making tle, free trader to India, was lost only a few it water-tight. This is contrary to the prac months before, having got ashore under more tice pursued in the Royal Navy, and, we are favorable circumstances for getting off again. induced to think, somewhat superfluous, but What could this be owing to? The ships is strongly recommended by Mr. Ballingall, were nearly, I believe, of similar tonnage. on the ground of its affording a double secuThe answer is plain and obvious. The Wolf rity against a leak. If this, however, be done, had a solid bottom of 15 inches thick at the it will be naturally asked how any water, keel, being 12 inches of timbers, and three which may have got into the vessel from ininches of outside plank, without allowing her board, is to get to the pumps to be pumped to have had any ceiling. The Carn Brea out? The answer to this question brings us Castle would only have an outside bottom to Mr. B.'s third important improvement, plank to protect her, of, I presume, 3 inches which consists in thick. Yet this vessel would have timbers of 12 inches thick, if no more, and a ceiling plank of, I also presnine, 3 inches thick, making 3 inches more than the sloop of war, but neither of which were of the least use to her in keeping out the water. Had her timbers been close and her ceiling been caulked, she would have had one more protection than the sloop of war, viz. the ceiling plank, without taking any thing from her stowage, and the fair inference is that she would have been got off and preserved."-P. 97-99. Mr. Knowles, in a letter to Mr. Ballingall, dated "Navy-Office, October 24, 1831," states that "the whole navy proves that the ships with solid bottoms have been more du. rable than they used to be when openings were left;" and he particularly specities the case of the Success, which went ashore in Cockburn Sound, when "the whole keel was carried away, also the lower piece of stern, five feet four inches of the stern-post, four pieces of the dead wood, nine strakes of the bottom, amidships, and many strakes in the bows, and yet this ship was floated off." Sir Robert Seppings has justly the credit of introducing this practice into general use in the Royal Dock Yards; but when in of fice, he had himself the liberality to point out to Mr. Ballingall, in the model-room at the Navy-Office, the model of a brig called The Lady Nelson, which was built about 1790, under the directions of Admiral Schanks, on the principle of a perfect union of the timbers, and is now, after a lapse of thirtytwo years, still running, and "tight as a bot tle." Mr. Ballingall thinks that "nearly all the 3. An improvement in the water-courses, by means of what are called percolators : "I would propose a water-course to be led alongside the kelson on each side, as fær forward and aft as may be required from the spring of the vessel raised above the level of the adjoining ceiling, by what I would call percolators, and the bottom of said watercourse sunk at least an inch and a half or more below the level of the adjoining ceiling, to allow any water which might get into the vessel to drain off the ceiling inte this water-course. dual acclivity forward and aft, to cause the water to flow readily along the water-courses to the bottom of the pumps. This would be greatly assisted by the spring of the vessel. In men of war, East and West India ships, and, in general, in all vessels which either carry no cargoes, or their cargoes in packages, these percolators may be readily made of strong and thick oak battens, fastened to the ceiling close to the water-courses, and raised, say from 6 or 8 inches high, above the ceiling, with notches cut in the under edges or sides of them, similar to, I believe, the practice in the navy. These water-courses to be covered with limber boards, as at present, and the boards would not be required to be tight on the top; the boards to be sloped up to the kelson.”—P. 20. There should be a gra Mr. Ballingall does not propose these percolators simply because they obviate the objection before stated to the caulking of the ceiling, but for this further reason, that, whether the ceiling is caulked or not, they furnish a better means of conveying the wa ter to the pumps, and keeping the pumps clear i than any now in use, while at the same time they contribute considerable additional stability to the vessel. The explanations on this head are too long for quotation, but are to our minds entirely satisfactory. 2 S BP The better to elucidate these different improvements, we copy from Mr. Ballingall's book the accompanying illustrative sketches. Fig. 1 is part of a transverse section of a ship built on Mr. Ballingall's plan, and fig. 2 a continuation of that section (part broken off.) TT is the compact floor, with its bottom and ceiling planking. AA are guards fitted to protect the percolators from damage by shovels, &c. in taking out ballast or unloading a cargo. BB spaces filled with tanner's bark, charcoal, &c. or such substances as will allow the water to flow freely through them, and keep back sand, and so prevent the copper strainers, on the outer edge of bilge. G shows the top of one of the main the percolators, from being choked. CC the percolators opened; that on the other side is BP is the bilge piece. copper strainers (shown by double lines) on represented as shut. the outer edge of the percolators. DD the SS the water-courses, serving as supporters percolators, the lid or covering being open to the bilge piece. Fig. 3 is another transon the starboard side in midships, and shut verse section, showing the alterations neceson the larboard side and at the bilge receiv- sary to be made in the positions of the pump EE limbers or receivers for water. FF (P), pump-well (PW), and cistern (CC), in the pipe which leads from the water-course order to suit the new system. Fig. 4 is part down into the well prepared for it at the of a longitudinal section of a merchant ves er. |