idle from year to year.
that commerce has been driven from the vicin-
ity of the yard. The devotion of these parts
of the yard to mercantile purposes would, with-
out doubt, attract commercial and manufactur-
ing enterprises to the city, and they would form
the nucleus of a system of docks and piers and
warehouses of great advantage to the metropo-
lis. The pier alluded to is known as Ordnance
or Cob Dock, and was completed in 1866, at a
cost of $1,900,000. It is built on an old island
in Wallabout Bay, shaped on the old maps not
unlike the Mikado's famous fan-shaped refuge
for the Dutch apostates in Japan. It covers
an area several times greater than that of any
other pier in the port; but its vast space is de-
voted to the storage of shot and shell and artil-
lery, instead of the rich products of industry
and agriculture.

to be full of water. After the vessel that is to be docked is floated in, this caisson, which contains an upper and lower compartment, is brought from the outside and set against the open end of the dock, which it closes, and in grooves which fit its bow and stern. Water is then let into the lower compartment of this caisson, and it sinks so as to hermetically seal up the dock, which is then pumped out. As soon as water is removed from the dock, the pressure of the water of the East River upon the caisson holds it in place as firmly as though it were part of the granite walls. When the dock is to be opened, a steam - engine and pump in the upper

The consequence is, | compartment of the caisson are set to work in pumping out the water in its lower compartment, and the caisson, rising in its grooves, allows the East River to flow beneath its keel and fill the dock. The strain on the gates is thus greatly relieved, as they are only used to break the intervening movements of the water. Success in shoring a vessel properly in dock depends largely upon its management in giving it its first "set." The dock, which contains 610,000 gallons, can be emptied within two hours and ten minutes. The whole height of its walls is 36 feet; its least depth, measured at high-water over the mitre-sills, 26 feet; and its least width, similarly measured, 66 feet. Its main chamber is 30 feet wide at bottom, and 286 feet in length; at top, 98 feet, and 307 feet long; and 52 feet can be added to its length by using the vestibule between the doors and the caisson.

The Dry Dock is an immovable basin of solid granite. More than ten thousand piles were driven to bear this vast mass of masonry. It was begun in August, 1841, and was ten years in building, costing not less than three millions of dollars. Its bottom is at least 23 feet below the surface of the East River at high tide. When its gates are open, the dock fills with water, a vessel is floated in, the gates closed, and the water pumped out. Ingenious devices aid in accomplishing these ends. The gates, or doors, are immense structures-their hinges alone would make several good-sized portals for ordinary dwellings. The gates are supplemented at the entrance of the dock by the most singular of all doors or portcullises, leaving a vast vestibule between. This outside door is an iron boat, called a caisson or pontoon, shaped much like an axe-head, with the edge for a keel, being 66 feet long, 16 wide, and with 30 feet depth of hold, supposing the dock

The growth of a navy-yard, like that of a city, can be traced by the different styles of architecture of successive periods. In earlier years, continuous blocks of buildings seem to have been the rule, single structures the exception, in the Brooklyn yard. First of all were old-fashioned houses, fronting as if on the street of a city, with gables at either end of the row, and looking at the present day like what a New Yorker would call a row of tenement houses. After these, separate lofty buildings grew, but these now seem old-fashioned, but far more pretentious, with vast roofs, double and hipped, reaching more than half the distance between the ridge-pole and the ground; strangest of all, they are not unfrequently built with sides sloping inward, as if the architect's ideas were derived from the tent, or the Indian wigwam. However inferior in architectural beauty, it is quite certain that these older buildings excel

THE BROOKLYN NAVY-YARD.

But the more recent buildings structure in a navy-yard had to be painted with yellow ochre.

more modern structures in the element of strength. "These are none of your balloon frame houses," said an old attaché of the yard, are allowed to retain the natural beauty of brick one George Washington Lee, who has watched and stone; and massive warehouses, elaborateits growth for more than fifty years, and who ly trimmed with hewn granite, mark an imThere are about fifty of these in that long period has been absent from duty proved era of taste, and better adaptation in -think of it, oh gentlemen who represent us, construction. in the intervals of holidays and excursions and immense buildings in the Brooklyn Navy-yard, The Brooklyn yard is considered as "pairings off," in Congress!-only forty days. each suitable for commercial or manufacturing "These are houses such as they don't build purposes. nowadays. There are beams in them, Sir, like the chief naval entrepôt for the receipt and dethe timbers of a seventy-four." Near the en- livery of the materials required at other navytrance, on the left of the main avenue, and ob- yards. At almost every hour of the day, in the structing the view of several of the most mag- busy times of the yard, vast coils of rope may be nificent of the warehouses in the yard, is an odd seen going in at one door, while immense chain specimen of architecture, called the Round cables are issuing from another. There is even House, probably from the fact that it is octago-a" pepper-and-mustard" building, where spices In other buildings are stored nal in form. Set in its tower is a great clock, and condiments are ground, prepared, and packby which the yard is ruled, as far as time is ed for ships' use. Within the building is the mus- specimens or samples of naval stores, from the concerned. In the store-room of the tering office, where, twice a month, the work- latest style of the tin dipper to the newest form men receive their pay. On one semi-monthly of explosive missile. pay-day only round sums are paid; on the Ordnance Department may be found numerous other, the account is closed with fractions, if articles, or patterns of articles, of this kind, and Even on the day when only round various illustrations of newly developed princiany. sums are paid, a sister of charity may be seen ples in construction, naval warfare, and mechansitting in the hall waiting to receive alms; ics. There is exhibited there, for instance, a and it must be inferred that either the work- plank upon which the experiment was made, men bring with them some remnant of previous by Admiral Farragut, of shooting with a tallow pay, which is very improbable, or that they con- candle as a projectile. It is an oak plank of at tribute legal tenders of not the smallest denom- least an inch in thickness. One candle has torn a hole through the plank. Another has splintination. Perhaps, however, the surest index of the ered it at the place of impact, but not actualUntil with-ly passing through, and pieces of the candle are architectural dates is yellow paint. in ten years at the furthest, every permanent still sticking in the clefts. The distance was

ROUND HOUSE.

five paces.

DRY DOCK.

In the Naval Lyceum or Museum, | of the canvas forms the chief part of this labor. The proportioning of sails to ships, and devising their outline for each vessel, are matters requiring mathematical calculation and measurement, as well as the knowledge that is acquired in nautical experience or developed in practical skill; and these require large apartments or floors on which to test the calculations by diagrams, as on a blackboard. And as every vessel, preparatory to a voyage, must have two or three suits of sails, their manufacture becomes an important branch of industry. Other floors are devoted to the making of "patterns." Before it became customary in navy-yards to build a house for laying out "moulding" lines by which vessels are shaped, they were simply traced in the sand of the shore where the construction was to take place. And this was by no means in those ages of antiquity when school-boys learning to write traced their "copies" in tablets of sand, but quite within the present century. Now there is no neater exemplification of the technical methods and scientific calculation by which all such works must be performed than the pattern-shop, with its "moulding-room." Here the lines of every vessel that is constructed in the yard, and those of many that undergo extensive repairs, are drawn upon the floor to the full size of the proposed vessel. These lines are taken from perhaps half a dozen different points of view of the hull, sectional and otherwise; such as might be obtained by looking from either end. from the deck downward, from the keel upward, etc. From these geometrical lines, which thus present in accurate and flowing curves the out

an apartment of the Admiral's Office, are numerous other naval curiosities which repay examination. The Lyceum was started in 1833, by prominent citizens of Brooklyn, and chartered by Congress in 1835. Chief among those who labored for its establishment was Captain Matthew C. Perry. The honor of belonging to it seems to have been the inducement for the annual subscription. Citizens sent books and paintings, some of which are of unquestionable value; among the latter being good portraits, in oil, of several of the naval heroes of our first wars, and a series of portraits of the early Presidents of the Republic. Naval officers afterward sent many contributions. An elegant coral formation, about two and a half feet high, is designated as the Alexonia Gigantea, or "Neptune's Cup," and was obtained in the Bay of Bengal, from a depth of sixty feet below the surface. There are models and plans of various naval structures. Two links of a chain are preserved, with a certificate that there were fifty-one links in all, fished out of "Hudson's River," between Fort Montgomery and West Point. The links weighed from thirty to thirty-five pounds apiece, and there can be no doubt that this massive product of Revolutionary forges was originally stretched across the river to prevent its ascent by invaders. An ecclesiastical chart, hung against the walls, reminds the visitor that he is yet within the boundaries of the City of Churches.

In other buildings sails are manufactured. It must not be supposed that the mere stitching

of course sweep off a circular surface as the timbers pass beneath them. Such is the toughness of the timber, and such the speed of the planes, that a stream of fire as well as of chips flies from the outer edge of the circle, while the plane is itself invisible on account of the rapidity of its motion.

heavy thud, cutting it with wedge-shaped blades | a perpendicular axis of revolution. The planes as though it were a fresh cheese under a caseknife. It is commonly supposed that the wedges or knives used for cutting red-hot iron are of the hardest steel. This is a mistake. The hot iron that is to be cut would heat a steel knife, and draw its temper before ten minutes' work could be done. The knives are of iron, and illustrate, as the experiments with the candle do, the rule that sufficient momentum may force a soft substance through a hard one. In other shops the timbers of a vessel undergo singular treatment in receiving the shape that fits them for their uses. A remarkable planing-machine handles these immense masses in a very easy way. The planes are what in other machinery are known as "routers," and revolve with high speed in a horizontal direction, each being suspended by

The change from the use of wood to that of iron in naval structures has effected prominent changes in the requisites of this as of every navyyard in the country. The machines which handle that metal are, of necessity, formidable. Hideous monsters, mechanical ogres, stand ready with savage jaws to bite out mouthfuls of solid metal. The metal shrieks as chisels pare it away while sliding under the planing tools, held down on a bed twenty or thirty feet long, where

10

it can not writhe, no matter what its agonies. Or it is twisted around by ponderous lathes, which whirl these enormous masses as lightly as if they were shillalahs at Donnybrook Fair. Some of the largest piston-heads ever turned have been required for the steam-cylinders which operate the guns in the turrets of the Monitors. The steam in the cylinder also acts as a buffer, or, rather, constitutes a "steamcushion," that receives the recoil of the gun. The diameter of one of these piston-heads, probably intended to operate a 20-inch gun, and manufactured in the Brooklyn yard, measured within a small fraction of eleven feet, and compared to but little disadvantage with the piston-head of the great caloric engine of the Ericsson, the experimental ship driven by hot air, whereon admiring members of Congress sat in enjoyment of a strange ride, which seems destined never to be repeated.

structures, taller than the masts of frigates, moved and actuated by steam in performing their labors, surpass even the genii of the Arabian tales in the prodigious facility with which they stretch out their long arms, seize vast masses of material, lift them in air, and deposit them where required. Sometimes, however, their fingers slip. Absolute skill, only acquired A heavy gun did by practice, is required to safely "sling" a marine boiler or a main shaft. once slip from the derrick slings in the Brooklyn yard and fall into the hold of a vessel; it, however, happily occasioned little damage. In 1863 a 15-inch gun was carried to the same yard from a distant foundry. It was destined to form part of the armament of the United States Monitor-turreted steamer Roanoke. The armament of that vessel was to be the heaviest afloat. She was intended for the protection of the harbor of New York. This gun, weighing about 50,000 pounds, was lifted out of a vessel that brought it at night, and gently deposited by a derrick on the shore end of one of the docks. Next morning no gun was visible. It had sunk, carrying with it the portion of the dock on which it rested, down into the quicksand, and was quite out of sight. The derrick was again brought into requisition. A hole The gun, howwas dug around the monster; it was "slung" again and lifted into the air. Among the most perfect machines which in- ever, slipped from the slings, and this time To raise it again it genuity has devised for the economy of labor in going down into the hole breech foremost, was naval construction is the derrick, of which one once more lost to view. of the finest specimens in the world is to be seen became necessary to sling it behind the trunin the Brooklyn Navy-yard. These singular nions. So troublesome was the quicksand that

Perhaps the culminations of the growth required by the use of iron would have been in rolling plates for iron-clads. A building was constructed in the Brooklyn yard for this purpose, and received the title of the "Iron-clad Shop." The shafting was introduced, and a variety of preparations completed, but Peace spread her white wings over the land, and the nest was never used that was to have hatched out, Minerva-like, men-of-war in full armor.