Thanks to the fact that nowadays more and more books are digitized we are able to read books that are some times for decades no longer available for the public for several reasons. That’s quite a pity while these books contains useful information while the archives are destroyed, incomplete or nor accessible.
P. 142: “This vessel is intended to carry out a principle often advocated - one large gun on the smallest amount of tonnage that could be designed in the form of a floating steam-carriage. She is 79ft. in length only, with a beam of 25ft.; her deck 27in. above the water-line amidships, when under steam, and with bulwarks of light iron of about 3ft. in depth. She is built of iron, with water tight compartments, but is entirely unprotected by armour-plating. The one gun she carries is a 12½ ton 9-inch rifled muzzle-loader of the Elswick pattern and manufacture, with a double sided iron carriage and slide, mounted on a square platform on the vessel’s forecastle, or the foremost part of the deck. This platform is fitted at each corner with a screw-box, which works on one of four columnar screws rising from the floor of the vessel's hold. The screws are driven by a donkey engine through gearing, and by this arrangement the platform with its gun, carriage, and slide can be lowered nearly below the level of the deck of the vessel whenever the latter may be steaming along the coast, or from port to port, and thus be carried with greater safety in a seaway. The bulwarks round the bows of the vessel, and in front of the gun are built up some six or seven feet inboard of the vessel's stem. They are of light iron, proof to rifle-shot fire from boats, and sufficiently high to cover the gun's crew from any such fire from the front, but, of course afford no protection against the fire from anything heavier than that of an ordinary rifle. Half-way upwards from the deck they are hinged so as throw down so far outwards when the gun is brought into action. The small donkey engine that drives the screw gearing for raising and lowering the gun also drives two small capstan heads which project above the deck on the right and left rear of the gun platform; side tackles brought to these capstan heads run the gun in and out. The training of the gun on the object to be fired at can be given by side tackles from these capstans through an arc of 40 deg., but the twin screws give a much superior means of training by making the vessel herself traverse the arc required, supplemented also as the screws are by the action of the rudder. The motive power of the vessel consists of a pair of engines of the collective nominal power of 25-horse, driving two three-bladed screws, each of 5ft. diameter and 7ft. pitch. Each engine has two cylinders of 14in. diameter and 14in. stroke, an air pump of 12in. diameter and 7in. stroke, worked from the crank shaft by an eccentric; one feed and one bilge pump, each 3in. in diameter, and 4in. stroke ; estimated speed 7 knots per hour.
Source
Artizan Club. The Artizan, volume 26, 1 June 1868.
Note
1. In the Dutch navy were in several gunboats build based on the Staunch-design, see for instance on this weblog “Dutch steam gunboat Zr. Ms. Ever (1871-1926)”.
