The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. MARINE REVIEW VoL. XXII. Payne idgs ty the Matinvieriew Puce. «=CLEVELAND, O., JULY 19, 1900. Foreign ENGINES OF THE ASAHI. A JAPANESE BATTLESHIP (LARGEST IN THE WORLD) OF 15,200 TONS DISPLACE- MENT, 16,360 HORSE POWER AND 18.8 KNOTS SPEED. Two views of the three-cylinder triple expansion engines of the Japanese 'battleship Asahi, built recently by John Brown & Co. of Clyde- bank, Glasgow, Scotland, are presented on this page. The illustrations are reproduced from Engineering of London. Aside from a description of these engines, it may be noted that the Asahi is the largest battleship in. the world, and that the Japanese navy now consists of ninety vessels of all classes, comprising ten first-class battleships, ten first-class armored cruisers, twenty fast protected cruisers and the remainder torpedo boat destroyers and small gunboats, all of the latest design. The Asahi is very much like vessels of the British Formidable class. Her principal dimen- sions are: Length over all, 42514 feet; length between perpendiculars, 400 feet; breadth, extreme, 75 feet; depth, moulded, 48% feet; normal mean draught, 27 feet; displacement, 15,200 tons. The armament includes four 12-inch guns mounted in pairs fore-and-aft, and fourteen 6-inch quick firing guns, eight on the main and six on the upper deck. There is quite a host of small guns, among them twenty 12-pounders, eight 3-pounders, four 2%-pounders and several Maxim rifles. The Asahi is propelled by two sets of three-cylinder triple expansion engines. Each of the two sets is designed to develop 8000 indicated horse power, giving a combined indicated power of 16,000. Steam is supplied by water-tube boilers of the latest Belleville economizer type, working at a pressure of 800 pounds per square inch, which will be reduced at the engines to 250 pounds. Each set of engines is placed in a separate engine room, divided by longitudinal watertight bulkhead, which extends the whole length of the machinery space. Each engine room is in all respects similar to but entirely independent of the other. The main engines are of the vertical inverted type, supported on cast-iron columns at the back, and inclined wrought-steel columns at the front. The soleplates, or main bearing frames, which are made of the cast-steel skeleton type to insure lightness, are strongly bolted together so as to form one homogeneous stiff foundation for the engines. All the cylinders are fitted with separate liners, and are steam-jacketed. The diameter of the high pressure cylin- ders is 3214 inches; that of the intermediate pressure cylinders, 52 inches; and that of the low-pressure cylinders, 85 inches; all having a stroke of 4 feet. The high and intermediate pressure cylinders are fitted with piston valves of the inside type, having approved adjustable packing rings; whilst the low pressure cylinders are fitted with treble-ported flat slide Vl | , ni We il valves, having a special type of relief frame fitted at the back to relieve them of steam jpressure. The weight of all the valves is suitably balanced in order to reduce the strain on the valve gear as far as possible; the latter is of the double-eccentric link-motion type. The cylinders, which are entirely independent castings, are connected together by attachments which, while allowing for the expansion of the different parts, insure, a' the same time, longitudinal stiffness; and to further increase their ji ae al stability in the event of ramming, etc., strong struts are fitted between the high pressure engine and the forward structure of the vessel, as well as traversely between the respective cylinders in each engine-room. The air pumps are not worked by levers in the usual manner from the main engines, but are entirely separate. Close under the main con- densers are placed a pair of direct-driving, single-acting air pumps, actuated -by steam cylinders working on the compound principle, the pumps running at a speed of thirty strokes per minute. The suction pipes of these air pumps are cross-connected, so that at lower speeds the one © il fm rm ri , {| i set of pumps suffice for both engine rooms, which may prove of great advantage in the event of accidents. The main condensers, which are built of riveted brass plates, are placed in the wings of the ship and have a collective cooling surface of 16,000 square feet. Adjacent to them, at the aft engine room bulkhead, are placed two auxiliary condensers, one in each engine room, having a combined cooling surface. of 2220 square (Continued on page 25.)