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3 "MARINE REVIEW. GRUSON ROTATING TURRETS. AN IMMENSE ARMOR PLANT IS BEING ERECTED AT EDDYSTONE FOR THEIR MANUFACTURE. At Eddystone, thirteen miles out of Philadelphia, an immense ae plant is nearing completion. This plant is practically an extension " aS great Krupp works at Magdeburg-Buckaw in Germany. The tine Krupp firm owns one-fifth of its stock, and under the eee acy ae Krupps it will make at Eddystone those coast defenses that are ca s 4 Gruson rotating turrets. Very interesting is the story of the plan = origin, of the Krupps' connection with it, and of these wonderful turrets that it will construct. P. H. Griffin of Buffalo is the president of the Gruson Iron Works, as the Eddystone concern is called. Mr. Griffin has been interested all his life in the manufacture of chilled iron. In his factory at Buffalo he turns out 450 chilled iron car wheels a day, and he has three other factories in the United States, two in Canada and six in Europe. Five months ot "each year he spends in Europe, looking after his interests there. In 189 he visited the Krupp works at Magdeburg-Buckaw, where the Gruson turrets are made. He made a study of these turrets, and in August, 1898, he consummated a deal with the Krupps by which he was empowered to "make them himself in the United States, the Krupps agreeing to supply him with all the needful information and to send over, if that should be necessary, expert workmen {rom their shops to start the plant. What attracted Mr. Griffin to the turrets was the fact that they are made of chilled iron. The Gruson turrets are thick iron things that resemble the backs of turtles. They squat low, and no shot from any ship, as has been proved conclusively, can harm them. They rotate, and they are armed each with _two guns that, thanks to their rotation, have a firing radius of 360 degrees. Germany, Italy, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Roumania and Brazil have adopted them. The germinal idea of a rotating turret for defense originated in America. Ruggles Timby of New York patented, in 1843, "a metallic, revolving fort, to be used on land or water and to be revolved by propelling engines located within the same and acting upon -suitable mechanism."' Ruggles Timby's' turret was used on the Monitor during the civil war, and 'Mr. Timby received $10,000 in royalties for its use. : Gruson, an iron manufacturer of Magdeburg, took up Timby's idea and devoted his life and fortune to perfecting it. He succeeded. But the work left him practically penniless; the incomparable value of his turret was not recognized, and he was just about going to the wall when the Krupps stepped in and bought his plant and secret. His secret was a method of chilling immense plates of cast iron--plates, some of them, 7 ft. thick--so well that they were harder, after the chilling, than hardened steel. Besides this, he had calculated mathematically such a shape for his turtle-back turret that, no matter at what angle a ship should fire on it, the shell could not pierce it, but would be deflected. He had perfected, too, a hundred other ideas tending to the turret's impregnability, and all these, the work of.a lifetime, the Krupps bought, and now have handed over to the American firm. a : To support the claim that a Gruson turret is impregnable it is pointed _out that at Spezzia, Italy, the Italian government made a highly successful test some time since. A plate from one of the great turrets made by the Krupps for the harbor of Spezzia and Taranto was tested. The plate weighed 193,895 Ibs. Three shots were fired at it at point-blank range from an Armstrong 100-ton gun. Krupp steel shells, each weighing 2,205 Ibs., were used, and the powder charges consisted of 827 lbs. of one-hole, brown prismatic powder. The energy developed on impact!amounted to 47,466 foot-tons. Each of these tremendous shells*on striking shivered into countless tiny splinters, but the plate stood the test faultlessly, the only effect produced on it being the appearance on its surface of several long abrasions of 2 and 3 in. in depth, and a number of cracks beside, five of which showed themselves on the rear side. HOW THE TURRET IS OPERATED. Made of such plates as this--plates running from 2 up to. % tt. in thickness--a Gruson turret lies low, like the back of a turtle, on the ground, all of it save the turtle-back and the guns being underneath the soil. It is painted, and its guns are painted, the same color as the sur- rounding country. By an ingenious pivoting arrangement, the idea oi Herr Gruson, the portholes are scarcely larger than the guns that pro- trude from them. Within, in perfect safety, a squad of fifteen men operate the great coast defender. The captain stands in the center, and with two levers aims the guns. When everything is ready he presses an electric button, and the men fire. The range-finder is like a camera obscura. It -- is a table, and by looking on its surface all the country roundabout can be seen. The table is divided into squares, each representing 100 ft. The squares are numbered, and as a ship passes from one to another of them the man at the finder calls this out. It is possible to aim and fire with perfect accuracy without actually seeing the target at all. Its image on the finder is all that is required. GREAT WEIGHT OF TURRETS. Some idea of the turret's enormous weight may be gathered from the following table: Weight for Weight for Tein. torrets, 16-in. turrets, Ss. Ibs. (Ciillcdsiren eupolay .. eres ere 1,677,000 2,850,000 WCligiied places anmor!.%. 04.05. ¢6.cc 2c 3 1,175,000 1,415,000 Castron= Toller path 225. .tas ce loki oe 75,000 100,500 Substructure (volled steel) 2.26. .c ci. 176,000 340,500 Bae FOOT eo ic ee he os tc 143,000 > 267,500 Peroumimiatets and WEIGHS 065 2 tae eee ie 210,000 °* 450,000 PMOy OVENS MIMCHANISM 666k oe acs we eee ies cs 17,400 24.500) Mechanism for operating accumulators ........... ' 18:000 15,000 Pydraulic rammers. 0%... ee ee 2,500 3.100 ee . 2,000> ° 6,000 mienecaie Micehanisti o.oo. ck eee © = 1200 1,300 PemmiiMion. NOStS 4... 55. 60 cro 15,500 21.500 rane track 1m f0ttet (60.4.0... ee a... 800 1,200 [April 18, Hydraulic piping =o. hie 4,500 7,800 Steam boilers (two) 3 din ds 30,000 e 41,000 Gun carriages for-two guns ..2060.. 433.4 135,000 250,000 General accessories 26:07 L2H Oj eee ee 2,800 4,500 Total-weight in pounds. 3.4... 3,685,700 5,799,400 Total weight in: gross tons 2.55. 377 38 8 1,640 2,589 The best coast defense that the United States at present has is the gun on a disappearing carriage. The disadvantage of this defense is in the fact that the gunners are not protected, Shrapnel, filled with thousands of small bullets, can now be timed to burst at any desired point, and nothing is easier than for a ship to send its shrapnel over the parapets of forts, to burst above the gunners' heads. Two things heretofore have precluded the purchase by the United States of Gruson turrets. One was the fact that they were made abroad, and the other was their great cost. The cost of those to be made here will not be great, it is claimed, for charcoal-iron, the chief material used in their construction, is cheaper and better in the United States than in any other country in the world. The United States is counted upon to take up these turrets. EXTENSIVE WORKS AT EDDYSTONE. _The superintendent of the Gruson Iron Works is David Townsend of Philadelphia, a son-in-law of James Moore, whose Bush Hill Iron Works were located on the site of the new Spring Garden street mint. From 1876 to 1895 Mr. Townsend was with Mr. Moore, and in 1895 he estab- lished for William Wharton, Jr., & Co. the Philadelphia Roll & Machine Co. as a department of their works. In 1898 he went abroad for Mr. Griffin to look into the manufacture of Gruson turrets, which he now understands perfectly. The Gruson Iron Works at Eddystone takes in 185 acres of ground, on which eight buildings have thus far been erected. There are three railroads to ship over, and there is a frontage to the works of 1,000 ft. on the channel side of the Delaware. Two more buildings are still to go up--an armor plate foundry 800 by 800 ft. in size, and an armor plate machine shop 600 by 200 ft. In May the works will be started, and they will eventually employ, when running full, some 2,000 men. A model of a 12-in. gun Gruson turret will be exhibited by the company at the Buffalo fair--Philadelphia Record. LAUNCH OF BATTLESHIP DUNCAN. The first class battleship Duncan was launched at Blackwell by the Thames Iron Works, Ship Building & Engineering Co., last week. She is 405 ft. in length by 75% ft. in breadth and is to have a displacement of 14,000 tons on a draught of 2614 ft. Some speeches 'were made at the launching which are of considerable interest because they reter to the man who is probably.the foremost of all naval constructors--Sir William White. Mr. A. F. Hills, the chairman of the company, in the course of a long speech said: "We have ibuilt for the British government now for more than forty years. I wish to do honor to the genius--because I think it amounts to genius--of the man who designed the Duncan, Sir Wm. White. How much we owe to the devotion, to the ability, and to the professional skill of Sir Wm. White it is not for this generation to say. You see in the penny and the hali-penny papers strange stories of the decadence of the British empire, of British commerce, and of the English fleet. I am here today to tell you that that is all nonsense. There was never a time in the history of the English fleet when it was so powerful, so well equipped, or so. well designed as it is at the present moment, and a great deal of that--in fact, the main part of it-- is due to Sir Wm. White, who honors us with his presence today. And I think we can take a little credit to ourselves too. lf you look down the line of models in this room you will see that the Duncan is like the Japanese battleship Shikishima; she was almost a facsimile of that vessel. The Duncan is 800 tons less in weight, as she carries less guns and armor. I think that if these two ships, the Shikishima and the Duncan, came at any time to hammer and tongs, they would make a good match of it to the bitter end. We built the Imperial Japanese battleship Shikishima in thirty months. That bat- tleship was 15,000 tons displacement, or 800 tons larger than the Duncan. We designed her, we built her, we armored her, we armed her, we put her through her official trials, and we delivered her in thirty months. The Albion we commenced six months before the Shikishima, and now twelve months after the Shikishima, she is not finished yet, and many people are asking what the reason is that the Albion should take so much longer to build than the Japanese ship. Let me add that the two ships, the Duncan and the Cornwallis, will take three and a half years to build, as compared with the thirty months that the Shikishima took. My answer to you is this: The reason is that the contractors are dealt with differently by , the admiralty from what they were dealt with by the Japanese govern- ment. We are just as able to build for the British as for the Japanese government, and much more eager to do so; we are full of true patriot- ism, and we would desire to build as speedily for the British admiralty as for any fofeign government. I have had the advantage of placing before the admiralty my views as to the obstacles which now stand in the way, not introduced by any individual, but by that system not so much of red tape as want of centralization, which involves difficulties and de- lays which prevent the rapid completion of a ship. If the admiralty were to extend the same treatment to us as the Japanese government did in the case of the Shikishima, we could give them just as satisfactory results." Sir William White, after appropriate compliments to Mr. Hills, re- plied: "There are some points in Mr. Hills' speech to which I might refer, and I should not be found to be absolutely in agreement with him; but this is not the occasion for controversy, and, what is more, Mr. Hills, who has the courage of his opinions, and who speaks his mind, is a man one must honor. There is one small fact, however, to which I must refer. Mr. Hills has done us the credit of assuming that the Duncan followed the design of the Shikishima. I want to point out that years before there was any Shikishima there was a Majestic class in the navy. I think that I am correct in saying that our friends in the Japanese admiralty, looking about the world for that type of battleship which they desired to. conform to most closely, selected the Majestic class as being that type; and with all respect for the work, that has been done here, I would venture to point out that 'battleship design did not begin with the Shikishima."