Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: authorizing her construction details her characteristics : " Said cruiser to be not less than two hundred and thirty feet long, twenty-six feet beam, seven and one half feet draught, three thousand two hundred horse-power, and guaranteed to attain a speed of twenty knots an hour, and to be equipped with three pneumatic dynamite guns of ten and one half inch caliber, and guaranteed to throw shells containing two hundred pounds of dynamite or other high explosives at least one mile, each gun to be capable of being discharged once in two minutes, at a price not exceeding three hundred and fifty thousand dollars." The Vesuvius exceeded the horse-power and speed required by the law, but the superior range of high-power guns and her vulnerability unpaired her value for offensive purposes. During the war with Spain, she was ordered to Santiago de Cuba, where, under the protection of the guns of the North Atlantic fleet, she threw dynamite shells into the harbor. The effect produced was materially unimportant though morally great. This experience confirmed the view that the ship was of limited usefulness, and she is now in ordinary, awaiting transformation into a torpedo- boat or other disposition. Like the Charleston, the Texas and Baltimore were built in accordance with designs purchased abroad. These three ships are the only vessels of the navy of any account, with the exception of the Albany, New Orleans, and Topeka, purchased during the war with Spain, which are the product of foreign thought. The cruisers Philadelphia and San Francisco, authorized in 1887, the Olympia, Cincinnati, Raleigh, Detroit, Mar- blehead, and Montgomery, provided for in the act of 1888, and the triple-screw Columbia, popularly named the " Gem of the Ocean," and her sister ship, the Minneapolis, as we...