Published Resources Details Journal Article
- Title
- Torpedo boat destroyers for sea service
- In
- The Engineer
- Imprint
- vol. 87, 31 March 1899, pp. 309-310
- Description
Accession No.562
- Abstract
An abstract of James Howden's paper "Torpedo boat destroyers for sea service." Read at the fortieth session of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1899. Although James Howden was an acknowledged expert on forced-draft firing, in the opinion of K. C. Barnaby he was apt to talk the most arrant nonsense on other subjects. In Barnaby's opinion his 1899 paper on destroyer design was a case in point. Howden had seen a proposed design by an American engineer named Dickie. This was for a vessel of 640 tons displacement with specially heavy scantlings, some bullet-proof protection, and capable of a speed of 25 knots, see Barnaby, K. C. 1960 The Institution of Naval Architects 1860-1960, George Allan and Unwin, London. Howden proposed to build an almost identical vessel, and substitute two cylindrical boilers for the four water-tube boilers of the Dickie design. In the discussion that followed Howden's paper White had no difficulty in demonstrating that Howden had hopelessly underestimated the power required as the dimensions were very similar to those of the torpedo-gunboats. See also Howden, J. 1899 " Torpedo-boat destroyers for sea service', Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, vol. 41, pp. 161-179, for the full text of Howden's paper and the discussion that followed.