Matt's Model Boats

CSS Atlanta was an ironclad whose battery, which was comprised of between four and six rifled guns, was installed in a broadside arrangement. It should be noted the American Civil War was one of the few conflicts in which ironclads fought one another for the supremacy of the rivers, estuaries and seas. CSS Atlanta , which fought USS Nahant and USS Weehawken on the 17th of June, will be remembered as one of the few iron-plated fighting vessels to exchange fire with ironclads. It should be remembered that the iron-cased ram, which had been known as CSS Fingal  before it was converted into a warship, began its career as a blockade-runner. Rear-admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont was in command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, to which the Passaic -class monitors belonged, during the Battle of Warsaw Sound. A detachment of ironclads, in the April of 1863, had been repulsed by the sea-coast batteries that defended Charleston Harbor and the defeat had tarnished the reputatio...

USRC Naugatuck , which was also known as USRC Stevens , was an ironclad that Edwin Augustus Stevens donated to the Treasury Department of the United States of America. Salmon Portland Chase, who had been Secretary of the Treasury at the time in which USRC Naugatuck  was delivered to the United States Revenue-cutter Service, re-named the gunboat in honour of the industrialist. It is possible, however, to mistake USRC Stevens  for the larger Stevens Battery  that was under construction at Hoboken.  USRC Naugatuck  had been built to provide the Treasury Department, which Chase had asked for half-a-million dollars, with a working model of the design principles which were embodied in the larger ironclad. Ballast tanks, protective iron plates, steam-engines, twin screws and a gun which could have the muzzle of its barrel depressed were among the features that were included in the revenue-cutter. Robert Livingstone Stevens, who was the older brother of E...

Mr. Telford's on the Intended Cumberland Canal; and Mr. Chapman's Further Observations Thereon  contains information about sailing flats as well as the ports which they visited. It is reported, on page 14, that sailing flats conveyed cargoes between Carlisle and Liverpool. Sailing flats, by crossing the Irish Sea, are claimed to have transported salt from the ports of the River Weaver to Dublin. An attempt is made, on page 21 of the third volume of Glossary of the Technical Terms Used in the Evidence Taken Before the Royal Commission of Labour , to draw a distinction between barges and lighters but it is concluded that the two types of vessel were indistinguishable from one another. Flats are described as lighters that were longer than canal boats and are reported, on page 22, to have been propelled by sails or by steam-engines. Sailing flats, on page 22, are claimed to have been designated as barges. It is reported, on page 24, that flats were boats that operated along the nav...