Excerpt from Structural Design of Warships The work of collecting the material and preparing it in a form that would be useful to the students presented considerable difficulty. The existing sources of information are very scattered, consisting in text books, handbooks, essays and articles, specifications, drawings, rules, and regulations. The text-books contain much valuable information, but, excepting some of the French books, they deal with so many other aspects of warship design that the discussion of structural features is necessarily brief and chiefly of a descriptive nature. It is the object here to present a more comprehensive discussion than hitherto given of this special branch of warship design, exhibiting in particular its relation to fundamental principles and conditions. On account of the vastness of the subject it has been found necessary to restrict the scope of the work to the main features of the hull proper. The descriptive part is made subservient to the discussion of principles; but where descriptions and sketches of structural parts are given, they represent, as far as possible, recent practice. Where important points of difference exist in the modes of construction in different navies they are critically compared. In the study of current practice it was often found difficult to discover the reasons why certain features were adopted and in some cases why they differed in different navies. The explanation is in general that once a certain mode of construction has been introduced in one of the leading navies and found satisfactory it becomes a standard. Gradually the reason for its adoption may be forgotten, and the construction is used as a matter of routine. It may even happen that the conditions which called forth the construction change or cease to exist, and that it survives simply because there is a vague feeling that something will go wrong if it is changed or abolished. A study of such questions cannot fail to be fruitful, because it leads naturally to suggestions 'for improvements. Moreover, in a work of this nature, it is desirable fully to state and explain the reasons for the adoption of the various structural features, inasmuch as such information will be of value, not only to the inexperienced student of the present time, but also as a matter of record for the future. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.