Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1888 — OUR NAVY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OUR NAVY.

Four New YesSels Soon to Be Added— The New Cruisers Nearing Completion. [Washington special to Chicago News.] I encountered the familiar faee of Charles Cramp, the great Philadelphia shipbuilder, at the Riggs House, and took occasion to ask him about his work on the three new cruisers, dynamite cruiser, and gunboat, for which be a year ago contracted with Secretary. Whitney. “Excellent progress is being made,” he said. “We are working night and day. The gunboat Yorktown will be launched m

a fortnight and the cruiser Baltimore, of 4,000 tons, during the early summer. The cruisers Philadelphia and Newark are well along, and will be launched in the fall. The Baltimore mu9t make nineteen knots, but I rather think we will get as high speed out of the Philadelphia. ” I asked him if there were any new developments of interest to the public. “Yes,” he said, “the experiment of casting steol guns in Pittsburg is of the highest interest, and its result will be watched with much anxiety. If steel cannon can be cast in this way instead of being forged it will revolutionize the art of arming forts and ships, for it will tremendously reduce the expense without much diminishing the effectivensss.” Mr. Cramp is a small-sized, pleasantvoiced man, his brown bair and full, red whiskers both turning gray, and his eyebrows drawn downward by those lines of thoughtfulness that reappear so often in the faces of business men that they might be called tbe lines of commercial anxiety.

CHARLES CRAMP.