Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1896 — A Swift French Vessel. [ARTICLE]

A Swift French Vessel.

Trobably the swiftest vessel in the world has recently been built In France. This extraorduary craft is the seagoing torpedo vessel constructed in Havre by the well-known house of Augustin Normaud, the contract requiring that it should maintain a speed of from twenty-nine to thirty knots for an hour under usual steam. At Its trial trip, It seems, this vessel, the Forbau, ran a distance of more than thir-ty-one knots in an hour, this being equivalent to about thirty-five miles, probably the greatest distance ever covered by a seagoing ship in sixty minutes—powerful engines being necessary, of course, to drive the vesse! through the water at such a rapid rate. On this score, therefore, the statement is not surprising that, although the displacement of the craft is only about 150 English tons, it carries engines of 3,250 horse power.—Revue Industrlelle. The ancients had no marks of punctuation; all their letters were of the same size, no distinction being made between those which began a sentence or proper, name and other letters. There was no, separation of the words, or even of the sentences, and hence much difficulty has arisen in construing many passages in the writings of the ancient historians.