Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1901 — LAVNCHING OF THE BATTLESHIP OHIO. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LAVNCHING OF THE BATTLESHIP OHIO.

The* illness of the wife of the president very naturally attracted the attention of the public from the event that brought about the presidential journey namely the launching of the mag n i ficent battleship Ohio. The new implement of sea warfare is not the first vessel of our navy to be named after the Buckeye state. On the 22d of May, 1820, just

eighty-one years ago, the old line of battleship Ohio was launched at the Brooklyn navy yard. It was for that day the finest war veseel of its class afloat, and was famous for its perfection and beauty. When fully ready for sea* it carried 110 guns and -spread 16,000 yards of canvass. With its sails spread it presented the handsomest spectacle ever seen afloat. Our country was at peace then with p.ll the world, and it was eighteen years before this vessel was put in commission or made a voyage. It started on its first cruise October 16, 1838, bound for the Mediteranean, under command of Commodore Isaac Hull, he who had won reno\yn as the commander of the Constitution in the war of 1812. The cruise in the Mediterranean was equivalent to a triumphal progress.

Everywhere the vessel went it was visited by thousands and was universally agpiired and praised. She outsailed' everything that came in competition with her, and became a model for other nations to imitate. In the Mexican war she saw her only war service, and was the flagship of the American fleet at the seige of Vera Cruz. When the steam era began she became effete and took her place with the old Vermont and the old Constitution as a receiving ship. Finally in 1883 she was sold to be broken up. She had long been as useless in war as the galleys of Julius Caesar. Such was the Ohio of 1820, and now enters the Ohio for 1901, a magnificent ocean steel fortress that depends on neither wind nor tide, but can steam out in the face of a storm as easily

as the old Ohio could sail with favoring winds. The wooden walls of the first Ohio would be splintered into fragments by a single shot from the new vessel, while all the guns of the old vessel that could be brought to bear could no more injure the sides of the new than if they were so many pea shooters. Nothing so vividly illustrates the marvelous advance that has been made in the art of naval construction and naval warfare in the past four-score years as the contrast between these two vessels. Nor would it be strange if, after the lapse of another eighty years, the parallel then made would be as much to the disadvantage of Ohio 11. as it Is row to Ohio I. Progress is now advancing more rapidly than ever.

THE PRESIDENT AND MRS. M’KINLEY. Some pictures of the President and his wife taken at different periods the past thirty years.