Read Sail and Inboard Plans of Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran , free online book, by Howard I. Chapelle, on ReadCentral.com.

The sail and rigging plan is likewise a Danish copy and shows the two-masted lateen rig employed. The hull is shown with bulwarks and gunports on the spar deck but no other evidence that the Battery was finished in this manner has been found. The rig resembles that of some of Josiah Fox’s designs for Jeffersonian gunboats double-enders designed to sail in either direction but without the jibs. The topmasts do not appear to be more than signal poles and apparently were not fitted with sails; however, some European lateeners did have triangular topsails over a lateen and it is possible the Battery may have carried such sails. Considering the stability and displacement of the Battery, the rig is very small and not sufficiently effective. Shrouds were not required; the masts were supported by runners that were shifted when the yards were reversed, and in tacking. Apparently the jibstays also could be slacked off so that the lateen yards would not have to be dipped under them.

The inboard profile is on tracing paper and the notes are in French. This drawing is of a simplified hull form having flat-bottom hulls with chines. It is possible that this is a tracing of a preliminary drawing obtained by Marestier or Montgery, but no documentation can be found. Its importance is that it shows in some detail the engine and boilers, as well as the wheelbox, and another drawing of the paddle wheel, more or less duplicating the wheel shown in the Danish plan. No details of the deck arrangements are shown in any of the plans, except for the dome skylight over the fireroom in the boiler hull.

Both the lines plan and the inboard drawing show construction midsections and hull connections. These plans show that the engine was not inclined, but rather was vertical, contrary to Fulton’s patent drawing. The piston rod and the crosshead obviously passed through its gun deck in a large hatch. Also it is plain that there must have been large hatches afore and abaft the wheelbox to make the stepped wheelbox construction desirable. There also must have been a hatch in the gun deck under the domed skylight. It is improbable that the engine and skylight hatches were used for ladderways, passing scuttles, or companionways.

The boilers are shown in the inboard profile about as described and drawn by Marestier but with two stacks on each boiler, one to each flue; Marestier’s sketch in his report on American steamships shows the flues of each boiler trunked into a single stack. The battery had two boilers and the stacks are at the boilers’ fire-door end. The steam lines came off the crown of the boilers and probably passed through the ends of the wheelbox to the engine; a trunk for the steam lines would undoubtedly have been necessary.

The engine is shown to have had counterbalanced side levers, one on each side, and a single flywheel on the outboard side. The cylinder is over the condenser or “cistern,” connected by the steam line and valve box on the side. The cylinder crosshead is shown in the inboard profile to have reached the underside of the beams of the upper deck. The crosshead was connected by two connecting rods to the side levers. These levers operated the paddle wheel by connecting rods to cranks on the paddle-wheel shaft. There is another pair of connecting rods from the side levers to the crosshead of the air pump. All connecting rods are on one arm of the side levers, the other end having only a counterbalance weight beyond the fulcrum bearing. The flywheel has a shaft fitted with two gears, and is driven through idler gears from gears on the paddle-wheel shaft; it turns at about twice the speed of the paddle wheel. No other pumps or fittings are shown in the engine hull, although manual pumps were probably fitted to fill and empty the boilers. Piping is not shown.

The four rudders, toggled in pairs, are shown in both the lines and inboard drawings, but the shape is different in the two plans. Operation must have been by a tiller under the gun-deck beams. The outer end of the tiller may have been pivoted on the toggle bar and the inboard end fitted, as previously described, with steering cable or chain tackles. This seems to be the only practical interpretation of the evidence.