experienced off Flushing, but we can easily understand how much they must have desired that the Glatton's sides could have been easier pierced by their 24 and 12-pounders. James, the naval historian, we are aware, attaches much importance to the Glatton mounting 68-pound carronades. Her armament may account for the damage to the enemy, but not for the trivial casualties among the noble Trollope's crew; that must go to the credit of stout oak or teak against the cannon of those days. With respect to sinking armour-clad ships by means of firing shot at them below water-line, we say that these vessels may be so constructed as to receive more shot below water with impunity than any wooden craft in existence. A cellular skin, upon the Great Eastern principle, together with a number of perfect internal compartments, and steam pumps capable of delivering a large volume of water, will make the sinking of such ships as the Warrior a very difficult feat indeed. No wonder, we say, if the Admiralty and Horse Guards were harassed with such fears and objections, that they have hesitated to go heartily into the new system.

Happily all inventors of rifled guns have not agreed with Mr Whitworth. Sir Richard Armstrong tells General Peel, late Secretary of War, "that if we can produce iron-cased vessels, attaining anything like the same speed, and as sea-worthy as ordinary men-of-war, no other vessels will have the slightest chance against them." This is strong testimony. Sir Richard has been passing his shells through the stoutest woodbutts with ease; he has breached martello towers, and shaken granite walls; but he knows that, except when placed over a yielding substance, no shell or shot that he has invented not even his 100-lb. solid shot-can penetrate slabs of wrought-iron; and it appears to be immaterial whether the projectile have a flat head, sharp point, or punch point! The last experiments against iron-walled embrasures at Shoeburyness are conclusive on that subject; and, convinced of it, he frankly yields that, after all, the

French are right. All honour to him. He deserves well of the navy for having said so; for we believe, had he still been sceptical, we should have still gone on thumping away at these plates for years to come. Expense was the next bogie; it still stands its ground. We are told, on unexceptional authority, that the two large mail-clad frigates now building, the one in the Thames, and the other in the Clyde, will cost the pretty figure of a million sterling! A very dear million's worth, in our opinion; but we are always expensive in Britain when we desire to be energetic. We shall build iron-clad vessels for much less than that some day; but if ever we should not be able to do so, an officer, who for years has had his attention directed to the subject, assures us that one gun covered by a shield of iron on board a ship, is equal to ten guns mounted in an ordinary three-decked line-of-battle ship of wood; and as the broadside of our Royal Albert counts sixty guns, the iron-clad vessel of six guns of a side would be her match. The Warrior or Defiance, therefore, with their 36 guns, are each equal to three of our largest three-deckers as engines of war. Why, then, be so startled because they cost as much? Captain Coles estimates the value of the largest frigate (iron-cased) of 36 guns at £320,000. The value of three Royal Alberts or Dukes of Wellington would be about £600,000; and as an investment for public security the former would be the better property, although not quite so ornamental. The relative fighting powers of guns and crews properly sheltered, from those placed in ships pervious to every missile, is very remarkable; but no one can form a better estimate upon the subject than the gallant officer above quoted, for his experience extends through every action in which our wooden fleet was engaged in the Black Sea, and we entirely adopt his opinions. After the expense of these vessels, the next question has been their sea-worthiness and speed, combined with their capability of carrying guns well above water.

So far as sea-worthiness goes, the question can never have been dispassionately considered, or there would not have been a doubt upon the subject. To bring it home to the minds of the general reader: Let us suppose that the Duke of Wellington of 120 guns, and with nominally three, but actually four fighting decks, be taken into a basin -that we cut off from that towering structure all the wood, decks, and sides above her lower gun battery, leaving her say sixteen guns of a side; and that we throw into a huge scale and have weighed, all that oak, teak, bolts, treenails, plank, and beams; add to that the 88 guns and carriages, with a hundred rounds of shot and powder for each of those 88 guns, as well as other fighting gear; then, let the 800 seamen belonging to those decks be requested to get into the scale with their clothing and three months' provisions, as well as six weeks' water, and an aggregate of weight removed out of that three-decked ship would appear on the index of the steelyard which would astonish most people. For instance, we have calculated roughly, and at the lowest figure, what the fighting gear alone upon those three removed decks would be, and the result is no less than 1100 odd tons weight.* Now, we maintain that, if on the remaining portion of that ship's side, iron be spread equal in weight to that removed, there cannot possibly be any sound reason why such a cut-down three-decker should not be a better ship than when all those weights were piled upon top one of the other to a height of fifty feet? Will not the same steam-power move the same weight faster when the hull offers smaller resistance to winds and beating seas, and when the masts and spars are proportionately reduced? Will her weights be worse, or more trying to her sides in a tempest, be

*

cause they are lower and nearer the element that supports them? Assuredly not. And, if we take care that on the displacement, or bottom, so to speak, of the razéed "Royal Albert," we take care to place a less weight of armour than it had to carry in timber and metal when she was a three-decker, will not her lower tier of guns be higher out of water? Of course they will. Then all we have to do is to keep this in mind

to take care that the displacement of these new Warriors is equal to the weight to be carried; and they will then be fleeter, safer, stouter ships at sea, and as good a protection to Old England for years to come, as our wooden walls were in years gone by. We should only tire our readers by dwelling longer on the point of seaworthiness, which, after all, is attested by the Gloire, and we hope will very soon be by our Warrior and Defiance. Speed is the next hobby-horse of the opposition. They will be of no use unless they are faster than wooden ships, they argue. Why so? If they are as fast, surely they will be as good; and there is more nonsense talked of the speed of our great frigates and liners of wood, than unprofessional men are perhaps aware. The measured mile at Stokes' Bay, upon which depends the question of the constructor and contractor, the school of naval architecture and the engineers, fulfilling all expectation of a confiding Admiralty and a generous country, is one thing; a knot by the ship's log three months afterwards against a moderate breeze and head sea in the Atlantic, is, as the Spaniards even know, quite an "otra cosa." When the reader takes up the Times, and finds that H.M.S. Screamer, of 90 guns, went in Stokes' Bay 13.8 knots, equal to so many more miles, and only required the length of Plymouth Breakwater to turn in, he must not run away with the idea

that it will often be so. Ten knots will probably be her natural speed, -a very good speed, too, and against a double-reefed breeze and head sea, proud must be the naval centurion whose bark will go steadily half that number of miles per hour; and in either case we should be very sorry to pay the bill for caulking seams, docking for leaks, or repairing defects of the Screamer. We dare not tell all the stories we know on that head; but great speed in great ships is a popular error, except when the wind is fair, or water nice and smooth. But allow that ten knots can often, under favourable circumstances, be steadily maintained in wooden vessels, is there any reason why as much should not be done by our mail-clad ones? For our part, we think handiness and light draught of water far more important points, and urge that they should not be sacrificed to speed. Actions are never fought at high steaming speed. There are fifty reasons against doing so. Chasing is all very well; but a long pair of legs will only insure occasional safety, not victory, against the Gloire. Our long-range guns place a wooden enemy under fire at three or four miles distance; he would have to come as near as that to know what the slow ship was made of. Honour would forbid that the wooden Screamer of 90 guns should leave the 36-gun Turtle without trying a throw, and then God help the Screamer! On the one side, immunity from every projectile but solid shot, delivered at a half-musket range; on the other 900 gallant men, working over magazines of powder and shell, furnaces and boilers, contained within a hull of wood -a huge target of living creatures and explosive inflammable matter, through which every hellish invention of shell, hot shot and rockets, can run riot. Heaven help brave men thus sacrificed. Oh! but you have your weak points, too, insist the believers in wood. You fight in a casemate; but then your ports must be open, and through them, by aid of my rifled guns, I throw shells filled with inflammable matter, and hoist you in your own petard. We

demur to this statement on two grounds. In the first place, we can fight without even opening a porthole; and, in the next, a correctlyconstructed war-ship should have no wood whatever employed in her hull or lower masts-nothing to ignite except her stores. The mode in which men-of-war can be constructed to fight their guns, and elevate or train them without exposing an aperture to the enemy's fire of more than 3 inch diameter, involves a long mechanical explanation, ill adapted to the tastes of our general readers. We must, therefore, ask them to accept our statement for the present that the difficulty has been met by Captain Coles, and that we believe a modification of his cupola may be even applied to the ports of such ships as the Warrior, and keep out, at any rate, shells, rockets, or hot shot. These cupola, or shieldships, will be hereafter described; models of them may be seen at the Royal United Service Institution; and the difficulty of fighting a gun without opening a huge port has been solved.

Let us pass to the consideration of the two next objections, which are brought forward with a view to frighten us. It is disheartening, says one statesman, to think that, after all the exertions and lavish expenditure of the two last years, there is reason to fear that it is time, material, and money thrown away.

We have just got fifty screw line-of-battle ships, are they to be burnt or, like our sailing threedecker and screw block-ships, to be consigned to the limbo of the mistakes of this century?

We think all this alarm-all these fears-uncalled for. Keep all the wooden vessels of war that we now have, but build no more, until the new experiment in iron has had a fair trial. If, as we firmly believe, the Gloire and Warrior class prove to be steps in the right direction, all we shall have to do will be to cut down the big three-deckers, in the manner we have already described, and put the wooden frigates into armour. Iron plates over wooden shells will not be as strong and perfect as

iron plates over iron shells or hulls; but inasmuch as our great naval rival France is, from necessity, obliged to adopt the former mode of carrying armour, let us, for convenience and economy's sake, do likewise. Our new 50-gun frigates may be converted into 8-gun corvettes; our corvettes into mail-clad gun vessels. Ships that cannot carry 4-inch plates had better carry 3-inch ones, rather than none at all; for it is known that a plate of one inch in thickness is impenetrable to every description of ordinary shell and hot shot. Let us go to work with a will upon the subject, earnestly, not recklessly. France is building no more wooden line-of- battle ships, but next spring she is to have ten Gloires in the water, it is said. Why should we not on the 1st May have as many wooden ships in armour? We can, at any rate, with

these hold our own, whilst the entirely iron vessels are preparing at a steadier and surer pace.

To the royal navy, and the sailors, as well as merchants of England, the problem to be worked out by these iron-clad ships is one of the deepest interest—the deepest moment. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Defences of Great Britain tacitly admitted that, in our wooden walls, England could no longer rely for security against insult and invasion. We who, in times gone by, with ships of oak, swept our enemies from the seas, can with ships of iron do as much for the future. We have the iron, the coal, and the skill in this country to preserve to us our proud supremacy, and to enable us to repeat at Cherbourg or Cronstadt the deeds of Copenhagen and the Nile. In the words of the Prussian Marshal," Forward!"

We have been earnestly requested by an old lady to go to the War-Office, and before finally deciding in favour of iron against wood, to inspect some excellent photographs of the effects of rifled cannon against the poor Trusty and other mail-clad targets. She touchingly adds, that her son is a naval officer, that the great ambition of her life has been to see the dear boy a captain of a three-decker, with her three rows of ports, gilt figure-head, and ensign drooping so gracefully over the stern; that she should have died happy could she have once seen him "make it eight o'clock" on board the Duke of Wellington; everybody saluting him, the colours going up, yards going across, bands playing, all the boatswains'mates chirruping, all the midshipmen running about, and one thousand men watching the nod of her swanlike boy. We feel for her deeply; we know that her son, who is almost goose enough to make one a convert to competitive examinations for the rank of captain, must by her family interest very soon get such a ship, and we would spare her feelings by letting him have one as soon as possible; but it must not be. We have had enough of these now useless, over-grown, but highly ornamental ships, mere dreams in wood; and duty

VOL. LXXXVIII.—NO. DXLII.

compels us to take a common-sense view both of her motherly object and proposal.

In the first place, we have seen sufficient of the effects of round shot and rifled balls to readily believe that there has been fracture, splinter, and wreck. The man who fancies that iron vessels are indestructible, must be a simpleton; but we again repeat, that the only way in which such destruction can be inflicted will be from guns equally or better shielded in iron casemates. Those photographs go to prove that fact, and no more; and they bear in no way upon the relative destructibility of armourclad ships as compared with ordinary wooden vessels. To do so, photographs should have been taken of the effects of an equal quantity of missiles, at equal distances and under exactly similar circumstances, against a wooden vessel of ordinary size and scantling. The comparison then would be of some service, and we should be by no means afraid of the issue.

We will suggest an experiment which would fairly test the question. Take the Trusty, and one of our useless screw block-ships-the Blenheim, for instance; equip them perfectly for a sea cruise, but with old stores. Take any vessel that we may possess,

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