70 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



that their French ally had already commenced to constrnct several 

 such ships, that the admiralty began to bestir themselves. 



The French ship La Gloire is built of wood, and completely cased 

 with four-and-one-half inch armor. She is schooner-rigged with 

 three masts, and consequently relies mainly on her steam-power for 

 locomotion. Her stowage is of course very much confined, both as 

 to provisions and to coals, as she has to bear up so much weight of 

 armor. The English iron-plated vessels are very different. While 

 La Gloire is of the size of an ordinary line-of-battle ship of about 

 three thousand tons, the Warrior is a vessel of six thousand tons ; La 

 Gloire is built of wood, the Warrior of iron ; La Gloire is cased 

 throughout, the Warrior only partially, both ends being left uncased, 

 and only about half the length of the vessel being protected. Under 

 the 4| in. plates, (of the latter) which are sixteen feet by four, is a 

 thickness of twenty inches of teak. The rivets are one-and-one- 

 half inch, and extend through the teak into the iron skin of the ves- 

 sel. She has also a sort of battering-ram in front, which is intended 

 to crush any vessel over which she may desire to pass. Her arma- 

 ment is composed of thirty-six sixty-eight pounders, with two one- 

 hundred-pound Armstrong pivot-guns, and four fifty-pound Armstrong 

 guns. 



The trial sea-trips of both the Warrior and the Gloire are re- 

 ported as completely successful, and, as before stated, both the Eng- 

 lish and French governments are building or have built other vessels 

 of a similar construction. 



The French system of building iron-clad vessels is undoubtedly the 

 cheaper, as the vessel is only half as large as in the English system. 

 The French ships, however, are built of wood, and behind these iron 

 plates it is said that a considerable decay must necessarily take 

 place. But the English vessel has one great advantage. It is now 

 certain that four and one-half inches' thickness of iron armor will 

 not resist the large rifled cannon now in use, and there is no doubt 

 that a well-directed round shot from the fifteen-inch Eodman guns 

 recently constructed by the United States government would crush 

 its way through any iron armor which has yet been applied to the 

 casing ofvessels. It may be necessary, therefore, to double the 

 thicknessof the plates applied to these frigates. This can be done 

 on the Warrior, but it cannot be done on La Gloire. 



The question whether such vessels shall be cased entirely with 

 iron plates or not is a very difficult one to determine. The Eng- 

 lish say that ships built for great speed must have very sharp ends, 

 and that if at the - same time these ends are armed with heavy 

 plates, speed cannot be obtained in a heavy sea. The French, on 

 the contrary, declare that the unprotected bow and stern of the 

 English vessels can easily be knocked away. This the English at- 

 tempt to remedy by fitting the ends with water-tight buikheacls. 



In addition to the Warrior, the English government have also 

 launched, during the past year, three other iron-clad vessels ; one, 

 the "Black Prince," of about the same size as the Warrior, and two 

 others of a smaller tonnage, (viz., three thousand six hundred tons). 

 The cost of the larger vessels was about $1,500,000 each. 



In addition to these, Mr. E. J. Keed, in a paper read before the 



