MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 71 



British Association, Sept. 1861, stated that the construction of six 

 other vessels of a similar character to the Warrior had been entered 

 upon by the British admiralty, three of which would be twenty feet 

 longer than the Warrior, fifteen inches broader, 582 tons additional 

 bin-then, and 1,245 tons additional displacement ; and as the displace- 

 ment was the actual measure of the ship's size, they would thus be 

 more than 1,000 tons larger than the Warrior. The cost of these 

 new vessels would exceed the cost of those of the Warrior class by 

 20,000 or 30,000. They would certainly be noble specimens of 

 war ships. A vessel built throughout of iron, four hundred feet long 

 and nearly sixty feet broad, enveloped from end to end in armor im- 

 pervious to all shell and to nearly all shot, furnished with the most 

 powerful ordnance, with ports nine feet six inches above the water- 

 line, steaming at the rate of twelve or thirteen knots an hour, would 

 indeed prove a most formidable engine of destruction. 



" In vessels of this kind," said Mr. Reed, " all beautifying devices 

 must be dispensed with. Their stems were to be upright, or nearly 

 so ; their sterns would also be upright, and as devoid of adornment as 

 the bows. It should also be stated, as a distinguishing mark of these 

 six ships, that their thick plate would not be extended to the bow at 

 the upper part, but would stop at the junction with the transverse 

 plated bulkhead, some little distance from the stem, and this bulkhead 

 would rise to a sufficient height to prevent the spar deck from being 

 raked by shot. They would be armed with fifty one-hundred-pounder 

 Armstrong guns, forty on the main deck, and ten on the upper. The 

 thickness of their armor plates would be six and one-half inches." 



The London Times of Sept. 23, 1861, in reviewing the trial-trip 

 of the Warrior, thus speaks of her : 



" If the Warrior were merely a floating battery, destined for the 

 protection of a harbor, we might look without much wonder at her 

 prodigious solidity and her impenetrable sides. But the marvel of 

 the case is that a ship with ribs as thick as the walls of Carnarvon 

 Castle, and sheathed in ponderous armor of solid iron, should prove 

 as lively and as buoyant a craft as the lightest yacht that ever floated. 

 It seems probable, indeed, that not even the fastest of our 'dispatch 

 boats, though built expressly for speed, will rival the speed of this 

 impregnable frigate. She can cleave the waves at a rate of sixteen 

 miles an hour, and can be handled with as much ease as a Thames 

 steamer. Nothing is so calculated to astonish a visitor as the skill 

 with which the incredible strength of this vessel has been combined 

 with apparent lightness and grace of form. The picture given is 

 that of some tremendous floating battery, so tremendous, indeed, 

 that one wonders how it can ever float at all. The reality is a splen- 

 did ship, differing from other ships only in size and beauty. 



" It is almost overpowering to think of the dimensions of a ship the 

 very engines of which exceed the entire tonnage of an old first-rate 

 Indiaman. We have at length shot ahead of all our rivals, and 

 framed the largest model known. In the last war the Americans 

 got the better of us by building frigates of unprecedented size and 

 solidity, but the finest of them all was but a cock-boat compared with 

 the Warrior. Her construction and trial have upset all our old ideas 

 about ' floating batteries,' for it is plain that a floating battery of 



