1862.] on the Iron Walls of England. 505 



then why we did not, and there is now no reason why the secret should 

 be kept. Our enemies know it, so why not our friends ? Our sailors 

 were not fools enough to stand to their guns in wooden ships exposed 

 to horizontal shell-firing. The speaker had read a letter from Lord 

 Dundonald, one of the bravest sailors that ever trod the deck, written 

 by him to Napier off Cronstadt, in which he expresses the greatest ap- 

 prehension that Sir Charles would be goaded on to try the attack with 

 what he called combustible ships. We tried Sebastopol — or rather we 

 tried to *' make-believe." We drew up our fleet a great way off, and 

 one or two brave sailors did go in closer. But the Russian gunners 

 were trained to horizontal shell-firing, and they soon found out it was 

 best to be farther off. The admiral was to be considered the wisest man 

 on board the fleet, for he anchored his ship the farthest off. Those 

 ships that ventured in were rendered by these shells incapable of con- 

 tinuing the action, and it is not now considered a disgrace to those 

 sailors to say that after three shells had exploded in one ship it was not 

 possible to find men •' fools " enough to stand to the guns. " Now, 

 you know why we did not take Cronstadt ; and why you did not know 

 it sooner, was because the Government did not wish you should fail to 

 believe in the wooden walls. At last, however, the ' Monitor ' and 

 * Merrimac ' have let out the secret, and I am here to tell you the 

 whole truth. It need not be said that those shells at Sinope and 

 Sebastopol were not the perfect weapons we have now — the Armstrong 

 shells are much more precise, and will scatter greater destruction 

 around them. How much more I may not tell. 



Attention has, therefore, since 1854 till now, been strongly directed 

 to inventions for protecting ships from the effects of shells — and shot 

 also, but chiefly shells. Men will stand against shot, but not against 

 shells ; they will run the risk of being hit, but will not face the cer- 

 tainty of being blown up. The invention of iron armour took place 

 fifty or sixty years ago. He was not prepared to name the first in- 

 ventor ; but long before we thought of using it in our navy, Mr. R. L. 

 Stevens, a celebrated engineer, of New York, the builder of some of 

 the fastest steam- vessels on the Hudson, was, he thought, the inventor. 

 Certainly Mr. Stevens, between 1845 and 1850, gave him a full account 

 of experiments made in America, partly at his own and partly at the 

 State's expense, and found that six inches thickness of iron-platp armour 

 was sufficient to resist every shot and shell of that day. In 1845, 

 he (Mr. Stevens) proposed to the American Government to construct 

 an iron-plated ship, and in 1854 the ship was begun. This ship is 

 in progress, but not yet finished. Mr. Stevens is therefore the inventor 

 of iron armour ; but no doubt the first man who applied it practically 

 for warfare was the Emperor of the French. In 1854 he engaged in 

 the Russian war, and being a great artillerist, he felt deeply what his 

 fleet could not do in the Black Sea, and we could not do in the Baltic, 

 and so he put his wise head to work to find out what could be done. 

 In 1854, the Emperor built some floating batteries — four or five; we 

 simply took his design, and made five or six. 



Vol. III. (No. 36.) 2 m 



