138 



NATURE 



{Dec. 20, 1877 



dispose of a long argument which the Committee enters 

 upon and pursues with the object of proving that by- 

 lengthening the citadel you would thin the armour upon 

 it, and thus reduce its defensive power. Assuredly you 

 would : nor can any one doubt for a single moment that 

 it would be far better to reduce the armour a little for 

 the purpose of making the citadel stable enough to hold 

 the ship upright in spite of any injury to the unpro- 

 tected ends, rather than to keep the present thickness, and 

 to reduce its length sufficiently to cause the whole to capsize 

 when the unarmoured ends only are badly damaged. 

 We know how naval officers answer this question. But, 

 in truth, the whole argument of the Committee on this 

 point is beside the mark, and a mere beating of the air, 

 for no one that we know of has urged the change which 

 the Committee take so much pains to discuss. What we 

 have always understood Mr. Reed to allege, and certainly 

 what we have in Nature maintained is, that in the 

 Inflexible the citadel and unarmoured ends were neither 

 well- formed, well-proportioned, nor well-balanced against 

 each other, and that a ship of her type should have em- 

 braced a larger area of flotation within the citadel and a 

 less area within the unarmoured ends. And this is pre- 

 cisely what the Committee themselves declare, and thus 

 refute their own assertion that the ship is properly 

 designed at present. Near the end of the Report they 

 say : — 



" Results which have been obtained in the course of 

 the experiments at Torquay on the resistance of ships, 

 show that a considerable increase of the extreme breadth 

 of the Inflexible, if accompanied by a corresponding fining 

 of the ends so as to keep the displacement unaltered, 

 would, if anything, diminish the resistance of the intact 

 vessel to propulsion at full speed. Supposing the ship 

 thus increased in beam 10 feet, and the citadel shortened 

 so as to retain the same perimeter and thickness of 

 armour, her transverse stability would then be about 

 doubled in the e and/' conditions, and in the riddled and 

 gutted condition, would be more than it now is in condi- 

 tion e or/. Her longitudinal stability in the riddled and 

 gutted condition would be reduced 10 per cent. (/, 

 Appendix No. 15), but would not be diminished in condi- 

 tion e, and scarcely appreciably so in / The increase of 

 beam would also add to the area of the citadel in a hori- 

 zontal plane, and thus increase the buoyancy in the 

 riddled condition." 



When the Committee, who lay^down these clear and 

 cogent proofs that the Inflexible is vastly inferior, in 

 respect of stability and safety, to what she might have 

 been, also tell us that " a just balance has been main- 

 tained in the design " of that ship, and that " a good 

 result has been obtained," we find great difficulty in 

 reconciling their statements, and feel strongly that if 

 the public were to trust only to the language of the Report 

 they might readily be led to draw extremely wrong infer- 

 ences. We much fear that the gentlemen composing the 

 Committee have thought too much of the Admiralty, with 

 which they are all more or less connected, and too little 

 of the public, who have been waiting for many months for 

 their verdict. That verdict has been pronounced in a 

 manner which, speaking 'on behalf of scientific men, we 

 lament. It is inconsistent, and, so far as we can under- 

 stand it, contradictory, in its several parts, and is in large 



^ These references caud/, are to the Parliamentary Papers, and represent 

 the ship with the ends riddled and water logged, e, showing the coal as well 

 as the cork, &c, in place, and /with the cork, &c., in, but not tiie coal. 



part likely to beget in certain quarters a fatal confidence 

 in a ship the defects and dangers of which the Committee 

 evidently well understand. So uncertain and indefinite is 

 it that it does not make it unquestionably clear even that 

 the Ajax and Agamemnon are included in their desire to 

 have progress arrested, for although after speaking of the 

 Inflexible only they ask that no more vessels of the type 

 may be proceeded with, and thus employ terms which 

 cannot well be otherwise interpreted ; the absence of all 

 mention of their names nevertheless leaves room for the 

 suggestion of a doubt on the point. It was clearly due 

 to all concerned that their views on so weighty a matter 

 should have been placed beyond all hesitation and 

 question. 



But those who would understand the full significance 

 of this Report must not be deterred from perusing it care- 

 fully through, for if after reading thirteen out of its sixteen 

 pages they Avere to throw it aside they would have derived 

 from it, we say without hesitation, not only a very insuffi- 

 cient but a very untrue conception of the hflexiblds 

 actual condition. Up to that point both a hasty and a 

 deliberate perusal of it yields, to our minds at least, the 

 impression that the Committee are admirers of the exist- 

 ing ship in almost every particular. But the disclosures 

 which the scientific conscience of the Committee de- 

 manded and enforced commence on p. 14, and thence to 

 the end facts of an appalling nature respecting her are 

 gradually unfolded with so much effect that even the 

 Committee themselves end by imploring the Admiralty 

 not to repeat such a design ! Let us briefly observe what 

 these disclosures are. 



The first relates to the inclining force which the action 

 of the rudder exerts upon a ship of small stability. The 

 Committee made experiments with the Thunderer ex- 

 pressly to acquire facts illustrative of the Inflexible's case, 

 and the conclusion at which they arrived is thus stated : — 

 *' The Inflexible riddled and gutted,^ and without water 

 ballast, going at 7*24 knots, and turning in the circle of 

 1,210 feet in diameter, would require a righting lever 

 or G Z of '13 feet, and as the value of GZ at her maximum 

 stability in this condition is only '12 feet, she would on this 

 supposition overset." To soften down this alarming fact 

 the Committee add : " It is, however, not to be expected 

 that the ship under this condition could be driven at this 

 speed"— a speed of y\ knots only round the circle, corre- 

 sponding to only eleven knots in the Thunderer when 

 steaming on a straight course ! And this the reader will 

 bear in mind is true of the iTflexible, not when her 

 armour has been pierced by huge shells, or her bottom 

 knocked about by rams and torpedoes, but when nothing 

 but her exposed unarmoured ends have been badly 

 injured. Her armour and her bottom may be perfectly 

 intact, ay, untouched, and yet her own rudder would 

 capsize her in steaming at a low speed. No statement 

 ever made about the Inflexible by those who condemn 

 her has gone or ever could go much beyond this. And 

 what can be thought of the figures given ? The line GZ 

 is the lever or arm, at the ends of which the gravity and 

 buoyancy of the ship act in opposite directions. The 

 length required for withstanding the rudder's action under 



I This phrase, "The Inflexibli riddled and gutted"" is (improperly) 

 employed by the Committee when they speak of the unarmoured ends being 

 riddled and having the cork blown out. 



