IRONSIDES AND WOODEN WALLS. 13 



seething, fighting, dying mass of humanity, with all the horrible concomitants of 

 deafening noise and blinding smoke and flashing fire ! It is not likely ever to occur in 

 modern warfare. The commanders of steam-vessels of all classes will be more likely to 

 fight at out-manoeuvring and shelling each other than to come to close quarters, which 

 would generally mean blowing up together. It would interesting to consider how 

 Nelson would have acted with, and opposed to, steam-frigates and ironclads. He 

 would, no doubt, have been as courageous and far-seeing and rapid in action as ever, 

 but hardly as reckless, or even daring. 



" And still, though seventy years, boys, 



Have gone, who, without pride, 

 Names his name tells his fame 

 Who at Trafalgar died?" 



May we always have a Nelson in the hour of national need ! 



The day for such battles as this is over ; there may be others as gloriously fought, but 

 never again by the same means. Ships, armaments, and modes of attack and defence 

 are, and will be, increasingly different. Those who have read Nelson's private letters and 

 journals will remember how he gloried in the appreciation of his subordinate officers just 

 before Trafalgar's happy and yet fatal day, when he had explained to them his intention to 

 attack the enemy with what was practically a wedge-formed fleet. He was determined to 

 break their line, and, Nelson-like, he did. But that which he facetiously christened the. 

 " Nelson touch " would itself nowadays be broken up in a few minutes and thrown into utter 

 confusion by any powerfully-armed vessel hovering about under steam. Or if the wedge of 

 wooden vessels were allowed to form, as they approached the apex, a couple of ironclads 

 would take them in hand coolly, one by one, and send them to the bottom, while their guns 

 might as well shoot peas at the ironclads as the shot of former days. 



Taking the Victory as a fair type of the best war-ships of her day (a day when there was 

 not that painful uncertainty with regard to naval construction and armament existing now, in 

 spite of our vaunted progress), we still know that in the presence of a powerful steam-frigate 

 with heavy guns, or an 11,000-ton ironclad, she would be literally nowhere. She was one of the 

 last specimens, and a very perfect specimen, too, of the wooden age. This is the age of iron 

 and steam. One of the largest vessels of her day, she is now excelled by hundreds employed in 

 ordinary commerce. The Royal Navy to-day possesses frigates nearly three times her ton- 

 nage, while we have ironclads of five times the same. The monster Great Eastern, which 

 has proved a monstrous mistake, is 22,500 tons. 



But size is by no means the only consideration in constructing vessels of war, and, 

 indeed, there are good reasons to believe that, in the end, vessels of moderate dimensions will 

 be preferred for most purposes of actual warfare. Of the advantages of steam-power there 

 can, of course, be only one opinion ; but as regards iron versus oak, there are many points 

 which may be urged in favour of either, with a preponderance in favour of the former. A 

 strong iron ship, strange as it may appear, is not more than half the weight of a wooden 

 vessel of the same size and class. It will, to the unthinking, seem absurd to say that an 

 iron ship is more buoyant than one of oak, but the fact is that the proportion of actual 

 weight in iron and wooden vessels of ordinary construction is about six to twenty. The iron 



