14 THE SEA. 



ship, therefore, stands high out of the water, and to sink it to the same line will require a 

 greater weight on board. From this fact, and the actual thinness of its walls, its carrying 

 capacity and stowage are so much the greater. This, which is a great point in vessels destined 

 for commerce, would be equally important in war. But these remarks do not apply to the 

 modern armoured vessel. We have ironclads with plates eighteen inches and upwards in- 

 thickness. What is the consequence ? Their actual weight, with that of the necessary engines 

 and monster guns employed, is so great that a vast deal of room on board has to be 

 unemployed. Day by day we hear of fresh experiments in gunnery, which keep pace 

 with the increased strength of the vessels. The invulnerable of to-day is the vulnerable 

 of to-morrow, and there are many leading authorities who believe in a return to a smaller 

 and weaker class of vessel provided, however, with all the appliances for great speed and 

 offensive warfare at a distance. Nelson's preference for small, easily-worked frigates over 

 the great ships of the line is well known, and were he alive to-day we can well believe that he 

 would prefer a medium-sized vessel of strong construction, to steam with great speed, and 

 carrying heavy, but, perhaps, not the heaviest guns, to one of those modern unwieldy masses 

 of iron, which have had, so far, a most disastrous history. The former might, so to speak, act 

 while the latter was making up her mind. Even a Nelson might hesitate to risk a vessel 

 representing six or seven hundred thousand pounds of the nation's money, in anything short of 

 an assured success. We have, however, yet to learn the full value and power of our ironclad 

 fleet. Of its cost there is not a doubt. Some time ago our leading newspaper estimated 

 the expense of construction and maintenance of our existing ironclads at 18,000,000. 

 Mr. Reed states that they have cost the country a million sterling per annum since the first 

 organisation of the fleet. Warfare will soon become a luxury only for the richest nations, and, 

 regarding it in this light, perhaps the very men who are racking their powers of invention to 

 discover terrible engines of war are the greatest peacemakers, after all. They may succeed in 

 making it an impossibility. 



" Hereafter, naval powers prepared with the necessary fleet will be able to transport the 

 base of operations to any point on the enemy's coast, turn the strongest positions, and baffle 

 the best-arranged combinations. Thanks to steam, the sea has become a means of communica- 

 tion more certain and more simple than the land ; and fleets will be able to act the part of 

 movable bases of operations, rendering them very formidable to powers which, possessing 

 coasts, will not have any navy sufficiently powerful to cause their being respected." * So far 

 as navy to navy is concerned, this is undoubtedly true ; yet there is another side to the question. 

 A fort is sometimes able to inflict far greater damage upon its naval assailants than the latter 

 can inflict upon it. A single shot may send a ship to the bottom, whilst the fire from the ship 

 during action is more or less inaccurate. At Sebastopol, a whole French fleet, firing at ranges 

 of 1,600 to 1,800 yards, failed to make any great impression on a fort close to the water's edge; 

 while a wretched earthen battery, mounting only five guns, inflicted terrible losses and injury 

 on four powerful English men-of-war, actually disabling two of them, without itself losing one 

 man or having a gun dismounted; while, as has been often calculated, the cost of a 

 single sloop of war with its equipment will construct a fine fort which will last almost for 



; 



* Brialmont, " fitude sur la Defense des Etats et sur la Fortification." 



