MECHANICAL AND USEFUL ARTS. 39 



The promptitude and decision of the Emperor of the French in 

 determining upon the building of the Gloirc, have been contrasted 

 with the apathy of the English Admiralty authorities. The Em- 

 peror had no sooner ascertained from the experiment at Kinburn that 

 the idea of protecting ships of war with an iron sheathing was, to a 

 certain extent, a success, than he set the best engineer he could find 

 to work upon the yet unsolved problem — how to construct a vessel 

 which should be as safe as the iron batteries which defied the 

 Russian guus, and, at the same time, as swift and handy as an ordi- 

 nary frigate. The design was made, and so confidently was the issue 

 expected, that no less than ten of these costly ships were put upon 

 the stocks at once. 



"Contrast, "says thewriter of an able article in the Saturday Review, 

 Oct. 20, 1860, "with the course taken in France the leisurely pro- 

 ceedings of our own Board of Admiralty. After the trial of the 

 clumsy batteries which were built for the Russian war, the two 

 countries had a fair start with equal experience. At Cherbourg and 

 at Portsmouth alike a course of experiments was tried, with the 

 view of determining in the first place the amount of protection which 

 iron sheathing could be made to afford. This was rational enough, 

 and a considerable improvement on the part of the Admiralty upon 

 the precipitation with which they had some years before rushed into 

 the plan of building frigates of thin iron plates without ever attempt- 

 ing to ascertain whether the first ball that struck them might not 

 send them to the bottom. Even a Board learns something from its 

 past failures, and the Admiralty resolved not to expose itself a second, 

 time to the charge of reckless and precipitate action. For fully six 

 years experiments upon iron plates have been going on, and to this 

 day the Admiralty seems still to be halting between two opinions. 

 The Frenchmen tried their experiments, found what iron- plates could 

 do, and what they could not do, and, having arrived at the practical 

 conclusion that they would add materially to the security of a ship, 

 lost no time in acting upon the results of their experience. Our 

 Board has had the advantage of more complete trials with artillery 

 of greater power, but at the end of six years it has not ventured 

 to announce or to act upon any more definite opinion on the subject 

 than might have been formed on the day after the attack on 

 Kinburn. 



" It may be said that the Admiralty have proved their belief in the 

 efficacy of iron sheathing by ordering four ships about three years 

 ago, and by adding one more to the number since the commotion 

 excited by the trial of the Gloire. But this is rather a proof of feeble- 

 ness of purpose than of anything else. On any view, it must be 

 wrong to commence four or five of the new class of vessels of which 

 Napoleon has ordered twenty, and to allow the first of these to re- 

 main unfinished and its qualities untested for years. They are either 

 too many o or to few. When once the experiments had gone so far 

 as to justify the trial of at least one vessel of the class, the obvious 

 course was to get her finished without an hour's unnecessary delay. 

 If she proved a failure, the first loss would be all ; if she were sue- 



