H 
a ae Hg 
or 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 931 
The deepest foundation is 90 ft. below high-water mark, and the extreme 
height of the central position of the cantilever is 361 ft. above the same datum, 
making the extreme total height of the bridge 451 ft. 
The actual minimum headway in the channels below the centre of the main 
spans at high-water spring tides is a little over 150 ft., and the rail level is about 
6 ft. higher. 
The weight of steel, nearly all riveted work, is 54,076 tons, and the amount 
of masonry and concrete 4,057,555 cubic feet. 
It is difficult, even for experts, fully to appreciate the stupendous amount of 
work indicated by these figures. During the Paris Exhibition the Eiffel Tower 
justly excited considerable admiration, and brought its designer into much repute; 
but that great work sinks altogether into insignificance when compared with the 
Forth Bridge. 
Conceive, as I have heard described, the Eiffel Tower built, not vertically, but 
horizontally ; conceive it further built without support, and at a giddy height over 
an arm of the sea. Such a work would do little more than reach half across one 
of the main spans of this great bridge. 
Those only who have had work of a similar nature can fully appreciate the 
innumerable experiments that must have been made, and the calculations that must 
have been gone through, to secure the maximum attainable rigidity both with respect 
to the strains induced vertically by the railway traffic and its own weight, and 
horizontally by the force of gales. 
The anxiety as to the security of the erection might well daunt the most skil- 
ful engineer. We are told that, apart from the permanent work, many hundreds 
of tons of weight in the shape of cranes, temporary girders, winches, steam boilers, 
rivet furnaces, and riveting machines, miles of steel-wire rope, and acres of timber 
staging were suspended from the cantilevers. A heavy shower of rain would in 
a few minutes give an additional weight of about 100 tons; and in their unfinished 
state, while approaching completion, the force of any gale had to be endured. 
I trust that as the Forth Bridge has been a great engineering, it may 
likewise prove a financial success, and I feel sure that all who hear me are rejoiced 
that it has pleased Her Majesty to confer the distinguished honours she has 
awarded to Sir John Fowler and Sir B. Baker—honours, I may add, that have rarely 
been more worthily bestowed, 
Let me turn now to the subject on which I propose to address you; and I shall 
first advert to the change which within my own recollection has taken place in 
that service which has been the pride and glory of the country in time past, and 
on which we must rely in the future as our first and principal means at once of 
defence and attack. 
To give even an idea of the revolution which our navy has undergone, I must 
refer in the first instance to the navy of the past. I must refer to those vessels 
which in the hands of our great naval commanders won for England victories 
which left her at the close of the great wars supreme upon the sea. 
A ‘first-rate’ of those days (I will take the Victory as a type) was a three- 
decker 186 feet in length, 52 feet in breadth, with a displacement of 3,500 tons, 
and she carried an armament of 102 guns, consisting of thirty 42 and 32-pounders, 
thirty 24-pounders, forty 12-pounders, and two 68-pounder carronades (the heaviest 
of her guns was a 42-pounder), and she had a complement of nearly 900 men, When 
we look at the wonderful mechanism connected with the armaments of the fighting- 
ships of the present day, it is difficult to conceive how such feats were accom- 
plished with such rude weapons. 
With the exception of a few small brass guns, the guns were mere blocks of 
east iron, the sole machining to which they were subjected consisting in the forma- 
tion of the bore and the drilling of the vent. 
A large proportion of nearly every armament consisted of carronades —a piece - 
which was in those days in great favour. They threw a shot of large diameter 
from a light gun with a low charge, and their popularity was chiefly due to the 
rapidity with which they could be worked. The great object of every English 
commander was, if it were possible, to bring his ship alongside that of the enemy ; 
