192 EXPERIMENTAL CRUISE OF THE 



lower, 24 on the main deck, and two chasers eji barbette on deck. Their battery 

 ia more numerous, and also more concentrated, wliicli may possibly be an advan- 

 tage in some points of view, it may also be of service, partly at least, in certain 

 states of the sea, when the lower guns, or those of frigates, would be paralyzed 

 by the swell, although it seems little likely that under such circumstances the fire 

 of the main-deck guns could be of real use, and I do not know aay example of a 

 sea-fight where such was the case. At all events, this armament by reason of its 

 upper guns has certainly, in close combat, the advantage over frigates of a plung- 

 ing fire, and this is not to be despised at the present day when the most vulnerable 

 points of the ironclads are undoubtedly the shell below the water-line and the 

 upper deck. The superiority of these ships over frigates, as far as artillery is con- 

 cerned, is then a manifest and accomplished fact, as well on account of the number 

 as the arrangement of the guns. At the same time, to obtain this superiority, it 

 has been necessary to make some concessions to the natural force of circumstances. 

 The most important of which is that the ship is not completely armed. Along 

 the water-line, and over all the height of the orlop deck it is so, but above this it 

 is only the guns which are covered by the armour. The fighting portions are 

 without doubt under shelter ; but forward and abaft, in both main and lower gun- 

 decks, there are vast spaces which are no more protected than were the ships of 

 long ago, and which offer considerable opportunity to the incendiary projectiles of 

 the enemy. These are the weak points of the Solferino and Magenta. They could 

 have been protected like the others only by adding three or four hundred tons to 

 the weight of their armour ; that is to say, it would have been necessary to change 

 all the conditions of their build, and that, too, by increasing the size of vessels 

 which are already greater than anything that had been seen before them. It 

 should not be forgotten that the mean tonnage of the three-deckers, the kings of 

 the sea ten years ago, did not exceed 5000 tons, and we have now reached nearly 

 7000 in the Solferino, 8800 in the Warrior, 10,000 or 11,000 in the AgincourU 

 (built by Messrs. Laird and Birkenhead) and 22,000 in the Oreat Eastern. This 

 is very quick work, and we may be permitted to doubt whether the English have 

 much to congratulate thempelves on by trying to make more rapid .springs than 

 ours. The Great Eastern has not turned out prosperously either as an instrument 

 of traffic 01' of navigation ; and the other day the constructor in chief of the Eng. 

 lish navy, the able M. Reed, confessed publicly at Greenwich that the Warrior 

 was not a success, owing to this very exaggeration of size. M. Reed said frankly 

 (using the figures that I here repeat) that the Warrior would be a better sea-boat 

 if she had 100 feet less length, that she would roll much less, and above all would 

 steer much better. In every art where, results are to be obtained, not by the 

 exercise of the imagination, but by the application of the principles of the exact 

 sciences, real and safe progress can only be made step by step, proceeding always 

 from the known to the unknown, and not by abrupt jumps. This is especiallj- 

 true of the labors of the naval architect. He has not merely to deal with his 

 own special art, and with the varying chances of the sea, but he must also deal 

 with a crowd of other special arts, which may sometimes be mutually exclusive, 

 i;nd are almost always contrary in their requirements; and in this way the true 

 spirit of his art is rather one of conciliation and perpetual compromise with all ' 



