496 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 334 



THE WARD RAM FOR WAR-SHIPS. 



In a recent article on " Naval Wars of the Future," Admiral 

 Porter, who is doubtless our highest authority on such matters, 

 says, " Then there is the ram with which most of the sea-fights of 

 the ancient Greeks were won. All foreign navies have vessels 

 fitted as rams, which are expected to perform great service in 



in 1878, by bad management, struck the ' Grosser Kurfurst ' in the 

 side and under water. The latter ship was sunk, and the former 

 so damaged that she had great difficulty in getting into port." 



In a similar irreverent way he says, " Neither fleet has what may 

 properly be called ' rams : ' both trust to the underwater ' snout,' 

 which caused the sinking of the ' Grosser Kurfurst ' and the dis- 

 abling of the ' Konig Wilhelm.' " He also puts in the mouth of a 



THE WARD RAM FOR WAR-SHIPS. 



time of war. The ' ram ' is simply an elongation of the bow under 

 water ; and although, no doubt, a vessel so fitted would inflict great 

 injury on an enemy by running into her, she would be liable to in- 

 jure herself quite as much, and go to the bottom with her foe. No 

 modern rams have been tried in war, and ships so constructed will 

 most likely be failures. In proof of this, take the case of the 

 armor-clad frigate ' Konig Wilhelm,' of the German Navy, which 



supposed English naval officer the saying, " Why have not the ad- 

 miralty built proper rams, for those are the largest kind of projec- 

 tiles .> " 



This description of a " proper ram " is certainly correct, for the 

 blow given by a ship weighing, say, five thousand tons, moving at 

 even as slow a rate as twelve miles per hour, would have many 

 times the force of the heaviest projectile from the largest ordnance 



