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POPOFFKAS, OK CIKCULAK IRONCLADS. 
By A. HILLIARD ATTEMDGE. 
S PEAKING- at Nicholaiev in May 1875, before an audience 
chiefly composed of officers of the imperial navy, Admiral 
Popoff briefly but clearly set forth the principles which have 
guided the Russian Government in the reorganisation of its 
navy since the Crimean War. The resources of Russia, he 
said, did not permit her to undertake the construction of an 
offensive navy — a fleet of huge line-of-battle ships. It was 
therefore decided that the object to be held in view should be 
the formation of a strong defensive fleet, so powerful as to be 
able to protect the coasts of Russia from any possible coalition, 
and in 1871 he submitted to the Admiralty at St. Petersburg 
designs for what he suggested should be the typical form for the 
ships constructed for the coast defence of the empire. Admiral 
Krabbe approved of the project; the ship was laid down at 
Nicholaiev, the great naval arsenal of Russia on the Black Sea ; 
and three years after the Novgorod , the first circular ironclad, 
was launched upon the Boug ; and a few months later, fully 
armed and equipped, steamed down the river to the Black Sea, 
and made a successful voyage to Sebastopol. A second ship, 
originally called the Kiev , but named on launching the Admiral 
Popoff, in honour of her inventor, was begun and completed 
shortly after the Novgorod ; and these two circular ships now 
form the principal strength of the Black Sea fleet. 
Mr. Reed, the late chief constructor of the British navy, from 
the first urged the consideration of the structure of these 
new vessels upon public attention in England. They were 
avowedly a further development of the principle which he had 
adopted in shortening the length and broadening the beam in 
the later ironclads which he designed for our navy. He saw the 
keels of the Novgorod laid at Nicholaiev ; in “Naval Science” 
he devoted several articles to the new ships, and published the 
first drawings of them which appeared in England. Last 
autumn he went to the Black Sea, made a voyage in one of the 
