POPOFFKAS, OR CIRCULAR IRONCLADS. 
271 
many of our ironclads, when steaming at any high speed, for 
want of this correspondence of the lines of the ship and the 
natural course of the wave lines, the water is piled up round 
the bows, and forms the bow-wave which floods the forward 
portion of the decks of low freeboard ships like the Devasta- 
tion, This bow-wave is a kind of visible index of the resist- 
ance of the water, and in the Popoffkas it increases to the 
enormous mass of water which in a rough sea rises on the ship 
and makes the high forecastle a positive necessity. The bow- 
wave is a matter of some importance viewed in this light, and 
Mr. Reed’s joke about people being anxious that the water 
should not be knocked about by his shortened ships is little to the 
purpose ; for the bow-wave simply means that the short-broad 
ship finds it more difficult to get through the water than her 
longer competitor, and the round Popoflfka finds it most diffi- 
cult of all. The circular shape, so to say, handicaps the 
engines ; they must have a power out of all proportion to the 
speed obtained. To rise to a high rate of speed, the weight of 
engines, boilers, and fuel would have to be enormously in- 
creased, and the weight of guns and armour reduced in a corre- 
sponding degree, or else the draught of water would have to be 
augmented. And with the adoption of either alternative, the 
special object for which the Popoffkas were designed would 
have to be sacrificed. Little if anything would be gained by 
giving the ship a larger diameter, and thus increasing her 
floating power ; for the greater the diameter the greater the 
resistance of the water, and consequently the more powerful 
and the heavier the engines that would be required. This 
increase of resistance with the increase of diameter is also the 
fatal objection to the proposal of a lightly-built outer ring to 
contain bunkers, which would supply the present deficiency in 
coal-carrying power. 
This question of speed and engine-power is, we believe, the 
real test of the whole matter. Mr. Reed, of course, recognises 
the fact ; and in his lecture or paper, read at the Royal United 
Service Institution, he endeavoured to prove that “ the circular 
ironclads have started with a much less proportion of steam- 
power to citadel armour and guns than has usually been given 
to ironclads, and not with an enormously greater power.” To 
our mind his facts and figures disprove his conclusion. He 
acknowledges that, “as compared with ordinary forms, the 
power required to drive at high speed a circular ship of equal 
displacement would probably be from two to three times that 
required for an equal displacement obtained on ordinary lines, 
or even more.” But, he said, the displacement did not offer a 
true basis of comparison ; such a basis was to be found in the 
proportion of steam power to the weight of guns and armour 
