176 
ARMOUR AND ITS ATTACK BY ORDNANCE. 
deficient in artillery fire, having little to supplement her four primary 
guns in her two turrets. 
The terrible power of shell fire has developed another principle of 
defence, namely, the curved protective deck. In nearly all earlier 
designs the horizontal deck runs along the upper edge of the belt. It 
seemed only natural to employ it to protect as much of the hull and as 
great a reserve of buoyancy as possible. 
For ships possessing no side armour, it would naturally be necessary 
for the steel deck to pass below the water-line at the ship’s side, and a 
reserve of buoyancy would be secured by a rise towards the centre. 
The same structure, inconvenient as it is, is found in armour-clad ships, 
and protection is afforded by steel traverses, which limit the zone of 
destruction of a bursting shell. This suggests a question on which 
different opinions have been given by high naval authorities, namely, 
the measure of effect to be expected from shell fire. The total amount 
of explosive that can be delivered into a ship is advocated by some as 
the measure of injury. On this principle one 8-inch shell would be as 
good as two 6-inch, and for certain kinds of structural injury this 
may be true, but seeing that it is the upper parts and secondary bat¬ 
teries of ships that are generally open to shell attack, where langridge 
tells as well as abstract explosive power, and where the zone of both 
may be limited, it appears as if distribution would tell sufficiently to 
make two 6-inch shell produce considerably more effect than one 8-incli, 
indeed, under some conditions they might produce nearly the same 
effect as two of the larger shells. 
(Conclusion.) 
