482 
FLOATING DEFENCE. 
There remains the plan of “ separating the battery from its moving 
power ” and utilising vessels “ of any form, power, draught of water, 
with any modes of protection .... as may, on thorough trial, 
be found best for different classes of station.” The “moving power” is 
to be supplied by local steamers, and the floating battery, “being 
armed, might remain at anchor at very little cost,” while crews would 
be provided from “ local forces on the spot.” Such batteries are to be 
“moored in advantageous positions,” and would be specially applicable 
“ at the great commercial ports that are within wide expanded inland 
waters, such as Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull, &c., where the constant 
presence of a flotilla of men-of-war, large or small, would be out of the 
question.” 
This comparatively definite proposal, however open to criticism, 
might have served—at the time when it was put forward—as the basis 
of an intelligible policy. Subsequent developments of steam, guns and 
armour, together with the uprising of the torpedo-boat and the extra¬ 
ordinary modern demands of submarine mines, have complicated the 
question. Floating defence is no longer a matter of block-ships or of 
moored batteries only, but of armour-clads, gun-boats, torpedo-boats, 
armed steamers, guard-boats, and look-out ships, to be used singly or 
in combination, as a stationary or as a manoeuvring force, locally or 
Imperially provided, administered by the Admiralty or by the War 
Office, or under some undefined and undefinable joint arrangement. 
The “blessed words” cover all this,*and we contentedly use them to 
conceal the conflict of incompatible conditions, the immense practical 
difficulties, and the utter uncertainty in which, the whole subject is 
involved. Now, as when Sir J. Burgoyne wrote, floating defence 
forms an “ingredient” in our projects. Now, as then, it exists princi¬ 
pally on paper. 
The United States’ “Board on Fortifications,” in proposing 1 an 
expenditure of £8,775,000 on floating defence for New Orleans and 
San Francisco, adopted the following definition :— 
“ In the phrase c floating defences 5 just used, the armoured sea-going ship of 
the Navy is not referred to.The floating defences mean floating 
batteries designed specially for operating in harbours or close to the land—- 
armoured more heavily and armed with heavier guns than any probable adversary. 
Of considerably less draught than the armoured sea-going ship, they could, by 
operating among the shoals, avoid ramming, and even torpedoes. To gain such 
advantages speed must be sacrificed, but it is quite evident that for the defence of 
harbours and bays the advantages of extra thickness of armour and of superior 
power of gun more than compensate for that loss.’ 5 
Such a definition evidently fails in comprehensiveness at the present 
time, and scarcely sufficed even for the proposals of the Board, which 
included a further sum of £1,944,000 for torpedo-boats intended for the 
local defence of thirteen specified ports. In an Appendix, Commander 
W. T. Sampson, U.S.N., defines “floating coast defences” as consist¬ 
ing of “ (1.) floating batteries; (2) gun-boats, and (8) torpedo-boats, the. 
essential difference between the first two consisting in the size and 
amount of protective armour.” He proceeds to propose five types, 
i In 1885. 
