THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
429 
The Special Committee on Iron reported that in their opinion, "the 
weight of iron which entered into the structure would have afforded 
greater resistance if it had been otherwise distributed.” 
With this opinion I quite agree. Of course I must be understood as 
solely speaking with reference to the resistance to projectiles offered by 
these several structures, and not as giving any opinion of their merits 
as ships. There may well be ship-building reasons which make it 
necessary to dispose the material in the manner in which we find it in the 
"Lord Warden,” but I have no hesitation in saying that this disposition is 
not advantageous for resistance to projectiles, and this can, I think, be 
explained in a very few words. The two great disadvantages which the 
firing at the "Lord Warden” target, showed to exist in this structure were, 
1st, a very large area of destruction to the inner lining from the absence of 
an iron skin, and 2nd, the large number of splinters of wood (varying in 
weight from 2 lbs. to 14 lbs.) which were driven through the target. 
Both these defects might be remedied, to a great extent, by means of an 
iron lining; for a steel shot which penetrated the target, damaged the inner 
planking of the "Lord Warden,” over an area of 8' x4',* but only made a 
hole 2' x H' in the iron skin of the "Chalmers” target,—the advantage of an 
iron lining is therefore manifest. Another alternative plan which might be 
adopted, without any increase of weight, would be to use armour plates 6" in 
thickness, in lieu of a 4^" plate and 1^" inner plate, and as all experiments 
have proved that one solid plate offers more resistance to projectiles than a 
series of thin plates superimposed of equal weight and area, by this means 
greater resistance to projectiles might be obtained; and although, only two 
years ago, it would have been impossible to procure plates of this thickness 
of uniform good quality, they are now being supplied to government in large 
quantities, and have constantly received the highest mark of merit in the 
Portsmouth trials, viz. Al. At the present time there is in fact no difficulty 
in obtaining plates of any required thickness up to 12"; a plate 19' x 3' 9" 
x 12" weighing 15 tons has actually been manufactured by Messrs John 
Brown and Co. of the Atlas Works, Sheffield, for the Russian government. 
Captain Inglis, R.E. does not approve of this arrangement of material 
adopted in the "Lord Warden,”t he states:— 
“ The division of the armour into two independent thicknesses in the manner 
here adopted cannot be an advantageous distribution of the material. Armour 
in two thicknesses, of inches and 1J inches, placed a few inches apart, would 
offer considerably less resistance to the passage of a shot than would the same 
armour collected in one thickness of 6 inches, and the mere presence of 10 inches 
of timber in the interval cannot materially affect the question either way.” 
The last ship construction, to which I have to allude, is that which was tested 
in the experiment on the " Small Plate ” target. 
The object of this experiment was to test the power of resistance of a system 
of armour plating which has been used to a considerable extent in Prance, 
* This was the extreme damage from splintering, 
f Vide R.E. Professional Papers, Yol XIII. p. 143. 
