BATTLESHIPS "SOUTH CAROLINA" (UNITED STATES) AND "DREADNOUGHT" (BRITISH) DESIGNED ON

that was originally intended by the Chevalier d'Arcon, their constructor, according to another account of the same date as the above, which states that "the covering was to have been laid over with strong sheets of copper, and by this means the redhot balls, the bombs and other destructive implements would have slid off."

The fate of these experimental armorclads offered no inducement to the naval constructors of the day to make further researches in the direction of protection, so that till comparatively recent times we find our sailors depending only on their "wooden walls" to resist the projectiles of the enemy. The oaken sides of the British ships, we may note in passing, were often exceptionally stout and difficult to penetrate. In the fight between the Glatton, 56-gun ship, and four French frigates, a brig and a cutter, mounting 220 guns between them, their 12 and 24pounders failed to penetrate her sides, and she beat them all off with great loss at the cost of

one officer and one man wounded.

But the Americans, from the very commencement of their existence as a nation, set themselves to make improvements in naval warfare. David Bushnell constructed a practical submarine boat in 1773. Torpedoes were used

by him and others in the war with this country, and for the purpose of towing these contrivances alongside our ships, they invented and built in 1814 a paddle-propelled turtlebacked boat lying very low in the water and covered with "half-inch iron plates, not to be injured by shot." About the same period the celebrated inventor, Robert Fulton, who had already constructed one or two submarine boats and various classes of torpedoes, built a steam frigate which he called the Demologos, or Voice of the People, but which is sometimes known as the Fulton I. This, the first steam warship ever constructed, had her sides no less than 13 feet thick of alternate layers of oak and ash wood, a thickness absolutely impenetrable by any gun then afloat. In 1829 this vessel was blown up by accident, and was succeeded in the American navy by the Fulton II., a ship which appears to have been protected by some kind of iron armor. Various proposals were made to use iron plating to protect the sides of ships of war from this time forward, but until the French constructed a number of armorplated, batteries for use in the Crimean war, nothing practical came of the suggestions of inventors. Their success at the bombardment of Kinburn demonstrated the value of armor plating. England at once followed suit with others of the same kind, some of which are still doing duty as hulks. Then came the French La Gloire, the British Warrior, the ironclads and monitors of the American war, and henceforward the steady evolution of the armored fighting ship, which has provided us with the majestic battleships of the present day.

Warships, Modern. It has become almost an axiom that military success, in a broad sense, depends upon command of the sea, and absolute command of the sea can only be attained in one way, by the capture or annihilation of the enemy's fleets. This makes it imperative that the enemy be met in battle, a result easily attained if he is of equal or superior force and, if his force is inferior, he must be made to fight. The questions of how, and when, and

where this should be done belong to the science of naval strategy, for our purpose it is enough to recognize that the destruction of his fleet is the paramount .object, we may then turn to consider what means have been provided for accomplishing this end. It can readily be seen that this serious problem of bringing the enemy to battle and making him fight, whether he will or not, can only be met by providing vessels capable of navigating the seas in any weather, and capable of meeting and destroying, or fighting to a standstill, any class of vessel that may be brought against them. In the old days, when all ships were on an equal footing as regards the motive power, when there was no protection and when the best ship was the one carrying the most guns, the problem was simple; but now, when each vessel must carry her own fuel, when high speed requires a disproportionate share of space and weight, when the competition between gun and armor has developed so rapidly that each series of new guns requires either thicker or better armor for protection against its projectiles, the problem is much more maker and the engineer have done much toward complex, and though of late years the steel improving the quality of their products, its principal result has been to increase the quantity used in a given case.

Qualifications.- Having seen that the primary purpose, indeed the raison d'étre of the true warship is to fight, it follows that the most efficient war vessel, in the sense of the present day, is that combining in the highest degree, offensive and defensive qualities. It may be said in a general way, that the most important of these qualities are armament, protection, radius of action, speed, and reliability of machinery. There are, however, great differences of opinion among naval experts and designers as to the relative importance of these qualities, which are all further complicated by subordinate and antagonistic elements, and to unite the whole, in the best possible ratio, is the aim of The the designer of every warship projected. above mentioned qualities may be altered proportionately, increasing one and decreasing another, but in every case there is one absolutely limiting factor which cannot be ignored, that is the total weight which a given vessel can carry. A ship of definite displacement can carry a certain number of tons weight with safety, and this weight may not be increased, so it follows that if any one quality is abnormally developed, some other quality or qualities, no matter how important, must be sacrificed. Thus every warship is a compromise in which the designers must nicely balance each element, an addition for some especially desirable feature entailing a reduction in something else considered not quite so important in view of the particular service to be required of the vessel. Being driven to these compromises and owing to the impossibility of uniting these discordant elements, each in its highest degree of excellence, in any one ship, designers have been forced to divide warships into a number of different classes, each class to fulfil special requirements and in each one of which one or more qualities reaches its highest development in accordance with the requirements of its class and the duties to be performed by the finished vessel.