represented in detail in Fig. 72, which gives a section, part elevation, and plan. Of the construction of the turret, and of the mode in which it was made to revolve, these drawings convey an idea sufficiently clear to obviate the necessity of a minute description. Each turret had an outside diameter of 27 ft., but inside the diameter was only 22 ft. 6 in., the walls being, therefore, 2 ft. 3 in. thick—nearly half this thickness consisting of iron plating. Separate engines were provided for turning the turrets, and they could also be turned by men working at the handles shown in the figures. Each turret carried two 25–ton Armstrong guns, capable of receiving a charge of 70 lbs. of gunpowder, and of throwing a 600 lb. shot. After some preliminary trials the _Captain_ was sent to sea, and behaved so well, that Captain Coles and Messrs. Laird, her designer and contractors, were perfectly satisfied with her qualities as a sea-going ship. She was then sent in the autumn of 1870 on a cruise with the fleet, and all went well until a little after midnight between the 6th and 7th September, 1870, when she suddenly foundered at sea off Cape Finisterre. The news of this disaster created a profound sensation throughout Great Britain, for, with the exception of nineteen persons, the whole crew of five hundred persons went down with the ship. Captain Coles, the inventor of the turrets, was in the ill-fated vessel and perished with the rest, as did also Captain Burgoyne, the gallant commander, and the many other distinguished naval officers who had been appointed to the ship; among the rest was a son of Mr. Childers, then First Lord of the Admiralty. Although the night on which this unfortunate ship went down was squally, with rain, and a heavy sea running, the case was not that of an ordinary shipwreck in which a vessel is overwhelmed by a raging storm. It might be said, indeed, of the loss of the _Captain_ as of that of the _Royal George_: “It was not in the battle; No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak; She ran upon no rock.” [Illustration: FIG. 74. ] [Illustration: FIG. 75. ]