wrote a versifier once about what the guns of the _Inflexible_ could do. With less than half the weight, they are considerably more powerful weapons than the 110-ton monsters of the _Benbow_ and _Sans Pareil_ and the ill-fated _Victoria_, one of which was tested at Shoeburyness against a specially-built-up target of enormous proportions, and sent its shot, as easily as one can push one's finger into a lump of putty, clean through 20 inches of steel-faced compound armour, 8 inches of cast iron, 20 feet of oak, 5 feet of granite, 11 feet of concrete, and lastly 6 feet of brick--to a depth of 44 feet 4 inches altogether. As to the actual size of the guns, of the ship's heavier pieces: each is 41 feet long--13 yards and 2 feet from muzzle to breech. Pace this out on a gravel garden-walk, and imagine the length covered by a gigantic steel tube, three-quarters of a yard across at one end and swelling gradually to over 5 feet thick at the other--that may give some idea of the bulk of a _Formidable_ gun. Such a piece of ordnance would have suited the mood of old Marshal Soult when he refused to fight a duel on the score of his dignity. 'A marshal of France,' growled the old gentleman at his challenger's seconds on their calling to offer him the choice of weapons, 'a marshal of France only fights with cannon!' Four of these weapons form the _Formidable's_ 'main armament.' They are mounted, two on the quarter-deck and two on the forecastle, each pair in a circular barbette 37-1/2 feet in diameter, walled round with 12-inch thick Harveyed steel of immense resisting capacity, and weighing upwards of 315 tons. They can load at any angle of elevation or of training, and the ammunition-supply mechanism ensures the guns being loaded as fast as they can fire. _Bis dat qui cito dat_, 'who gives quickly gives twice,' is the maxim of the modern navy gunner. As far as her 12-inch guns are concerned, the _Formidable_ could let the enemy have two 850-lb. lyddite shells from each gun every eighty seconds. The ship's magazines and shell-rooms stow eighty rounds for each gun. Fired at the same time, the four guns exert a combined force enough to lift the whole ship up bodily ten feet. [Illustration: _Photo by Stephen Cribb, Portsmouth._ 'UT VENIANT OMNES!'--THE BIG 50-TON GUNS OF THE _FORMIDABLE_] To support the 'main armament' and provide for all comers, down to hostile torpedo boats, there are on board the _Formidable_, as 'secondary armament,' twelve 6-inch Vickers guns of the latest pattern (mounted six a side), sixteen 12-pounders and six 3-pounders (mounted in the fighting-tops--three in each top), with Maxims and light boat and field guns. In battle, fighting an enemy end-on, this embodiment of a 'blustering adjective' would, within the first five minutes, have sent at the enemy upwards of 7 tons of bursting shells; fighting broadside-on, over 16 tons.