Some of these experiences were purchased at the cost of the lives of gallant men, and that fact enhanced their value. [Illustration: THE “GLATTON.”] It is not possible to dwell at length upon the means by which the Monitor influence took effect in the navies of Europe, but it may be doubted whether ships like the _Thunderer_, _Devastation_, and _Dreadnought_, which naval officers declare to be to-day the most formidable of all British war-ships, would have found their way so readily into existence if the Monitors of America had not encouraged such large departures from Old-world ideas. In this sense the _Times_ correctly stated some years ago that the “American Monitors were certainly the progenitors of our _Devastation_ type.” The one ship in the British navy which comes nearest to the American Monitor, in respect of the nearness of her deck to the water, is the _Glatton_, a very exceptional vessel, and designed under a very peculiar stress of circumstances. But even in her case, as in that of every other armored turret-ship of the present writer’s design, the base of the turret and the hatchways over the machinery and boilers were protected by an armored breastwork standing high above this low deck, whereas in the American Monitors the turret rests upon the deck, which is near to the smooth sea’s surface. We have here, in the features just contrasted, the expression of a fundamental difference of view between the American system, as applied to sea-going turret-ships, and the European system of sea-going ships introduced by the writer. It has never been possible, in our judgment on the British side of the Atlantic, to regard even such Monitors as the _Puritan_ and _Dictator_ were designed to be, as sufficiently proof to sea perils. At the time when these lines were penned the following paragraph appeared in English newspapers: “The Cunard steamer _Servia_ arrived at New York yesterday, being three days overdue. During a heavy sea the boats, the bridge, and the funnel were carried away, and the saloon was flooded.” Any one who has seen the _Servia_, and observed the great height above the smooth sea’s surface at which her boats, bridge, and funnel are carried, will be at no loss to infer why it is that we object to ships with upper decks within two or three feet only of that surface. In short, it can be demonstrated that ships of the latter type are liable, in certain possible seas, to be completely ingulfed even to the very tops of their funnels. In the case of the _Glatton_, which had to be produced in conformity to ideas some of which were not those of the designer, one or two devices were resorted to expressly in order to secure in an indirect manner some increase of the assigned buoyancy, and thus to raise the upper deck above its prescribed height. The officers who served in her, however, judiciously regarded her, on account of her low deck, as fit only for harbor service or restricted coast defence.