Before passing from the armored ships of the navy—or, rather, as we must now say, in view of some of the ships just described and illustrated, before passing from the ships which have some armor—it is desirable to take note of a few exceptional vessels which cannot be classed either with the pretentious and so-called line-of-battle ships or with the rigged iron-clads generally. Among these will be found two comparatively small ships, designed by the writer many years ago to serve primarily as rams, but to carry also some guns. These were the _Hotspur_ and _Rupert_. The water-line of the _Hotspur_ was protected with very thick armor for her day (11-inch), extending from stem to stern, dipping down forward to greatly strengthen the projecting ram. She carried (besides a few smaller guns) the largest gun of the period, one of twenty-five tons, mounted on a turn-table, but protected by a fixed tower pierced with four ports.[5] This fixed tower was years afterwards replaced by a revolving turret, similar to that which the writer gave in the first instance to the _Rupert_, designed soon after the _Hotspur_. Both the armor and the armament of the second vessel were heavier than those of the first, but the ram, as before, was the chief feature of the ship. It is needless here to describe some of the very early turret-ships, such as the _Prince Albert_, _Scorpion_, _Wyvern_, and _Royal Sovereign_, all of which embodied the early (though not by any means the earliest) views of that able, energetic, and lamented officer, the late Captain Cowper Coles, R.N., who was lost at sea by the capsizing of his own ship, the _Captain_, her low sides failing to furnish the necessary stability for enabling her to resist, when under her canvas, the force of a moderate gale of wind. Had he been able to foresee the coming abandonment of sail-power in rigged ships, and had he been placed, as the writer advised, in charge of the revolving turrets of the navy, leaving ship-designing to those who understood it, he might have been alive to this day, to witness the very general adoption in the British navy of that turret system to which he for some years devoted and eventually sacrificed his life. [Illustration: THE “HOTSPUR.”] The first real sea-going and successful ship designed and built to carry the revolving turret of Coles was, by universal consent, the _Monarch_, whose sea-going qualities secured for her the distinction of transporting to the shores of America—as a mark of England’s good-will to the people of the United States, and of her admiration of a great and good citizen—the body of the late Mr. George Peabody. “The performances of the _Monarch_ at sea,” says Brassey’s “British Navy,” “were in the highest degree satisfactory;” and nothing could exceed the frank and liberal praises bestowed upon her for her performances during the voyage to New York by the officers of the United States man-of-war which accompanied her as a complimentary escort.