But it is obvious that all belted or partially belted vessels, in which the belt is carried but a small height above the water for the size of the ship, must run the risk of losing both buoyancy and stability very soon if even moderately inclined in or after battle, seeing that, with a moderate inclination only, the entire armor-belt on the depressed side of the ship must disappear beneath the sea’s surface. The strenuous assertion of this source of danger, although it could not lead to much increase in the stability of the existing armored ships, has produced as one effect the busy and earnest efforts which both English and French constructors have been recently making to subdivide their ships _above the armor_ into as many water-tight compartments as possible, and to stuff these compartments as full as possible of buoyant (or at least of water-excluding) materials. The necessity for resorting to this device, however, in first-class ships of nine, ten, or eleven thousand tons displacement, and of something approaching to five million dollars each in value, is not a thing for either French or English naval constructors to be proud of. But the assertion of the danger in question has had in England the further and very satisfactory result of bringing much more trustworthy ships, like the _Nile_ and _Trafalgar_, into being, and of insuring the determined support of these ships in Parliament whenever those who foolishly confound mere cheapness with merit in such constructions seek to interfere with the progress of these magnificent vessels. Two other powerful ships of the French navy, closely resembling the _Amiral Duperré_, are the _Amiral Baudin_ and the _Formidable_. They are of 3¼ feet more beam than the _Duperré_ (and therefore probably have much larger stability), and their displacement exceeds hers by 900 tons. Their armaments chiefly differ from hers in the employment of three guns of 75 tons each in their towers, in lieu of the four guns of 48 tons of the _Duperré_. The _Neptune_, _Hoche_, _Magenta_, and _Marceau_ are four other powerful ships, as will have been seen from Table A, the principal armament of each consisting of four guns of 52 tons, carried in towers, with the exception of the _Hoche_, which has two of her four principal guns of 28 tons each only.