65 will at once be evidence. This is the _Terrible_, captured from the French in 1747, and afterwards passed into the English Navy. She was a two-decker with three masts, and carried 74 guns. Her gun-deck was 164 feet 1 inch long, and her beam was 47 feet 3 inches, while her depth was 20 feet 7½ inches. Her tonnage worked out at 1590. The illustration has been taken from a contemporary print in the Royal United Service Museum. [Illustration: FIG. 66. H.M.S. “ROYAL GEORGE.” 100 GUNS, 2047 TONS. FOUNDERED IN 1782.] Fig. 66 represents H.M.S. _Royal George_, of 100 guns, one of the most famous ships of the eighteenth century. Her size—2047 tons—alone makes her remarkable, apart altogether from her good looks. Her length on the keel was 143 feet 5½ inches, beam 51 feet 9½ inches, depth 21 feet 6 inches. Built at Woolwich she ended her days as tragically as another vessel we mentioned before, and owing to a similar cause. While she was being careened as she lay at anchor in Spithead for some repairs to her hull below the waterline, she sank on August 29, 1782. To-day she is still famous as the ship in which Rear-Admiral Kempenfelt, together with nine hundred men, women, and children, went down to their graves. The illustration is taken from an engraving, by T. Baston, in “Twenty-two Prints of several of the Capital ships of his Majesties Royal Navy,” in the Print Room of the British Museum. Still another experiment was made in 1761 in order to find some suitable method for sheathing ships’ bottoms. At last lead had been finally discarded. But now the sensible plan of using copper was tried on the _Alarm_, a 32-gun frigate. Finding that not only did this preserve the ship’s planking, but also increased the speed of the ship through the water, vessels of all classes were subsequently covered in the same way. The plates of copper were affixed to the hull, tough sheets of paper being placed in between the sheathing and the hull. [Illustration: FIG. 67. NELSON’S “VICTORY.” 2162 TONS. BUILT IN 1765. _Photo. S. Cribb._]