The newer ships gradually eliminated sails and came to depend exclusively on their engines, just as passenger ships did during this same period, and the engines increased in power and reliability until, in the early ’nineties, many of the world’s cruisers were capable of a speed of more than twenty knots an hour. Turrets had become revolving armoured turntables carrying one or two guns, and these had been placed on an equally heavily armoured “barbette” or circular steel base through which shells and ammunition were hoisted into the turret. Side armour grew heavier and heavier, and a “protective deck,” somewhat above the water line, was built in. This deck was of comparatively thin steel armour, and as it approached the side of the ship it was bent down so that it was attached to the sides at or below the water line, thus placing over the all-important boilers, engine rooms, and magazines the protection that they needed from the enemy’s shells. During this period, guns were such that an enemy’s projectile would probably strike the side of the ship, and this deck, therefore, did not have to be designed to prevent the entrance of shells striking it except at a small angle. Consequently, the light armour used was sufficient. Later, at the Battle of Jutland (in 1916) and elsewhere, these decks were easily penetrated by shells fired at such a distance that they fell at a very steep angle. [Illustration: A SCOUT CRUISER _This ship is one of the_ Omaha _class, built after the World War for the U. S. Navy._] Shortly before the Spanish-American War, a new type of warship began to appear, and it created much interest because of its supposed ability to annihilate other types of ships. This new type was the torpedo boat. It was small and was very fast, for that day, being capable of twenty-one or twenty-two knots and sometimes a little more. It was a fragile affair, but it carried the newly perfected Whitehead torpedo. “Torpedoes” had been used during the Civil War, but in reality they were nothing but mines, set off by a trigger or by contact, and capable of use only when they could be set in the path of a ship, or by being fastened at the end of a long pole could be thrust against a ship, below the water line, by another craft. Some success attended their use during the Civil War, but they were not numerous or widely successful.