One of the most extraordinary steam yachts ever built was the _Livadia_, of which a capital model is illustrated opposite page 276. She was built in 1880 by Messrs. John Elder & Co. for the Russian Admiralty. Her unusual design was based on the idea of a circular floating battery invented by John Elder in the ’sixties, and reintroduced by Admiral Popoff ten years later. From a technical paper read some years ago by her builder, we gather that she was constructed in accordance with Admiral Popoff’s designs to give 14 knots per hour. In case of her failing to come up to the required standard, the Russian Admiralty were to be allowed to reject her. Previous to her actual building, elaborate experiments took place with a model, and both before and after the appearance of the ship she was subject to considerable criticism, some of which, no doubt, was owing to the radical departure from accepted custom. Her builder described her as being turbot-shaped with a super-structure which contained the Imperial apartments and the accommodation for suite and crew. After her trials, she sailed from the Clyde to Brest in fine weather. Thence she crossed the Bay of Biscay, and the bad weather which had sprung up increased to a gale of exceptional violence, which also afforded the most conclusive test for her steadiness. It was found that she was wonderfully endowed with the latter virtue, and that although she had been designed for service on the Black Sea, she was able to take the seas of the Bay in a most satisfactory manner. The height of the waves was adjudged by the experts on board as being from twenty to twenty-five feet, but the receding formation of the turbot had the effect of dividing the wave against itself. In no case did the waves succeed in reaching the keels of the ship’s boats hung in davits 22 feet above the load-line, and although the table was loaded with candelabra and other easily capsizable articles, the ship never lurched so as to send them moving. It is true that when she put into Ferrol, owing to the exhaustion of the crew, two of the thirty-seven cells on the external rim of the turbot were damaged, yet this did not vitiate the general principle of her construction. She was driven by three propellers and three independent engines, and was easily handled. During the gale she only required one man at the wheel. She displaced nearly 4,000 tons, measured 235 feet in length, 153 feet in extreme width, and drew only 6½ feet.