the floating batteries used by the French and Spanish against Gibraltar in 1782. Those were merely enormous hulks, destitute of masts, sails, or rigging; their sides were composed of solid carpentry, 6ft. 6ins. in thickness, and they carried from nine to twenty-four guns. When in action, streams of water were made to flow constantly over their decks and sides, but notwithstanding every precaution, such an overwhelming storm of shell and red-hot shot was poured upon them by the English garrison that they were all speedily burnt. Not so the _Devastation_, _La Lave_, and _La Tonnante_ before the Russian fortress above mentioned, on the memorable 14th October, 1855. At 9 p.m. they opened fire, and in an hour and twenty-five minutes the enemy was silenced, nearly all the gunners being killed, their pieces dismounted, and all the ramparts themselves being for the most part demolished. To accomplish this destruction in so short a space of time, the three batteries, each carrying eighteen fifty pounders (supported, of course, by the fire of the English vessels), advanced in very shallow water within 800 yards of the walls, receiving themselves very little damage in comparison with the immense havoc they occasioned.” From the above extract it is clear that the “impenetrable coat of mail” idea, popularly supposed to have led to the introduction of ironclads, never existed to any appreciable extent. Indeed, when the Committee, alluded to on an earlier page, concluded its labours in 1859, it merely recommended the conversion of nineteen more sailing ships into steamers. It was Sir John Pakington who decided to lay down a couple of “armoured steam frigates,” and to build them of iron instead of wood. The French _frégates blindées_ were wooden ships, armoured. John Scott Russell is said to have been Pakington’s chief adviser in this matter of building iron armoured ships and disregarding all the laborious conclusions of Captain Chads against iron hulls. As regards the general recommendations of the committee already referred to, these had resulted in 1861 in there being no less than sixty-seven wooden unarmoured ships of the line building or converting into “screw ships.” The two iron-plated steam frigates were decided on without any popular enthusiasm concerning them. Now and again retired Admirals paid surreptitious visits to the French “_blindées_” and returned with alarming reports; but, with the possible exception of flying machines, no epoch-making thing ever came in quite so quietly as the ironclad. The wildest dreamer saw nothing in it beyond a variation on existing types. The ironclad was something which, by carrying a great deal of weight, could keep out shell; beyond that no one seems to have had any particular ideals whatever, except perhaps Sir Edward Reed.