“The tiller was necessarily above the water-line and was outside of the cover of the armour. The wooden line-of-battle ships, with which the designers of these first iron-cased ships were familiar, had required no special water-line protection, and when wheel ropes or tiller were shot away the ship did not cease to be able to fight. The line-of-battle ships, which they knew so well, had a lower, or gun deck about four feet above the water-line, and an orlop deck about three feet below the water-line. Between these two decks the ship’s sides were stouter than in any other part, and shot did not easily perforate them. When a shot did enter there, between wind and water, as it was called, ample provision was made to prevent the serious admission of water. “In this between-deck space the sides of the ship were kept free from all erections or obstructions. The ‘wing passages’ on the orlop were clear, from end to end of the ship, and they were patrolled by the carpenter’s crew, who were provided with shot plugs of wood and oakum and sail cloth with which to close any shot holes. As against disabled steering gear there were spare tillers and tiller ropes, and only injury to the rudder head itself was serious.” It is easy to-day to indicate where the old-time designers erred; and later on they realised and repaired their error with commendable promptitude. The really interesting point is that British designers evolved the ideal thing for the day, while the French evolved the idea of the ideal thing for the to-morrow. Unhappily for the latter, their evolution was unable to survive its birth till the day of its utility. _La Gloire_, the first French ironclad, was broken up more years ago than any can remember; the _Warrior_ and the _Black Prince_, though long ago reduced to hulk service,[91] still float as sound as when in 1861 the _Warrior_ first took the water. To the French belongs the honour of realising what armour protection might mean; but to England goes the credit of reducing the idea to practical application. The _Warrior_ was designed by Messrs. Scott Russell and Isaac Watts, the Chief Constructor. Her length between perpendiculars was 380 feet. She carried originally a uniform armament of forty-eight 68-pounders smooth bores, weighing 95cwt. each. These fired shell and cast-iron spherical shot. The guns were carried as follows:--Main deck, thirty-eight, of which twelve were not protected by armour. On the upper-deck, ten, also unprotected. This armament was subsequently changed to two 110-pounder rifled Armstrongs on pivot mountings, and four 40-pounders on the upper-deck; while the main-deck battery was reduced to thirty-four guns. At a later date it was again altered to four 8-inch 9-ton M.L.R., and twenty-eight 7-inch 6½-ton M.L.R.