“It may be proper in this connection to draw attention to the fact that the probable employment of torpedoes in a future naval war has not been lost sight of in carrying out these structural improvements. Up to the present time torpedoes have been used almost solely for coast and harbour defence, and have, under those circumstances, proved most destructive, as a glance through the reports of the operations of the Federal Fleet at Charleston and other Confederate ports will show. It is still doubtful, however, whether these formidable engines of war can be supplied with anything like the same efficiency at sea under the vastly different conditions which they will there have to encounter. The Americans have, it is true, proposed to fit torpedo-booms to their unarmoured ocean-cruisers, such as the _Wampanoag_, and a naval war would doubtless at once bring similar schemes into prominence. Nothing less than actual warfare can be expected to set the question at rest; but whatever the result of such a test may be, it is obviously a proper policy of construction to provide as much as possible against the dangers of torpedoes; and it must be freely admitted that the strongest ironclad yet designed, although practically impenetrable by the heaviest guns yet constructed, would be very liable to damage from the explosion of a submerged torpedo. No ship’s bottom can, in fact, be made strong enough to resist the shock of such an explosion; and the question consequently arises: How best can the structure be made to give safety against a mode of attack which cannot fail to cause a more or less extensive fracture of the ship’s bottom, even if it does no more serious damage? In our recent ships, as I have said, attempts have been made to give a practical answer to this question. Seeing that the bottom must inevitably be broken through by the explosion of a torpedo which exerts its full force upon the ship, it obviously becomes necessary to provide, as far as possible, against the danger resulting from a great in-flow of water. This is the leading idea which has been kept in view in arranging the structural details of our ships to meet this danger, and the reader cannot fail to perceive that the double bottom and watertight subdivisions described above are as available against injury from torpedoes as they are against the injuries resulting from striking the ground.” [Illustration: THE _BELLEROPHON_, COMPLETED 1866.] Details of the _Bellerophon_ were as follows:-- Displacement--7,550 tons. Length--300 ft. between perpendiculars. Beam--56ft. 1in. H.P.--6,520. Mean Draught--26ft. 7ins. Guns--Ten 12-ton M.L.R., five 6½-ton M.L.R. (changed in 1890 to ten 8-in. 14-ton B.L.R., four 6-in., six 4-in. ditto.)