Like the _King Edwards_, various boilers were given to them. All of them have one-fifth cylindrical boilers. The _Devonshire_ and _Carnarvon_ were otherwise given Niclausse; _Antrim_ and _Hampshire_, Yarrow; _Argyll_, Babcock; and _Roxburgh_, Dürr. The designed speed was exceeded by all on trials, but none have proved successful steamers ever since. They were completed between 1904 and 1905. These were the last ships to be designed by Sir William White. He resigned his position from ill-health; but, like his predecessors, left under a cloud--at any rate, with his services not really appreciated. He had created a magnificent fleet; but its very magnificence made many of his designs look poor on paper against any foreign construction of less displacement, but--_on paper_--of equal or superior qualities. It is the fate of the naval architect in peace-time to be judged on paper with small regard to issues such as nautical qualities, constructional strength, and a score of other details which are not to be expressed by any statistical formulæ, but yet make all the difference between efficiency and the absence of it. [Illustration: EARLY TYPE OF “27 KNOT” DESTROYERS.] Sir William White’s period of office was marked by an almost complete naval revolution. It began with the quick-firer and the disappearance of the low freeboard battleships. It ended with the coming of submarines, fire-control, and wireless. In between, it included the coming of the destroyer, the re-birth of the armoured cruiser; the arrival of the water-tube boiler, new forms of hull, unprecedented advances in both guns and armour--in fact, almost every conceivable change. Through these troubled waters with a steady hand and cool brain Sir William White guided the destiny of the Fleet and the millions of pounds expended in shipbuilding. Already his era is “the pre-_Dreadnought_” one, and to present-day ideas the term “pre-_Dreadnought_” is already very nearly akin to “pre-historic.” His creations preserved the peace, for which very reason they failed to secure glory. Already some have gone to the scrap-heap, and others are well on their way thither to join the Reed and Barnaby ships in that oblivion to which modern _Dreadnoughts_ will just as surely go in their season. More might be said: but _cui bono?_ Such public epitaph as Sir William White received when he retired was of the “about time, too!” order. The creator of the finest fleet that the world has ever seen left office with less honour and no more public interest than did half-a-dozen mediocre admirals who had chanced to fly their flags in some of his creations. It is not given for the stage manager to stand in the lime-light reserved for the principal actors. But the historian of a hundred years hence, placing great Englishmen in perspective, will assuredly place Sir William White far ahead of many who loom greater in the public eye to-day. _GUNS IN THE ERA._