WE are accustomed to think of the armour-clad war-ship as entirely a thing of to-day, or at any rate of the last fifty or sixty years. This is, however, not altogether correct. Armour is not necessarily steel or iron--witness the derivation of "cuirass" from the French _cuir_, i.e. "leather". A French battleship is called _cuirassé_. Protective devices of various kinds and materials have been used for hundreds, nay thousands, of years for the defence of ships specially designed for fighting purposes, though never, it must be admitted, so generally and extensively as at the present day. Raw hides were constantly used in ancient and mediæval times to protect ships and the wooden towers used in sieges on shore. Thick felt was also utilized for this purpose. The Normans hung their galleys with this material in a battle with the Saracens off Palermo in 1071, and it played not only a defensive but a decorative part in the equipment of the big "dromons" of the Saracens and Byzantines, which were covered with thick woollen cloth soaked in vinegar to render it fire-proof, and hung with mantlets of red and yellow felt--a rather gaudier war-jacket than the slate-grey of our "Dreadnoughts". Whatever the advantages of felt, there were naval constructors who stood fast by the old "adage", "There's nothing like leather". Thus, at the siege of Tyre in 1171 and the forcing of the entrance of the Nile in 1218, an extensive use was made of a species of small craft known as "barbots" or "duck-backs", whose crews were protected by a strong domed deck or roof covered with leather. Again, in 1276, Pedro III of Aragon _cuirassed_ two of his biggest ships with leather--probably raw hides--before sending them to engage the fleet of Charles of Anjou. Lead was also used for ship armour in mediæval times. It is said that the great dromon captured by Richard I off Beyrout had some kind of leaden plating. Later on, this heavy metal preceded copper as a sheathing for the under-water portions of ships: the _Grande Françoise_, launched in 1527, was lead-sheathed from her keel to the first wale above her water-line. Three years later than this date a regular "lead-clad" was launched at Nice, where she had been built to the order of the Knights of Malta, who had not very long before been driven out of Rhodes by the Turks. This big vessel, the _Santa Anna_, was a regular "Dreadnought" in her day. While as fast as other unprotected vessels of her time, she was heavily plated with lead, fastened to her sides with brazen bolts, from her upper deck down to her keel; and this armour was so strengthened by the thick backing of her timbers that, "having been many times engaged, and received much cannonading, she was never pierced below the bulwarks". She carried fifty heavy guns, besides numerous smaller pieces, of which not a few were carried aloft in her many fighting-tops.