In the _Naval Chronicle_ for that year we have an account of a vessel designed by a son of the General Congreve who is famous as being the inventor of the "Congreve rocket", once a somewhat highly esteemed missile. The ship--it does not appear whether it was actually built or not--was intended for the attack of the French invasion flotillas which were blockaded inside their ports by our fleets. It was to have sloping sides covered with iron plates and bars, proof against any gun of the period, and was to be armed with four big mortars and the same number of 42-pound carronades. Her rudder, anchors, and cables were to be entirely under water, and so not exposed to hostile artillery, while she was to be rigged in such a way that masts, yards, and sails could be lowered or erected in a quarter of an hour. When these were "struck" and housed under the armour she could be moved--probably at a very slow pace--by oars pulled by forty men, worked entirely under cover. Fulton, the famous American inventor, who built a submarine boat, and invented mines and torpedoes and other weapons of war, turned his attention to the protection of war-vessels. He was probably responsible for a little paddle-wheel-propelled vessel for towing torpedoes, which is described as being covered with 1/2-inch iron plates, "not to be injured by shot". Later on he built a steam frigate, which he called the _Demologos_, or "Voice of the People". This relied on 13-feet-thick sides to protect her crew, but was not armour-plated. She was blown up by accident in 1829, and replaced by the _Fulton the Second_, which seems to have been to some extent protected by iron armour. But it was not till towards the end of the Crimean War that real steam-propelled armour-clad ships appeared, in the shape of a series of slow and unwieldy floating batteries, specially designed for the attack of the massive Russian fortifications. If anyone would like to see what these were like--that is, as regards their hulls, for the masts have long since disappeared--he has only to travel as far as Chatham Dockyard and ask the policeman on duty at the main gate to direct him to the _Thunderbolt_ pier.