The _Thunderbolt_ is one of these old ironclads which has come down to the useful but inglorious duty of acting as a landing-stage in the River Medway. Neither she nor any of her English sisters was ever in action; they were too late in the field--or rather the water. But several of the French floating batteries, almost precisely similar vessels, took a prominent part in the bombardment of the Russian fortress of Kinburn, where their fire proved most effective. As for the shot and shell from the Russian forts, they rebounded from their sloping iron sides like so many tennis-balls. These armoured batteries were, however, slow, clumsy, flat-bottomed affairs, with no speed under steam or sail and but moderately seaworthy. It remained for the French--whose models in the "days of wood and hemp" were generally better than our own--to go another step forward and produce a regular sea-going ironclad. This was the famous _La Gloire_. She was no beauty. She had an extremely ugly bow and was very short in proportion to her beam. She was not a new ship, but the old two-decker _Napoleon_ cut down, lengthened, and covered along her whole side with iron plating 5 inches in thickness. She took two years to finish, and was not ready till the end of 1859. She naturally created a good deal of excitement, and it was at once seen that we must follow suit. But our naval men did not see why they need be content with so unsightly a war-ship. They had been much impressed, a year or two before, by the _Niagara_, a fine United States frigate which had visited the Thames, and which had what was then regarded as the immense length of 337 feet. Our constructors, therefore, were rather inclined to follow her lines than those of _La Gloire_, and turned out the _Warrior_, a magnificent-looking vessel, not improvised out of an old wooden ship, but entirely built of iron. Her armour-plating, however, did not extend from bow to stern, but only covered her battery amidships, which occupied somewhere about two-thirds of her total length. The _Warrior_ was 382 feet long, and fitted with a not very obtrusive ram. As a matter of fact, it was not perceptible at all, since the stem was finished off with a very graceful swan bow adorned with one of the finest figure-heads ever executed. She was fully rigged, did 14-1/2 knots under steam at her trials, and carried an armament of thirty-eight 68-pounders, then the heaviest guns afloat. In short, the _Warrior_ was a triumph of British shipbuilding, and a worthy ancestor of the magnificent armour-clad fleet which has played such an important part in the history of the nation. She had one sister, the _Black Prince_, after which a few smaller ironclads were built, the _Defence_, _Resistance_, _Hector_, and _Valiant_. Next came four bigger ships, the _Achilles_, _Minotaur_, _Northumberland_, and _Agincourt_. These were all improved _Warriors_, armoured along their whole length, with ram bows, a heavier armament, and no less than five masts.