No more ships were built on such lines, but about this period an important innovation was made by the introduction of a class of ships in which the four heavy guns were carried in a couple of high barbettes with sloping sides, instead of in turrets. The whole gun was exposed, but not its mountings or crew, since the top of the barbette was closed in by a flat shield which revolved with the guns. These were the _Collingwood_, _Camperdown_, _Howe_, _Rodney_, _Anson_, and _Benbow_. The last-named had one 111-ton gun in each barbette, instead of a pair of rather smaller cannon. Amidships, between the barbettes, were secondary batteries of half a dozen 6-inch guns (the _Benbow_ had ten). These were entirely unprotected except from fire coming from ahead or astern, from which they were covered by armoured bulkheads reaching across the ship immediately behind each barbette. I well recollect my first sight of these ships, which had all been completed during four years I had been away on a distant station, though, as a matter of fact, I had seen the _Rodney_ launched before I left England. I was on board H.M.S. _Aurora_, a new cruiser which had been specially commissioned for the naval manoeuvres. We left Plymouth and proceeded to Spithead, where a large fleet had been assembled to do honour to the Kaiser--with whom we were then on rather more friendly terms than latterly, and who came over at the head of a squadron of his war-ships. He was much more anxious to exhibit German war-ships to the British fleet than his naval commanders seem to have been during the Great War. We got into Spithead about six on a morning when there was a thick drizzle almost amounting to a fog, and as one after another of these monsters--as we thought them then--loomed up out of the mist and vanished astern, they presented a most impressive picture of strength and solidity. They really did look in the dim light like "castles afloat"! But they were not by any means among our most successful efforts. No one liked the unprotected secondary batteries, and thought of the well-armoured _Devastation_ and her sisters. _They_ had no secondary batteries--but they were so well armoured that these were not necessary, except for purposes of offence. This consideration doubtless led to the building of the _Nile_ and _Trafalgar_, in which the four big guns were carried in turrets and the secondary armament in an armoured battery amidships. They were extremely well-protected ships and would have given a very good account of any ship of their day. But the tendency was ever for bigger ships, which allowed, generally speaking, for greater speed, greater radius of action, greater seaworthiness, and afforded a steadier gun platform.