This produced the "Royal Sovereign" class, of over 14,000 tons displacement, a great advance in size on any ships which had preceded them. They created a considerable sensation at the time of their appearance, especially the _Royal Sovereign_ herself, the first of them. My own first sight of her was somewhere in the Irish Sea, not far from the Isle of Man. I was serving on board H.M.S. _Triumph_ in the naval manoeuvres of 1892. The _Royal Sovereign_ passed us just at the time tea was going on in the wardroom, which would be between half-past three and four, and I remember how everybody rushed up on deck to get a look at the new marvel in shipbuilding. The _Royal Sovereign_ became practically the regulation type of battleship until the advent of the "Dreadnoughts", though of course each successive batch was an improvement on the preceding one in speed, protection, and gun-power. All had four heavy guns in low barbettes, covered with armoured hoods which revolved with the guns--so they may be said to have been a combination of turret and barbette. The single exception was the _Hood_ in the "Royal Sovereign" batch, which carried her four heavy guns in two regular turrets. All had secondary batteries, whose guns were distributed in armoured casemates at considerable intervals from each other, and all had a couple of military masts, with one or two fighting-tops on each, armed with light rapid-fire guns. This fine series of battleships amounted to forty in all, and formed a homogeneous and magnificent fleet, the like of which the world had never seen. Nearly all had a displacement of from 14,000 to 15,000 tons, and a speed of from 17 to 18 knots. Most are still in service, and though they have been put rather in the background by our "Dreadnoughts" and "Super-Dreadnoughts", we may still be very proud of them.