But, acting upon expert advice and influence, doubtless, by the remembrance of the _Birkenhead_ and _Simoon_ fiasco, the government still felt unable to sanction the use of iron, and it was not until news of the laying down of the _Gloire_ reached England that a decision was made to adopt the new material, both as armour and for the hulls of warships. The high protagonist of timber-built ships, it was shortly afterwards revealed, was Sir Howard Douglas: the most strenuous advocate of iron was John Scott Russell. For years, it appeared, Sir Howard had been the influential and successful adviser of the government against the adoption of iron. “I was consulted by Sir Robert Peel,” he wrote in 1860, “on his accession to the government, as to the use and efficiency of a certain half-dozen iron frigates, two of which were finished, and four constructing by contract. I stated in reply that vessels wholly constructed of iron were utterly unfit for all the purposes of war, whether armed or as transports for the conveyance of troops.” In the same paper he stated the arguments on which he had tendered this advice; and these arguments appeared so fallacious, and the facts on which they were based so disputable, as to seem to call for some reply from the builders of iron ships. Sir Howard had certainly strayed far from science in his unsupported statements as to the calamitous effects of iron if used for warships; and unfortunately he had allowed himself to stigmatize the _Great Eastern_, as representative of iron ships generally, as “an awful roller,” and as never having attained anything like her calculated speed. Scott Russell made a violent reply. “After establishing that Sir H. Douglas’s conclusions are the reverse of the truth,” he began, “I shall proceed to establish that the future navy of England must be an iron navy. That its construction must be founded on facts and principles, which Sir H. Douglas’s writings ignore, and his deductions contradict; and I believe I shall prove that if iron ships had been introduced at the time when Sir Howard says he sedulously and systematically opposed their introduction, the money which has been spent on a wooden fleet about to become valueless would have given England a fleet greatly more powerful than the combined navies of the world.”[163]