What was the actual experience of ramming gained in peace-time? In ’68 Admiral Warden, commanding the Channel Fleet, reported: “So long as a ship has good way on her, and a good command of steam to increase her speed at pleasure, that ship cannot be what is called ‘rammed’; she cannot even be struck to any purpose so long as she has room, and is properly handled. The use of ships as rams, it appears to me, will only be called into play after an action has commenced, when ships, of necessity, are reduced to a low rate of speed--probably their lowest.” As time progressed the chances of ramming certainly grew less. Yet Lissa and Hampton Roads continued to influence opinion to such a degree, as to lead to a glorification of ram tactics; in the press, and in the technical institutions which had now come into being, the ram retained a lustre which it no longer deserved. So long as artillery was feeble and gunnery of low efficiency, and so long as speeds of ships were slow and manœuvring power restricted, the ram was of great potential value. As these conditions changed, the value of the ram declined. But for a time it was actually in question which of the two forms of power, the steam engine or the gun, would ultimately exert the greater influence as a weapon in action. The subject of a Prize Essay for 1872 was, “The Manœuvres and System of Tactics which Fleets of Ships should adopt, to develop the powers of the Ram, Heavy Artillery, Torpedoes, etc., in an action in the open sea”; and it was the opinion of the prize-winner, Commander G. H. Noel, that the ram was at that time fast supplanting the gun in importance. “The serious part of a future naval attack,” wrote Captain Colomb, in _Lessons from Lissa_, “does not appear to be the guns, but the rams.” And the French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the principal weapon in naval combats--the _ultima ratio_ of maritime warfare.” “There is a new warfare,” said Scott Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her alongside, but, Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.” And he predicted fleets of high-speed vessels, equipped with powerful rams and twin-screw engines, in which both guns and armour were merely of secondary importance. And writers on tactics discerned future squadrons in action charging each other after the manner of heavy cavalry.