So rapidly the power of ordnance grew. It has been observed that of this feverish evolution of armour and artillery the circumstances were doubly remarkable. Firstly, no foreign pressure existed which called for such overleaping and experimental advances. The Americans still clung to their smooth-bore system; the French, who like us had adopted breech-loading guns, retained the system in their service and suffered for some years from its continuous inefficiency. Secondly, the navy was itself “unwillingly dragged into the cul-de-sac of experimental construction induced by the clamour of public opinion.” The type, the size of the gun which was to be embodied in our latest warships, was decided mainly by forces outside the navy, and changed from year to year. Naval architecture changed with it. The adoption of the succession of increasingly powerful rifled guns set experts at their wit’s ends devising warships suitable for carrying them; entailed continuous alterations both in the armaments of new ships and in the design of the new ships themselves; but also, as it happened, had the effect of giving this country a mastery over naval material which it has never since surrendered. The type having been decided for each individual vessel, there remained the question of the disposition of the armament. Two main considerations guided the evolution of the ironclads of this period in respect of the disposition of their guns: one mainly tactical, the other mainly constructive. It appears probable that, from the date of Trafalgar onward, the limitations of merely broadside fire had been realized; that the end-on attack, such as had obtained in the supreme actions fought by Nelson and Rodney, had shown the weakness of the broadside ship in ahead fire and had made obvious the anomaly that, in all ships-of-the-line, the course of the ship, the direction in which the attack was made, was the very direction in which gunfire was least powerful, if not altogether non-existent. With the coming of steam and the consequent growth of the ram and ramming tactics, this anomaly was more and more apparent; and from the _Warrior_ onwards each new type presented an enhanced effort to provide, particularly, ahead fire. The growth of the gun materially assisted this effort. Ahead fire increased, between the years 1860 and 1880, from zero to a large proportion of the total fire. The broadside ship was for a time abandoned.