The germ of the central-battery idea may be seen, perhaps, in the belted _Minotaur_, in which, in order to allow the chase guns to be fought from behind armour, a transverse armour bulkhead was worked, at a distance of some 25 feet aft of the bow. Had foreign influence not exerted itself it may be supposed with reason that from the _Minotaur_ the central battery would have been evolved. However this may be, the evolution was hastened by French initiative; for in each of the two wooden ships _Magenta_ and _Solferino_, laid down in ’59, was found a complete two-decked central battery whose whole depth was faced with armour for the protection of fifty-two 5-ton cannon, the rest of the ship’s water-line being protected by an armour belt much narrower than that of the _Gloire_. In imitation of this plan our own designs were prepared; and gradually, and only by a series of steps, we achieved what our rivals had obtained in a single stride. In ’63 Sir Edward Reed, at that time Mr. Reed, one of the graduates of the school which in ’48 had been established at Portsmouth Dockyard, was appointed to the office of Chief Constructor of the Navy. Possessed of broad and original views and gifted to an unusual degree in the arts of exposition and argument, he made himself responsible for designs of warships differing widely from their large and unwieldy precursors. The first of these was the _Bellerophon_, a short and easily manœuvred, fully rigged belt-and-battery ship, carrying ten 12-ton Armstrong guns for broadside fire in the battery, and two 6-ton guns for ahead fire in a small armoured battery in the bows. Not only in the disposition of her armament was the _Bellerophon_ different from all former ships. She was a radical departure from existing practice in many important respects. Constructionally, she was built on a new “bracket-frame” system designed to give great girder strength for small expenditure of weight, already in vogue for mercantile shipping. The use of watertight compartments was extended as a defence against an enemy ram, the system of double bottoms was extended as a consequence of the introduction of the torpedo. A powerful ram was carried, but the bow took a new form; a U- instead of a V-section was adopted in order to give buoyancy and thus minimize the tendency to plunge which was inherent in a fine-bowed ship; the section near the water-line being fined away so as to form a cut-water. Steel was largely used instead of iron, with a consequent saving of weight. A novel trim was given her--six feet by the stern--to give a deep immersion for the powerful screw and to assist the ship in turning quickly on her heel under the action of the balanced rudder; an adjustment which experience showed to have a detrimental effect on the propulsive efficiency.