Even in the _Captain_ ahead fire was not found possible. In the original plans she had the low freeboard favoured by her designer; but in the later plans poops and forecastles were added to give the necessary sea-going qualities, and ahead fire was thereby sacrificed. Complete mastage was given her: iron masts in the form of tripods to avoid the use of shrouds and to give as clear an arc of fire as possible. The rigging was all stopped short at, and worked from, a narrow flying deck which was built above the turrets. This flying deck provided a working space for the crew, who in a moderately rough sea would not be able to make use of the low upper deck. [Illustration: THE _MONARCH_ From a photograph by Symonds, Portsmouth] On the night of September 6th, 1870, the _Captain_ capsized in a heavy sea off C. Finisterre. In St. Paul’s Cathedral the memorial brass, erected in commemoration of this disaster, records that the _Captain_ was built in deference to public opinion expressed in parliament and through other channels, and in opposition to the views and opinions of the Controller and his department; and that the evidence all tended to show that they generally disapproved of her construction. § The difficulty of combining the turret system with a full rig of masts and sails had for a long time been recognized. Some eighteen months before the loss of the _Captain_, the Admiralty, in the presence of the increasing efficiency of steam machinery, had decided to construct a mastless sea-going turret ship. American experience greatly influenced this decision. In America, where the principle of machinery for propulsion and for working the guns had been accepted with a greater readiness than in Europe, the line of development had been more direct. From the original _Monitor_ a whole series of derivatives had been produced, and from coast-defence vessels of a single turret advance had been made to ocean-going mastless turret ships of low freeboard, carrying the largest smooth-bore guns. These ocean monitors, lacking though they did some features which were considered indispensable in British warships, yet exerted an undoubted influence upon our own construction. Weakly designed in many respects, with small fuel capacity, and unsteady as gun platforms, they were regarded by some writers as the true progenitors of the class of warship which now superseded the masted vessels of the ’sixties.