The idea of sails was not yet altogether dead. In deference to a strong naval opinion she was originally designed to carry two pole masts, with sails for steadying her motion in a seaway and as a standby in the event of her propelling machinery being disabled. But this scheme was modified owing to the possibility of falling masts and rigging interfering with the working of guns and screw in action. It was decided that she should be brig-rigged for peace service; and that, on an anticipation of war, she should be docked to allow the cruising masts to be removed and replaced by two short iron masts without yards for signalling and for carrying crows’ nests. But it was in the bold abandonment of armour for the ends of the ship and its concentration on the sides of the citadel that the _Inflexible_ design was most freely criticized. Armour, except in the form of an under-water protective deck, was not used at all forward and aft of the citadel. The ends of the ship were left unprotected, but subdivided; the compartments near the water-line formed watertight tanks filled with coals, stores, or--next to the side of the ship--cork. This criticism was directed from two directions. To many naval men the attempt to beat the gun by adding to the thickness of the armour was a game no longer worth the candle. The point of view, moreover, that the defensive power of a ship was accurately represented by the defensive power of an armour patch upon its side was condemned as altogether too partial and theoretical. The same fallacy was abroad in respect of guns. “Men were apt to think and speak as if the mounting of a single excessively heavy gun in a ship would make her exceptionally powerful, no matter what number of powerful, but still less powerful, guns were displaced to make room for it. The targets and guns at Shoeburyness were held to be real measures of the defensive and offensive powers of ships.”[170]