The _Collingwood_ was of 9150 tons displacement, 325 feet in length, 68 feet in breadth, and 15·7 knots speed. There was in her, for the first time in the navy, that particular disposition of guns which Captain Key had recommended in ’66: two guns at bow, two at stern, on turntables, and a strong broadside armament between them. In the end the adoption of a breech-loading system led to a larger barbette and a smaller battery armament: to 43-ton guns at bow and stern and only 6-inch guns on the broadsides; and in this way the final design differed more than did the original from the ’66 ideal. “The bow and stern guns were protected by barbette and other armour, but Key had required that some protection should be given to the turntables and the machinery for working them. Hydraulics had greatly increased the quantity and importance of this machinery, and as by its means the crews of the guns were very much diminished, we can imagine the admiral concurring in the change as a natural development of his principle. So we can understand him as now definitely concurring in the abandonment of sail power for first-class battleships.” In ’78 he had flown his flag in the _Thunderer_ at sea, and he had then experienced the reliability of the gun machinery and the difficulties attendant on the manœuvring of a modern fleet under sail. Both in armament and in disposition of armour the _Collingwood_ was a great but a natural advance on the citadel ships of the _Inflexible_ type. The symmetrical placing of the big gun turntables, one forward and one aft, proclaimed the advent of new tactical ideas--the recognition of the battleship as a unit which must take its place in the line with others, and the rejection of “end-on” methods of fighting which involved a concentration of bow-fire. The provision of the powerful secondary armament was a tribute to the growing efficiency of French torpedo craft, while at the same time serving, offensively, to force an enemy to protect himself against it: to spread his armour over as large a surface as possible in the attempt to preserve his stability in a protracted action. The concentration of armour on the fixed barbettes and on a partial belt over the central portion of the ship was in accordance with the _Inflexible_ arrangement. But, in consequence of the strictures which had been passed on that vessel and on the exposure of her large unprotected ends, the _Collingwood_ was given a longer belt, though not so thick. Fifty-four per cent of her length was covered with 18-inch compound armour, as compared with 42 per cent, and 24-inch armour, in the former ship. Although this longer belt appeared to confer greater longitudinal stability on the ship, its narrowness was such that it was of doubtful efficacy, as Sir Edward Reed was not slow to point out. So narrow was this belt, so big still remained the unarmoured ends, that the slight sinkage caused by their filling would bring the whole of the armour belt, he said, under