water. Thus all the advantage arising from a longer citadel was more than destroyed by this lowering of the armour, and, so great was the consequent danger of the vessel capsizing, that he hesitated to regard the _Collingwood_ as an armoured ship. The _Collingwood_ was laid down in July, 1880. But what was there to show that her design would be in any degree permanent? Was it safe to consider it sufficiently satisfactory to form the master-pattern for a number of new ships, urgently required? For a short time there was uncertainty. “The French type, where there were isolated armoured barbette towers generally containing single heavy guns placed at the ends and sides of the ships upon the upper deck, with broadside batteries of lighter guns, entirely unprotected by armour, upon the deck below, did not commend itself to the English naval mind, yet, in the sort of despair which possessed us, the new Board turned somewhat towards the French system. The _Warspite_ and _Impérieuse_ were laid down in 1881, and were again a new departure in British design.... It was intended to adhere to sail power in these new types, and it was only after they were approaching completion that the utter incongruity of the proposal was realized, and sail power was given up in the last of the armoured ships to which it was attempted to apply it.” But the Admiralty still wished, without alarming the public, to regain as soon as possible a safe balance of armoured construction over that of France. “There was no design before the Board which was more likely to perpetuate itself than that of the unlaunched _Collingwood_. Suppose a bold policy were adopted? Suppose it were assumed that the time had come when diversities of type were to cease, would it be made less likely by the frank abandonment of sail power?” The bold step was taken. Four more ships to the _Collingwood_ design were laid down in ’82, the five being thereafter spoken of as the “Admiral” class. “At the time, little note was taken of this very great step in advance. Even at this day it is scarcely remembered that this is the step which made possible, and led up to, our present great battle fleet, and that never before had so many as five first-class ironclads of a definite type been on the stocks together.... In the Admiral class there was the definite parting with sail power, the rejection of the tactical ideas brought to a climax in the _Inflexible_, and, above all, the definite adoption of the long-barrelled breech-loading rifled gun. Without question, we must say that we owe the Admiral class, and all that has followed, in great part to the enterprising and yet well-balanced mind that then governed the naval part of the Council at Whitehall.” §