During the same month, Mr. William White, Chief Constructor to the Admiralty, read a paper at the Mansion House dealing with the design of modern men-of-war, which marked an era in shipbuilding. Sir William White restored to the ship of war that symmetry and beauty of design which {351} had been lost during the transition from sails to steam. The transition vessels were nightmares. Sir William White designed ships. A man of genius, of a refined and beautiful nature, a loyal servant of the Admiralty, to which he devoted talents which, applied outside the Service, would have gained him wealth, his recent death was a great loss to his country. The later Victorian Navy is his splendid monument: and it may yet be that history will designate those noble ships as the finest type of steam vessels of war. About the same time, I brought forward another motion in the House of Commons, to abolish obsolete vessels, of which I specified fifty-nine, and to utilise the money saved in their maintenance, in new construction. The scheme was carried into execution by degrees. In June of 1887, I invited a large party of members of the House of Commons to visit Portsmouth, where they were shown something of the Navy. In December of the same year, speaking in public, I affirmed the following principles: that in time of war our frontiers were the ports of the enemy; that our main fleets could be required to watch those ports; and that the strength of the Fleet required should be calculated upon the basis of the work it would be required to perform. I also urged that the line of communications should be instituted, by means of establishing a system of signalling between the ships of the Navy and the ships of the mercantile marine, and between all ships and the shore. At that time there was no such system. The Press and the public received the exposition of these elementary principles of organisation for war as a complete novelty; by many they were welcomed like a revelation; circumstances which exemplify the general ignorance prevailing at the time. Of even more significance were the official declarations on the subject. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, had publicly stated in November, 1886, that this country had more ships in commission than the {352} three other European Naval Powers next in order of strength. The statement was correct; but among the ships in commission were included many vessels of no fighting value, such as the _Indus_, _Asia _and _Duke of Wellington_. As an estimate of comparative fighting strength, the statement, like many another official statement before and since, required qualification; as I remarked in the House of Commons in the course of my reply to Lord George Hamilton.