CHAPTER XVI BATTLESHIPS Perhaps the greatest war invention of modern times was the British battleship _Dreadnought_. Of course, there have been battleships for centuries. In history we read of fleets consisting of so many "ships of the line" or in other words "line-of-battle" ships, meaning ships which were considered capable of taking their place in "line of battle," as distinguished from "frigates" which correspond to the modern "cruiser." The "line-of-battle" ships were stout and strong with plenty of guns. They went into the thick of the fight, since they were capable of giving and receiving hard blows, while the lighter frigates hovered around seeking an opening to use their higher speed to cut off stragglers or to prey upon merchant ships. Although so different in form and material that a sailor of the old days, could he revisit the earth, would not recognize them, the battleships of to-day are the real descendants of the "line-of-battle" ships of those times. They are stout and strong, with the heaviest guns, capable of giving and taking the hardest knocks, and it is they who form the backbone of the fleet. As we saw in the accounts of the battle of Jutland, the German Fleet tackled our cruisers and lighter vessels but discreetly withdrew when the battleships came up. Looked at in another way, we may say that a battleship is a floating fortress. Its speed is not great, when compared with other ships, but it is constructed to carry enormous guns. It is also armoured with steel plates of great thickness and of special hardness placed upon the outside of the hull so as to cover its vital parts and protect them from the shells of the enemy. Its chief function, we may say, is to carry its guns: to enable it to do this with safety, it is armoured: and to enable it to get to grips with its enemies it has engines and boilers. Those are the three features of greatest importance in a battleship, its guns, its armour and its engines. All else is of minor importance. It is strange to think how short a time the iron or steel ship has been with us. In the American Civil War, for instance, only about sixty years ago, the battleships were made of wood. It was during that war that Ericcson thought of the idea of putting iron plates to protect the sides of a ship from the hostile shots, and from that improvised armouring of a wooden ship has arisen the iron-clad or, more correctly, steel-clad monsters of to-day. It is just about fifty years ago since the last iron-clad wooden battleship was launched for the British Navy. Her name was _Repulse_, and she took the water in 1868. With a tonnage of 6190 and a horse-power of 3350, she had a speed of 12 knots. Her armouring of iron was in parts 4½ inches and in other parts 6 inches thick, while she carried 20 guns of sizes which to-day would seem mere toys. If all her guns were discharged together she would throw a total weight of 2160 lbs. of projectiles.