If the speeds of the Fleets are equal, how can this be done? The heads of both lines will be abreast and the fire will only be given and returned ship for ship. But suppose you have a division of ships in your Fleet which go much faster than any of your other ships or of your enemy’s ships. These ships will be certainly able to draw ahead and curl round the head of the enemy’s line. More than that, as they draw ahead they will repeat in a much more effective fashion the advantage of an overlapping tail, because the ships at the head of the enemy’s line will have to bear the fire of the overlapping ships as well as the fire of those which are lying opposite to them, and therefore two or three ships might be firing on every one of the leading ships of the enemy, thus smashing to pieces the head of the enemy’s line and throwing his whole formation into confusion. Here then in simple outline is the famous argument for the Fast Division. A squadron of ships possessing a definite superiority of speed could be so disposed in the approaching formation of your own Fleet as to enable you, whichever way the enemy might deploy, to double the fire after certain interval upon the head of his line, and also to envelop it and cross it and so force him into a circular movement and bring him to bay once and for all without hope of escape. Hitherto in all our battle plans this rôle had been assigned to the battle-cruisers. Their speed would certainly enable them to get there. But we must imagine that they would also be met by the enemy’s battle-cruisers, whereupon, as they say in the reports of the House of Commons ‘debate arising,’ they might easily fight a separate action of their own without relation to the supreme conflict. Further, the battle-cruisers, our beautiful ‘Cats,’ as their squadron was irreverently called,[18] had thin skins compared to the enemy’s strongest battleships, which presumably would head his line. It is a rough game to pit battle-cruisers against battleships with only seven or nine inches of armour against twelve or thirteen, and probably with a weaker gun-power as well.[19] Suppose, however, we could make a division of ships fast enough to seize the advantageous position and yet as strong in gun-power and armour as any battleship afloat. Should we not have scored almost with certainty an inestimable and a decisive advantage? The First Sea Lord, Sir Francis Bridgeman, fresh from the command of the Home Fleet, and most of his principal officers, certainly thought so. The Fast Division was the dream of their battle plans. But could we get such ships? Could they be designed and constructed? And here we came back again to Sir Philip Watts and Sir Henry Oram and the Ordnance Board and the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors.