high speed, great coal capacity, large sail power, lofty freeboards, seaworthiness, steadiness of gun platform, small size, shallow draught, and comparative invisibility to an enemy’s gunners.[41] As it was manifestly impossible to build ships which should meet the requirements of all the nation’s advisers and be suitable to be sent to perform all kinds of duties anywhere, armoured ships began to be constructed of special types according to the work expected of them. The first division was into battleships, armoured cruisers, and coast defence ships. As the result of Captain Coles’s advocacy of the turret system, which he began in 1861, the Admiralty, when converting a number of old and new wooden ships into ironclads, had one of them, the _Royal Sovereign_, cut down, covered with armour, and given four armoured revolving turrets placed on the upper deck in the middle line of the ship. She marked the conversion of the Admiralty to the new order of things which steam power and iron armour in combination had rendered possible. One step in the process of conversion was that sail power was no longer considered necessary in fighting vessels, another was that the combatant part of every ship intended for heavy fighting should be afforded as much protection as possible, and a third step was that the guns should be few in number, of considerable power, and so disposed as to have the widest possible range. This ship could fire all her guns on either broadside, and also had a direct fire ahead and astern. She started her career as a 131-gun line-of-battle ship, but after her alterations she carried five 12-ton muzzle-loading guns, of which two were in the foremost turret and one each in the others. She was also the first of the converted vessels to be given a steel protective deck, in her case two inches thick, but it was not curved so as to place the edges below the water-line, and it consequently would not have afforded any protection to the vessel had a shot penetrated the armour at the water-line. Her low freeboard would have rendered her difficult to hit, and she would have been able to approach an enemy and deliver a telling fire at comparatively short range without running undue risk of receiving much damage in return. [Illustration: THE “PRINCE ALBERT” (SISTER SHIP TO THE “ROYAL SOVEREIGN”) AS CONVERTED TO A TURRET SHIP. _From the Model in the Royal Naval College, Greenwich._] [Illustration: H.M.S. “MINOTAUR.” _Photograph by Symonds & Co., Portsmouth._] The dimensions of the first British turret ship compare curiously with those turret ships which followed her in rapid succession, both in the British and other navies. She was 240 feet 7 inches in length, with an extreme beam of 62 feet and a draught aft of 24 feet 11 inches.