Even after the launch of the _Warrior_ the Admiralty ordered a few wooden ships, but in 1866 decided upon the adoption of iron warships. One of the last and certainly one of the best to look at of the wooden armour-plated ships was the steam frigate _Lord Clyde_, but as a sailer she had many defects, of which slowness was not the least. In her case the armour extended to the ends of the ship, and nowhere was it less than 4½ inches in thickness, while at the water-line the armour plates were 5½ inches thick. The sides of the entire battery deck from stem to stern, and from 3 feet below to 3 feet above the ports, were plated with 6-inch armour, of which one thickness of 1½ inches was bolted to the ship’s frame, and the other, of 4½ inches, was placed upon the outside of the planking. The armour went 6 feet below the water-line amidships, and for the sake of lightness was only 4½ feet deep at the ends. The gun ports were 8 feet 9 inches above the water-line, or 2 feet 6 inches higher than those of _La Gloire_. She was the first vessel in the British Navy to carry an armour-plated bow battery on the main deck. This armour plating also was carried upwards to protect an upper-deck bow battery mounted under the ship’s forecastle. This arrangement enabled her to fire four guns ahead, while exposing to the enemy’s fire only the curved surface of her bow armour. She also had a distance of 15 feet between each gun port on her main deck. Her engines of 1,000 h.p. nominal, and 6,000 indicated, drove a two-bladed Griffith’s adjustable propeller 28 feet in diameter. From 1860 to 1866 ten broadside ironclads were added to the navy, the last and the largest being the _Northumberland_ of 10,780 tons. All these vessels, except the _Hector_ and _Minotaur_, carried muzzle-loaders, but these two had breechloaders of the early Armstrong screw type, which were soon superseded by more powerful weapons. The _Minotaur_ carried fifty guns, the _Northumberland_ twenty-six. Then followed the abandonment of the broadside and the confinement of the heavy armament of an ironclad to a central battery protected by thick iron side armour and armoured bulkheads, the only other portion of the ship to be thus protected being that near the water-line. The first of these in the British Navy was the _Bellerophon_, launched in 1865; she was of 7,550 tons displacement, and her engines, of 6,520 h.p. indicated, drove one screw and gave her a speed of fourteen knots. Her thickest armour was 6 inches, and her heaviest gun a 12-ton muzzle-loader. Altogether she carried fourteen guns, including one in a small armoured citadel in the bows.