Matters were in this experimental stage when the first engagement was fought between European fleets, each of which included sea-going ironclads. The battle of Lissa, in 1866, was no less remarkable for the crushing defeat which the Austrians inflicted on the Italians than for the fact that that defeat was against all that the naval experts had considered to be the natural order of things. The Italian fleet was more numerous than the Austrian; it had more ironclads, its armament was greater, it had a greater number of wooden warships of various sorts and sizes; but as a powerful offset to all these advantages it had an amount of muddle and disorganisation truly appalling. The Italian fondness for big ships and big guns was as much in evidence in the fleet of 1866 as in the immense armoured ships _Duilio_ and _Dandolo_, which that country built a few years later, and to which a more extended reference is made on another page. Its principal ships in the attack on Lissa and the subsequent engagement with the Austrian fleet were the _Re d’Italia_ and the _Re di Portogallo_--two American-built vessels of 5,700 tons, old measurement. They were plated with armour 7 inches thick. They were designed to carry, the former two 150-pounders, and thirty 6-inch guns and four smooth-bore guns; and the latter two 300-pounders, and twenty-six 6-inch guns. These ships were poorly constructed, and the design was so faulty that the rudders were left without protection and open to destruction by ramming or gun-fire--a weakness of which the Austrians took full advantage. There was also a turret ram called the _Affondatore_, 4,070 tons, built at Millwall, and armed with two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in two turrets, which was supposed to epitomise all the lessons of the American War. Her ram projected 26 feet, and what with this and her big guns and her thick armour, the Italians expected her to do wonders. As sea-boats the three were about equally bad. There were also two French-built small rams, _Terribile_ and _Formidabile_, of 2,700 tons. The French at that time favoured comparatively small ships with large rams for coast and harbour defence, giving them iron plating 4½ inches thick, and 6-inch rifled guns as their principal weapons. Of the broadside ironclads there were four, of about 4,700 tons each, and belted from stem to stern at the water-line. There were, besides, two armoured gunboats which carried two 150-pounder Armstrongs and some smaller guns. The Italian fleet also had a number of steam-engined wooden vessels. The Austrian fleet had six very indifferent ironclads, slow, none too well armed, smooth-bores of no great size predominating, and a few other vessels, mostly of wood, of little fighting value, but capable of holding in check the Italian wooden ships for a time at all events. The Austrian ships were the _Drache_, _Kaiser Maximilian_, _Prinz Eugen_, and _Salamander_, whose tonnage ranged from 3,400 to 3,800, each