only maintained by comparatively small guns, told its own tale. Ramming only sent one ship down as the immediate result of the blow, but the moral effect of the fear of being rammed was very great, as no crew, seeing an enemy making straight for their ship, could foresee the result. In any case, the damage was sure to be considerable. Yet the Italian Admiral, when he had two splendid opportunities of ramming his opponents with his most powerful vessel, the _Affondatore_, deliberately turned his ship aside and shrank from delivering the blows. The battle was noteworthy for its demonstration of the importance of accurate gunnery; nearly all the Italian projectiles passed over the Austrian ships, and the Italian gunners were heedless whether they fired when their vessels were on the upward or the downward roll. The trained Austrian gunners fired to hit. Such lessons as the battle of Lissa was regarded as having presented were accepted, more or less, in the ironclads constructed in the five years immediately subsequent to that engagement. The _Hercules_, begun in 1866, launched in 1868, and completed in 1869, was intended to combine the best features of the _Black Prince_ and _Minotaur_. She was built entirely of iron, was 325 feet long between perpendiculars, 55 feet beam, and drew 34 feet 6 inches. The ram, a solid forging, weighed 5 tons, the armour plate was 8 to 9 inches thick, and weighed 1,145 tons; the weight of the bolts, nuts, and washers used in securing the armour plates was 73 tons, and there were also 91 tons of armour plates for the bulkheads, and 4 tons of bolts to secure them. The bulwarks were of wood, but below them were two iron strakes 6 inches thick, next a strake of 8-inch armour covering the lower portion of the main deck or central box battery, then two strakes of 6-inch plates, and then a belt of armour with a maximum thickness of 9 inches extending the length of the ship and amply protecting her some distance above and below the water-line; under this was another strake of 6-inch plates resting on the double skin of the hull itself. The 9-inch plates were backed by 10 inches of teak, inside which was an iron skin 1½ inches thick supported by vertical frames 10 inches deep and 2 feet apart, further stiffened by other beams. From the lower deck downwards the wing passages were strengthened with 18 to 20 inches of teak, and backed by a ¾-inch iron skin, which was also most substantially supported. The rest of the armour was backed by 10 or 12 inches of teak fastened to an iron skin 1½ inches thick, with a similar strengthening of vertical and longitudinal frames. She carried eight 10-inch 18-ton guns, four on either broadside, the two foremost and the two hindmost training through embrasures at the ends of the thwartship bulkheads and through recesses in the iron-clad sides. These four guns were established on what was known as Captain Scott’s turn-table and racers. Two 12½-ton guns were in protected batteries on the same