The _Hercules_ was the first of her class to be given only one mast. Of the centre-line turrets, one is forward and the other two are aft, and of these two the foremost can fire over that aft of it. This arrangement of the turrets makes it possible for ten of these immense guns to be fired on either broadside. There are also twenty 4-inch quick-firers and three submerged 21-inch torpedo tubes. Her maximum coal capacity is 2,700 tons and she can also carry oil fuel in her double bottom. She is a sister vessel to the _Neptune_ and _Colossus_. These three vessels are protected against attack by aerial warships. Like all the rest of the _Dreadnoughts_, the _Neptune_ was constructed in unusually quick time, only two years elapsing from the laying of the keel until she was ready for being commissioned. She has been described as a 30 per cent. improvement on the _Dreadnought_, but the rapidity of her construction made her a cheaper vessel than the other, her cost per ton of displacement working out at £86.85, as against £101.29 for the _Dreadnought_. The _Monarch_ took the water with a launching weight of about 11,500 tons, a record for a warship, after having been just a year on the stocks. This weight included the main structure, the boilers, funnels, funnel uptakes, casings, and a large quantity of auxiliary machinery and armour. Her eighteen boilers weighed 23 tons each, and her two funnels, which are 53 feet high above the upper deck, weigh 18 tons apiece. The deck-houses and bridges were also in place, and she was in other respects in a forward condition. The whole of the work was carried out in 220 working days. This shows what can be done in the private ship-building yards of this country. Builders of warships now find it more economical to put as much work as possible into the hull before launching it, modern dockyard methods rendering this comparatively easy. A great boiler is raised bodily and lifted into position without trouble, and even items weighing 20 to 30 tons or more are lifted and deposited where wanted with no more trouble than if they weighed so many hundredweights.