Mention has been made in earlier pages of such splendid vessels as the _Hood_, _Trafalgar_, _Nile_ and _Royal Sovereign_, all of which in their day, not so long past, were considered to be unsurpassed, and by some to be unsurpassable. Their fighting efficiency is as great as the day they were launched, yet these and many others, equally good vessels, have been removed from the list of the Navy as obsolete and ere long will retire ingloriously to the scrap-heap. All these vessels have been launched since 1890, and however much one may deplore that such fine ships should be discarded, there is no denying that they are hopelessly outclassed by the _Dreadnoughts_, and that a dozen of them would not be a match for one of the latest _Orions_. Yet more than one of them was hailed as the last word in battleships, and there were some who asserted that they would prove to be the last big armoured ships to be built, as torpedo craft and protected cruisers would constitute the navies of the future. But that prophecy was made before the Battle of Tsushima was fought, and the lessons it taught were learnt. Protests by naval men against the relegation of these ships to the lists of the useless have been frequent, and it has been contended that some of these fine old battleships could have been sent to the Colonies to act as harbour-defence vessels. But the Colonies have shown no disposition to be satisfied with anything under the best that money can buy, and they have contended that if a ship be out of date it is no use to them, especially as any hostile power sending a ship out against them would probably send one of the best and newest and most powerful. The compound armour produced in 1879 enabled the thickness of armour carried to be reduced to 18 inches, and proved equal to the attacks of the 80-ton gun of the period, but was ultimately beaten by heavier guns and improved projectiles. All-steel armour was introduced in 1890, and was followed in 1892 by the super-carburising and subsequent chilling of the face of plates made of nickel steel. Five years later steel plates were made yet harder, until the 9-inch plate of the modern battleship was equal to a 13-inch plate of the early hardened type; or a 20-inch compound plate of the ’eighties, or a 26-inch wrought-iron plate of the ’sixties.[59]