TO THE READER
Many years ago the writer of these pages first conceived the idea that, as the heavy guns of a modern ironclad were, and must ever be, her decisive weapons, the chief thing to be attended to was to increase their rate and precision of fire, and that the power requisite for this purpose could readily and economically be obtained from the guns' recoil. Further, it occurred to him that this might enable the crew to be withdrawn from the vicinity of the guns, and the weight of the necessary armour protection to be greatly reduced.
Ideas of this sort were taken up at intervals as the amusement of idle hours, but it was long before they assumed any definite shape, and longer still before any notion was entertained of bringing them to any serious or practical conclusion.
Meanwhile a great development took place in quick-firing guns of smaller calibre, a development which has not as yet been attended by any corresponding development in the means of protecting the men working them. The urgent need of some such protection was forcibly pointed out by Mr. Arnold Foster in his well-known work, 'In a Conning Tower'; but
