the broadside system, and the difficulty of removing or diminishing those evils, yet made a great impression on his hearers, and on the public in general; but apparently it was not regarded with equal favour by the Admiralty, who, while ordering ships to be laid down on the old models with different trifling variations, steadily resisted every proposal to give Captain Coles’s novel designs a trial. However, as time wore on, the new plan was discussed and favorably estimated in Parliament; the Prince Consort, who, from a careful examination of its details, had conceived a high opinion of its probable success, and, at all events, of the genius and merit of the inventor, pressed it on the notice of those in authority at Whitehall; and at last, after a year had elapsed, a trial was so far given to it that a turret was constructed on an old vessel called the Trusty, from which a gun was worked in competition with another gun mounted in the old fashion at the side of the ship; and the strength and working of the turret was further tested by a heavy cannonade from 68 and 110-pounders being directed at it from a distance of only 200 yards. Whether for offence or defence the turret proved a complete success. It was hit by 44 shot, which not only failed to penetrate it at any point, but utterly failed also to destroy, or even in the least to diminish the ease and rapidity with which it worked round. So utterly, indeed, that the men employed at it declared (we should think with some slight exaggeration) that the pounding it had received had made it work, “if anything, rather better.” As a weapon of offence the gun which it contained, though only 7 men were required by it, while 12 were wanted for the gun at the ship’s side, never fired fewer than three shots for every two that could be discharged from the other; and on one occasion, when the smoke (from which its position on deck relieved those in the turret) enveloped those at the broadside gun between decks, she actually fired seven shots, bringing each to bear with true aim at a gunboat passing at full speed, while her rival could only deliver one.
Yet even after this apparent verification of all that the inventor had promised, no steps were taken to give the invention such further trial as to build a ship in accordance with it, till, in the spring of the next year, the increasing pressure of public opinion, fortified by the knowledge that the Americans had borrowed the idea, and had proved its value in real warfare, became irresistible, and at last the Admiralty yielded, and orders were issued to apply it to two ships, one of which, the Prince Albert, was to be built on purpose; the other, the Royal Sovereign, a splendid three-decker, which had never been to sea, was to be altered to receive the turrets, as other vessels, such as the Royal Oak, the Prince Consort, &c., had been reduced to receive their armour-plates. The Prince Albert is not yet ready for sea; the Royal Sovereign was completed in the spring of the present year, and of her we will now attempt to present some description to our readers.
We must premise however that she is not built or equipped exactly in accordance with Captain Coles’s original plan. Some alterations have been made by himself; others, strange to say, in spite of his most earnest protest. The vast increase in the size of ordnance which had been made since his lecture in 1860, led him to reduce the number of his turrets, though making them, from the superior calibre of the guns which he now placed in them, very far more powerful than those which he had originally designed. In fact, the effect of shot is now so clearly ascertained to increase in almost geometrical progression according to its calibre, that a single 300-pounder will probably disable a hostile ship more than twenty guns of a third of that size, just as one lion would be more formidable to a herd of oxen than a score of cats. The alterations, however, which have been made by others, in disregard of his wishes, affecting as they do her masts, her tonnage, and her whole general character to a degree which disqualifies her from being used as a sea-going ship, may almost be looked upon as neutralising the advantage gained by the increase of her gun-power. A little while before the commencement of her conversion into a turret-ship the Admiralty had appointed a Mr. Reed Chief Constructor of the Navy, though he had previously had scarcely any experience as a ship builder; and, though he was chiefly known as the champion of a plan diametrically opposed to that of Captain Coles, gave him authority to decide on and alter the details of that officer’s design—authority which he certainly exercised with no very great forbearance. It would seem to have been a singular policy of the Board so to tamper with a new invention as to leave the inventor the credit of any success which his ship might achieve, while thus dividing the discredit of any defect which she might develop between themselves and their new constructor.
We must however look at her as she is; and a very singular vessel she certainly appears to eyes accustomed to the tapering masts and lofty sides gaping with portholes and bristling with cannon of the honoured old Victory or the modern Duke of Wellington, both of which, as if to provoke the comparison, lie almost by her