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Coast Defence — the Ram.
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the idea that powerful squadrons could be kept at a distance by small coast defence monitors was no doubt hard to resist, however fallacious, and hence the reconstruction of Russia's seagoing ironclad navy is barely the growth of a decade. Absorbed in this view of a coast defence which might combine a fort and ship in one, the head of the Russian navy in 1870, Admiral Popoff, designed a vessel of which the breadth was
THE DECK OF THE 'NOVGOROD,' CIRCULAR IRONCLAD.
nearly equal to the length. These structures were afterwards more familiarly known as Popoffkas or circular ironclads. Two were constructed, called the 'Novgorod'
