The romance of the ship; the story of her origin and evolution . ighties the 12-inch gun had weighed but 45 tons, butthis is now practically obsolete also; though the modern12-inch gun, which weighs about 65 tons, is the standardheavy gun of the British navy. So quickly does a fine man-of-war make her firstsensation by her improvements in design, construction,and armament, and then vanish into obscurity on theappearance of her still further improved successor, thatone is tempted too frequently to admire only the present,forgetting all the time that the whole history is one ofevolution, and tha
The romance of the ship; the story of her origin and evolution . ighties the 12-inch gun had weighed but 45 tons, butthis is now practically obsolete also; though the modern12-inch gun, which weighs about 65 tons, is the standardheavy gun of the British navy. So quickly does a fine man-of-war make her firstsensation by her improvements in design, construction,and armament, and then vanish into obscurity on theappearance of her still further improved successor, thatone is tempted too frequently to admire only the present,forgetting all the time that the whole history is one ofevolution, and that the handsome ship which we see nowrepresents only one more stage in the romantic historyof the naval vessel. The early nineties introduced aninteresting type of battleship known as the R * class, ofwhich we may mention the Royal Sovereign^ the Repulse^the Revenge^ the Royal Oah^ and so on. In them maybe summed up all the beneficial results of the experi-mental years which had preceded them. The RoyalSovereign^ for instance, was built of steel, and was so 196. c >> ^== o ?s ^.y v; 4-> O <U d rC ^- u) CU !/: D ^i — u 3 OJ ?i:;;-^ S2 u O tA :3 a (/; .-. ^G O tf ^- hfl ^.S c^^ ^ bl) aus - ^ ^ t/j E H JSii m ^13 0 5 <L) P o z Old z 5 05 p bJOl^; < hJ (LP w ^T3 H tog ^ .i; S t; 1^ P c/) O THE STEAM MAN-OF-WAR efficiently armoured with plating and protective decks,that these alone amounted to 4550 tons in weight,apart from that of the hull, engines, guns, and a thou-sand other entities, A feature of this R class was themethod of protecting the central parts, a steel deck com-posed of two thicknesses of plates being screwed on to thetop of the armour belt, so as to protect her machineryand magazines from vertical fire. As the power of thequick-firing guns increased in destructiveness, the appli-cation of additional armour, so as to go right round thewater-line, became essential; and presently the steel ofthe armour had to be given a surface made by a special
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookd, booksubjectshipbuilding, booksubjectships
