Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/765

 Ancient Battleship Ideas Revived

��Bv Percival Hislam

���The "Finis Belli," built in 1585, the first armored battleship, and precursor of the "Merrimac" and all armed ships

��MOST people imagine that the first armored ship was the "iron- cased frigate" Gloire, launched for the French navy in 1857; yet the Dutch built an armor- plated vessel near- ly three hundred years ear- lier. That was in 1585, when Antwerp was besieg- ed by the Spaniards. The Dutch took one of their big- gest ships, cut her down and erected on the deck a battery with armored and sloping sides, within which they mounted eight of the heaviest guns the factories of the day could pro- duce. The roof of the battery formed an armored breast- work for men armed with cross-bows and shot-guns, and there were gratings in the roof to provide ven- tilation for the bat- tery below. A re- drawn contempora- ry picture of the Finis Belli, as she was called, is repro- duced herewith ; and notwithstanding the lapse of time, she bears a striking re- semblance to the Merrimac of the Civil War, which was designed and built on precisely the same principles.

More than sixty years before the first dreadnought was designed, the famous

���A circular warship of Russian design with

six propellers. Two were built, but

proved utterly unmanageable at sea

��American engineer Stevens laid down at Brooklyn an "armored battery" which had five gun-positions out of seven on the middle line. In order

to save

length, the other two guns were placed slightly en echelon — a system of mount- ing found in many British and German d r e a d - noughts to-day. The Stev- ens b a t - tery would have been able to fire all her guns on either broadside. Unfortu- nately, she was never completed, and after being on the stocks for over forty years was sold as scrap-iron.

The other illus- tration depicts a re- markable type of ship built for the Russian Navy in the seventies. They were absolutely cir- cular and fitted with six screws apiece, the arma- ment consisting of two t wel\e - i nc h guns in a revolving barbette in the cen- ter. Two of these vessels were built, the Vice - Admiral Popoff (after the designer) and the Novoorod. They proved absolutely un- manageable in anything but a mill- pond, though the idea might have some practical use for coast defense.

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