Page:The Development of Navies During the Last Half-Century.djvu/151

 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

nearly equal to the length. These structures were afterwards more familiarly known as Popoffkas or circular ironclads. Two were constructed, called the 'Novgorod'