Page:The Development of Navies During the Last Half-Century.djvu/72

 harmlessly against them. Damage, of course, they received as, having numerous port holes, all the projectiles and pieces of shell could not be excluded, but the injuries received were small in comparison to what they would have been had the sides been without the armour. To have been completely effectual there should have been at least a dozen of these batteries. The number of guns three could bring into action was relatively small. After a two hours' cannonade the line-of-battle and other ships advanced and poured in a heavy fire. In less than half-an-hour the batteries were silenced, and the appearance of a white flag showed that all resistance was at an end.

The success attending the employment of these floating batteries in the Black Sea indicated that in some such direction was to be found the solution of a problem now exercising men's minds, namely, how to resist the destructive effects of shell. In England we were disposed to rely on what had in former years admirably answered the purpose, and given us a supremacy on the sea by which the security of the country was ensured. Had our fleet suffered defeat, we might have been more ready to adopt new inventions, indeed, to initiate them, rather than wait until their utility was proved by others. But the weapons to hand not having failed, the natural tendency was to let them go with reluctance. In France, on the other hand, no such sentiment prevailed; and the skill she had always shown in naval construction was at once displayed when an entirely new departure for the designs of battle ships was taken. She had, moreover, in the head