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Updated: June 10, 2025
There is a legend that on one occasion four machine-gun bullets actually hit him and bounced off, which gave the imitative Hun the idea of armour-plating his machines. Grigson took the slip and read, slowly and paraphrastically: "Night operations.
Equally, of course, the Captain had to tell him what he knew how the fort was built of solid masonry, sixteen feet thick, with two feet of armour-plating outside that; and how the little fortress, as it undoubtedly was, had a well dug deep down into the sands below the sea, to supply its garrison with fresh-water in the event of communication being cut off with the mainland.
La Gloire was built, and was quickly followed by our own Warrior. The frame of La Gloire was constructed of wood, but covered with an iron plating four and a half inches in thickness. The Warrior was built on an iron frame, and her armour-plating is of the same thickness as that of La Gloire; the lining is of solid teak eighteen inches thick, which is again backed by an inner coating of iron.
The plant world, we saw, starts, like the animal world, with a great kingdom of one-celled microscopic representatives, and the same principles of development, to a great extent, shape it into a large variety of forms. Armour-plating has a widespread influence among them.
On land were the smoking ruins of houses, still smouldering in the remains of the fires which had consumed them; forts which twenty-four hours before had grinned defiance at the enemy were shapeless heaps of earth and stone, and armour-plating torn into great jagged fragments; and on sea were a few half-crippled wrecks, the remains of the British fleet, with their flags still flying, and such guns as were not disabled firing their last rounds at the victorious foe.
She can thus use the whole of her guns against an enemy at the same time, whether it be ahead or astern. It will be seen that the thickness of the armour-plating with which the Inflexible is protected is enormous; and yet this thickness of iron has been pierced. The question, then, that immediately suggests itself is, Can a vessel be constructed to carry much heavier armour-plating than this?
But now they fail; for where the vast mass presses close, the Teucrians roll a huge block tumbling down that makes a wide gap in the Rutulians and crashes through their armour-plating.
A chapter treating of ironclads would, we think, be incomplete without allusion made to the loss of the Captain, whose terrible fate in 1870 has caused a mournful interest to be attached to that vessel. The Captain was 320 feet in length and 53 feet broad. Her armour-plating reached to five feet below the water-line.
The Companies were linking up the North with the West, and strings of trolleys, coupled together like railway-trucks, and laden with yellow clay or great balks of timber, or giant scales of bored armour-plating, or moleskin-clad, brawny navvies, progressed incessantly and at all hours through the thoroughfares of the metropolis behind huge, giraffe-necked, splay-wheeled, smoke-vomiting traction-engines.
Then there came to me with some bitterness that I had earnestly desired a thin steel armour-plating at the water-line, but had allowed myself to be persuaded out of it by her builders. So again my forethought had been of no avail though, of course, lightness of draught was the first consideration.
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