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Updated: June 10, 2025
Australia agreed to form a distinct fleet unit, consisting of a large armoured cruiser, three unarmoured cruisers, six destroyers and three submarines, with auxiliary ships. Canada, not an island like Australia or Great Britain, had two seaboards to protect, ten thousand miles apart.
To perform these varied functions, one of the chief requirements is speed, rather than heavy armament, so that it can run, if need be, if it should happen to encounter a ship of greater power. Accordingly the best cruisers are given the high maximum speed of 23 to 25 knots. Cruisers are divided into two classes: armoured and unarmoured.
Ranged along the coast from Folkestone to Deal was an armament consisting of forty-five battleships of the first, second, and third classes, supported by fifteen coast-defence ironclads, seventy armoured and thirty-two unarmoured cruisers, forty gunboats, and a hundred and fifty torpedo-boats.
The machine gun was first introduced to meet this danger; it could send a continuous shower of rifle bullets at the approaching boat, and riddle and sink her before she got near enough to do mischief; but when torpedo boats began to be armoured with iron plates, proof not only against rifle bullets, but even against the heavier Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt half-pounder guns, except at very close ranges, it was seen that an armament of small guns was desirable to repel torpedo boats, or to be used against unarmoured cruisers, whose superior speed would soon take them out of danger from the slow-firing heavy guns.
In June 1870, I received a letter from Sir E. J. Reed, containing the following extracts: "I was aware previously that plans had been proposed for constructing unarmoured steam rams, but I was not acquainted with the fact that you had put forward so well-maturerd a scheme at so early a date; and it has given me much pleasure to find that such is the case.
As this was the first time that unarmoured vessels had ventured to engage an ironclad of modern type, every credit is due to the gallantry of our seamen, although they were unsuccessful in their attempt to capture or sink their opponent.
A sheep might as well have tried to escape from a tiger. Many of the crew flung themselves overboard in the madness of despair. There was a shock and a grinding crash, and the ram bored its way twenty feet into the unarmoured quarter. Then the Ithuriel's screws dragged her free, and the Davout followed her sisters to the bottom of the Channel.
The fleet under Admiral Beresford's command consisted of fifty-five battleships of the first and second class, forty-six armoured and seventy-two unarmoured cruisers, fifty-four gunboats, and two hundred and seventy torpedo-boats; while the Franco-Italian Allied fleets mustered between them forty-six battleships, seventy-five armoured and sixty-three unarmoured cruisers, forty gunboats, and two hundred and fifty torpedo-boats.
Miriam looked down to see a man, bare-headed and with close-cropped hair, white-robed also and unarmoured, as though he had risen from his couch, riding on a great war-horse, an ivory wand in his hand and preceded by an officer who bore the standard of the Roman Eagles. It was Titus itself, who as he came shouted to the centurions to beat back the legionaries and extinguish the fire.
As the gunboats approached the northern end they opened fire with their guns, striking the mud entrenchments at every shot, and driving clouds of dust and splinters into the air. The Maxim guns began to search the parapets, and two companies of the Staffordshire Regiment on board the unarmoured steamers Dal and Akasha fired long-range volleys.
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