Abstract

The Plate-Armor and Big-Gun Farce in Europe

The contest which has been going on in Europe during the last ten years between the constructors of armor-plated ships and manufacturers of rifled cannon is, people are glad to say, reaching the extreme of absurdity. It is a contest of which the well-known New Zealand tourist will doubtless read, when he goes home to his hotel in the evening after sketching the ruins of St. Paul's, with both surprise and amusement. The French led the way in building cuirassed frigates; their war demonstrated the impossibility of meeting armor-plated ships with wooden ones; the British then went into the business, and a considerable portion of the best brains of England, France, Prussia, and Russia has ever since been engaged just in trying how heavily ships might be plated without destroying their buoyancy and manageability, and in inventing guns that would smash the plating.