One of the most interesting chapters in the Annual is that which deals with the effect of the exp-riments on the B-elsie. It will be remembered that this old irm iven up asa target for the Majestic, which circle} round her at about ten knots' speed a-d in from six to eight minutes fi ed eight rounds 32-inch comm-n shell, seven rounds 12-i¢ch armour-piercing shot, ubout 100 6-inch lyddite, about 100 6-ich common, about 40012-pdr. commer, and about 750 3-par. A. P. shell; full charges being used throughout, Baween 30 ant 40 per cent of the shots fired are said to have been effective, and the result to the Relleisle was a sight rose, © Tt was impossi identify the damage caused by each individual shell of small calibre. All was swallowed up in the general ru Riddled through and through, immense gaping cavities in the deck showing where % lyddite shell bursting below hai forced a passage upward, the un armoured ends a mass of ruin it is' no wonder the poor old Belleisle speedily found a r. place on the sand some four fort below hr keel.
Naturally t e authorities took esta to keep ut Toast some of the results from becoming public property. Such: experiments sre stay. and there is no reason why Briti should pay cosmopolitan experiments, Two poi which had long been practically et ai were demonstratel to be so. It was shown rmur sill gives very efficient protection, anc that such parts as are without it have n tthe slightest chance of remaining tenable ander the fire numb r of quick-firers Naval war therefore continues to be a rivalry between zuus and armour, a duel which seems likely th" perennial, No were vessels made impervious to guns thay other guns were made agai h all existing armour was useless, So the see-saw hax continued. At the moment the armour-plate has rather the best of it. Whatis known as the cementing process has been applied most successfully to plates of all thicknesses lown to £ ur inches, giving them a resistance equal to that of nearly double the thickness in wrought iron, a quality arising from the intense hardness given to the face of the plates. Our Duncans have no armour thicker than eleven inches, armour of twelve inches being the thickest now wae, 'This, except under the b st possible cmditions of hitting, is a match for the 12-inch, 50-ton gun, Were the Inflexible's 24-inch plates of this type, it would require a gun of 490 tons with a projectile of nearly 3 tons' weight to pierce A consideration of the firing qualities of the various guns in use immediately s' ows how they will be used in war. A big 12-inch gun fires an 850-1b. shell with a bursting charge of 8-Ib, once a mis.ute. Eight G-inch guns weighing the sune as the one 12-inch fire in one minute shells weighing 3,200 Ibs. with about 300 Ili. bursting charge, hitting in 32 places, while the 12-inch hits only in. one, It is thus consid-red certain that the big guns still fire only armour-piercing shot, leaving shell to the smaller quick-firers, Tt becomes a very important point how guns sre arranged for loading burp ses. Our Roy I Sovereign and Majestic classes load their big quns when the guns are in a fore-and-aft position. At the same their broadside fire is so superior to th end-on fire that they would inevitably have to fight broadside Hence the whole length of their biggest. weapons would be exposed to the enemy's tire, and it is reckoned that at 3,000 yards "a single G-inch gun should not take more than haitan-hour to disable a 12-inch gun under these circumstances, and a quar er of an hour for the 13.5-inch of the Royal Sovereign class. "A modern armoured cruiser, say the Japanese Assam, would make exceedingly short work of the Royal Soverei The Asama, having the speed, would close m to 2,016 yards or xo, where three quick-firers wou'd Buish their work in three or four minutes, Ovee the Royal Save-eign's guns were silene d, the thrast of " torpedo wust bring her fez down Such ships as these, owing to improvements in armour, cannot face modern ships of hale their size."
Readers should here be _pyrticularly careful ty note the present day meaning of the word "modern" as applied to battle: ships. The writer refers to the Royal Sovereign as something enrively out-of-date when pitted against newer vessels, even of smaller size. Judging from the tone of the extract, the ves d might have been constructed in the early days of the Into Queen's reign or even before, Asa matter of fact she was completed only in 1892, She is barely nine years old. It is now easy to see why there is no finality in shipbuilding, why Mr, John Burns who at the Jubilee sw miles and miles of war vessels and thought the time had come to say, Enough," was r koning without the inventor, All sorts of contrivances are adopted to ensure greater efficiency on the part of the shall; one of the most effective being the hardened cap with which it ix pointer for mou:-piercing purpows. Hits that at 5u0 yards fail to pie ce without the cap il, with it, succeed in doing xo at 4,000, One of the chief points in which improved arm ur is effective is in the incrossed areas of protection that are possible owing toits great ess, Waterline armour is much extended, and the protection of quick-tiring guns' is very much more eiticient than lyased te be." The result will be, say's the "Annual," that © the modern ship will require a great deal of hammer ing to bring her to terms (it will be remembered of cause tht the Belleisle was not modern) and, seeing (hit the improvemwut in torpedoes (to say nothing of submarines) con ong range a large amount of ammunition, especi of armour-piercing projectiles, will he needed."
Since the "Annual" was published there is a report that a new British gun of an abnormally great length has given a muzzle velocity of 3,000 ft. per second, This, if true, will mark out this weapon as probably the most effective for its si in existence, very few yuns indeed having hitherto had a muzzle velocity ever 2,500 ft, and most being well below that. "We have here probably the first beginning of the swing of the pendulum to the other side when the gun shall once more comnuand the armour.
Tar Exp.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.