Identifier: romanceofshipsto00chat (find matches)
Title: The romance of the ship; the story of her origin and evolution
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Chatterton, E. Keble (Edward Keble), 1878-1944
Subjects: Ships Shipbuilding
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott company London, Seeley and co., limited
Contributing Library: Boston College Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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ere, in respect both of tonnage and speed, actuallyinferior to the protected cruisers Powerful and Terrible^yet the Cressy^ which was the first of the armouredclass to be built in 1899, and her sisters, are far morecapable of enduring the enemys fire. It is not toomuch to say that the coming of the modern armouredcruiser, of which the present Iridomitahle class is themost recent development, has reduced the value of thePoxoerful and other first-class protected cruisers to some-thing infinitesimal as fighting ships. Similarly, the second-class cruisers of the same period,though their moderate displacement of four or fivethousand tons and their speed of almost twenty knotsmade them remarkably mobile and enabled them incertain duties, such as scouting, to do good and usefulwork, yet as fighting ships again they are now of littlevalue, for they are but lightly protected and theirheaviest guns are only of the 6-inch type. Anotherproduct of the nineties, the torpedo-gunboat, has already 204
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THE STEAM MAN-OF-WAR begun to be obsolete, not by reason of any defects inconstruction, but because in the march of time theyhave ceased to be fighting units. To this class belongthe Dryad of the year 1893, the Halcyon, 1894, andalso the Harrier. With a length of only 250 feet anda draught of the remarkably small amount of 9 feet,such ships as these, with a displacement of just over athousand tons and a speed of 18; knots, were excellentfor the purposes for which they were built, viz. inflictinga harassing attack on the enemy by firing from theirfive tubes death-dealing torpedoes. They were also sup-plied with a couple of 4*7 guns. But now these shipsare relegated to such duties as fisheries-protection work,or as guide ** for torpedo flotillas. The torpedo-gunboatsof the nineties became too expensive and slow for thework assigned to them, as battleships began to be builtwith a speed as great as these gunboats, and even greater,and so now their work is assigned to very much fastervesse

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