The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-01 00:00:00

TILE LAUNCH OF THE WARRIOR.

(From the Times.)

The successful launch of the Warrior may be
thought to open a new chapter in the history of
the British Navy. We cannot, indeed, regard the
theory of iron-cased ships as absolutely established,
but there is certainly sufficient reason for concluding
that such fabrics must hereafter enter largely into
the composition of our national marine, and repre-
sent a most important element of our naval strength.
Perhaps in the end they may be classed simply as
floating batteries for the defence of our shores ;
perhaps they may be found more available for more
distant service • but to same extent it may fairly
be presumed that ships of war will in future be
protected by armour exactly as they have come to
be propelled by steam. Iron may not entirely super-
sede woods any more than steam has superseded
sails, but in one shape or other it may be confidently
expected that the new system will last. The par-
ticulars of this remarkable event we have already
recorded, and we have put the public in possession
of the principal details connected with the structure
itself; but there are two points of the subject which
deserve further notice in these columns. The War-
rior is not the first iron -cased frigate that has
been launched, but she is the, largest. The former
of these facts expresses a very familiar feature in
the Administration of our Navy, the latter indi-
cates a material reform.

We are always behind in the work of discovery,
and are even slow in applying the inventions of
others. We had exactly the same opportunities as
the French in this matter. We constructed our
floating batteries for the Russian War just as they
did ; we saw, as they did, the actual results of the
experiment. The difference between us was that
they availed themselves of the lesson with true
practical wisdom, whereas we did our best to ex-
plain the lesson away.. We spent infinite time and
pains in endeavourin g to convince ourselves that
iron armour was no protection to a ship's side, and
when, after a dozen shots, we had succeeded in
piercing a 4-inch plate, we chuckled over the ex-
ploit without remermbering that 11 shots out of the
12 had been repelled. We asked ourselves simply
whether iron-cas ad ships could be rendered impreg-
nable, and, havbag contrived by indefatigable exer-
tion to provide fo. negative answer to the question,
we were in a fair way of dropping the subject if
our neighbours, had not set us a different example.
It was preciaeity the same thing in the case ofsteam
instead of sails, and of screws instead of paddles.
Our authorities are so terribly anxious to find out
the weak points of a new invention that they over-
look its real strength. They ascertain to their own
satisfaction that the scheme isnot perfect, and then,
dismiss it ; whereas, upon a fair balance of advan-
tages and disadvantages, it might have been found.
decidedly eligible. There is always something to
be said against a novel theory, but if we had
listened exclusively to such predictions we should
never have had gas in our streets or loccimotives on
our railroads.

It is no matter of wonder, therefore, that the
Warrior should make her appearance only some four
months after " possession of the seas" had been
taken by the Glorie. That is a very natural expres-
sion of British usage in such matters, but what is
by no means so ordinary an affair is the powerful
character in which our first iron frigate has ap-
peared. In the present generation we have, at any
rate, unlearned one of our national faults. From
the first days of modern shipbuilding our vessels of
every rate were uniformly smaller than those of
similar rates in rival navies. At the beginning of
the Revolutionary Wars a French 74 was usually
about one-fifth larger than a British 74 ; and so
universally did a similar feature prevail throughout
our fleets that James, the naval historian, speaks
of the " contracted size" of our ships and the " re-
duced scale" of their complements as national cha-
racteristics, to be explained by some broad refer-
enco to policy or principle. It was certainly not
from want of better models that we persisted in
these customs, for the Spaniards as well as the
French set us an example of more sensible archi-
tecture; but the old fashions kept their ground as
long as we were on the winning side, and would
have flourished perhaps undisturbed up to the
present day 'had it not been for the rough lesson
administered by the Americans. In the short
war with the United States we found, to our
cost, that big ships were very likely to beat little
ones, and that when a frigate was built with
the dimensions of a 74 she became pretty nearly
a match for the 74 in action. That lesson we.n
not lost upon us, and the capture of the Pre-
sident was the great event that revolutionised
our system of shipbuilding. From that time we
have kept well abreast of every rival in the
dimensions of our vessels. We did not imitate the
questionable models of the Merrimac and the
Niagara, but neither the !americans nor the French
have outstripped us of late in the power and size of
oar men-of-war. The Duke of Wellington was
fully as strong as the Bretagne, and was launched
three years earlier; the Orlando and the Mersey
aro the most formidable frigates afloat; the Ariadne
and the Jason are unmatched in their respective
classes; and now the Warrior, in speed, capacity,
and armament, has outdone the Gloire.
The Great Eastern has so unsettled our concep-
tions of magnitude that even the dimensions of the
Warrior seem moderate in comparison ; yet the
engines and coal alone of the new vessel are almost
equal in weight to the entire tonnage of a British
three-decker in 1815, and her armament is equally
extraordinary. If it were not that she combined
in herself illustrations of defensive and offensive
power together, we might be at a loss to imagine
what fabric could resist her attack. As it is, we
are left equally at liberty to wonder whether any
attack could overcome her powers of resistance, and
the great problem of warfare seems to be rendered
moreinsoluble than ever. On which side have the
resources of modern ingenuity been most effectively
displayed ? Which are we to regard with the
greatest surprise,—the Armstrong 100-pounders
dealing death and destruction at three miles' distance
or the tremendous ribs of iron and teak, impene-
trable to the heaviest bullet ? The whole achieve-
ment seems really to express a contradiction. We
have been at work upon a ship which no projectiles
are to be capable of damaging, and we have armed
her with guns which no ship is to be 'capable of
resisting. Have we been most successful in the
means of attack or in those of defence ? Does the
reality lie in the armour or the armament? Both
can hardly be so powerful as we think, but the
combinations of the two has given us, beyond
doubt, the most formidable ship of war ever yet seen.
The cost of this terrible machine is proportionate
to its power. It will certainly not be less than
£350,000, whereas the cost of our largest ships of
the line has hitherto been but about half that sum.
On this point, however, there is room for consider-
able reassurance. It does not follow that the
aggregate charge of the Navy will be increased
because the charge is greater in particular ships.
On the contrary, it has been found by experience
that in proportion as single vessels are made more
powerful and expensive the number of vessels de-
clines. We have now as strong a fleet as we ever
had, but it consists of many fewer ships than were
afloat 50 years ago. To put the case in a practical
form, we may compare the actual expenditure upon
the Navy in two years of war—in 1813 and in
1855. In the former period a ship of war cost very
much less than in the latter, and yet it was the
more expensive period of the two, for the Navy
Eomates were then nearly £22,000,000, whereas
in 1856, the heaviest year of the Russian War,
they were but £19,000,000. It is clear, there-
fore, that what we spend upon single specimens we
may save in numbers, and the fact may lead us to
contemplate even a fleet of Warriors without much
alarm.

(From the Morning Herald.)

The Warrior is launched. The great iron monster
which was designed to eclipse
the French Governmentis sop the vessel of which
proud is at last a float-
ing fact. The Warrior is the largest
the fighting vessel
that was ever built, being two-thirds of length
i
of the Great Eastern, and n shape not unlike her :
420 feet long, 58 feet wide at the beam, and carry-
ing 36 gnus of the heaviest calibre, she will prove,
if manageable, quick, and invulnerable, a tremen-
dous engine of offence.
In the building of this shii-p and others like it the
new theory of the necessity. of iron plating to the
protection of a ship's side against modern artillery
has been actednpon. Plates, of wrought-iron of 4
to 5 inches in thickness, have been found to resist
the impact of the solid shot of a 68-pounder, even i
when aimed from very near.. This has been known
for years past, and it is sonic time since it was first
proposed to construct invulnerable vessels by coat-
ing a ship's side with such a layer of iron. The
Emperor of the French co nstructed floating batteries
on this plan in 1855. The 77 were used with effect in
the bombardment of Kinburn, but were found ex-
tremely unwieldy and unmanageable in a heavy
sea. There were still tto, questions fur naval archi-
tects to solve, even sup posing the value of iron
plating admitted. The first was, could a perfectly
seaworthy and fast ship be built with this iron mail.
This possibility has been long stoutly denied. The
immense accession of weight given by the iron
must proportionately in crease the displacement,
render it difficult to carry a heavy armament, or
enough coals, make her unmanageable in a heavy
sea, stow at all times, and sure to sink if a breach
were made in her sides. So it was argued by the
advocates of wooden ships as preferable to iron
ones. However, there were naval architects who
declared themselves ready to overcome all these
difficulties ; the Emperc.r of the French, while we
were arguing, was building a mail-clad Yessel, The