made in the frames faced with iron usually closed or did
little mischief. A few plates of inferior iron occasionally gave way
after repeated assaults, for English iron is coarsely made and poorly
welded,--a striking illustration of which may be found in a part of
the hull of the ill-fated steamer Connaught, which is preserved at the
ship-yard near Dorchester Point, South Boston.

England was at length convinced; she determined that she could not
safely permit the Emperor of the French to rule the sea with his iron
navy. She had not forgotten St. Helena. She realized that she had no
fleet that could safely encounter one of his mail-clad warriors, and
found herself obliged to copy the new invention. She commenced last year
ten iron-clad ships of the line, and has nearly or quite finished the
Warrior, Black Prince, Defiance, and Resistance, while others are
progressing. But she could not tamely copy France. Instead of confining
herself to the length of the Gloire, she is constructing vessels of
immense size. The Warrior, recently launched, is four hundred and
twenty-six feet in length, nearly fifty-two feet in depth, has a width
of fifty-eight feet, measures six thousand one hundred and seventy-seven
tons, and is moved by engines of twelve hundred horse-power. She is to
mount thirty-six cannon of the largest class, and her armor weighs nine
hundred tons.

This vessel will be a formidable antagonist upon the open sea; but her
great depth, with the weight of her armor, causes her to draw thirty
feet, which would prohibit her entrance into most of the seaports upon
our coast. She is vulnerable, too, at each extremity. Her iron plates,
four and a half inches thick, extend but half her length, leaving more
than a hundred feet at each end covered by a plate of only five-eighths
of an inch in thickness; and in case these portions should be injured,
she must rely upon her water-tight compartments. An adroit foe, in a
light craft of greater speed, avoiding her batteries, which are planted
behind her armor, might possibly assail her unprotected ends, and,
although he could not sink her, still, by shot between wind and water,
he might render her more unwieldy and less manageable,--a weight of
water being thus admitted which would bring down the ship so as to
endanger her lower ports and prevent the use of them in action. He might
thus also prevent her approach to shoal water. The Warrior and her
companions are, however, formidable