he British army the old smoothbore
musket or "Brown Bess," with which at ranges above 200 yards it was
difficult to hit a target 11 feet square. This change led quickly
to the rifling of heavy ordnance as well. The first Armstrong rifles
of 1858--named after their inventor, Sir William Armstrong, head
of the Royal Gun Factory at Woolwich--included guns up to 7-inch
diameter of bore. The American navy, however, depended chiefly
on smoothbores throughout the Civil War.

Breech-loading, which had been used centuries earlier, came in
again with these first rifles, but after 1865 the British navy
went back to muzzle-loading and stuck to it persistently for the
next 15 years. By that time the breech-loading mechanism had been
simplified, and its adoption became necessary to secure greater length
of gun barrel, increased rapidity of fire, and better protection for
gun-crews. About 1880 quick-fire guns of from 3 to 6 inches, firing
12 or 15 shots a minute, were mounted in secondary batteries.

As already suggested, the necessity for armor arose from the smashing
and splintering effect of shell against wooden targets and the
penetrating power of rifled guns. To attack Russian forts in the
Crimea, the French navy in 1855 built three steam-driven floating
batteries, the _Tonnant, Lave_, and _Devastation_, each protected
by 4.3-inch plates and mounting 8 56-lb. guns. In the reduction of
the Kinburn batteries, in October of the same year, these boats
suffered little, but were helped out by an overwhelming fire from
wooden ships, 630 guns against 81 in the forts.

The French armored ship _Gloire_ of 1859 caused England serious worry
about her naval supremacy, and led at once to H. M. S. _Warrior_,
like the _Gloire_, full rigged with auxiliary steam. The _Warrior's_
4.5-inch armor, extending from 6 feet below the waterline to 16 feet
above and covering about 42 per cent of the visible target, was
proof against the weapons of the time. At this initial stage in
armored construction, naval experts turned with intense interest
to watch the work of ironclads against ships and forts in the
American Civil War.

_The American Civil War_

The naval activities of this war are too manifold to follow in
detail. For four years the Union navy was kept constantly occupied
with the tasks of blockading over 3000 miles of coast-line, running
down enemy commerce destroyers, cooperating with the army in the
capture of coast strongholds, and openin