especially exciting for those who took part
in it, the pursuers succeeded in destroying four English torpedo-boats
without themselves suffering any damage worth mentioning. The others
escaped, and, for the time, might be regarded as out of action.

The enemy having altered his front, the Prince-Admiral had turned right
about, so that he might enter into action with all the guns of one side.
The English Admiral also doubled, but the manoeuvre proved the cause of
a fatal misfortune. Whether the disturbance of the tactical unity by the
loss of the three torpedoed vessels was the cause of it, or whether the
first and second divisions were unaccustomed to manoeuvre together, the
Formidable carried out orders so clumsily, that she was rammed amidships
by her neighbour the Renown, and immediately heeled over and sunk in a
few minutes, carrying hundreds of brave English sailors with her into
the deep.

The Renown herself, whose ram had caused the fearful disaster, had not
escaped without severe injury in the collision, which had shattered
the mighty floating fortress in all its joints. The two first fore
compartments, as the bulkheads did not hold together, had filled with
water. This caused the vessel to heel over; her value as a fighting
instrument was thereby sensibly diminished.

Thus the first great catastrophe in the battle was caused, not by the
power of the enemy, but by the clumsy manoeuvring of a friendly ship.
This naturally caused many of the spectators, deeply affected by
the sinking of the magnificent vessel and her gallant crew, to ask
themselves whether the great perfection attained in the construction
of modern ships of war was not to a great extent counterbalanced by
the defects that were combined with the increasing size and fighting
strength of these gigantic ironclads. No ship of the line, no frigate,
not even the little gunboat of earlier times could have disappeared from
the line of battle so speedily and without leaving a trace behind as
the Formidable, built of mighty dimensions and equipped with all the
appliances of naval technique. No doubt her armour-plate and steel
turrets would have been able successfully to resist a hail of the
heaviest projectiles, but a misunderstood steering order had been
sufficient to send her to the bottom. Neither the double bottoms nor the
division of the bulkheads, which should have prevented the inrush of
an excessive amount of water, had been able to avert the fate