The Spaniards attempted to protect their galleons of the Invincible Armada by building their exposed sides of exceeding thicicness, but the heavy English guns *lashed them through and through? The first real ironclad ship was constructed in Antwerp in 1585, with a view of breaking through the hnes of the Spanish army under Alexander of Parma, which was at that time closely investing the city. It was a large flat-bottomed craft, with a central casemate or battery built of thick balks of timber and plated with • iron. It was intended to be and very likely was impenetrable to any artillery that the Spaniards could bring against it; and in hopeful anticipation that their ironclad ship would raise the siege and put an end to hos tilities, the men of Antwerp christened her the Finis Belli. In addition to a heavy bat tery of guns, the Finis Belli carried a large body of masketeers, some of whom were stationed aloft in her four fighting tops, while the rest were well protected by the loopholed bulwarks on the upper deck. Unluckily for the besieged Dutchmen, she ran aground before she reached her objective and fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who niclmamed her the Carats 'amnia or Bogey. They contrived to get her afloat and brought her down to the camp of Alexander of Parma, where she became a great attraction to the sightseers of the period. As for the Dutchmen in the doomed city, they henceforward only referred to their experiment as the Perdita Expense or Wasted Money. Ten.years previous to this, others of the Dutch patriots had built a somewhat similar contri vance, which very possibly was also armored. This was the Ark of Delft, a tvvin-hulled vessel supporting a floating fortress, which was pro pelled by three hand-worked paddle-wheels placed between the two hulls.
It is interesting to note that if we go to the Far East we can find a parallel to almost any Western invention. It is, therefore, not aston ishing to find that the Japanese possessed a paddle-propelled armorclad in the year 1600. This quaint craft, like the old leather-clad Tharbotes* of the 12th century, was turtle backed, with ports for the gunners. She was covered with iron and copper plates fitted together like the cells of a honeycomb, mounted 10 guns, and, like the Ark of Delft, was moved by a central paddle wheel. The British naTy used various devices to protect its ships in the 18th century. According to a French writer the sailors of his country were astonished at the perfection to which the English had attained in this direction. °Old cables,* he writes, *held in place by pieces of iron, barricaded the whole length of the bulwarks; mantlets of old rope hung over the ship's sides to diminish the shodc of our cannon .,Wlls, and, beneath, a thick rope netting stretched from poop to bowsprit. The English fought under shelter, maneuvenng with out ceasing, out of musket range, so as to riddle our detachments of fusileers, with their can non shot. So we lost 200 men for every 30 of the English put out of action" This system of armoring was soon adopted by the French. The Spamards endeavored to improve on this and in 1782 hoped.great things
from the celebrated floating battenes employed at the great siege of Gibraltar by the Dulce de Crillon. The floating batteries were mounted on ships of the line, cut down to a uniform size. On the top they were defended by a covering made of cordage and wet hides. This was not the complete protection that was origi nally intended by the Chevalier d'Arcon, their constructor, according to another account of the same date as the above, which states that ((the covering was to have been laid over with strong sheets of copper and by this means the redhot balls, the bombs and other destructive implements would have slid off.* The fate of these experimental armorclads offered no inducement to the naval constructors of the day to make further efforts in the di rection of protection, so that till comparatively recent times we find sailors depending only on their ((wooden walls* to resist the projectiles of the enemy. The oaken sides of the British ships, we may note in passing, were often ex ceptionally stout and difficult to penetrate. In the fight between the Glatton, 56-gun ship, and four French frigates, a brig and a cutter, inotmt ing 220 guns between them, their 12- and 24 pounders failed to penetrate her sides and she beat thern all off with great loss at the cost of one officer and one man wounded.
Americans, from the very commencement of their existence as a nation, set themselves to make improvements in naval warfare. David Bushnell constructed a practical submarine boat in- 1773. Torpedoes were used by him and others in the war with England and for the purpose of towing these contnvances alongside the British ships, they invented and built in 1814 a paddle-propelled turtle-backed boat lying very low in the water and covered with chaff inch iron plates, not to be injured by shot.* About the same period Robert Fulton (q.v.), who had already constructed one or two sub marine boats and various classes of torpedoes, built a steam frigate which he called the De inologos, or Voice of the People, but which is sometimes known as the Fulton L This, the first steam warship ever constructed, had her sides no less than. 13 feet thick of alternate layers of oak and ash wood, a thicicness im penetrable by shot from any gun then afloat. In 1829 this vessel was blown up by accident and was succeeded in the American navy by the Fulton If a ship which appears to have been protectect by some kind of iron armor.
Various proposals were made to use iron plating to protect the sides of ships of war from this time fonvard, but until the French con structed a number of armor-plated batteries for use in the Crimean War, nothing practical came of the suggestions of inventors. Their success at the bombardment of rinburn demonstrated the value of armor plating. England at once followed with others of the same kind, some of which are still preserved as relics. Then came the French La Glare, the British Warrior, the iron clads and nionitors of the American war and henceforward ;he steady evolution of the armored fighting ship, which has provided us with the majestic battleships of the present day.