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18 weight to the second purpose, and from the varying opinions as to the best pur-- poses of armor has arisen one of the. important problems of design. It is now generally conceded, and has always been followed in the U. S. de- signs, beginning with the Indiana class, that the first purpose is the more im- 'portant, as probably affecting the life of the whole ship, and that armor, when properly distributed for this purpose, gen- erally incidentally contributes largely to the second purpose. At various times in the course of bat- tleship design, striking examples have 'occurred of the weight given to the rival claims of offense and defense, at times the one having the preponderance and at other times the other, and the naval -architect's design has naturally been largely influenced by the prevalent naval opinion as to the relative merits of these two features, The U. S. battleships have generally shown a well-considered adjustment of the two qualities necessary to all-round efficiency, with a general acceptation of the belief that a well-armed and handled ship has within herself a mighty protec- tion apart from such actual armor as may be given by the designer. The construction of any class of ves- sels, apart from changes in opinion as to qualities desirable in a warship, neces- sarily demonstrates deficiencies in the details of the design which require to be overcome in the succeeding designs. The Indiana's dimensions and battery are given in the appended plate, and the principal inherent defects in the design were due to her original avowed object of coast defense--a style of naval war- fare to which, it is believed the strat- -egical experts now consider a sea-keeping fleet is best suited. For this purpose of coast defense, as outlined in its original inception, she has never been used. The inherent deficiencies referred to were small radius of action, low freeboard and slow speed, and accordingly, as a purely peace development, in the succeed- ing or Iowa class these features had to be and were improved upon, the radius of action by increasing the bunker ca- pacity, the low freeboard by adding an additional deck forward, and the speed by a considerable increase of horse- power, from a designed H. P. of 9;000 on the Indiana to 11,000 on the Iowa, giving a designed speed of a knot more. One of the practical results of the construction of the Indiana class was finding that turrets of the unbalanced type, carrying large guns, produced, when trained abeam, an undesirable heel from which arose the development of the present type of overhung or balanced type. The present U. S. type of turret, with its sloping front plate, is the proc- ess of evolution through several inter- TAE. Marine. REVIEW mediate steps, but is primarily due to the experience on this ship. The mat- ter of installation of heavy guns is one of the principal problems which has con- fronted the designer of warships, the English clinging to the nomenclature (at least) of the barbette type, and the French and U. S. navies to the turret type, both of which, however, as in many other features, have changed in such manner that the two types are now very similar. : In the matter of installation of smaller guns where fitted, there his also been difference of opinion. We have never in our service mounted guns less than 8 inches in turrets, while the French have fitted those of much smaller caliber in turrets. The U. S.. designs have therefore in. this respect generally represented a mix- ture of the so-called English and French ideas. The writer is of the opinion that for the majority of duties of the battleship, which is essentially for fleet purposes, in- volving operations such as to make great broadside fire desirable, the broadside in- stallation for intermediate calibers pro- duces a maximum result with a mini- mum expenditure of weight, utilizing in great part, as it does, for protection of the guns the weight already assigned to the protection of the ship herself. The overcoming, or at least, the ame- lioration of the difficulties experienced in ° our first class of battleships. necessitated an increase in size from 10,225 to 11,363 tons, and an increase in length from 348 to 360 feet. About this time an im- provement in the ballistic qualities of armor permitted a reduction in its thick- ness, the Indiana's side armor being 18- inch top and 8'%-inch bottom, and the Towa's 14-inch top and 7-inch bottom, with equal protection and an increase in area of protection on about the same weight, thus somewhat simplifying. the problem. The increase of bending mo- ment resulting from the greater distance between barbettes necessitated some modification in the structure, but the change necessary was not of sufficient moment to render the problem of the structure itself difficult, and practically the whole of the additional displacement gained by increase of size was available for the additional load of upper deck, additional area of armor, extra length of hull of about same scantling, coal, and machinery. The Iowa has been a very successful ship, and still represents a formidable unit though her armament is naturally somewhat antiquated. In the immediately succeeding designs, Kearsarge and Kentucky, may be seen the effect of naval opinion as a development of theoretical and peace-time considera- tions, particularly in the arrangement of "battery and the superposed turrets, it being argued at the time that the tactical advantages of this arrangement of bat- tery were great, even considering the de- crease of freeboard necessary to obtain i. ; Contemporary literature shows many arguments both for and against the su- perposed turrets, and these arguments continued for some years, as evidenced by the Virginia class of battleships (1900- 1905). It is now granted, the writer be- lieves, by those most conversant with target practice and the use of guns, that other distributions of guns are better. Here in the Kearsarge and Kentucky was another problem confronting the de- signer in providing structural strength to support the immense weights of tur- rets (weight of Iowa's turrets was 463 tons; of Kearsarge and Kentucky, 728 tons each) and taking the recoil of the turret gufis, as the trunnion pressure for simultaneous firing increased from 220 tons to 506 tons, and to provide at the same time the necessary metacentric height, etc., with the high weights, which combined to necessitate thé return to the low freeboard and thus impaired the dry- ness of the vessels at sea. The design succeeding this, the Ala- bama class, shows a general similarity to the then prevalent type of English battleship, and with the knowledge gained by previous ships, presented no unusual designed problem beyond the general one of the development of the details to ob- tain a proper balance of qualities. In battleships, as well as in wearing apparel, there is often apparent the ef- fect of style, though style in ships is gen- erally due to consideration of the kind of warfare in which they are to engage and the contemporary line of develop- ment of ordnance, gunnery, and _ tactics, the changes in style being due to changes in one or more of these. At times a considerable similarity has existed between our battleship and the prevalent English style, and at other timies this similarity has approximated more closely to the French. The writer does not wish to be understood to imply that this was done from a desire on the part of any nation to follow the practice of any other nation in warship design, but that the prevalent naval opinion as to the strategical and tactical qualities necessary being similar in two countries, or the geographic, hydrographic, or po- litical positions of two countries being similar, naturally leads to ships of gen- erally similar qualities and appearance. This is strongly borne out by the pres- ent tendency of all nations who can af- ford the price to construct large ships with great speed and a main battery of a single large caliber of guns. One of the most difficult problems con- fronting a designing naval architect is