Note 23 — THE FRENCH NAVY.
Reading edition
It will be instructive to repeat here, before leaving this question of partially armored ships, a comparison resembling that which I employed in a paper read at the Royal United Service Institution, in which are set down in one column the displacements of certain British and French ships, eleven of each, built and building, possessing maximum armor on the water-line of at least fifteen inches. As all the French ships given have complete or all but complete armor-belts, it is proper to reckon their whole displacement tonnages as armored tonnage. But in the case of all the British ships which carry such thick armor they are deprived of armor altogether except amidships, and it is therefore misleading, and even absurd, to reckon their whole displacement tonnages as armored tonnage. For this reason I am obliged to give two tonnages for them, viz., the armored and the unarmored, as I do below:
French Ships. British Ships.
Armored. Unarmored. Armored. Total.
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
Amiral Baudin 11,141 Inflexible 5,210 6,670 11,880
Amiral Duperré 10,486 Ajax 4,160 4,350 8,510
Dévastation 9,639 Agamemnon 4,160 4,350 8,510
Formidable 11,441 Colossus 4,580 4,570 9,150
Courbet 9,639 Edinburgh 4,580 4,570 9,150
Hoche 9,864 Collingwood 4,580 4,570 9,150
Magenta 9,864 Rodney 4,800 4,900 9,700
Marceau 9,864 Home 4,800 4,900 9,700
Neptune 9,864 Camperdown 4,900 5,100 10,000
Caïman 7,239 Benbow 4,900 5,100 10,000
Indomptable 7,184 Anson 4,900 5,100 10,000
Total 106,225 Total 51,570 54,180 105,750
I have not thought it necessary to alter these figures in repeating this comparison, as they are sufficiently near the truth for the only purpose for which I employ them, which is that of exhibiting the fact that whereas the above eleven British iron-clads (so called) figure in the official tables of the British government as constituting an armored tonnage of 105,750 tons, nearly equal to that of the eleven French ships, they really represent but little more than half that amount of armored tonnage.—E. J. R.