Note 162 — Chapter X · THE IRONCLAD
Reading edition
The rapid construction of over two hundred gunboats and their steam machinery revealed the enormous industrial capacity of this country, and constituted a feat of which the whole nation was rightly proud. For instance of successful organization, Messrs. Penn of Greenwich contracted to build eighty sets of main engines in three months—a proposition ridiculed as impossible. By the rapid distribution of duplicate patterns throughout the country the resources of all the greatest firms were utilized, and the contract was fulfilled almost to the day!
Some seven or eight years later, when the building of ironclads was being debated in parliament, the government was able to recall this achievement as an argument for not building too many ships of a new and probably transitional type. If we liked, it was said, we could soon produce a fleet of ironclads far greater than all the other Powers of Europe besides.