Black Sea Torpedo-boats.
Completed: 5 over 100 feet in length; 8 over 70 feet in length; 6 under 70 feet in length. Completed and building: 7 over 100 feet in length—total, 26.
Russia has also a volunteer fleet consisting of ten vessels of no great fighting value; a Siberian flotilla comprising nine gun-boats and other small craft; a Caspian flotilla of seven small vessels; and an Aral flotilla of still less moment.
In the German armored navy four citadel vessels figure as having the heaviest (16-inch) armor, but these are of that objectionable Sachsen type to which I previously adverted. In order to let the reader see under what slight pretexts some people are prepared to regard ships as powerful iron-clads, I give engravings which represent the Sachsen in side view and in plan, these illustrations being taken from Captain J. F. von Kronenfels’s “Das Schwimmende Flottenmaterial der Seemächte.” The shaded portion in the middle exhibits the extent of this ship’s armor; the long white ends are left to depend upon walls of cork, etc., which are very poor—nay, almost imaginary—defences against the effects of explosive shells.
In observing the limitation of the armor in this and similar ships one is tempted to ask, Why stop there? Why not shorten the armor, say to twenty or thirty feet of length, and make it a yard thick, and then enter her in the list of iron-clads as a vessel with armor three feet thick? Deck-plating, according to such constructors, is ample for the protection of engines and boilers, and everything else which is below water.
HALF-DECK PLAN OF THE “SACHSEN.”
SIDE ELEVATION OF THE “SACHSEN.”