Modern British Battleships

HMS Eagle underway, circa 1930's.

A navy no more than anything else may stand still, it either is being improved or is deteriorating. The British Government, for instance, which under the limitations of armament was authorized to build the two battleships, has tried to improve on the old model, there being no restrictions pertaining to the design but only with regard to gun caliber and tonnage. The improvements made are said to render the old type obsolete, for one thing because they concentrate forward overwhelming gun power.

The following description of more obvious features indicates the departure in construction that has been made:

January 24, 1862 – Men Wanted for the Gun Boats

A gentleman in DeKalb county, Indiana, writes to us that he is ready to serve Uncle Abe by entering the gunboat service, and inquires for the rendezvous. We have had several letters of the same import. In reply, we say that Cairo is the place. If our friends want to serve their country in earnest, let them call at once upon Commodore Foote, at Cairo. They will find him a most estimable man—a gentleman, in every sense of the the term, a son of old Connecticut, who is a stranger to fear, who believes in fighting, who has been under hot fire several times in his life, who is also cool, deliberate, judicious, earnest; whose whole soul is in this war, and who will, provided he can get ordnance and men, force the rebels to make quicker time from Columbus than the chivalric South Carolinians made from Tybee.