But let us glance at the kind of weapons which would be used against us in a foreign war, and with which we are unprovided and with which we must supply ourselves. Except the United States, every nation of any maritime importance possesses immense war vessels. There are some vessels which have an average speed of sixteen miles an hour; which have their batteries and their machinery protected by solid iron of a thickness of two feet, or of steel and iron combined of one and a half feet thickness; whose battery, or armament rather, consists of a few _very_ heavy guns, capable of sending a mass of metal weighing one ton a distance of eleven miles, several guns of less weight and power, a number of revolving cannon, a dozen or two dozen torpedoes, two torpedo-boats, each of these fitted with four torpedoes and a revolving gun; whose crews are supplied with rapid, accurate and distant-firing small arms (muskets and pistols). In addition to all this, these vessels are rams, and are themselves most powerful weapons of war, and could cut in two and sink any ship they struck. These vessels, when complete, with their guns, ammunition, crews, provisions and coal, everything in fact on board, weigh from 9,000 to 13,000 tons. About twenty-seven feet of the depth of such a vessel while she floats is beneath the surface of the water, and the whole ship is divided into fifty or more water-tight compartments, so that if any two compartments are filled with water the ship will still float. These iron-clads (more properly armor-clads) do not have this two feet thickness of iron all around the ship, only the vital parts, the engines and boilers, etc., and that part of the ship where the great guns are fought, are so protected. The armor consists of a belt eight to ten feet wide (deep) and from one to two feet thick; half of its width or depth is below the surface of the water and half is above. The machinery, engines and boilers in a war vessel are put in the ship as low down as possible, the farther below the surface of the water the better, as below the surface of the water a shot is not effective, that is, for a greater depth below the surface than one or two feet.
The machinery then is protected from shot on the sides and underneath. To protect it from shot on top, a steel deck of three inches thickness is built in the ship immediately over the engines and boilers, the deck inclining toward the sides of the ship, so that if a shot did strike the deck it would be deflected upward and away from the engines and boilers. This deck is also placed below the surface of the water, if practicable.