Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Subjects:

Steamships, Military Technology, Accidents, Heroism, Romanticism, Feeling

People mentioned:

George Tryon

Institutions mentioned:

Royal Navy

    Notes that it is 'the fashion among some writers to decry the modern ironclad, as if it were a mere clumsy ugly box of machinery and boilers, a thing from which all sentiment and romance had departed', but insists that as 'a matter of fact, these great marine monsters do succeed in inspiring the same kind of sentiment in the men who sail them and who fight them as did the old wooden battle-ships'. Furthermore, the sinking of HMS Victoria does not necessarily indicate the 'fragility of the modern ironclad', for there is 'nothing exceptional or unusual about the capsizing of an ironclad' and ships of 'the most ancient heart-of-oak pattern' regularly keeled over with 'even less excuse'. (15)