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on steady platforms, a fortiori pass them when mounted on shipboard

Even if not carried into effect, as a demonstration made up on
the flank, or looking towards the rear of a flank, such a use of rams
or torpedo vessels might well have a very distracting effect upon
the enemy. His ships of the line could not be directed to their
attack, nor under the suppositions catch them if they were.

All such operations are of course subsidiary in their general
character, and though they may be of capital importance in a par-
ticular instance. The ram and the torpedo I consider, as I have
already said, inferior weapons to the gun.

But I think it can be laid down with great positiveness as a [I?]
rule almost never to be departed from, that the ships of the line
must not be separated from one another by intervals that will give
a chance for an enemy to push between; yet that such work as I
have indicated should be done, and that there should therefore be
special vessels to do it.

As to the character of those vessels we have these considera-
tions: There is wanted first great speed and second to act close
to the enemy; these are their main charaacteristics. They will
have therefore the ram and the torpedo, close quarter weapons, for
their particular offensive work; and the gun becomes then to them
a secondary weapon. It follows that the gun need not be protected
and to save weight any battery they carry should be unarmored.
In making a dash, the guns crews should be withdrawn below, and the
captains' attention wholly fixed upon collision. This ship de-