Ordered home to submit his plans and
models to the Admiralty, Captain Coles
shared the usual fate of reformers and
inventors, however honest, however
ingenious; he found only the usual Chinese
Toryism, and that virulent hatred of change
even for the better which especially
distinguishes Englishmen when in office. One
clever man alone, Mr. Brunei, saw and
approved the plan.

"You have hit on the right thing," he
said. " I myself have been devising something
for the same purpose; but your plan
is so superior to mine, that I shall think no
more of mine. I shall charge you nothing
for my draughtsman. I have the greatest
pleasure in helping a naval officer who is
trying to benefit his country. Go on,
persevere, and you will succeed."

In 1859, Captain Coles again forwarded to
the government drawings of his proposed
shield and of turn-tables for the guns. The
late Prince Consort examined these drawings
with great interest, having himself
turned his attention to the same subject, and
to this interview Captain Coles was probably
indebted for the Admiralty ever considering
his idea at all. While the Admiralty still
sneered, and dozed, and fancied itself thinking,
the American war broke out, and our prompt
Yankee cousins soon availed themselves
of Captain Coles's thoughts. The Federal
Monitor, an iron raft with a revolving
tower and only two guns, drove off
the Confederate Merrimac, an ironclad of ten
guns, a vessel which had sunk or dispersed
a wooden squadron of the now useless old
school, had passed through a hail-storm
fire from the heaviest Columbiads of the
Federal batteries on the Point, and had all
but driven the frightened New Yorkers
to block up their harbour against the
invulnerable monster.

The Americans were not slow to follow
up this hint. In 1864, they had already
built seventy turret vessels. Elated at this
practical proof of the success of his primary
notion, however imperfect as yet in detail,
poor Captain Coles, with all the pluck
and energy of a British sailor, plied
the Admiralty day and night with complaints,
assurances, and promises. He guaranteed
to build shot-proof rafts, with three-hundred
pound guns and revolving shields,
for sixty thousand pounds each.*

* Mr. Reed tells us that the unlucky Captain cost
one hundred and thirty-nine thousand eight hundred
and sixty-four pounds; but what is that, when the
Minotaur (ironclad) actually cost four hundred and
eighty-five thousand three hundred and forty pounds?

There is no knowing, in the first years of
costly experiment with iron, what this
clever and sanguine inventor did not propose
to do. He offered, we find, among
other things, for the eight hundred and
sixty thousand pounds spent on three forts
at Spithead, to convert twenty useless
wooden line-of-battle ships into effective
iron block-ships to resist monitors, land forts
being, in his opinion, entirely useless. He
undertook to build a vessel nearly one
hundred feet shorter than the Warrior, to
require only half the crew, and to cost at
least one hundred thousand pounds less—
and to disable and capture the Warrior in
one hour. There can be no doubt, in fact,
that the lamented gentleman led the
Admiralty what we may be allowed perhaps to
call a dog of a life; he was so vigorous, so
restless, and so sanguine.

In the mean time, Captain Coles's enemies
the haters of change gave him as
good as they got. They kept up a ceaseless
fire of aggravating doubts and scruples.
Loud against Captain Coles grew the prophecies
of the usual Cassandras. The concussion
of forty pounds of powder would be
so great that no gunner could live in the
turrets. It would be impossible to move
the turrets when the ships were in motion.
The decks would blow up with the firing.
The ship would become uninhabitable. The
turrets would be instantly jammed by shot,
and so rendered immovable.

In 1861, however, after a steady system
of blistering annoyances, and cold shower-
baths of public opinion, the Admiralty began
to slowly open one eye. A cupola vessel,
the Trusty, made a successful trial trip in
September, 1861. Captain Coles was then
asked to furnish memoranda of suggestions
(he had plenty of them by him you may be
sure), so that a ship with two cupolas might
be designed. These memoranda eventually
resulted in the Prince Albert, a turret ship,
built, however, for coast defence only.

Lord Clarence Paget, in the naval debates
of 1865, was especially hard on this
"thorn in the Admiralty's flesh," who was
constantly raising outcries which obtained
a hearing in the press, constantly letting
air and light into the Admiralty's secret
conclaves and old-fashioned anti-reform
ways. My Lords shut the official door often
enough on him, but he was one of those
men who would not remain outside in the
cold, and would not bear being treated like
a madman, a swindler, or a begging-letter
impostor. When Lord Clarence acknowledged
Captain Coles in Parliament to be.