ges which were regarded as too distant for any effective action in
earlier days.

But for nearly thirty years after Lissa there were no fleet actions.
Ships, armour, guns, were all improved, and the great naval Powers built on
a larger and larger scale. Steel took the place of iron as the material for
shipbuilding and armour. Naval gunnery became a precise science. Torpedoes
were introduced, and with them such new types of ships as the swift torpedo
boat and the "destroyer." But there was very little fighting on the sea,
though in the same period there were colossal conflicts on land.

Hundreds of armour-clads were built that became obsolete, and were turned
over to the shipbreaker, without ever having fired a shot in action.
Theories of tactics for fleet actions were worked out on paper, and tested
to some extent at naval manoeuvres, but the supreme test of battle was
wanting. In the Franco-German War of 1870 the French navy had such a
decided superiority that the few German warships of the day were kept in
their harbours protected by batteries and sunken mines. The only naval
action of the war was an indecisive duel between two gunboats. In the
second stage of the war the officers and men of the French navy fought as
soldiers in the defence of France. Guns were taken from the ships to be
mounted on land fortifications. Admirals commanded divisions, formed
largely of naval officers and bluejackets.

Again in the war of 1878 between Russia and Turkey the Russians had only a
few light craft in the Black Sea, and the Turkish fleet under Hobart Pasha,
weak as it was, held the undisputed command of these waters, and had only
to fear some isolated torpedo attacks. In South American civil wars and
international conflicts there were duels between individual ships, and some
dashing enterprises by torpedo boats, but nothing that could be described
as a fleet action between ironclads. The only time a British armoured fleet
was in action was against the batteries of Alexandria on the occasion of
the bombardment in July, 1882. The forts, badly armed and constructed, and
inefficiently defended, were silenced, but a careful examination of them
convinced experts that if they had been held by a better-trained garrison,
the victory would not have been such an easy matter. This and subsequent
experiences have led to the general acceptance of the view that it will be
seldom advisable to risk such valuable fighting machines as first-class