THEN AND NOW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13497, 25 May 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

THEN AND NOW.

'. . "When I saw our latest leviathan warship, the Indomitable, launched at Glas- - , gow the other day," writes a correspondent of the Westminster • Gazette, "I could not help wondering what our forefathers of a century ago would have I f||- thought of her. In 1800 a leading naval authority wrote:—'The size of our ships seems now to have reached its ultimatum. » • . The French, indeed, have latterly built a snip of most extraordinary =1 ■«e, 172 ft keel, 55ft 9in by the beam, ton- ■" ■ , a age about 2850 tons; but she is pro- ■ jounced to be entirely unfit for service.' l> A "d yet this marine monstei of 1800, whose size mado her so unwieldy that "he hath never been out of harbour,' was but a third as long as our latest :, cruiser, little more than two-thirds the ';fp^' s l "' and a sixth of the tonnage—in fact, - • e <, was relatively so small that ; she might easily, one would think, have been carried °n the Indomitable's deck.. Although a 50acre forest .had. provided Iter • timbers, and nv had taken 200 shipwrights a year ;,. ' « build her, her total cost was less than ''Ee-v.sntb that of her successor of to-day." r feiSi?'■■'■' T-f'tJSi'S.:: ; '. ' .'■ ■■■ " "-, ' ; " • '