"Ironclad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your statement before the trial board, sir," replied the commander briefly. "I may as well say, however, that I do not believe you will be able to do them much good. You know our rules are ironclad." ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... general rule of employing only soldiers as scouts, there was an occasional exception to it. I cannot say that these exceptions proved wholly that an ironclad observance of the rule would have been best, but I am sure of it in one instance. A man named Lomas, who claimed to be a Marylander, offered me his services as a spy, and coming highly recommended from Mr. Stanton, who had made use of him ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... her ships from foreign countries, and so difficult was it to obtain parliamentary support for these acquisitions that, as already stated, when war with the neighbouring empire broke out in 1894, she did not possess a single ironclad, her strongest vessels being four second-class cruisers, which, according to modern ideas, would not be worthy of a place ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in the China Sea, during the war, two little frightened birds, smaller even than our wrens, arrived, I know not how, on board our ironclad, in our Admiral's cabin, and all day long, though no one attempted to disturb them, they fluttered from side to side, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... this bill to allow the beneficiaries named therein to present to the Court of Claims for determination certain demands made by them against the Government on account of the construction of two ironclad monitors called the Squando and the Nauset and a side-wheel ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... the future comedian, with his turned-up nose, which cuts the air like the prow of a first-class ironclad, superb, triumphant, dressed like a Brazilian, shaved to the quick, the dearest hope of Regnier's class at the Conservatoire-Jocquelet, who has made an enormous success in an act from the "Precieuses," at the last quarter's ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... at his desk when Mr. Newman, on the Monday evening, was shown in to him by the ironclad widow who kept house for him. He looked up with ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... three sections. Maj. John W. Graham advanced the center faster than the wings and soon planted our flag on the west fortifications. This was a signal for Hoke's and Kemper's brigades to come in from that side. On Monday night of the first attack, at midnight, our ironclad gunboat, Albemarle, came down the river and cleared it of all the Yankee shipping, sinking and running off all their gunboats. The Albemarle was firing into Fort Williamson. General Hoke demanded the surrender of this fort, but General ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... an army corps, and the excited Turkish population." Elsewhere, with prophetic foresight, he showed that the forcing of the Dardanelles could not be carried out without "heavy loss, possibly tremendous loss, and that the loss of a first-class British ironclad is equivalent to the loss of an army corps with all its guns." [Footnote: Letter to the Macclesfield Chronicle, September ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Union craft had more than the forts against them. Once past the boom they were in the midst of a hostile fleet of fifteen vessels, including a dangerous ironclad ram. A fierce water-fight followed. The Union Varuna was sunk; the flag-ship Hartford set on fire by one of the fire-rafts. The flames, however, were soon put out. Other vessels were disabled. But every one of the Confederate ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... experiments against the Resistance, which have been suspended since November last, were resumed on June 9 at Portsmouth by the officers of the Vernon. The injuries received by the ironclad in the previous experiments having been repaired, so as to make the vessel watertight, the old ship was towed up the harbor, and moored in Fareham Creek. Our readers are aware that the Resistance is an obsolete ironclad which has finished her career as a battle ship, and that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... abundant, I plump for a sea unicorn of colossal dimensions, no longer armed with a mere lance but with an actual spur, like ironclad frigates or those warships called 'rams,' whose mass and motor power it ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... superstition that a calamity of any sort must be expiated by a human sacrifice; so the wickednesses and stupidities of our medicine men are rooted in superstitions that have no more to do with science than the traditional ceremony of christening an ironclad has to do with the effectiveness of its armament. We have only to turn to Macaulay's description of the treatment of Charles II in his last illness to see how strongly his physicians felt that their only chance ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... Magdalen, though she disapproved of her manner of life as weak and illogical. You could not love Bessie any more than you could love an ironclad. She bore the same resemblance to a woman that an iron building does to a house. She was not in reality harder than tin or granite or asphalt, or her father; but it would not be an over-statement to suggest that ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... beyond the coffee-pot, neatly folded, lay the TIMES, and the DAILY NEWS and the TELEGRAPH all with an air of requiring his attention. There had been more fighting in Thibet and Mr. Ritchie had made a Free Trade speech at Croydon. The Japanese had torpedoed another Russian ironclad and a British cruiser was ashore in the East Indies. A man had been found murdered in an empty house in Hoxton and the King had had a conversation with General Booth. Tadpole was in for North Winchelsea, beating Taper by nine votes, and there had been a new cut in the Atlantic passenger ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... nation; but although there were no more wrought-iron cannon made, the building of naval steamships, which began with Stockton's "Princeton," went steadily on, growing and improving, until it reached the high point shown by the swift and powerful ironclad men-of-war which now ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... creaking sign drew so many to the verge of destruction, and plunged so many over into the gulf, he was met by Skipper Ned Bryce, a sociable, reckless sort of man, of whom he was rather fond. Bryce was skipper of the Fairy, an iron smack, which was known in the fleet as the Ironclad. ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... itself felt in later years. Adams was instrumental in getting Lord John Russell to stop the "Alexandra,'' and it was his industry and pertinacity in argument and remonstrance that induced Russell to order the detention in September 1863 of the two ironclad rams intended for the Confederate States. Adams remained in England until May 1868. His last important work was as a member, in 1871—1872, of the tribunal of arbitration at Geneva which disposed of the "Alabama'' claims. His ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... A column of seething mud and water, twenty feet in diameter, shot full thirty feet into the air, overwhelming the launch in such a shower that many of the unprofessional spectators imagined she was lost. Thus an imaginary ironclad was sent, with a tremendous hole in her, to the bottom of ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... was slick enough to get an ironclad contract as Resident Engineer. His bridge plans are a wonder, but he's proved himself N. G. on construction work. Has to be told how to build his own bridge. I'm ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... weapon is the ironclad going to vanquish these torpedo rams? Guns cannot hit her when moving at speed; she is proof against machine guns, and, being smaller, handier, and faster than most ironclads, should have a better chance with her ram, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... There was no doubt of it. Moving with a terrible sinuous motion. Occasionally an incautious ironclad approached like a foolish hen, and pecked at the moving mass. Then there was a slight crash, followed by a mild convulsion of masts, and spars, and iron-plates, and 100-ton guns, then two or three gurgles and all was still. The iceberg passed on smiling in triumph, and British Admirals wrote to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... depended absolutely upon the caprice of the mysterious steersman who inhabited the ironclad, fish-shaped machine. ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... told Hefty to go lie down. It has never been explained just what horrible insult lies back of this advice, but it is a very dangerous thing to tell a gentleman to do. Hefty lifted one foot heavily and bore down on the disappointed masker like an ironclad in a heavy sea. But before he could reach him Policeman McCluire, mindful of the insult put upon him by this stranger, sprang between them and said: "Here, now, no scrapping here; get out of this," and shoved Hefty ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... mean is to say that the whole craft seems to be alive, and a perfect demon of energy and strength. Many persons hold that a torpedo boat is likely to be more useful in terrifying an enemy than in doing him real harm, and we can safely say that the captain of an ironclad who saw half a dozen of these vessels bearing down on him, and did not wish himself well out of a scrape, has more nerve than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... New York, she was picked up on the limit of the American water by two cruisers, which would keep pace with her as well as they could until she reached the first battleship. As she passed the ironclad these two would leave her, and the next two would take up the running, and so on until she reached the range of operations of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... leadership in the labour unions so that these valuable institutions may no longer stultify themselves and wreck their own cause by their unjust and anti-social regulations as to apprentices, control of maximum output and its standard of quality, division of labour with ironclad inhibitions against one man doing another's work and against one man doing what six men can do less well, and as to the obligation to strike on order when no local or personal grievance exists. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... for ethics, is not hard in political circles. Paul Brennan found his man in Frank Manison, a rising figure in the office of the District Attorney. Manison had gubernatorial ambitions, and he was politically sharp. He personally conducted only those cases that would give him ironclad publicity; he preferred to lower the boom on a lighter charge than chance an acquittal. Manison also had a fine feeling for anticipating public trends, a sense of the drama, and an understanding ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... and wishes into words, and then later, without words, concentrating myself in worship. It was a need inherited from many hundreds of generations of forefathers, this need of invoking help and comfort. Nomads of the plains, Bedouins of the desert, ironclad warriors, pious priests, roving sailors, travelling merchants, the citizen of the town and the peasant in the country, all had prayed for centuries, and from the very dawn of time; the women, the hundreds and hundreds of women from whom I was descended, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... dock has been formed, capable of receiving the largest steamers in the ocean mail service, and broad enough for an ironclad. The principal dimensions are: length, 540 feet; breadth, 68 feet; depth, 26 feet. An outer harbour, 44 acres in extent, will be gradually formed under the protection of the breakwater. When these works are completed, Cape Town will afford advantages to shipping such as are scarcely exceeded ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... proposal to the Confederate authorities about cotton. Another of the Emperor's friends now enters the play. On January 7, 1863, M. Arman, of Bordeaux, "the largest shipbuilder in France," had called on the Confederate commissioner: M. Arman would be happy to build ironclad ships for the Confederacy, and as to paying for them, cotton bonds might ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... south as Memphis; had blockaded all the cotton ports of the South; had assisted in the reduction of a number of Confederate forts; had aided Grant at Fort Donelson and the battle of Shiloh; the Monitor had whipped the ironclad terror, Merrimac (the Confederates called her the Virginia); Admiral Farragut's fleet had compelled the surrender of the city of New Orleans, the great forts which had defended it, and the Federal Government obtained control of the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the Crimean War, and in 1858 built four iron-plated line-of-battle ships; in 1860 England built the Warrior, an iron steam battleship with 41/2-inch plates; since then new types have succeeded each other very quickly; the modern ironclad is built of steel and armed with steel plates sometimes 2 feet thick; the term is now loosely applied to all armoured vessels, whether battleships, or cruisers, or gunboats, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... port; but for a cruising fleet, or for independent vessels, the speed of the colliers would be insufficient, and a line of coaling-stations, at intervals of five days' steaming is in my opinion highly important, in addition to the necessity of docks where ironclad vessels could obtain the necessary repairs after a naval engagement. It is a serious result of modern improvements that the cumbrous and complicated ironclads cannot be repaired in a few days after an action with the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... morning found the six girls downstairs and seated at the breakfast table. Mr. Ashe, who made it an ironclad rule always to be in his office at half-past eight o'clock, even on holidays, had time for only a hasty good morning all around before his man announced that his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... took command of my two hundred boys and girls in B——, I realized how vast is the contrast between free and unrestricted educating, and the grind of cramming according to the ironclad rule of the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... showing the enormous force used upon them. "Superior speed will be very essential to the successful action of the ram; but by the above circumstance we may assume that even a moderate speed would enable great effects to be produced, at least on any comparatively weak point of even ironclad ships, such as ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... table must have been measured by the available funds of three poor musicians. But the whole affair did its mission admirably—even more effectively than an official commission to (let us say) inquire into the cause of the loss of an ironclad. It—the tree I mean, not the commission—was intended to excite joy and delight, and it did excite them to a very high extent. It was meant to produce astonishment in unsophisticated minds—it did that too, and here it has a point in common with the proceedings ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... was again in running order and everything progressing smoothly when one morning at breakfast I was informed that Pierola had broken out again. This time his party had, by means unknown, captured the Peruvian ironclad ram, Huascar. He must have been aided by the officers, or at least one of them who declared in his favor. Howbeit, he had possession. The Peruvian fleet was sent in pursuit, but as the Huascar was the most powerful vessel of the fleet, they had ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... penetration. Fired at ships, a shot was capable of breaching the planks (at 100-yard range a 24-pounder shot would penetrate 4-1/2 feet of "sound and hard" oak). With a fair aim at the waterline, a gunner could sink or seriously damage a vessel with a few rounds. On ironclad targets like the Monitor and Merrimac, however, round shot did little more than bounce; it took the long, armor-piercing rifle projectile to force the development of the tremendously thick plate of ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... it was very desirable to secure control of. The Confederates were fully aware of this, and as soon as they could, placed on the waters of their rivers and harbors vessels new to naval warfare, called ironclad rams. These were steamboats cut down and made suitable for naval purposes, and then covered over with iron rails or thick iron plates. The most famous of them was ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying the whites. Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made to take the oath of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requests were granted; flags were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalks in order to irritate the recalcitrant dames and their daughters. Confederate songs and color combinations were forbidden. In Richmond, General Halleck ordered ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... immense amount of knowledge of all the sciences, and once every year, though no one ever knew when he would be moved to relate it, he told a thrilling story of how once, guided by the stars, he had run a Confederate blockade in a waterlogged ironclad under a withering fire from the enemy's batteries. And when he had finished and the applause ceased, he glanced about with an air of surprise and said: "Thank you, young gentlemen; it pleases me to find you so enthusiastic ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... of architecture is the classical Italian Renaissance, with some modifications to harmonize with the treatment of the roofs, which are to be French, as best suited to such architecture on a large scale. The Mansard roof will be covered with an ironclad cornice ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... almost unaided human arm with which to subdue the boundless savagery of a continent, and win independence and form a nation besides. The demand for huge masses of the most essential of the factors of civilization has grown since, because the ironclad and the big gun have come, and those inadequate forces and crude methods supplied for a time the demand that was small and imperative. The largest mass made then, and frequently spoken of in colonial records, was a piece ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... relative. In the transition from wood to iron in naval architecture he has had command in every type of fighting craft beginning with the wooden Ossipee, when he took part at Mobile Bay in ramming the ironclad Tennessee, and, as ensign in charge of the forward guns, was the first to exchange words with the latter's commander as he came out of the casemate to surrender his ship, and ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... water of the channel had been raised like a dome, the bottom of the brig crushed in, and she had sunk instantly, the damage done to her hull being so considerable that it was impossible to refloat her. The "Speedy" had not been able to withstand a torpedo that would have destroyed an ironclad ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... maidens, even the accumulated impassiveness of thirty-seven generations of Kong fore-fathers broke down for the moment, and unable to restrain every vestige of emotion I crept unperceived to the ancestral hall of Sir Philip and there shook hands affectionately with myself before each of the nine ironclad warriors about its walls before I could revert to a becoming state of trustworthy unconcern. That night in my own upper chamber I spent many hours in testing my powers and studying more remarkable attitudes of locust flight, and I even found to be within myself some new attainments of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... triumphant Alexander, valiant Hannibal, or beauteous Cleopatra, shall be so well known to coming ages as thou art. No ship of the Spanish Armada, or of Lord Howard, who swept it from the sea; no looming monster; no Great Eastern or frowning ironclad of modern navies, shall be held like thee in perpetual remembrance by all the sons of men. For none ever bore such a hero on such a mission, that has glorified all nations by giving the greatest of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... he want to know?" asked Mrs. Marland; but chaff had about as much effect on Mr. Vansittart as it would have on an ironclad. He seemed not to hear, and awaited an answer with a bland smile. In truth, he thought Mrs. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... The ironclad that bore Helmar and his young friend to Alexandria also carried a great number of refugees, all bound for their homes in Europe. The time passed so pleasantly, that when their destination came into view, it was with feelings of regret that the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... his preparations were now complete, and the squadron detached to assist him was under orders to leave for Kinchau Bay that very night. This squadron consisted of the Tsukushi, a light cruiser, armed with two 10-inch and four 47-inch guns, and the old ironclad Hei-yen, once belonging to the Chinese navy, but captured by the Japanese at the first battle of the Yalu. She mounted one 10-inch Krupp which had formed part of her original armament, and two 6-inch modern guns. Also the Akagi, another survivor ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... 'Squimalt has not taken place in late years. The loss of the naval station lately does not seem to have made a deal of difference to its appearance. It dates back to the "wooden walls" of old England, and the appearance on the scene of the ironclad of later years. Whatever was the cause, the effect is there, and I suppose good reason could be found for the great change. Melancholy it was to me, who had seen the place full of life, jollity and laughter ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... of Hilo is disturbed. Two days ago an official intimation was received that the American Government had placed the U.S. ironclad "Benicia" at the disposal of King Lunalilo for a cruise round Hawaii, and that he would arrive here the following morning with Admiral Pennock and the U.S. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... story was repeated. The people convinced themselves that they would never again be forced to go to war; that they had seen the folly of it, and the misery of it, and would devote themselves thereafter to the delightful pursuits of peace. Gradually the fighting ships of the ironclad class were allowed to go to pieces; gradually even the larger ships of the wooden sailing class fell into disrepair; gradually the idea of war faded from the minds even of naval officers; gradually squadrons and fleets, as such, were broken up, and our ships were ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... and a battery of four seacoast mortars, placed below the water battery. Fort Jackson, besides its water battery, mounted sixty-two guns, while above the forts were fourteen vessels, including the ironclad ram Manassas, and a partially completed floating battery, armored with railroad iron and called the Louisiana. New Orleans was defended by three thousand volunteers, most of the troops formerly there having been sent to the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... his, "a very wealthy man," he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and other supplies to the Carlist army. And it was not a shipwreck in the ordinary sense. Everything went perfectly well to the last moment when suddenly the Numancia (a Republican ironclad) had appeared and chased them ashore on the French coast below Bayonne. In a few words, but with evident appreciation of the adventure, Mills described to us how he swam to the beach clad simply in a money belt and a pair ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... practically gone out of military use, but it is still employed in the navy, where the distinction is clearly preserved; any vessel provided with cannon is an armed vessel; an armored ship is an ironclad. Anything that can be wielded in fight may become a weapon, as a pitchfork or a paving-stone; arms are especially ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... only existing relic within the city's verge of the chain of downs once encircling the whole place. It had however been cannonaded so steadily during the six months' siege as to have become almost ironclad—a mass of metal gradually accumulating from the enemy's guns. With the curtain extending from it towards east and west it protected the old town quite up to the little ancient brick church, one of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... In Logan County, Ill., alone, he has 40,000 to 45,000 acres. It is the almost universal testimony that Scully's rule in that county has reduced 250 tenants and their families to a condition approaching serfdom. Furthermore, Scully pays no taxes, the tenants signing ironclad agreements to assume the same, but they are required to pay to Scully's agents the tax money at the same time as the rentals—the 1st of January of each year; whereas, the agent need not turn over the taxes to the county treasurer until about June 10 following. It is suggested ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... block of seasoned oak, six inches through, and two feet in height, and interpose it squarely against an approaching body and it is almost as powerful in the way of resistance as so much metal. It would take an ironclad to crush it to pulp, by acting longitudinally or along its line of length. This block stood upright, and received a portion of the rafters, covered by the shingles and held them aloft as easily as you ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... powers of narrative, I cannot hope to make clear to you all that Cuthbert Banks endured in the next few weeks. And, even if I could, I doubt if I should do so. It is all very well to excite pity and terror, as Aristotle recommends, but there are limits. In the ancient Greek tragedies it was an ironclad rule that all the real rough stuff should take place off-stage, and I shall follow this admirable principle. It will suffice if I say merely that J. Cuthbert Banks had a thin time. After attending eleven debates and ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... impostor. But he would risk 100 T on me anyhow, and as soon as I was reported favorably on by the college I would be raised—the agreement is to be for three years. For a few months I am to command a training ship—an ironclad that is in dry dock at present, until a captain in the English Navy comes out, who has been sent ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... a time in the Crimea. The allied fleet was sent to bombard various sea forts. The most important of these naval operations from a historical standpoint was the expedition against Kinburn, for here it was that the modern ironclad was first tried. On September 5, 1854, Napoleon had ordered the construction of five armored floating batteries, which embodied the results obtained in the tests of plating made before the War Ministry's ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... heavy guns could harm her, and relying for offensive weapons not on a broadside of thirty guns of small calibre, but on two pivotal 100-pounder columbiads, or, perhaps, if necessary, on blows from her hog snout,—the Fulton was the true prototype of the modern steam ironclad, with its few heavy guns and ram. Almost as significant is the presence of the Torpedo. I have not chronicled the several efforts made by the Americans to destroy British vessels with torpedoes; some very nearly succeeded, and although they failed it must not be supposed that they did no ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... general had given him three days' leave, Vincent was able to stay to see the close of the affair, and early next morning again rode down to Sewell's Point, as the Merrimac was to start at daybreak. At six o'clock the ironclad came out from the river and made for the Minnesota, which was still aground. The latter was seen to run up a signal, and the spectators saw an object which they had not before perceived coming out as if to meet the ram. The glasses were directed toward ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... does not go down under gun fire as stone or brick does. The whole fabric wars rust, bent and twisted, gaping with shell holes, that raggedest display of old iron, but it still kept its general shape, as a smashed, battered, and sunken ironclad might do at the bottom ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was bothering me for it, but I knew he was in need of it himself, to pay back Selina, who wanted it to make up a sum of two shillings, to buy Harold an ironclad for his approaching birthday,—H. M. S. Majestic, now lying uselessly careened in the toyshop window, just when her country had such sore need ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... 1862.—Farragut carried his fleet into the Mississippi, but found his way upstream barred by two forts on the river's bank. A great chain stretched across the river below the forts, and a fleet of river gunboats with an ironclad or two was in waiting above the forts. Chain, forts, and gunboats all gave way before Farragut's forceful will. At night he passed the forts amid a terrific cannonade. Once above them New Orleans was at his mercy. It surrendered, ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... PROVIDED by nature with ironclad constitutional defences against illness, Mr. Henley was now and then troubled with groundless doubts of his own state of health. Acting under a delusion of this kind, he imagined symptoms which rendered a change ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater rate than twenty to twenty-five miles an hour; when grand pianos were not yet ironclad and armour-plated, or had learnt proudly to display the maker's name on their broadside when they went forth to do battle ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... to in the foregoing extract from the committee's report is that popularly known as the "Ironclad oath," prescribed by the Act of July 2, 1862, to be taken by every person elected or appointed to any office of honor or profit under the Government of the United States, either in the civil, military, or naval ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... obscure, of too little importance even for the messengers of Death to remember and to relieve from their misery. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons of offence regularly win in their race with the weapons of defence. Fortresses that took years to construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, would our defensive ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... German Emperor proceeded to hold a review of the Austro-Hungarian Fleet and went beyond the official programme by going aboard the ironclad Francis Joseph, flying the flag of Admiral Sterneck. After this, inviting himself to luncheon with the Archduke Charles Stephen, commanding the Austrian squadron, he made a fervent speech, wishing health and glory to his precious ally ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... as efficient fighting-machines, became schools of leisure wherein—a thing impossible amid the perpetual storm and stress of war—the young blood of the nation could be more gradually inured to the sea and tuned to fighting-pitch. Science had not yet linked hands with warfare. Steam, steel, the ironclad, the super-Dreadnought and the devastating cordite gun were still in the womb of the future; but the keels of a newer fleet were nevertheless already on the slips, and with the old order the press-gang, now for ever obsolete, went the way of all ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... all these facts have a bearing upon each other I can not at present state, but in view of the twenty years' franchise, and of the fact that you will hold undisputed control, I do not see but that you have a splendid investment here. The contract for the city lighting of those twelve blocks is ironclad, and the franchise for exclusive private lighting and power is exclusive so long as 'reasonably satisfactory service' is maintained. As this has been undisputed for thirty years I don't think you need have much fear upon that score," ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... affairs, also, we speak of the architect having created the palace or cathedral, or the ironclad; meaning thereby not the slow process of cutting and joining stone, or riveting steel plates, but the higher antecedent act of mind in evoking the ideal form and providing for all contingencies in the adaptation and subsequent working ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... at Chickasaw Bayou, Admiral Porter was equally busy in the Yazoo River, threatening the enemy's batteries at Haines's and Snyder's Bluffs above. In a sharp engagement he lost one of his best officers, in the person of Captain Gwin, United States Navy, who, though on board an ironclad, insisted on keeping his post on deck, where he was struck in the breast by a round shot, which carried away the muscle, and contused the lung within, from which he died a few days after. We of the army deplored his loss quite as much as his fellows of the navy, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the creation of a navy. By the end of the year 1863 the government had six hundred vessels of war which were increased to seven hundred before the rebellion was subdued. Of the total number at least seventy-five were ironclad. It may be instanced with laudable pride that one enterprising man, honorably distinguished as a scientific engineer, constructed in less than a hundred days an armored squadron of eight ships, in the aggregate of five thousand tons burden, capable of steaming nine knots per ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... draw up an ironclad contract that will hold a man as slippery as Eells, but two outside lawyers who had come in with the rush did their best to make it air-tight. And even after that Wunpost took it to Los Angeles to show a lawyer who was his friend. When it came back ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... and foreign officers who had seen the rebel ram Merrimac being built at Norfolk, reported her as formidable. The United States Galena, our first ironclad, was a failure. There was no vessel of the kind to deal with the monster save Ericsson's floating battery, ready for sea in March, called the Monitor, as a warning to Great Britain, expected to interfere on behalf of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... of enticing the German fleet into the open," maintained the Colonial Minister. "Let us send an ironclad squadron to Heligoland and bombard the island and its fortifications until it crumbles into the sea. The acquisition of Heligoland was the Emperor William's darling idea, and this monarch will take good ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... shown the many hideous scenes of coarseness, vulgarity, obscenity, and degrading immorality in Martin Luther's life." When the Catholic rises from the contemplation of these scenes, it is hoped that his mind has become ironclad against Protestant argument. These attacks upon Luther are a plea pro domo, the effort of a strong man armed to keep his palace and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... (recently graduated from a Salt Lake City picture house) got eight weeks booking on the Cort Circuit out through the Northwest. The first show told the story. They were bad: awfully bad. But they had an ironclad, pay-or-play contract and as the management couldn't fire them, it was determined to freeze them out. The manager started in giving them two, three and four hundred mile jumps every week, hoping that they would quit. But no matter how long ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... these measures the South was at first practically without naval resources, and had to turn at once to new methods of war. Its first move was to convert the steam frigate Merrimac, captured half-burned with the Norfolk Navy Yard, into an ironclad ram. A casemate of 4 inches of iron over 22 inches of wood, sloping 35 degrees from the vertical, was extended over 178 feet, or about two-thirds of her hull. Beyond this structure the decks were awash. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the United States navy had been steadily improving, but this improvement was not sufficient to make it worthy of reliance at this crisis. As has been said, there was money enough, and every ship-yard in the country could be set to work to build ironclad men-of-war: but it takes a long time to build ships, and England's navy was afloat. It was the British keel that America had ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... of the Mississippi were two formidable forts and a number of water batteries, with combined armaments greatly superior to those of Farragut's fleet. A great barrier of logs stretched across the river, while farther up lay a Confederate fleet of fifteen vessels, one of which was an ironclad ram. A strong force of Confederate sharpshooters was stationed along either bank, and a number of fire-rafts were ready to be lighted and sent down against the Union fleet. It was against these obstacles that ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... wonderful. Well, now, these men would be all ready for us if we were in national danger. I heard Mr. Fullerton say that hundreds of them are in the Naval Reserve, and as soon as they learned their way about an ironclad, they would take to the work by instinct. There is nothing they don't understand about the sea, and wind and weather. Would any negro help us? Why, Lord Wolseley told your friend Sir James Roche that a thousand Fantees ran away from fifty painted men of some other tribe; and Lord Wolseley said ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... and when eleven years old served on the Essex in the War of 1812. When his fleet started up the Mississippi River, in 1862, he found his way to New Orleans blocked by two forts, St. Philip and Jackson, by chains across the river on hulks below Fort Jackson, and by a fleet of ironclad boats above. After bombarding the forts for six days, he cut the chains, ran by the forts, defeated the fleet, and went up to New Orleans, and later took Baton Rouge and Natchez. For the capture of New Orleans ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... sounded like the broadsides of a big vessel. Were they the guns of Persano's long inactive fleet attacking some of Brondolo's or Chioggia's advanced forts? Were the guns those of some Austrian man-of-war which had engaged an Italian ironclad; or were they the 'Affondatore,' which left the Thames only a month ago, pitching into Trieste? To tell the truth, although we patiently waited two long hours on Dolo church spire, when both I and my companion descended we were not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The central battery ironclad Colbert is one of the ten ships of the French navy that constitute the group ranking next in importance to the squadron of great turret ships, of which the Formidable is the largest. The group consists of six types, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... lay Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Fortress Monroe, the Government station. Near here one of the most important naval engagements of the Civil War was fought, when Ericsson's "cheese on a raft," the Monitor, faced the terrible Confederate ironclad ram, Merrimac, and forced her to retire, after it seemed as though the entire wooden United States navy was to be at the mercy ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... under was still and glassy, so that the neck of land seemed projected into the sky—a sort of gigantic razor-fish suspended in the silvery clouds. Then, to give the yachts time to overtake them, they steamed over to a mighty ironclad that lay at anchor there; and as they came near her vast black bulk they lowered their flag, and the band played "Rule, Britannia." The salute was returned; the officer on the high quarterdeck raised his ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of six years at the Court of St. James, but during the war it was a serious matter to be Minister to England. In the summer of 1863 affairs there had reached a climax. The Alabama and Florida were scaring all American ships from the ocean, and five ironclad rams, built for the confederate government, were nearly ready to put to sea from English ports. If this should happen it seemed likely that they would succeed in raising the blockade. As a final resort Lincoln and Seward sent word ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Amethyst, were engaged in the only encounter at sea in which Her Majesty's ships have been engaged, (with the exception of fights with slavers) for very many years, and this conflict was the more remarkable inasmuch as their opponent was an ironclad. Peru is the land of revolution and revolt against authority. Such a rising took place in the last week of May. Pierola, the leader, had as his friends the officers of the Peruvian ironclad the Huascar, and this vessel pronouncing in his favour, put to sea with him on board. ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... impatiently as one turns upon an impertinence, and beheld a great ironclad not four miles out, steaming fast across the dappled silver, and from its funnels sparks, intensely red, poured out into the night. As I turned, came the hot flash of its guns, firing seaward, and answering this, red flashes and a streaming ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the cool, comfortable quarters of the Boxer to the hot wardroom of the ironclad was not an agreeable one; but Frank was not the one to complain, and he entered upon his duties with his accustomed cheerfulness and alacrity. He was allowed very little rest. The captain of the Michigan—which was the flag-ship of the third division of the squadron—was a regular officer, ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... with his tail between his legs. He had not even been accepted as a suitor, he who had himself been wooed only a day before. His proposal of marriage had not been accepted, had not even been considered by the woman who had so lately broken ironclad convention to propose marriage to him. He had been treated merely as a scapegrace debtor who had come to ask favours from an old friend. He had even been treated like a bad boy; had been told that he had wasted money; had been ordered, in no doubtful ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... I've been refusing all the way from Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she's only an orphan; and that she can't expect the people who were glad to come to the house in her father's time to trouble much about her now. That's the latest game. An orphan! It's like hearing an ironclad talk about being at the mercy of the winds ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... officers' spurs, I assure you. We amateurs cling to the Regular Army pomp and practice. Frankly, I love it; I admire the military method—a rule for every occasion, a rigid adherence to form, no price too high for a necessary objective. And the army code! Ironclad and exacting! Honors difficult and disgrace easy. One learns to set great store by both. You've no idea, Miss Good, how precious is the one and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the hands of a few merchants who had large warehouses and who took the greater part of what the ships brought in. These men were, in turn, affiliated more or less closely with the great trading houses which sent goods from Rouen or Rochelle, so that the monopoly was nearly as ironclad as when commercial companies were in control. When an outsider broke into the charmed circle, as happened occasionally, there was usually some way of hustling him out again by means either fair or foul. The ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... of the United States consists at this time of 588 vessels completed and in the course of completion, and of these 75 are ironclad or armored steamers. The events of the war give an increased interest and importance to the Navy which will probably extend beyond the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... courts of justice was suspended, lawlessness and individual license walked abroad, and anarchy, pure and simple, prevailed. Under the name of the "Ku Klux Klan," the South was bound by the following oath, ironclad, paradoxical and enigmatical ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune |
