Gradually it was perceived that coast-defence ships thus scattered were an attraction to an enemy and an invitation to him to destroy them in detail; and so the idea of concentrating defence squadrons came into being.
At the same time it was found that coast-defence ships were poor sea-boats and practically useless with a sea-going battle squadron, and on such grounds every navy now has dropped them in favour of ships able to act anywhere in all weathers. Thus, by a process of cycle we have returned to the equivalent of the martello tower and batteries. As a result big bases are crammed with guns rarely if ever likely to be fired at an enemy, and lesser places are supplied with a few guns that if attacked at all will be overwhelmed. The situation is on the face of it illogical; but it is also the result of an attempted evolution of something better.
If the fort system be wrong, then there is probably some error in the course of that evolution which took us from forts to ships and then back to forts again. Examined, one is inclined to imagine that perhaps the coast-defence ships idea was not wrong save in its application.
Its application may have been wrong in this wise. The coast-defunders, even the early American monitors, were always primarily ships. They were bad ships in the matter of nautical qualities, but they were still always more ships than floating forts. The floating battery proper hardly survived its first inception, when
