The design of many of her Majesty's ships has been altered after
trials with their models. This was notably the case in connection with
the design of the Medway class of river gunboats. The Admiralty
constructors at first determined to make them 110 ft. long, by only 26
ft. in breadth. A doubt arising in their minds, the matter was
referred to the late Mr. Froude, who had models made of various
breadths, with which he experimented. The results satisfied the
Admiralty officers that a substantial gain, rather than a loss, would
follow from giving them much greater beam than had been proposed, and
this was amply verified in the actual ships.

So long ago as the last decade of last century, an extended series of
experiments with variously shaped bodies, ships as well as other
shapes, were conducted by Colonel Beaufoy, in Greenland dock, London,
under the auspices of a society instituted to improve naval
architecture at that time. Robert Fulton, of America, David Napier, of
Glasgow, and other pioneers of the steamship, are related to have
carried out systematic model experiments, although of a rude kind in
modern eyes, before entering on some of their ventures. About 1840 Mr.
John Scott Russell carried on, on behalf of the British Association,
of which he was at that time one of its most distinguished members, an
elaborate series of investigations into the form of least resistance
in vessels. For this purpose he leased the Virginia House and grounds,
a former residence of Rodger Stewart, a famous Greenock shipowner of
the early part of the century, the house being used as offices, while
in the grounds an experimental tank was erected. In it tests were made
of the speed and resistance of the various forms which Mr. Russell's
ingenuity evolved--notably those based on the well-known stream line
theory--as possible types of the steam fleets of the future. All the
data derived from experiment was tabulated, or shown graphically in