News of Queen Victoria's pregnancy travelled through London with the swiftness of a delighted whisper carried by spring winds. The city — a maze of soot-stained rooftops, rattling omnibuses, and the endless drone of industry — seemed suddenly lighter, as though even the chimney smoke rose with a hint of celebration.
And with that news came a renewed fascination with Arthur Lionheart, the Prince Consort. The satirical prints on Fleet Street portrayed him as the lucky knight who had conquered the heart of Britain's young monarch; the more serious papers spoke of him as a man who might quietly shape the destiny of the Empire.
Arthur, skimming through caricatures and commentary delivered to him each morning, understood all too well that public admiration was not power.
Real power, in that age, spoke through coal, iron, and the guns of the Royal Navy.
Thus, when the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Minto, summoned him to Whitehall to inspect a new warship model, Arthur knew the meeting would not be a simple courtesy. The Admiralty was one of the most conservative pillars of Britain; many of its members still considered the steam engine a suspicious French contraption that exploded more often than it ran.
The conference hall, lit by tall Georgian windows, held at its centre a magnificent scale model of a first-rate ship-of-the-line of the new Britannia class: three gun decks, one hundred and twenty cannons, a Burmese teak hull, golden embellishments reminiscent of the ships that had crushed Napoleon at Trafalgar.
The admirals stood around it with the pride of fathers admiring a prodigious child.
"Your Royal Highness," the Earl of Minto declared, chest swelling with confidence born of tradition, "this will be the most powerful vessel the world has ever seen."
Arthur studied the model. Every detail was exquisite… and fatally outdated.
The men in that room, raised in unwavering faith in British oak and wind, could not yet accept that the world was on the brink of a profound transformation.
He spoke with a calm, almost courtly tone.
"My lord, you call this a 'floating fortress'… but I must be honest. To my eyes, it is a wooden coffin."
The words struck the room like a cannon fired at close range.
Uniformed shoulders stiffened; a few men inhaled sharply as though witnessing a blasphemy. No one in living memory had dared to speak of His Majesty's ships in such terms. Yet Arthur's expression remained composed, hands clasped behind his back.
"Your Royal Highness!" barked an admiral whose face flushed crimson. "You will find no support for such insults here. The Royal Navy is the shield of the Empire!"
Arthur bent over the model, fingertips brushing the polished teak.
That wood had once made Britain invincible — but its age was ending.
"I mean no insult," he replied. "Only truth. The wars to come will not be fought with wooden walls. These vessels will burn, gentlemen — and sink — under the fire of weapons you have not yet allowed yourselves to imagine."
He opened a wooden crate brought by one of his secretaries. Inside lay a plate of steel, forged using a process he had quietly refined… and an object no officer of the Royal Navy had ever seen before: an explosive armour-piercing shell, with an elongated casing and an internal timed fuse.
Several admirals blanched. Whispers had travelled through Europe about the new French Paixhans shells — weapons capable of turning wooden battle fleets into floating pyres. Many feared that once perfected, they would render Britain's proud line-of-battle ships catastrophically vulnerable.
"I propose a demonstration," Arthur said simply.
Within the hour, they reached the firing grounds of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, where London gave way to fields, foundries, and sprawling artillery workshops. The air smelled of coal smoke and gunpowder; distant hammers rang against iron like church bells of a new industrial age.
A thick panel of seasoned oak, the same used in British warships, was set beside the steel plate. A 24-pounder naval cannon — standard armament on many ships-of-the-line — was loaded.
The first shot, a traditional solid iron ball, smashed into the oak board with a thunderous crack. Wood splintered; the panel bowed but did not fully give way.
"There!" an admiral exclaimed triumphantly. "British oak endures."
Arthur said nothing.
He motioned for the cannon to be reloaded — this time with his shell.
The second shot tore from the cannon with a screaming metallic howl. It struck the steel plate and passed through it effortlessly, as though the metal were no more substantial than parchment.
Then it exploded.
The blast shook the air; shards of steel and splinters of burning oak erupted outward. The proud wooden panel — symbol of centuries of naval supremacy — disintegrated into a shredded, smoking ruin.
Silence fell.
A silence so heavy it felt as though history itself had paused to listen.
The Duke of Wellington, who had faced more battlefields than any man present, touched the steel plate, still warm and trembling.
"Arthur… you have foreseen a new century."
"No," Arthur answered quietly. "I have merely hastened it."
Now the admirals stared at him not with condescension, but with a dawning mixture of awe and fear.
Arthur unfolded a set of architectural drawings.
"Gentlemen, wood is dead. The ships of the future will be built of steel. They will carry no sails, for steam engines grow more reliable with each passing year. They will be armoured, fast, and armed with weapons that can shatter any timber hull."
The Earl of Minto's composure cracked; he looked at Arthur as though beholding some dangerous prophet.
"And who," he demanded, "is expected to pay for such madness? Parliament is already choking on the costs of the new railways! And if such a vessel of iron were to sink on its maiden voyage, Britain would be the laughingstock of Europe!"
Arthur nodded calmly.
"I am aware of the risk. Which is precisely why… I will pay for it myself."
No one spoke.
Even the wind seemed to retreat.
"I will finance the construction of the first experimental ironclad at my own shipyards. If, within a year, it survives sea trials and proves its superiority, the Admiralty will be obliged to purchase it at double the cost — and commission a fleet of twenty more."
His gaze sharpened, steel against steel.
"If it fails — if it sinks, or explodes, or humiliates itself — then the disgrace shall rest solely on me, Arthur Lionheart.
Not upon the Crown.
Not upon the Royal Navy."
He stepped forward, utterly unflinching.
"Now, gentlemen… do you accept my wager?"