Ships Cover for the Imperieuse class armoured cruisers HMS Imperieuse (1883) and HMS Warspite (1884). The documentation mainly relates to the early design requirements and specifications, statements of dimensions and weights, allocated armament and ammunition, armour protection, and scheme of complement. The controversy these ships attracted is borne out in the amount of paperwork devoted to the pros and cons of their designs. There are two seperate digests of design history, one dealing with the general design up to March 1881 and the other barbette design up to June of that year. A great deal of the correspondence is devoted to concerns over the overweight condition of the completed vessels, and the impact this would have on their stability, protection and fighting capability. Two documents of particular interest are a letter from Edward Reed MP to Vice Admiral Sir W. Houston Stewart (Controller of the Navy) criticising the Admiralty design while forwarding his own, and a subsequent letter from Barnaby to William White in 1885 concerning the need to limit size of armament in the interests of maintaining sound stability. The sometimes confrontational paperwork culminates in a published June 1887 report on an experimental cruise carried out by Imperieuse. The date range covered by the papers is curiously short, commencing with the design phase in August 1880 and ending with the June 1887 Imperieuse trial cruise report.