THE IRONCLAD
The year 1860 marks the most dramatic, swift, and far-reaching change
which has ever befallen war material: the supersession of the wooden
ship-of-the-line by the modern battleship in its earliest form. What
were the causes, suddenly realized or acknowledged, which impelled this
revolutionary change, and what were the circumstances which moulded
the new form of naval construction? This final chapter will attempt to
show. Before descending to a detailed examination of this evolution,
however, let us trace out the most striking features of the transition;
their measure of accuracy can be estimated by the light of the
subsequent narration of progress.
In the first place, then, we remark that, potentially, from the time
when shell-throwing ordnance was introduced into the French, and then
as a counter-measure into our own fleet, unarmoured wooden ships were
doomed. Strange it seems that so long a time elapsed before this fact
was realized; though it is true that with spherical shells and small
explosive charges the destructive effects of shell fire were not
greatly superior to those of solid shot, that fuzes were unreliable,
that trials of artillery against material were rarely resorted to,
and that, moreover, no opportunity occurred between 1822 and the
outbreak of the Crimean War to demonstrate in actual sea-fighting such
superiority as actually existed. Implicit trust was placed in our
fine sailing ships. So long as solid shot were used, indeed, these
timber-built ships were admirably suited for the line of battle;
as size and strength increased and as our methods of construction
improved the ship gained an increasing advantage over the gun, defence
increasingly mastered attack, to such a degree that by the end of the
long wars with France the ship-of-the-line had become almost unsinkable
by gun-fire. But so soon as shell guns were established--even with
spherical shells fired from smooth-bore ordnance--wooden ships
loomed easy targets for destruction. For a long time this disquieting
conclusion was ignored or boldly denied; expert opinion with sagacity
turned a blind eye to the portentous evidence presented to it of the
power of shell. War came, but even then the full possibilities of shell
fire were not developed. Enough proof was given, however, to show that
in the special circumstances of that war unarmoured ships were of small
value against shell fire. Armour was accordingly requisitioned, and,
some few years after the war, was applied to seagoing warships.
Another development now took place. At this period when disruptive and
incendiary shell was proving itself a more powerful agent than solid
shot of equal size, both shell and shot gained an enhanced value from
the application of rifling to ordnance; moreover, ordnance itself was
developing so quickly that each year saw an appreciable increase in
the unit of artillery force. This variation in the unit profoundly
affected naval architecture. No longer was there a unit of standard
and unchanging value, which, when multiplied by a certain number,
conveyed a measure of a ship’s offensive power. No longer was the size
of a ship a rough measure of its fighting strength; by concentrating
power in a few guns, offensive strength could be correspondingly
concentrated, if desired, in a small vessel. On the other hand, in
view of the sudden accession of offensive strength, the defensive
capacities of a ship remaining as before, it was now true that size had
become an element of danger, diminutiveness of safety. Hence warships,
which had for centuries triumphed in the moral and physical effect of
their height and size, suddenly sought to shrink, to render themselves
inconspicuous, to take the first step towards total invisibility.
An effect of the same development--of the increasing size of the unit
gun, and therefore of the decreasing number of units which a ship could
carry--was the mounting of every big gun so as to command as large an
arc of fire as possible.
As the final development we note that the steam engine, in endowing the
warship with motions far more variable, certain and controlled than
those of the sailing ship, called forth tactical ideas quite different,
in many respects, from those which governed sea actions in the canvas
period. The warship itself is the embodiment of tactical ideas. Hence
the design of the steam-propelled warship evolved along a different
line from that of the sailing ship.
By the effect and interaction of these developments a complete
revolution was compassed in naval architecture; by the progress of
artillery and the steam engine, and by the improvement in mechanical
processes in general, an entirely new unit of naval force was evolved
from the old sailing ship: the mastless, turreted ironclad of the late
’sixties, the precursor of the modern battleship.
§
No sooner had the shell gun given proofs of its destructive powers than
experiments on the penetrative power of projectiles began to assume
importance, and as early as 1838 trials were being made at Portsmouth
against a hulk, the result of which, confirming the experiments made
by the French with the _Pacificateur_ some sixteen years previously,
demonstrated the far-reaching effects of explosive shell against a
ship’s side-timbers. Four years later the prime minister was apprised
from New York that the Americans had discovered a suitable and adequate
protection for ships’ sides; iron plates of three-eighths of an inch
in thickness, riveted together to form a compound 6-inch plate, were
alleged to have been found ball-proof. On receipt of which intelligence
the Admiralty instructed Sir Thomas Hastings, captain of the
_Excellent_, to confirm or disprove by actual trial. Trial was made,
but it was reported that no protection was afforded by such plates
against the fire of 8-inch shell or 32-pounder shot, even at 200 yards’
range. No defensive remedy could be devised against shell fire, and the
only counter-measures deemed practical were of an offensive nature,
viz. to mount shell guns as powerful as those of the enemy, and to keep
him at a distance by the employment of large and far-ranging solid-shot
ordnance.
In the meantime iron, which was not acceptable as a protection, had
been accepted as a constructive material for ships. For some years it
had been increasingly used for mercantile shipping with satisfactory
results. The scarcity of timber and its cost, as well as the positive
advantages to be obtained from the use of the much stronger and more
plentiful material, had decided the Admiralty in ’43 to build iron
warships. Some small vessels were built and, in spite of adverse
criticism and alarming prediction, acquitted themselves admirably on
service. In ’46 it was resolved, however, to put iron to the test
of artillery. An iron steamboat, the _Ruby_, was used as a target
by the _Excellent_ gunners, and the results were unfavourable; the
stopping power of the thin metal was small, and the balls which went
clean through the near side wrought extensive damage on the opposite
plates. In ’49 trials were made with stouter plates with more promising
results: a report favourable to iron as a protection for topsides was
made. But in ’51, as the result of elaborate trials made against a
“mock up” of the side of the _Simoon_, the previous conclusions were
reversed. Iron was condemned altogether as unsuitable for ships of war.
“The shot and shell,” reported Captain Chads, “on striking are shivered
into innumerable pieces, passing on as a cloud of langrage with great
velocity,” and working great destruction among the crew. Nor was a
combination of wood and iron any better. In fact the report claimed
that, as regards the suitability or the unsuitability of iron, these
experiments might be deemed to set the question at rest. The experience
of the French had apparently been somewhat similar to our own. In both
countries the use of iron for warships received a sudden check and,
in England at any rate, the idea of unarmoured wood was once again
accepted. In both countries the opinion was widely held that iron was
unsuitable either for construction or protection, and that the view of
General Paixhans, that vessels might be made proof even against shells
by being “cuirassées en fer,” was preposterous and impracticable.[161]
Potentially, as it now seems, wooden sailing ships were so weak in
defensive qualities that the new artillery, if only it could be
adequately protected, had them at its mercy. Actually it required the
rude test of war to establish the unpalatable truth. In November,
1853, such proof was given. At Sinope a squadron of Turkish frigates
armed with solid-shot guns was almost blown out of the water by shell
fire from a powerful Russian squadron; the latter were practically
uninjured, while the Turkish fleet was set on fire and a terrible
mortality inflicted among the crews in a short time. General Paixhans,
who had lived to see his invention fulfil in actual warfare his early
predictions, was able to emphasize, in the columns of the official
_Moniteur_, the arguments against large ships and the advantages which
would accrue to France especially by the subdivision of force and the
substitution of small protected steamers armed with heavy guns for the
existing wooden ships-of-the-line. The concentrated fire of a few such
steamers would overpower the radiating fire of the largest three-decker.
The type of naval warfare imposed on the allies in the Crimean War lent
special force to Paixhans’ arguments. For the attack of fortresses
and coasts whose waters were exceptionally shallow it was at any rate
clear that the orthodox form of warship, unarmoured, of large size
and of deep draught, was of very limited value. Some special form was
necessary; France made a rapid decision. Napoleon III issued an order
for the construction of a flotilla of floating batteries, light-draught
vessels capable of carrying heavy shell guns and of being covered with
iron armour strong enough to resist not only solid shot but the effects
of explosive shell.
The idea of armouring ships was, of course, not novel. Armour of sorts
had been utilized from antiquity; in the days when the shields of the
men-at-arms were ranged along the bulwarks of the war galleys; in
the Tudor days when the waists of ships were protected by high elm
“blinders,” and when Andrea Doria’s carrack was so sheathed with lead
and bolted with brass that “it was impossible to sink her though all
the artillery of a fleet were fired against her.” In the eighteenth
century the French themselves had attempted to clothe floating
batteries with armour, not indeed against shells but against red-hot
shot. In 1782 they had devised, for the attack on Gibraltar, six wooden
floating batteries which, with their armament, were protected by a
belt of sand enclosed in cork and kept moist with sea water. But this
experience had been disastrous. The sand-drenching apparatus failed to
act, and the batteries were almost totally destroyed by fire.
But now, although experiments with iron-plated ships had been the
reverse of satisfactory, data were to hand which showed that, if used
in sufficient thickness, iron plates _were_ capable of withstanding
the disruptive effects of shell. At Vincennes trials had been made,
between 1851 and 1854, with various thicknesses and dispositions of
iron; with plates four to five and a half inches thick, with compound
plates, and with plates supported on a hard wood lining eighteen
inches thick; of all of which the thick simple plates had proved the
most effective. So the five floating batteries ordered for work in the
Crimea were covered with 4-inch iron plates backed by a thick lining.
Sixty-four feet long, 42 feet in beam, drawing about 18 feet of water,
armed with sixteen 56-pounder shell guns and equipped with auxiliary
steam machinery for manœuvring, their construction was hastened with
all possible speed. By October, ’55, three of them, the _Dévastation_,
_Tonnante_, and _Lave_, had joined the allied flags, and on the 17th of
that month they took a principal part in the bombardment of Kinburn.
Their success was complete. Although repeatedly hit their iron plates
were only dented by the Russian shot and shell. “Everything,” reported
the French commander-in-chief, “may be expected from these formidable
engines of war.” Once again the arguments of Paixhans for armoured war
vessels had been justified; the experience gained with iron armour at
Kinburn confirmed that gained with shell guns at Sinope. France at once
proceeded to apply these lessons to the improvement of her navy proper.
In England, on the other hand, no great impression was created either
by shells or by iron protection. A comfortable faith in our fleets of
timber-built ships persisted; and, with regard to policy, as it had
been with shell guns, and with steam propulsion, so it appeared to be
with armour; the national desire was to avoid for as long a time as
possible all change which would have the effect of depreciating the
value of our well-tried material. At the same time it is remarkable
how small an effect was conveyed to expert opinion, both here and in
America, by the events of the Crimean War. In the years immediately
following the war some notable technical works were published:
Dahlgren’s _Shell and Shell Guns_, Read’s _Modifications to Ships of
the Royal Navy_, Grantham’s _Iron Shipbuilding_, Sir Howard Douglas’
_Naval Warfare with Steam_, and Hans Busk’s _Navies of the World_. From
these works and from the press and parliamentary discussions of the day
it is evident that, outside France, the impressions created were vague
and conflicting. The main lesson conveyed was the great tactical value
of steam propulsion. The reports laid no emphasis on shells, and so
scanty was the information concerning them that it was very difficult
to appraise their value. Their effect at Sinope was disguised by the
overwhelming superiority of the Russian force, which rendered the
result of the action a foregone conclusion; on another occasion (at
Sebastopol) shells fired at long range were reported to have failed to
penetrate or embed themselves in a ship’s timbers. Commander Dahlgren
was uncertain, in the absence of fuller information, whether shells had
justified their advocates or not. Nor was Grantham impressed by the
French floating batteries. “One only of these vessels,” he incorrectly
says, “was thus engaged, but then not under circumstances that gave any
good proof of their efficiency, as the fire was distant and not very
heavy.”
So no violent change in our naval material followed as the immediate
result of the war. Only in the matter of light-draught gunboats and
batteries tardy action was forced on the authorities by public opinion.
Although iron had been condemned for warship construction iron ships
had been built in the years preceding the war in considerable numbers
for foreign governments; the firms of Laird and Scott Russell had
built in 1850 powerful light-draught gunboats for Russia, and in the
same year Russia had ordered from a Thames firm an iron gunboat whose
novel design had been brought to the notice of the Admiralty. But these
craft were intended for the defence of shallow waters, and nothing
analogous to them was considered necessary for the British navy. The
exigencies of the war demonstrated in the course of time the value of
these light-draught vessels. Still there was long hesitation; though
the French government pressed on us their advantages, and presented
our minister with the plans of their own floating batteries. The
disappointment of the Baltic expedition, however, and the realization
that the powerful British fleet which in the summer of ’54 had set
out to reduce Cronstadt had done nothing but prove the inherent
unsuitability of large ships-of-the-line for the attack of fortresses
in shallow waters, gave rise to a loud demand in the press that
gunboats should be built. Several were accordingly laid down. The first
of these were found to be too deep, but others of lighter draught
were designed and by the autumn of ’55 sixteen were ready; and these,
together with some dockyard lighters which had been fitted as mortar
vessels, joined a flotilla of French floating batteries in the Baltic
and effectually bombarded Sveaborg. As the war progressed the value of
ironclad gunboats became more fully appreciated. A large number was
ordered, but most of them were only completed in time to fire a grand
salute in honour of the proclamation of peace.[162]
Apart from the building of these gunboats innovation was avoided.
Unarmoured wooden ships, equipped with a mixed armament of shot and
shell guns, continued to be launched and passed into commission,
and it was only after France had constructed, at Toulon in ’58, an
iron-encased frigate, that England unwillingly followed suit, convinced
at last that a reconstruction of her materials could no longer be
averted.
_La Gloire_, the iron-belted frigate, was the direct result of the
lessons gained from the floating batteries in the Russian war. After
Kinburn the French naval authorities took up the study of how to apply
armour to sea-going ships. Was it possible to embody in a fighting unit
sea-going capacity, high speed, great offensive power, in addition to
the defensive qualities possessed by the slow, unwieldy batteries?
Could such a weight as iron armour would entail be embodied in a ship
design without loss of other important qualities? It was concluded
that, while it would be impossible to cover the sides completely, it
would be possible to protect the surfaces near the water-line, under
cover of which all the ships’ vital parts could be secreted. A great
increase in defensive power would thus be obtained. Before developing a
plan in detail it was decided to carry out further armour trials, and
solid iron plates of 4½ inches thickness were fired at with English
68-pounders and French 50-pounders, with solid balls and with charged
shells. The results were satisfactory, so these plates were adopted as
the standard of armour protection. To the design of M. Dupuy de Lôme
the first ironclad frigate was constructed from a fine two-decked ship,
the _Napoleon_, which was cut down, lengthened, and armoured from stem
to stern. The result was the celebrated _Gloire_. She was followed
shortly afterwards by two sister vessels. And then, in order to obtain
a direct comparison between timber-built and iron ships, an armoured
_iron_ frigate, the _Couronne_, was also built. The three wooden ships
were given a complete belt round the water-line of 4½ inches of iron;
the _Couronne_ had compound armour--3-inch and 1½-inch iron plates
separated from each other and from the iron stem-plating by wood lining
6 inches in thickness. The armament of all four frigates consisted of
thirty-six 50-pounder shell guns, carried low. They were given yacht
masts and equipped with propelling machinery designed to give them 12
knots speed.
§
The naval position of England at this time was the reverse of
satisfactory. Comparing the material resources of the two great
maritime rivals, it came to be noted with surprise that France, taking
advantage of the development of steam propulsion during the decade,
had actually drawn level with England in the numbers of steam warships
available and in their aggregate motive horse-power. The French had
submitted to great financial outlay on account of their navy. In this
country a reaction, following the large and partially ineffective
expenditure incurred in the Crimean War, had dried up the sources of
supplies and stunted constructional development; there was little to
show for the money spent on such works as the enlargement of docks
and on the extensive new factories and docks established at Sheerness
and Keyham. Apprehension was widespread when the intelligence of the
building of the iron-sided ships was received, and this apprehension
developed when whispers reached Westminster of a huge prospective
programme meditated by France. To allay the panic a parliamentary
committee was formed to inquire into the relative strength of the two
navies; and their report, published in January, 1859, made bad reading.
Comparing the steam navies--for, the committee reported, sailing ships
could not be opposed to steamships with any chance of success--France
and England each had afloat the same number of line-of-battle ships,
viz. twenty-nine; and as regards frigates France had thirty-four to
England’s twenty-six! This did not include the four _frégates blindées_
laid down by France, which would be substitutes for line-of-battle
ships, which were being built with the scantling of three-deckers,
and which were to be armed with thirty-six heavy guns, most of them
50-pounders throwing an 80-pound hollow percussion shell. “So convinced
do naval men seem to be in France,” note the committee, “of the
irresistible qualities of these ships, that they are of opinion that
no more ships-of-the-line will be laid down, and that in ten years
that class of vessel will have become obsolete.” The position is bad
enough; yet so bewildered are our experts by the radical developments
of the rival navy, so difficult appears the problem of countering the
French designs by any new and well-studied procedure, that all that the
committee can recommend is the accelerated conversion of our remaining
sailing ships to steam. The committee realize that naval architecture,
and still more naval artillery, is in a state of transition, and that
the late invention of Armstrong’s gun “may possibly affect even the
size and structure of ships of war.”
It is not possible, however, for a country desirous of maintaining its
maritime supremacy to wait upon perfection in the manner implied as
the policy of the parliamentary committee. Some drastic and immediate
action was necessary, to redress the advantage accruing to France from
the possession of the _Gloire_ and her sister frigates. Such action was
duly taken; but before proceeding to examine this action it will be
necessary to revert for a moment to a consideration of iron. We have
already sketched the evolution of iron as a protective covering for
warships; we must now glance back and briefly trace its progress as a
constructive material.
Iron vessels had appeared on the canals of England in the latter part
of the eighteenth century. In 1815 a pleasure boat of that material
had sailed on the River Mersey, attracting crowds of people whose
credulity had been severely strained by the statement that an iron ship
would float. Admiral Napier had manifested an early interest in iron
ships; in 1820, in partnership with a Mr. Manby, he had constructed
the first iron steamer, the _Aaron Manby_, and navigated it from
London up the Seine to Paris, where in ’22 it attracted considerable
attention. From this date onwards iron vessels increased in number.
In ’39 the _Nemesis_ and _Phlegethon_ were built by Mr. Laird for the
East India Company, and in the China war of ’42 these gunboats played
a conspicuous and significant part. The grounding of the _Nemesis_ in
’40 on the rocks of Scilly afforded early evidence of the value of
watertight bulkheads (a Chinese invention) when embodied in an iron
hull.
As the size of ships increased, the disabilities attaching to the use
of timber became more and more evident. Though braced internally by
an elaborate system of iron straps, knees, and nutted bolts in iron
or copper, the large timber-built ship, considered as a structure,
was fundamentally weak; in fact the presence of the straps and ties
contributed in no small degree to its inability to withstand continuous
stress. The fastenings did not accord with the materials which they
fastened together, and the wood was relatively so soft that when a
severe strain arose a general yielding took place, the boltheads
sinking into the wood and causing it to give way to the pressure thrown
locally upon it. As tonnage increased the metal fastenings grew more
and more conspicuous, the ship became a composite structure of wood
and iron, with the result that uniformity of elasticity and strength
was lost and the stresses, instead of being distributed throughout
the structure, tended to become localized at certain points. “The
metallic fastenings of a timber-built ship act to accelerate her
destruction so soon as the close connection of the several parts is at
all diminished.” So in 1840 wrote Augustin Creuze, a graduate of the
disbanded school of naval architecture and one of the most gifted and
eminent men of his profession at that day.
Iron ships, on the other hand, were found to be well adapted to
withstand the racking stresses, the localized loads and the vibrations
which were introduced by steam machinery; they were lighter than
wooden ships, more capacious, more easily shaped to give the fine
lines necessary for speed, cheaper and immeasurably stronger. In
course of time the objections to them gradually vanished; by aid of
the scientists the derangement of their compasses was overcome, the
dangers from lightning were obviated, and the extent of the fouling to
which their surfaces were liable was kept within limits. In course of
time, in spite of natural preference and vested interest, and since
the advantages of iron were confirmed by continuous experience, wood
became almost entirely superseded by the metal for large mercantile
construction. But in the case of warships, as we have seen, insuperable
objections seemed to prohibit the change of material. No sooner had a
step been taken by the Admiralty, in the ordering of a group of iron
paddlewheel frigates in ’43, than an outcry arose; the wooden walls
of England were in danger, the opponents of iron declared, and iron
ships were wholly unsuitable for warlike purposes. More were ordered in
’46. Sir Charles Napier, whose opinion naturally carried great weight
with the public, led the opposition, and when, in ’49, the artillery
trial demonstrated the dangerous effects of shot and shell on thin iron
plates, the advocates of iron were fain to admit the error of their
opinions. The iron frigates were struck from the establishment and
transformed--such of them as were completed--into unarmed transports.
As experience with iron ships accumulated, the feeling grew in
certain quarters that the artillery trials, the results of which had
been claimed as being decisive proof of the unsuitability of iron
for warships, might not have been the last word upon the subject.
The events of the Crimean War tended to emphasize the doubt and
uncertainty. A few there were who saw in that war clear proofs of the
superiority of iron over wood; who argued that, though iron had proved
to be dangerous in the form of thin plates in certain circumstances,
yet it had shown itself to be impervious both to shot and shell, and
indeed an indispensable defence in certain circumstances when applied
in sufficient thickness; that thicker plates than those condemned as
dangerous might therefore prove to be a great protection against shell
fire; and that, even as regards thin plates, the splintering effect of
shell against these was small, from all accounts, compared with the
_incendiary_ effect of shell against timber. And in what other respects
were the advantages of iron contested?
But, acting upon expert advice and influence, doubtless, by the
remembrance of the _Birkenhead_ and _Simoon_ fiasco, the government
still felt unable to sanction the use of iron, and it was not until
news of the laying down of the _Gloire_ reached England that a decision
was made to adopt the new material, both as armour and for the hulls of
warships.
The high protagonist of timber-built ships, it was shortly afterwards
revealed, was Sir Howard Douglas: the most strenuous advocate of iron
was John Scott Russell. For years, it appeared, Sir Howard had been
the influential and successful adviser of the government against the
adoption of iron. “I was consulted by Sir Robert Peel,” he wrote
in 1860, “on his accession to the government, as to the use and
efficiency of a certain half-dozen iron frigates, two of which were
finished, and four constructing by contract. I stated in reply that
vessels wholly constructed of iron were utterly unfit for all the
purposes of war, whether armed or as transports for the conveyance of
troops.” In the same paper he stated the arguments on which he had
tendered this advice; and these arguments appeared so fallacious,
and the facts on which they were based so disputable, as to seem to
call for some reply from the builders of iron ships. Sir Howard had
certainly strayed far from science in his unsupported statements
as to the calamitous effects of iron if used for warships; and
unfortunately he had allowed himself to stigmatize the _Great Eastern_,
as representative of iron ships generally, as “an awful roller,” and
as never having attained anything like her calculated speed. Scott
Russell made a violent reply. “After establishing that Sir H. Douglas’s
conclusions are the reverse of the truth,” he began, “I shall proceed
to establish that the future navy of England must be an iron navy. That
its construction must be founded on facts and principles, which Sir H.
Douglas’s writings ignore, and his deductions contradict; and I believe
I shall prove that if iron ships had been introduced at the time
when Sir Howard says he sedulously and systematically opposed their
introduction, the money which has been spent on a wooden fleet about to
become valueless would have given England a fleet greatly more powerful
than the combined navies of the world.”[163]
It may be conceded that in this public argument Scott Russell had the
advantage: the architect of the _Great Eastern_ had little difficulty
in confuting the views of the artillerist. But by this time the
battle between wood and iron had been fought and won. The Board of
Admiralty, influenced by the arguments of Scott Russell and their own
constructors, and in the presence of gigantic achievements in the form
of iron-built liners, felt unable to agree with Sir Howard in his
continued advocacy of timber; Sir John Pakington expressed his personal
doubts to him in a correspondence. Expert opinion, naval officers and
architects, leaned more and more in the direction of the new material,
and, early in 1859, the decision was made to build an armoured frigate
_of iron_. It was a momentous decision. The “wooden walls” had crumbled
at last, and iron had won acceptance as alone able to cope with the
new forces brought into existence by the progress of artillery and
steam machinery. The opponents of iron could not sustain for long their
arguments in favour of timber; experience was accumulating against
them, and it was necessary to accept defeat. Chief among them was Sir
Howard Douglas. There is, surely, something pathetic in the episode of
his long-continued struggle against radical change; something tragic in
the spectacle of this scientist, whose labours had done more, perhaps,
than any other man’s for the efficiency of the nineteenth-century navy,
in his old age casting the great weight of his influence unwittingly
against the navy’s interest? How gamely the old general fought for
his convictions is told us by his biographer, who with a natural
warmth denounced the fierce criticism which Scott Russell had directed
against a veteran of eighty-five winters, devoting his last hours to
the service of his country. “His resistance to armour ships bore him
down, his arguments met with unbelief, or elicited taunts, and ceased
to influence the public. ‘All that I have said about armour ships will
prove correct,’ he remarked, twenty-four hours before his death, toward
the end of ’61. ‘How little do they know of the undeveloped power of
artillery!’”
§
In June, 1859, some months before the launching of the _Gloire_, the
reply was given: the _Warrior_ was laid down. Up to this time the
initiative, in the slow evolution of naval material, had rested mainly
with France. From this moment England, having taken up the challenge,
assumed the initiative and its responsibilities; and from now onwards,
in spite of false moves, failures, and ineffective expenditures of
money and labour, she regained more and more surely the preponderance
in naval strength which she had possessed of old. At last a scientific
era of naval architecture had opened. Up to this time the design and
construction of warships had been treated as a mere craft: a craft
hampered, moreover, by absence of method, reluctance to adopt new
views, limitations as to size, interference and ever-varying decisions
as to such factors as the extent of sail-power or the number of guns
to be carried. By the official acceptance of scientific methods this
was largely changed. By the raising of the old office of Surveyor to
the dignity of Controller of the Navy, by the institution of a new
school of naval architecture to take the place of that suppressed
in 1832 (whose most eminent graduates, fittingly enough, were the
chief witnesses against the debased state and management of naval
construction as it was prior to 1860), by utilizing the services of
men trained in mathematics, the effect on naval architecture soon
became apparent. Originality had scope, forethought and cleverness had
full play; men of considerable technical knowledge were pressed into
service, who proved well able to cope with the new developments.
The outcome of this new orientation was the _Warrior_. It is usual to
think of her as similar to the _Gloire_; like her she was designed to
resist the 68-pounder unit of artillery, like her she carried a belt of
iron armour 4½ inches thick, and was equipped with steam machinery to
give her a high speed. Yet in important respects she differed from her
French rival.
[Illustration: THE _WARRIOR_
From a photograph in the possession of Dr. Oscar Parkes, O.B.E.]
Firstly, her size in relation to her armament caused general surprise.
Admittedly the policy of restricting dimensions, pursued with such
rigour from the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
had operated to the detriment of our naval construction; admittedly
the long and fine-shaped sailing vessels built during recent years
were greatly superior to those of the older models; yet no reason
presented itself for building a ship, of armament equal to that of the
5000-ton French frigate, which would displace over 9000 tons. Were not
cost and tonnage directly related, and was there some real necessity
forcing us to build ships of so large a size? Was it true that the
basins at Portsmouth would require to be enlarged to take such a ship,
and that her draught would be such that she could only be docked
at certain tides? The question was debated vigorously by the Board
itself. Three considerations, according to an authoritative statement
made to parliament, prompted the decision to depart widely from the
design adopted by the French: considerations one or more of which have
influenced all subsequent construction in this country. Firstly, the
world-wide duties of the British navy demanded a type of ship capable
of making long and distant voyages either with steam or sail: in
short, a fully rigged ship, a good sailer, and at the same time one
with sufficient carrying capacity to enable her to keep the seas for
a long time. Secondly, to ensure good sailing qualities and to avoid
a defect which had been experienced in our own ships fitted with
heavy pivot guns, and which was predicted in the case of the _Gloire_,
the extremities must be as lightly loaded as possible, and not weighed
down with heavy armour. Thirdly--and this was more or less special to
the period--since artillery was already in a state of rapid transition
to higher power, any protective armour approved must sooner or later
be insufficient and require to be augmented. These conditions, and the
advantages which increase of length were known to give in reducing
the propeller power necessary to obtain a certain speed, governed the
specifications to which the _Warrior_ was built. She was given a length
of 380 feet, machinery for a speed of nearly 14 knots, full canvas,
telescopic funnels, and waterline armour over her central parts: the
ends being left unarmoured, but subdivided by watertight compartments.
Of her forty-eight smooth-bore guns, twenty-six were behind armour and
twelve were outside of the protective belt; the remaining ten were
mounted on the upper deck, also without protection.
In another respect the _Warrior_ bore witness to the foresight of
the Board. Hidden behind, and altogether disguised by, the shapely
bow with its surmounting figure-head, was a stout iron ram-stem,
worked to the knee and side-plates of the bow: an inconspicuous but
significant feature. Ever since steamers had been established in the
navy the possibilities of ramming had been discussed. The revolution
in tactics resulting from the introduction of steam as motive power
had been examined by authorities such as Bowles and Moorson, Douglas,
Dahlgren and Labrousse, and all of them saw in the new conditions an
opening for the use of the ram. In ’44 Captain Labrousse had suggested
strengthening the bows of wooden ships for this purpose, and in England
Admiral Sartorius had become the advocate of a special type of warship
built expressly to ram. The circumstances of the naval warfare of the
Crimea, in which slow-moving steamers operated in restricted waters,
had displayed to naval men the advantages to be obtained from actual
collision--from the use of their ship itself as a projectile against
the enemy’s hull. In the case of the _Warrior_ an additional argument
was now to hand for providing a ram. The use of iron as armour had
restored the equilibrium between defence and attack which had been
disturbed by the adoption of shell fire; nay more, it had actually
turned the scale against artillery, the 68-pounder being unable to
penetrate the armour of the ship in which it was carried. For this
reason, that for the moment armour had the ascendancy over the gun, a
ram was considered to be necessary as an additional means of offence;
and a ram was accordingly embodied in the _Warrior_, to the strength of
which her converging iron-plate structure aptly contributed.
And now, leaving the _Warrior_ for a moment, it will be convenient to
glance ahead and note the part played by the ram and the value set upon
it in connection with later types of warships.
In 1860 no doubt was felt but that ramming would play a very important
part in future warfare. The experiences of the American Civil War
of ’62 seemed to supply a perfect confirmation of this opinion. “We
fought the _Merrimac_ for more than three hours this forenoon,” wrote
the engineer of the _Monitor_ to John Ericsson, “and sent her back
to Norfolk in a sinking condition. Ironclad against ironclad, we
manœuvred about the bay here (Hampton Roads), and went at each other
with mutual fierceness.... We were struck twenty-two times, the pilot
house twice, the turret nine times, the side armour eight times, deck
three times.... She tried to run us down and sink us, as she did the
_Cumberland_ yesterday, but she got the worst of it. Her bow passed
over our deck, and our sharp upper-edged side cut through the light
iron shoe upon her stem, and well into her oak. She will not try that
again. She gave us a tremendous thump but did not injure us in the
least.... The turret is a splendid structure....”
On the preceding day the iron-covered _Merrimac_ had sunk the wooden
sailing ship _Cumberland_ by ram alone, without the aid of artillery,
the shots from her victim’s guns glancing off her iron casing “like
hailstones off a tin roof.” She had then opened on the wooden
_Congress_ with shell fire, and in a short time the crowded decks of
that ship had been reduced to a shambles. Then she had fought the
inconclusive duel with the armoured _Monitor_. What lessons were at
length driven home by these three single actions! What a novel warfare
did they not foretell! The helplessness of the wooden ship when
attacked by an ironclad was apparent, the terrific effects of shell
fire were once again conclusively proved. The value of thick armour was
once more shown, but, above all, the power of the ram, the new _arme
blanche_ of sea warfare, seemed to be indisputably demonstrated. On
both sides of the Atlantic a revision of values took place: the wooden
navies of the world sank into insignificance, the _Warrior_ and her
type were seen to be the main support and measure of each nation’s
naval power. “The man who goes into action in a wooden ship is a fool,”
Sir John Hay was quoted as saying, “and the man who sends him there
is a villain.” The ocean-sceptre of Britain was broken, thought an
American writer forgetful of the limitations of monitors, by the blow
which crushed the sides of the _Cumberland_ and _Congress_.
Four years later the battle of Lissa, in which the ironclad squadrons
of Austria and Italy were engaged with one another, gave confirmation
that the lessons of Hampton Roads were also applicable to blue-water
actions. “Full speed. Ironclads rush against the enemy and sink him,”
was the signal made by the Austrian admiral, Tegetthof. The ram was
his chief weapon of offence, the gun being a useful auxiliary in
gaining him the victory; gunfire, by disabling the steering gear of the
_Ré d’Italia_, making her an easy prey for the ram of his flagship,
_Ferdinand Max_.
Of all the factors influencing the evolution of naval material, the
experiences and records of actual warfare are naturally considered
to carry the greatest weight in council: they are, indeed, the only
data whose acceptance is indisputable. The claims and achievements
put forward in time of peace, however their excellence may have been
attested by the most realistic experiments, are all referred to
actual war for trial, and are accepted only in so far as they fit
in with war experience. But sea actions between ironclads have been
few and far between. It has been the more difficult, therefore, to
draw from them the true lessons conveyed; the fixed points have been
insufficient in number, so to speak, to allow of the true curve of
progress being traced. Not only has this insufficiency been evident,
but the restriction in the area of war experience has had another
harmful effect, in that undue weight has been given to each individual
experience. Difficult as it always is to strip each experience of its
special circumstances and deduce from it the correct conclusion, errors
have undoubtedly been made; and these errors have had a prominence
which would not have been theirs if the number of experiences had been
greater. On the other hand, an altogether insufficient weight has
commonly been given to the experiences of peace-time.
These remarks find one application in the ram, and in the value placed
upon it in the ’sixties and ’seventies. During this period artillery
was undergoing a continuous and rapid improvement, eventually turning
the scales against defensive armour; steam power was expanding and
the manœuvring capacities of ships were being extended, so as to make
ramming an operation more and more difficult to perform. Yet faith in
the ram grew rather than decreased, influenced almost entirely by the
evidence of the two sea-actions.
What was the actual experience of ramming gained in peace-time? In ’68
Admiral Warden, commanding the Channel Fleet, reported: “So long as
a ship has good way on her, and a good command of steam to increase
her speed at pleasure, that ship cannot be what is called ‘rammed’;
she cannot even be struck to any purpose so long as she has room,
and is properly handled. The use of ships as rams, it appears to me,
will only be called into play after an action has commenced, when
ships, of necessity, are reduced to a low rate of speed--probably
their lowest.” As time progressed the chances of ramming certainly
grew less. Yet Lissa and Hampton Roads continued to influence opinion
to such a degree, as to lead to a glorification of ram tactics; in
the press, and in the technical institutions which had now come into
being, the ram retained a lustre which it no longer deserved. So long
as artillery was feeble and gunnery of low efficiency, and so long as
speeds of ships were slow and manœuvring power restricted, the ram was
of great potential value. As these conditions changed, the value of
the ram declined. But for a time it was actually in question which of
the two forms of power, the steam engine or the gun, would ultimately
exert the greater influence as a weapon in action. The subject of a
Prize Essay for 1872 was, “The Manœuvres and System of Tactics which
Fleets of Ships should adopt, to develop the powers of the Ram, Heavy
Artillery, Torpedoes, etc., in an action in the open sea”; and it was
the opinion of the prize-winner, Commander G. H. Noel, that the ram
was at that time fast supplanting the gun in importance. “The serious
part of a future naval attack,” wrote Captain Colomb, in _Lessons
from Lissa_, “does not appear to be the guns, but the rams.” And the
French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the principal weapon in
naval combats--the _ultima ratio_ of maritime warfare.” “There is a
new warfare,” said Scott Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her
alongside, but, Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.”
And he predicted fleets of high-speed vessels, equipped with powerful
rams and twin-screw engines, in which both guns and armour were merely
of secondary importance. And writers on tactics discerned future
squadrons in action charging each other after the manner of heavy
cavalry.
The evolution of artillery falsified these expectations. With the
growing advantage of artillery over the defence, and with the coming of
the torpedo, fighting ranges increased and the use of the ram declined.
With greater speeds and greater ranges the possibility of ramming
became (as might be deduced mathematically) a diminishing ratio; before
the end of the century it was sufficiently clear, and was confirmed by
actual warfare, that the ram formed but a very secondary factor of a
warship’s offensive power. But for some years ramming, and “bows-on”
fighting in which ramming was intended to play an important part,
influenced to a great extent the designs of warships.
So much for the ram, first fitted in the _Warrior_. In her sister
ship the ram was less pronounced and, before Hampton Roads had drawn
attention to its possibilities, it was even in question to renounce
it altogether. In the case of the _Warrior_ the heavy figure-head
so overhung the ram that many were dubious whether the latter would
seriously damage an enemy; and, moreover, the wisdom of driving a fully
rigged ship against another vessel, and risking the dismantling of
her masts and rigging, was widely doubted. In other respects, except
for her armour belt and for the material of which she was built, that
vessel was not radically different from her predecessors; the first of
iron-built ironclads was a handsome screw frigate not unlike previous
British ships of her type, from whom she was lineally descended.
Although on the whole she was a conspicuous success, it was soon
apparent that the great length of the _Warrior_ tended to make her
difficult to manœuvre: in fact, made her deficient in that very
quality--handiness--which was indispensable to her effective use as
a ram. And this unhandiness was accentuated in the _Minotaur_ class
which was begun in 1861. These ships were given a belt an inch thicker
than that of the _Warrior_, and, partial protection being considered
objectionable, especially as leaving exposed the steering gear and a
portion of the gun armament, the belt was made continuous over the
whole length of the ship. This length, owing to the extra weight of
the armour, was 400 feet: 20 feet greater than that of the _Warrior_
and a hundred greater than that of the longest timber-built ships. At
first, five masts were fitted, in order to obtain a large sail-area
while at the same time keeping the size of each sail within desirable
limits; but these were afterwards reduced to three. Sail power and
steam machinery were seen to be an imperfect combination in so large
a vessel. The _Minotaur_ class proved to be costly, unhandy and
vulnerable ships, and signalled a return to smaller dimensions. It was
found possible to design ships equally fast and equally well armed and
protected, by the use of fuller lines and less length and an increased
engine power. “Increased manœuvring power and reduction in prime cost,”
wrote the designer of the new type, “more than make amends for the
moderate addition to the steam power.”[164]
Here we may briefly note the conversion of the timber-built fleet. In
’57 Captain Moorsom had submitted a scheme of cutting down ships to
a short height above the water-line and using the weight thus gained
to provide an armour belt. Sir Charles Napier had advocated a similar
policy in parliament. As soon as the necessity for armour was accepted
this policy was adopted; not only were the resources of the private
ship-yards bent to the building of a fleet of new iron warships, but
the best of the old navy was metamorphized in the royal dockyards by
the process of the _razee_: the cutting down of two-deckers and their
conversion into iron-belted frigates. By these exertions France was
soon outstripped in the struggle. For a long time she clung to wooden
ships, though in ’62 she adopted iron for upper works; and of such
ships, of wooden bottoms but of iron above the water-line, she built a
fleet “possessing only one possible merit--uniformity; which the new
English construction lacked.” The combination of heavy steam machinery
and wooden hulls was the cause of continuous difficulties; the growth
of artillery rendered the ships obsolete almost before they were built.
§
By the time the _Warrior_ and her sister ships were afloat the great
struggle between armour and artillery was well in progress. It was
a struggle which was to lead to unsuspected developments in naval
architecture.
For the moment, and in the presence of the new iron-built ironclads,
the gun was at its lowest point of effectiveness. But rifling had
conferred new powers on it, and the greatest efforts were being put
forth to improve its position. As it grew rapidly in size and power,
naval experts were faced with a succession of problems of extraordinary
difficulty. Two things were in question: both the type and the
disposition of gun best suited for a warship’s armament.
With regard to type, the adoption of armour inevitably gave a set-back
to the value of the shell gun. Shells, which would rend and set on
fire a wooden ship, would not pierce armour or inflame iron plates; of
which facts Hampton Roads afforded a demonstration. It seemed clear
also from that incident, to experts in this country and in France,
that no extension of the Paixhans principle was likely to compete with
armour in the future. The system of shell fire of General Paixhans,
like the shot system of the inventor of the carronade, had relied on
low muzzle velocities and curved trajectories, to effect its purpose.
His shells were for lodgment rather than penetration, and did not
gain their effect by their kinetic energy; and in view of this their
inventor had himself conceived the use of iron armour as the very means
whereby they might be countered. Nevertheless the Americans had been
strongly attracted by the Paixhans principle, and with their Dahlgrens
and Columbiads had extended it in practice to embrace the use of guns
of the largest calibres. The action between the _Monitor_ and the
_Merrimac_ did nothing to shake their faith in this class of ordnance.
Subsequent experiments appeared to confirm the national predilection;
and one of their writers, in giving credit to the navy chiefs for
adhering to the principle of the large smooth-bore gun, recorded that
the small-bore-and-high-velocity theory had received its quietus by
the utter demolition of a 6-inch plate by a ball from a 15-inch gun at
Washington in February, 1864.[165] In France and England it was held,
and held rightly, that high velocities were necessary for the attack of
armour.
If shell guns were of small value, what was suitable? Were the old
spherical solid shot still capable of beating the defence? A serious
effort was made in this country to bring them to do it. The Armstrong
rifled breech-loading guns recently adopted had been proving defective
and indifferent on service; a return was wisely made to muzzle-loading;
and it was in question also to revert to spherical shot and shell.
Spherical shot of hardest steel were tried by the _Excellent_, in the
hope that they would penetrate 4½-inch plates. Experimental guns were
also made, in 1864, to discharge 100-pound balls with charges of 25
pounds of powder; guns so heavy (6½ tons) that it was doubted at the
time whether they could be efficiently worked on the broadside of a
rolling ship. Should not increased power be obtained by persevering
with rifled guns? The advantages possessed by the rifled gun in ranging
power, accuracy, capacity of shell, were admitted; nevertheless the
navy as a whole favoured the smooth-bore, with its simplicity, rapidity
of fire, strength, and greater initial velocity, and thought that, at
close ranges, the 100-pounder 6½-ton smooth-bore gun was the best and
most suitable weapon for the service. But the rifled gun was advancing
rapidly. “By May, 1864, the 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled shunt gun of
6½ tons had been tried in the _Excellent_, and had a good deal shaken
the position of the smooth-bore. Captain Key reported that it was more
than equal to naval requirements.... It was admirably adapted for the
naval service.”[166] This fired a projectile 115 pounds in weight. By
June of the following year the target of 9-inch plate representing the
side of the _Hercules_ had beaten the latest Armstrong achievement, a
12½-ton 300-pounder. And on this pretext, and judging the defensive
power of the whole ship by the defensive power of the thickest patch of
its armour, a still more powerful gun was demanded for the navy by the
inventor and by the press: a 25-ton 600-pounder.
So rapidly the power of ordnance grew. It has been observed that of
this feverish evolution of armour and artillery the circumstances
were doubly remarkable. Firstly, no foreign pressure existed which
called for such overleaping and experimental advances. The Americans
still clung to their smooth-bore system; the French, who like us had
adopted breech-loading guns, retained the system in their service and
suffered for some years from its continuous inefficiency. Secondly,
the navy was itself “unwillingly dragged into the cul-de-sac of
experimental construction induced by the clamour of public opinion.”
The type, the size of the gun which was to be embodied in our latest
warships, was decided mainly by forces outside the navy, and changed
from year to year. Naval architecture changed with it. The adoption
of the succession of increasingly powerful rifled guns set experts at
their wit’s ends devising warships suitable for carrying them; entailed
continuous alterations both in the armaments of new ships and in the
design of the new ships themselves; but also, as it happened, had the
effect of giving this country a mastery over naval material which it
has never since surrendered.
The type having been decided for each individual vessel, there remained
the question of the disposition of the armament.
Two main considerations guided the evolution of the ironclads of
this period in respect of the disposition of their guns: one mainly
tactical, the other mainly constructive. It appears probable that, from
the date of Trafalgar onward, the limitations of merely broadside fire
had been realized; that the end-on attack, such as had obtained in the
supreme actions fought by Nelson and Rodney, had shown the weakness
of the broadside ship in ahead fire and had made obvious the anomaly
that, in all ships-of-the-line, the course of the ship, the direction
in which the attack was made, was the very direction in which gunfire
was least powerful, if not altogether non-existent. With the coming of
steam and the consequent growth of the ram and ramming tactics, this
anomaly was more and more apparent; and from the _Warrior_ onwards
each new type presented an enhanced effort to provide, particularly,
ahead fire. The growth of the gun materially assisted this effort.
Ahead fire increased, between the years 1860 and 1880, from zero to a
large proportion of the total fire. The broadside ship was for a time
abandoned.
The constructive consideration was the requirement of a protected
armament capable of the maximum effective fire in all directions. In
the first half of the century an increased effectiveness had been
obtained, with the old-fashioned truck guns, by adaptation of the ports
or by use of specially designed carriages, to permit of as large an arc
of training as possible. Even so the arc through which guns could be
fired was small, and in the case of the 68-pounder of the _Warrior_ was
only thirty degrees before and abaft the beam. The demand for greater
utility was emphasized when, with the increase in size of the unit gun,
the number of pieces carried by each ship was diminished.
How, then, having regard to these two considerations, should a
warship’s guns be disposed? Various methods were adopted. In the first
instance, it was seen to be possible to augment the ahead fire of a
ship, and to give a wide sweep of training to some of her guns, by
indenting the sides; by so shaping the ship’s side-plating as to allow
guns mounted in the forward part to fire in the direction of the ship’s
longitudinal axis. At first, slight use was made of this method: with
the fine lines given to iron ships it appeared practicable in only a
small degree. Moreover, it was objected to as causing a “funnelling”
effect to the path of fragments of enemy shell or shot; it was found
that shrapnel shell, fired at indented embrasures at Shoebury, broke
up, and the number of balls which entered the portholes was ten times
the number which entered similar portholes on a straight side. But,
after the _Minotaur_ class, less length and greater beam were given
to ships, and recessed ports and indented sides therefore became more
feasible.
As guns increased in weight and individual importance the advantages
of concentration became apparent. It was now undoubtedly desirable
to protect _all_ the guns; yet, if they had been strung out along
the whole length of the ship, the weight, both of the guns and their
protective armour, would prove to be an excessive burden to the ship.
Hence the advantage of the _central battery_. By concentrating the guns
into a central area, an armoured box amidships, the weight of armour
necessary to protect them could be kept within reasonable limits,
protection was afforded not only to the guns but to the vital parts
of the ship, while at the same time the extremities were left lightly
loaded. The complete water-line belt of armour was retained, but,
both in the French and in the English navy, the system of complete
protection as embodied in the _Gloire_ and _Warrior_ was given up.
This device of the central battery was at first used solely for
broadside guns. But the desire for ahead fire from behind armour soon
caused the adaptation of the battery to allow it. Ports were cut in
the two transverse bulkheads, the ship’s sides were indented, suitable
gun-mountings were provided whereby some of the battery guns could be
shifted from one porthole to another; and in this way it was secured
that a fair proportion of the armament could be fired either on the
beam or parallel with the keel-line of the ship. A power of offence was
given in all directions, and no “point of impunity” existed.
Ingenious were the arrangements resorted to, to obtain the maximum
effect from the new medium-sized artillery which superseded the
original truck-guns of the _Warrior_ and former warships. The armoured
boxes, instead of being made with their sides respectively parallel,
and at right angles, to the sides of the ship, were sometimes set
diagonally, with their sides at forty-five degrees with fore-and-aft.
Sometimes they were octagonal, sometimes with curved bulkheads,
sometimes two batteries were superposed one on the other; but always
the desire was to utilize each gun over as large as possible an arc
of fire, and always the tendency was to augment the ahead fire. The
central battery formed a powerful citadel covering the whole beam
of the ship amidships. The guns of this citadel, by the power of
manœuvring given by the adoption of twin-screw propelling machinery,
could, it was argued, be brought to bear in any direction desired. Of
all directions, “right ahead” was considered to be of the greatest
importance. End-on fighting, it was assumed, would always be resorted
to in future; and it was the power of keeping the ship end-on to the
enemy which was the great military advantage conferred by twin screws.
A further step in the direction of giving to each gun a large arc of
fire was taken in the introduction of the sponson. By means of this
circular platform, projecting from the vessel’s side, a gun could be
carried so as to fire through an arc of 180 degrees. The same system
obtained largely in the French ships of this period; by mounting guns
in overhung circular turntables, one at each corner of the central
battery _en caponière_, a large effective arc was obtained for them.
Only one step more was necessary: that which would allow each gun to
command the whole sweep of the horizon, and to be available for duty
upon either beam and any bearing: the adoption of the _centre-line
turret_. But before tracing the evolution of the turret, let us
recapitulate the typical ships built between 1860 and 1873 which
composed our central-battery fleet.
The germ of the central-battery idea may be seen, perhaps, in the
belted _Minotaur_, in which, in order to allow the chase guns to be
fought from behind armour, a transverse armour bulkhead was worked, at
a distance of some 25 feet aft of the bow. Had foreign influence not
exerted itself it may be supposed with reason that from the _Minotaur_
the central battery would have been evolved. However this may be, the
evolution was hastened by French initiative; for in each of the two
wooden ships _Magenta_ and _Solferino_, laid down in ’59, was found a
complete two-decked central battery whose whole depth was faced with
armour for the protection of fifty-two 5-ton cannon, the rest of the
ship’s water-line being protected by an armour belt much narrower than
that of the _Gloire_. In imitation of this plan our own designs were
prepared; and gradually, and only by a series of steps, we achieved
what our rivals had obtained in a single stride.
In ’63 Sir Edward Reed, at that time Mr. Reed, one of the graduates of
the school which in ’48 had been established at Portsmouth Dockyard,
was appointed to the office of Chief Constructor of the Navy. Possessed
of broad and original views and gifted to an unusual degree in the arts
of exposition and argument, he made himself responsible for designs of
warships differing widely from their large and unwieldy precursors. The
first of these was the _Bellerophon_, a short and easily manœuvred,
fully rigged belt-and-battery ship, carrying ten 12-ton Armstrong guns
for broadside fire in the battery, and two 6-ton guns for ahead fire
in a small armoured battery in the bows. Not only in the disposition
of her armament was the _Bellerophon_ different from all former ships.
She was a radical departure from existing practice in many important
respects. Constructionally, she was built on a new “bracket-frame”
system designed to give great girder strength for small expenditure of
weight, already in vogue for mercantile shipping. The use of watertight
compartments was extended as a defence against an enemy ram, the system
of double bottoms was extended as a consequence of the introduction of
the torpedo. A powerful ram was carried, but the bow took a new form;
a U- instead of a V-section was adopted in order to give buoyancy
and thus minimize the tendency to plunge which was inherent in a
fine-bowed ship; the section near the water-line being fined away so
as to form a cut-water. Steel was largely used instead of iron, with
a consequent saving of weight. A novel trim was given her--six feet
by the stern--to give a deep immersion for the powerful screw and to
assist the ship in turning quickly on her heel under the action of
the balanced rudder; an adjustment which experience showed to have a
detrimental effect on the propulsive efficiency.
Next came the _Enterprise_, a still smaller ship. In the _Bellerophon_,
as we have seen, there was no bow fire possible from the central
battery; in the _Enterprise_ this was obtained by piercing the
athwartship bulkheads of the battery with ports, and substituting
movable for fixed bulwarks. The same arrangement was developed in the
_Pallas_ and _Penelope_, in which ships the arc of fire of the corner
guns of the battery was further extended by the device of indented
sides. Then came the _Hercules_, generally like the _Bellerophon_ but
with indented sides and, as a novelty, alternative ports in the battery
armour by means of which the corner guns could be trained, on revolving
platforms, to fire either on the beam or nearly in line with the keel;
a system which presented an obvious disadvantage in requiring twelve
ports for eight guns. In the _Kaiser_ class, designed by Sir Edward
Reed shortly afterwards for the German government, this disadvantage
was obviated by the expedient of forming ports in facets of the battery
set at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and by muzzle-pivoting
guns.
Both in the _Bellerophon_ and the _Hercules_ axial fire had only been
obtained by the provision of special batteries, at the bow and stern,
of partially protected guns. Now, this accumulation of weight at the
extremities was a feature viewed with disfavour by naval opinion;
moreover, these bow batteries did not meet the ever-growing demand
for a considerable ahead fire. So in the _Sultan_, which carried a
central-battery armament similar to that of the _Hercules_, an upper
deck armoured battery was embodied, superposed on the after end of
the main deck battery and carrying guns which gave both astern and
beam fire; while, for bow fire, two 12-ton guns were mounted in the
forecastle, but without any protection.
The central-battery system had now to sustain the greatest attack that
had yet been made upon it by the advocates of centre-line turrets. The
position of the central-battery school was already somewhat shaken;
ordnance had grown to a weight and power which justified the main
argument of the turret advocates; Lissa had just shown the importance
of being able to concentrate on any one bearing a maximum of offensive
power. Controversy raged hotly on the relative merits of turret and
central battery.
In these circumstances the Admiralty in ’68 determined to consider both
types, with a view to embodying the best arrangement in the new class
of vessels then projected. The principal shipbuilders of the country
were invited to compete, and were presented with specifications for
a first-class warship so widely drawn as to leave them the greatest
latitude in design. Of the seven designs submitted, three were of the
central-battery type, three were turret ships, and one a compound of
the two. After comparison with an Admiralty design produced by Sir
Edward Reed, it was decided to adopt this in preference to those of
the private firms, and to build a whole class of six ships to it. The
result was the _Audacious_ class--of which the best-remembered are
the _Iron Duke_ and the ill-fated _Vanguard_. In this class a strong
all-round fire was obtained by arranging two central batteries of the
same size, one on the main and one on the upper deck. The main deck
battery had only broadside ports for its six 12-ton guns, each gun
training thirty degrees before and abaft the beam; the upper deck
battery had four guns of the same calibre mounted at ports cut in
armour facets at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and training
through ninety degrees. To allow axial fire from these guns the upper
battery was made to project slightly, sponson fashion, over the sides
of the ship, and the bulwarks forward and aft of the battery were set
slightly back toward the centre line to enable the guns to fire past
them.
A final stage in the evolution of the central-battery ship was attained
in the _Alexandra_, laid down in ’72. The type had proved tenacious
of life, and, for masted vessels, still held its own up to this point
against the turret system. The design for the _Alexandra_ gave as
complete an all-round fire as was attainable in a central-battery
ironclad; for the first time, it was said, we really had a masted ship
with satisfactory all-round fire. Generally like the _Audacious_ class,
the _Alexandra_ possessed an advantage in that the two forward guns of
the upper deck battery were 25 ton instead of 18 ton, and in having,
in addition to the six broadside guns of the main deck battery, two
additional 18-ton guns mounted so as to be capable of firing nearly
ahead and on the beam as well. Designed to fulfil the requirements of
“end-on” fighting, she made a heavy sacrifice of broadside fire to
obtain a maximum of bow fire; and at a later date, when a different
valuation had come to be placed on axial fire, this sacrifice was
noted against her. “She could only take her place at a disadvantage in
any form of battle which was suited to the armaments of the ironclads
that had gone before her.”[167] Nevertheless she was a formidable
vessel. Defensively, too, she was pronounced to be conspicuously
successful; her armour belt, which attained a thickness of 12 inches
at the water-line amidships, was carried down at the bow to cover and
strengthen the stem, and to protect the vessel from a raking fire. For
the protection of the stern against a raking fire, an armour bulkhead
was worked across the after part, extending to a depth of 6 feet below
the water-line.
The _Alexandra_ was the last of the purely “central battery”
ships.[168] By the time she was launched experience had set the seal of
approval on another type, to the evolution of which we must now revert.
§
It is difficult to trace to its source the invention of the armoured
gun-turret. The inventive Ericsson is said to have envisaged at an
early age the idea of a protected gun carried on a mobile raft, “an
idea probably inspired by his river-rafts in Sweden”; and it is known
that at a later date he planned in detail a primitive monitor, the
design of which at the outbreak of the Crimean War he offered to
Napoleon III. Perhaps the idea, which M. Paixhans first developed in
public, of applying iron armour to a sea-going ship, induced the idea
of a pivot-gun protected by an armour shield. A protected armament
was found, as we have seen, in the French batteries built for the
assault of Kinburn: the armoured vessel and the armoured gun were first
embodied in the same unit; and though these units were the first to be
tried in actual war, yet some years previously, in 1842 or thereabouts,
a Mr. Stevens of New York had proposed and made an armoured floating
battery. But in neither of these instances was the gun in a turret.
The turret idea, like so many other inventions, had an independent
development in Europe and in America. In each case war supplied the
incentive. In America, in ’62, Ericsson himself produced in a national
emergency the _Monitor_, the low, shallow-draft armoured vessel
carrying two 11-inch Dahlgren guns in a steam-rotated turret which
served to counter the Southern _Merrimac_, the rasée with the fixed
penthouse armour roof over its guns which the Confederates had built by
the light of French experience.
The _Monitor_, both in design and in the circumstances of its
production, was a great achievement; its success gave sanction to the
revolving turret as a form of structure by means of which a big gun
could be carried and trained. Nevertheless it is doubtful whether it
influenced to an appreciable degree the evolution of the sea-going
turret ship on this side of the Atlantic. Already, when the _Monitor_
fought her action with the _Merrimac_, the turret had been adopted in
coast-defence ships ordered for European powers; and, dramatic though
it was, the incident of Hampton Roads afforded merely a confirmation
of the effectiveness of the turret form of gun mounting. It was to an
episode of the Crimean War that the development of the sea-going turret
ship was directly due.
In the Sea of Azov, in the spring of 1855, Commander Cowper Coles, of
H.M. steamer _Stromboli_, constructed in a single night, of barrels,
spars and boards, a raft capable of bearing heavy artillery, which he
named the _Lady Nancy_; by means of which he brought within range and
destroyed by shell fire the Russian stores at Taganrog.
The naval operations of this war had drawn general attention to the
special problems in connection with the navigation of shallow waters by
vessels with a heavy armament, and Commander Coles’ exploit immediately
excited official interest. Models of armed rafts were submitted by him
for Admiralty inspection, and shortly afterwards he was himself ordered
home to give advice upon the requirements of this form of construction:
in connection with which the necessity for armour protection for the
gun or guns was a point early insisted on by him. In that same year he
sketched a design for a belted shallow-draught vessel for the attack of
stationary forts which he equipped with guns of the heaviest pattern,
each working in a fixed hemispherical shield. From the fixed shield
to a revolving turret was a small step. In a short time Commander
Coles made himself the enthusiastic exponent of armour-protected guns,
mounted in cupolas or turrets on or near the centre-line of a ship so
as to give a command over nearly the whole sweep of the horizon. By
such a system, he argued, a vessel could be endowed with a concentrated
offensive power on any bearing unapproachable by broadside armament,
however designed; all guns were effective on almost any bearing without
diverting the ship, their force required no evolution to elicit,
existing as it did when the ship was at anchor, in dry dock or on a
constant course. The height of the turrets gave them a plunging fire,
an effect particularly useful now that ships’ sides were armoured and
their decks alone remained penetrable.
His advocacy of the turret system, aided by the technical assistance
of Mr. Brunel, made a deep impression on a large section of the public
and gained the interest of the Prince Consort. He did not profess the
technical knowledge of a shipbuilder or designer; but in his insistence
on the advantages to be derived from the method of mounting guns on the
centre-line he wielded arguments of great natural force, and enlisted
in his favour the professional sympathies of eminent builders and naval
men. In 1860 he produced before the newly founded Institution of Naval
Architects a plan of a sea-going ship carrying nine turrets, seven on
the centre-line and two off-set so as to allow ahead fire from three
turrets. In the following year he wrote to the Admiralty undertaking
to prove that a vessel could be built on his principle of armament
100 feet shorter than the _Warrior_ and in all military respects her
superior: “I will guarantee to disable and capture her in an hour; she
shall draw four foot less water, require only half the crew, and cost
the country for building at least £100,000 less. I am ready to stand or
fall on these assertions.”
Such a pronouncement could not be lightly passed over. Moreover,
coast-defence vessels embodying the turret system--light-draught
vessels characterized by small tonnage, small cost and indifferent
sea-going qualities, in combination with massive protection and a large
offensive armament--were already being built by the private firms of
this country for various foreign powers. In ’61, for instance, Denmark
had ordered the _Rolf Krake_, a turret gunboat carrying a 4½-inch belt
and four 68-pounder guns, a pair in each of two armoured turrets; which
three years later proved her value in action against a nominally
superior force. Prussia had ordered her first ironclad, a turret
ship. Holland, Italy, Brazil, Russia--all were known to be purchasing
coast-defence vessels of the turret type. And two sea-going turret
ships which had been ordered by the American Confederates, and which
were building in this country--the _Wyvern_ and _Scorpion_--had been
seized and purchased by our government.
In these circumstances the Admiralty, though there was a preponderance
of official opinion against the idea, resolved to countenance the
turret system and give it a trial. The _Royal Sovereign_ was cut down
from a three-decker of 120 guns, armoured with a 5½-inch belt and a
1-inch deck, and equipped with four turrets carrying a total of five
12½-ton guns--two in the foremost and one in the remaining turrets. At
the same time the _Prince Albert_, also a four-turret ship, was laid
down by the firm of Samuda to an Admiralty order. These ships were
a distinct success so far as the armament was concerned. They were
certainly not ocean-going ships. There were many faults and undesirable
features to be found in them. But the disposition of the armament was
found satisfactory, and the captain of the _Royal Sovereign_ reported
most favourably of his ship, describing her as the most formidable
man-of-war; “her handiness, speed, weight of broadside, and the small
target she offers, increase tenfold her powers of assault and retreat.”
Time, and the progress of artillery, were on the side of Captain Cowper
Coles. He saw, and the Admiralty advisers felt, that although it was
possible to work existing guns on the broadside, yet increase in the
size and weight of guns would sooner or later necessitate the mounting
of them on accurately balanced turntables secured by central pivots
on the centre-line. Only by such a method could the largest gun be
worked and the full weight of metal be poured, as required, on either
broadside. In fact the turret, the original object of which was purely
defensive, was now regarded from a quite different point of view: as a
convenient device by which guns of the highest calibre could be carried
and worked. Was complicated machinery objected to? The common winch,
the rack and pinion, were in constant use on every railway turntable,
nor had the American turrets ever failed in action or caused a loss
of confidence in their reliability. Reliance upon a central pivot was
disliked? Yet the pivot was already in use for holding the broadside
guns of our ironclads--a mere bolt 4 inches in diameter and itself
exposed to gunfire.[169]
The Admiralty constructors were insistent on the practical difficulties
which lay in the way of designing a satisfactory sea-going turret ship.
The advantages which had been claimed for turrets were obvious, said
Sir Edward Reed; the larger and heavier the individual gun, the greater
the gain of mounting it in a turret. But enthusiastic advocates of
this method lost sight of the fact that turrets were incompatible with
masts and sails, and with the forecastle and high freeboard necessary
for good sea-going qualities. At that time, 1865, it was possible to
protect and work eight of the largest guns, mounted on the broadside,
with as little expenditure of weight as would be required to mount four
of the guns two in a turret on the centre-line; while in the latter
case they could only fire in two different directions at the same time,
whereas in the former they could fire in eight.
In order to allow both sides in the controversy to come to grips with
the practical difficulties, a committee was formed at the Admiralty in
May, ’65, and Captain Coles was asked to produce a turret-ship design
by the aid of a draughtsman and with the drawings of the _Pallas_ for
guidance. His design, a vessel showing two 600-pounders each mounted
in a centre-line cupola, was not considered suitable. So the Board
resolved to build a ship to Sir Edward Reed’s design--a fully rigged
and masted, high-freeboard ship, with an armour belt and protected bow
and stern batteries, and with two centre-line turrets amidships mounted
over a central battery, each carrying two 25-ton 600-pounder guns. This
was the _Monarch_. She was the first truly ocean-going turret ship,
and her performances at sea in ’69 in company with central-battery
ships like the _Bellerophon_ and _Hercules_ proved her to be a valuable
and efficient unit; by this experiment it was demonstrated, said Mr.
Brassey, “that it was practicable to design a thoroughly seaworthy
turret ship, although for sea-going purposes a central battery presents
great advantages over the turret system.”
In the meantime Captain Coles had protested vigorously against the
design of the _Monarch_ as representative of his system. The plan was
not his; the turrets were mounted so high that there was a large area
to protect and the ship, unlike the low-freeboard ships of his own
design, presented a large target. But his chief objection was, that
the presence of a forecastle and an armoured bow battery annihilated
the whole advantage of turret guns by preventing ahead fire from them.
After protracted negotiations he obtained Admiralty permission to have
a ship built to satisfy his own views and independently of criticism
from Admiralty officials. In ’69 the _Captain_, built by Messrs. Laird
to his drawings, was launched at Birkenhead. The _Captain_, although
generally similar to the _Monarch_ (the growth of artillery limited
the number of the turrets to two), differed from her in one important
respect: her designed freeboard was only 8 feet as compared with 14;
and, by some error in calculation, this dimension proved to be only
6 feet when the vessel was in sea-going trim. This low freeboard,
in conjunction with her large sail-area, produced a condition of
instability at large angles of heel which led to disaster and sealed
the doom of the fully rigged turret ship.
Even in the _Captain_ ahead fire was not found possible. In the
original plans she had the low freeboard favoured by her designer;
but in the later plans poops and forecastles were added to give the
necessary sea-going qualities, and ahead fire was thereby sacrificed.
Complete mastage was given her: iron masts in the form of tripods
to avoid the use of shrouds and to give as clear an arc of fire as
possible. The rigging was all stopped short at, and worked from, a
narrow flying deck which was built above the turrets. This flying deck
provided a working space for the crew, who in a moderately rough sea
would not be able to make use of the low upper deck.
[Illustration: THE _MONARCH_
From a photograph by Symonds, Portsmouth]
On the night of September 6th, 1870, the _Captain_ capsized in a heavy
sea off C. Finisterre. In St. Paul’s Cathedral the memorial brass,
erected in commemoration of this disaster, records that the _Captain_
was built in deference to public opinion expressed in parliament and
through other channels, and in opposition to the views and opinions of
the Controller and his department; and that the evidence all tended to
show that they generally disapproved of her construction.
§
The difficulty of combining the turret system with a full rig of masts
and sails had for a long time been recognized. Some eighteen months
before the loss of the _Captain_, the Admiralty, in the presence of the
increasing efficiency of steam machinery, had decided to construct a
mastless sea-going turret ship.
American experience greatly influenced this decision. In America, where
the principle of machinery for propulsion and for working the guns had
been accepted with a greater readiness than in Europe, the line of
development had been more direct. From the original _Monitor_ a whole
series of derivatives had been produced, and from coast-defence vessels
of a single turret advance had been made to ocean-going mastless
turret ships of low freeboard, carrying the largest smooth-bore guns.
These ocean monitors, lacking though they did some features which were
considered indispensable in British warships, yet exerted an undoubted
influence upon our own construction. Weakly designed in many respects,
with small fuel capacity, and unsteady as gun platforms, they were
regarded by some writers as the true progenitors of the class of
warship which now superseded the masted vessels of the ’sixties.
The problem of the naval architect henceforth was greatly simplified.
Masts and sails, which had in the past proved such an embarrassment,
were now frankly abandoned, with the result that a thousand
difficulties which had beset the designer of the turret ship were swept
away. No longer had the stability curve to conform to the conflicting
requirements of the sailing vessel and the gun platform. The large
weight gained by dispensing with masts and sails could be embodied as
an addition to the armament or to the fuel carried. The single screw,
which in the case of a ship intended to use sails had been almost a
necessity, could be replaced by twin screws of greater power; and the
change would remove the liability of complete disablement, and give a
number of constructive advantages which it is unnecessary to enumerate.
Indeed, it may be said conversely, that the adoption of twin screws
so improved the reliability of the propelling machinery as to make
practicable the abandonment of masts and sails.
In April, 1869, the _Devastation_ was commenced. Designed by Sir
Edward Reed, she “forestalled, rather than profited by, the dreadful
lesson of the _Captain_ and by her success gave proof of the judgment
and initiative of the Board and their adviser.” Sir Edward Reed had
recognized, more fully than his critics, the conflicting elements
inherent in the rigged turret ship. And it is significant that, just
at a time when the assured success of the _Monarch_ must have been a
gratification to her designer, he should record: “My clear and strong
conviction at the moment of writing these lines [March 31st, 1869] is
that no satisfactorily designed turret ship with rigging has yet been
built, or even laid down.”
The _Devastation_ design was a development of those of some previous
mastless turret ships, the _Cerberus_, the _Hotspur_, and the
_Glatton_ class, which had embodied Sir Edward Reed’s ideas as to the
requirements of coast-service vessels. At first given four 25-ton
guns, the _Devastation_ was ultimately armed with four M.L. guns each
weighing 35 tons and carried in turrets on the centre-line, one at
each end of a central breastwork, 150 feet in length, built round the
funnels.
This central breastwork, raised above the upper deck and armoured along
its sides with 10-inch steel, supported the two turrets and enabled
the guns to be carried at a desirable height above the water-line. The
upper deck itself was low. The sides, up to its level, were protected
by a complete belt of armour 8 inches in thickness.
The abolition of masts and rigging had a striking effect on the design.
Compared with the _Monarch_, of nearly the same tonnage, she carried
heavier guns, double the weight of armour, double the amount of fuel,
and required little more than half the crew to work her.
The loss of the _Captain_, confirming the doubts which experts had
expressed as to the seaworthiness of rigged turret ships, caused an
alarm for the safety of all turret ships, built and building. In
the public mind, in consequence of the reported shortcomings of the
American monitors and the known deficiencies of our coast-defence
vessels, the belief was growing that the turret system was inherently
unsafe. It was believed, also, that mastless ships, having no spread of
sail to steady their motion, would be liable to excessive and dangerous
rolling. To allay the uneasiness as to the safety of the _Devastation_
and her type a Committee on Designs was formed. The Committee, composed
of some of the most eminent of naval architects and officers, made a
report in the spring of ’71 which, though it met with considerable
opposition from one school, nevertheless “formed the groundwork upon
which the English Admiralty determined to construct their policy for
the future.” The Committee pronounced altogether against fully rigged
ships for the line of battle; it was impossible, in their opinion, to
combine in the same vessel great offensive and defensive power and
a full spread of canvas. They considered the _Devastation_ class as
the most suitable type of armoured ship for future service, and found
them to have sufficient stability for safety and to be in almost all
respects a satisfactory design of warship. As regards the _Devastation_
herself they recommended some minor alterations, the effect of
which was to improve the stability of the ship and to give greater
accommodation for the crew. The main alteration consisted in the
carrying up of the ship’s sides amidships to the level of the central
breastwork, and in continuing the breastwork deck outward to the sides,
to form unarmoured side superstructures.
Besides the _Devastation_, two others of the type were laid down
shortly afterwards, the _Thunderer_ and the _Dreadnought_. The three
ships differed from each other slightly in dimensions, but embodied
the same characteristic features. Of chief interest is the transition
of the unarmoured side superstructures, in the _Devastation_, to
an armoured central battery of the same width as the ship, in
the _Dreadnought_. The influence of Sir Edward Reed, who had now
given place to Mr. Nathaniel Barnaby as Chief Constructor at the
Admiralty, was apparent in this evolution. In ’73 he stated publicly
his objections to the carrying up of the _Devastation’s_ sides, and
pictured a shell entering the unarmoured superstructure and blowing
up all the light iron structure in front of the guns. The result
was seen in the _Dreadnought_, in which the breastwork was made a
continuation of the ship’s side and armoured. More freeboard was also
given to the forecastle and the after deck than was found in the
_Devastation_ and _Thunderer_, with the desire to make the vessel drier
and more comfortable; and, owing to the height at which the turrets
were carried, this was found possible without restricting the arcs
of fire of the guns. The movement from the monitor type toward the
modern battleship in respect of freeboard is clearly traced in these
three ships of the _Devastation_ class. Low freeboard, in spite of its
effect in rendering inconspicuous the ship in which it was embodied,
was gradually being abandoned. High freeboard was foreshadowed for
future ships. The loss of the _Captain_ had led to a serious study, by
naval architects and mathematicians, of the stability of warships at
large angles of rolling, and the advantages of high freeboard were by
this time widely appreciated. High freeboard not only made a ship more
habitable; by the form of stability curve it gave it allowed a vessel’s
beam to be reduced with safety, and thereby contributed to a steadier
and more easily propelled ship than would have been obtained without it.
In other respects these three ships show the lines along which progress
was being made. In the turrets of the _Devastation_ the twin 35-ton
guns had been loaded and worked by hand; but in the forward turret
of the _Thunderer_ the new hydraulic system of Messrs. Armstrong was
applied with success to two 38-ton 12-inch guns; and this system was
adopted for both turrets of the _Dreadnought_. The guns were loaded
externally, the turrets being revolved by steam, after firing, till
the guns were on the requisite bearing; they were then depressed by
hydraulic power, and the 700-pound projectiles were rammed into their
muzzles by a telescopic hydraulic rammer. In 1879 an accident occurred
in the _Thunderer_ which helped, it is said, to hasten the return to
breech-loading guns. Simultaneous firing was being carried out; one
of the guns missed fire without anyone either inside or outside the
turret being aware of it. The guns were loaded again, and, on being
discharged, one of them burst. Such double-loading, it was clearly
seen, would not have obtained with breech-loading guns.
The _Devastation_ had twin screws driven by independent engines, but
these were non-compound engines of the trunk type working with a
maximum steam pressure of 30 lbs. per square inch. In the _Dreadnought_
an advance had been made to compound the three-cylinder vertical
engines, working with 60 lbs. per square inch in engine-rooms divided
by a longitudinal watertight bulkhead.
§
The evolution of the battleship was being forced along at a hot pace
by the evolution of artillery. No sooner had the mastless turret ship
received the sanction of the Committee on Designs as the standard
type for warfare of the immediate future, than a sudden increase in
the power of guns necessitated the consideration of new principles and
brought into being a new type.
So far, defence had managed to compete fairly successfully with
offence; the naval architect, by devoting as much as 25 per cent of the
total of a ship’s weight to protective armour, had been able to keep
level with the artillerist. But it was clear that he could not follow
much further, by the existing methods. Armour could not be thickened
indefinitely. Penetrable armour was no better than none; worse, in
fact, since it was a superfluity, and in a ship a superfluity was
doubly wasteful, implying a loss of strength in some other direction.
Armour might have to go altogether? It seemed that, after all, the
predictions of Sir Howard Douglas might well come true; that, just as
gunpowder had forced the foot soldier, after burdening him with an
ever-increasing weight, to dispense altogether with body-armour, so
rifled artillery would render ship armour increasingly ineffectual and,
eventually, an altogether useless encumbrance.
The advance in artillery took place in connection with Italian
construction. In 1872 Italy laid down the _Duilio_, and a year later
the _Dandolo_, two mastless turret ships of a novel class, engined by
Penn and Maudsley, and equipped with two diagonally placed turrets each
designed to carry two 60-ton Armstrong guns; guns which were afterwards
changed to 100-ton guns of 17¾ inches bore. In the same ships the
Italians introduced a solution of the armour difficulty. They abandoned
vertical armour altogether, except for a very thick belt over the
central portion of each vessel which was to protect the vital machinery
and the gun turrets.
The reply to these was the _Inflexible_, laid down in ’74.
We have already seen how, in the last of the _Devastation_ class,
the central armoured breastwork was widened to the full beam of the
ship. It had been proposed by Mr. Barnaby to take advantage of this
arrangement to off-set the two turrets of the _Dreadnought_ at a
distance each side of the centre line of the ship, so as to allow
a powerful ahead fire. Although not then approved, this suggestion
was embodied in the _Inflexible_ as her most distinctive feature. In
this, however, she was forestalled by the Italians. Her two turrets,
each weighing 750 tons, were carried diagonally on a central armoured
citadel plated with compound armour of a maximum thickness of 24
inches. Forward and aft of this citadel the unarmoured ends were
built flush with it, and along the centre line was built, the whole
length of the ship, a narrow superstructure. This superstructure did
not contribute anything to her stability; nor was such contribution
needed in view of the comparatively high freeboard. But it rendered
unnecessary a flying deck such as had been fitted in the _Devastation_
class, and provided accommodation for the crew, without restricting to
any appreciable degree the arcs of fire of the big guns.
The _Inflexible_ was of over 11,000 tons displacement, the heaviest
and most powerful warship that had ever been built. She was 320 feet
in length and 75 feet broad at the water-line; this unprecedented beam
being required, in spite of the high freeboard, on account of the
height at which the turrets were carried. Nevertheless, so improved
was her propulsive efficiency as compared with that of former ships,
so great the gain resulting from Mr. Froude’s historic researches on
ship form and the action of propellers, that a speed of 15 knots was
obtained at a relatively small expense in horse-power.
The idea of sails was not yet altogether dead. In deference to a strong
naval opinion she was originally designed to carry two pole masts,
with sails for steadying her motion in a seaway and as a standby in
the event of her propelling machinery being disabled. But this scheme
was modified owing to the possibility of falling masts and rigging
interfering with the working of guns and screw in action. It was
decided that she should be brig-rigged for peace service; and that,
on an anticipation of war, she should be docked to allow the cruising
masts to be removed and replaced by two short iron masts without yards
for signalling and for carrying crows’ nests.
But it was in the bold abandonment of armour for the ends of the ship
and its concentration on the sides of the citadel that the _Inflexible_
design was most freely criticized. Armour, except in the form of an
under-water protective deck, was not used at all forward and aft of the
citadel. The ends of the ship were left unprotected, but subdivided;
the compartments near the water-line formed watertight tanks filled
with coals, stores, or--next to the side of the ship--cork. This
criticism was directed from two directions.
To many naval men the attempt to beat the gun by adding to the
thickness of the armour was a game no longer worth the candle. The
point of view, moreover, that the defensive power of a ship was
accurately represented by the defensive power of an armour patch upon
its side was condemned as altogether too partial and theoretical. The
same fallacy was abroad in respect of guns. “Men were apt to think
and speak as if the mounting of a single excessively heavy gun in a
ship would make her exceptionally powerful, no matter what number of
powerful, but still less powerful, guns were displaced to make room for
it. The targets and guns at Shoeburyness were held to be real measures
of the defensive and offensive powers of ships.”[170]
On the other hand, experience was at this time bringing to light the
inefficiency of heavy naval artillery. In ’71 a paper by Captain Colomb
attracted attention, in which he analysed the effective gun power of
the _Monarch_, and showed, by the light of experiments carried out by
her against a rock off Vigo in company with _Captain_ and _Hercules_,
that “in six minutes from the opening of her fire on the sister ship at
1000 yards, she will have fired twelve shot, of which one will have hit
and another may have glanced, and it remains an even chance whether the
single hit will have penetrated the enemy’s armour.” In the following
summer Mr. Barnaby was himself impressed with the difficulty which the
_Hotspur_ experienced in hitting the turret of the _Glatton_ at a range
of 200 yards in the smooth water of Portland Harbour: an experiment
which, while confirming confidence in the reliability of a turret and
its power to withstand shock, led him to question whether we were wise
to put so much weight into the protection of turrets, and whether it
might not be a better plan to stint armour on guns in order to add to
their number and power.
From another direction the criticism was more directly effective.
In ’75 Sir Edward Reed, now a private member of parliament, made a
pronouncement on his return from a visit to Italy in the following
words: “The Italian ships _Duilio_ and _Dandolo_ are exposed, in my
opinion, beyond all doubt or question, to speedy destruction. I fear
I can only express my apprehension that the Italians are pursuing a
totally wrong course, and one which is likely to result in disaster.”
The Italian Minister of Marine indignantly refuted the assertion,
based as it must have been (he said) on incomplete information; and
the construction of the _Duilio_ and the _Dandolo_ proceeded. But the
remarks of the ex-Chief Constructor applied with equal force to the
_Inflexible_; and in the following session he stated as much in the
House of Commons. It was possible, he insisted, that in an action the
cork and stores which filled the unarmoured ends of the _Inflexible_
might be shot away, and the ends riddled and water-logged; and that in
such an event the citadel, though intact, would not have sufficient
stability to save the ship from capsizing.
The reply of the Admiralty was to the effect that Sir Edward Reed had
assumed an extreme case, and that such a complete destruction as he
had envisaged was, even if possible, never likely to occur in a naval
action.
The effect of both statements was to cause widespread anxiety in the
public mind, and a lamentable loss of confidence in the projected
warship. A decision was therefore made to appoint another Committee, of
unquestioned eminence and freedom from bias, to investigate and report
on the _Inflexible_ design. In due course the Committee reported. They
confirmed in a long statement the Admiralty point of view that the
complete penetration and water-logging of the unarmoured ends of the
ship, and the blowing out of the whole of the stores and the cork by
the action of shell fire, was a very highly improbable contingency;
they found that the ship, if reduced to the extremest limit of
instability likely to occur, viz. with her ends completely riddled
and water-logged, but with the stores and cork remaining and adding
buoyancy, would still possess a sufficient reserve both of buoyancy and
of stability; and, balancing the vulnerability of the citadel with its
24-inch armour and the destructibility of the unarmoured ends, they
came to the conclusion that the unarmoured ends were as well able as
the armoured citadel to bear the part assigned to them in encountering
the risks of naval warfare, and that therefore a just balance had been
maintained in the design, so that out of a given set of conditions a
good result had been obtained. Except that a recommendation was made
that the system of cork chambers should be extended, no structural
alteration from the existing design was proposed.
The _Inflexible_ was followed by its smaller derivatives, the _Ajax_
and _Agamemnon_, _Colossus_ and _Edinburgh_, and by the _Conqueror_, an
improved _Rupert_, with a single turret. Movement was in the direction
of smaller displacements and less armour; construction was influenced
at this time more by Italian than by French practice.
§
All through this transitional decade, 1870-80, experience and various
new developments were imperceptibly causing a gradual change of
opinion as to what constituted the best type of battleship. At no
period, perhaps, was the warship more obviously a compromise, at no
time were the limitations of size and weight more keenly felt. So many
considerations interacted with one another, so conflicting were the
claims made of the naval architect, that it appeared indeed almost
impossible to embody them in a satisfactory design. (And yet nothing is
more remarkable than the unanimity with which designers, given certain
conditions, arrived at the same final result: the _Duilio_ and the
_Inflexible_ are a case in point.) Whatever the design might be, it
was open to powerful criticism. And the chief part of this criticism
was directed, as we have seen, against the use and disposition of the
armour.
In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had questioned the wisdom of expending a large
weight in the protection of turrets. Three years later Commander Noel,
in a Prize Essay, was advocating unarmoured batteries, with a view
to multiplying the number of battery guns, utilizing for offence the
weight thus saved. In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had argued that the stinting of
armour on the hull in order to thicken it on the battery would drive
the enemy to multiply his light and medium machine-guns. Within a few
years warships were bristling with Gatling and Gardner, Nordenfelt and
Hotchkiss guns, which by their presence gave a new value to armour,
however thin. Mr. Froude, too, in his experiments in connection with
the _Inflexible_, brought into prominence the advantage which thin
armour on a ship’s ends conferred on her stability. The idea of
substituting cellular construction for armour was proving attractive.
While the French continued to favour the complete water-line belt,
the Italians went to the limit in the _Italia_ and _Lepanto_, in
which the water-line was left entirely unprotected by side armour.
Such armour as was carried was embodied in the form of a protective
deck, a feature found above water and in conjunction with a side belt
in our _Devastation_ class, and under water and without side armour
in the _Inflexible_ and smaller contemporary ships. The protective
deck, which covered the vitals of a ship and deflected shot and shell
from its surface, was a device which found increasing favour with
naval architects. It was advocated by the Committee on Designs in
’71 as possessing important advantages over a similar weight of side
armour. If placed at some distance below water it formed the roof of
a submerged hull structure which was immune from damage by gun-fire,
the sides of this hull being protected sufficiently by sea-water. If,
as was subsequently done, the protective deck were placed at a small
distance above water, and if the sides of it were bent down so as to
meet the ship’s sides at a distance below water beyond which a shot was
unlikely to penetrate, the deck offered other advantages: the vital
machinery, though now partly above water, was still protected, the
sloping parts of the deck being able to deflect shots which would have
penetrated a much thicker vertical plate; moreover, if the ship’s sides
were riddled in action, the protective deck still preserved a large
portion of the water-line area intact, and thereby secured her lateral
stability.
The ram was still in favour, but opinion was slowly changing as to the
necessity for bow-fire. “It is my impression,” wrote Commander Noel in
’76, “that too great a value was attached by some of the authorities,
two or three years ago, to bow-fire; and that the manœuvring of a fleet
in action will be more for the purpose of using the ram effectually,
and the guns in broadsides on passing the enemy.” The firing of the
heavy guns in the approach to ram was considered undesirable, owing
to the obscuring of the scene by smoke. In short, bow-fire was not of
primary importance, and the disposition of armament which sought to
obtain a concentration of bow-fire at the expense of broadside fire was
based on a false principle. Commander Noel advocated a broadside ship,
of moderate tonnage, with an unarmoured battery of moderate-size guns,
with an armour belt round her water-line of 10-inch armour tapering
to 5 inches forward and aft, and backed by wood and coal. Watertight
subdivisions he proposed as a defence against the ram and the torpedo.
As the decade progressed the navy and naval affairs were less and less
a subject of public interest. The design of warships continued to be
discussed by a small circle, but the Board, alive to the transitional
nature of the citadel ships, and under the influence of a national
movement for retrenchment and economy, had almost ceased to build. In
the three years ’76, ’77, and ’78 England laid down only two armoured
battleships, while France laid down a dozen. In ’78 four foreign ships
building in this country were hastily purchased on a Vote of Credit.
But by 1880 the French armoured navy was once more equal in strength to
that of England.
The gun, by its rapid evolution, was blocking design. The long debates
over sails and steam had been settled; it was now the achievement of
powerful breech-loading guns of large and small calibre which threw
all existing ideas of warship design into the melting-pot. It became
known that the French at last possessed efficient breech-loading
guns; and artillerists showed that, in spite of the inconvenience of
long-barrelled guns in ships, long barrels and slow-burning powder
were necessary if greater powers were to be developed, and that our
short-barrelled muzzle-loaders were already becoming obsolete. In the
summer of ’79 public interest was aroused by the arrival at Spithead of
some Chinese gunboats built by the firm of Armstrong. These gunboats
each carried two 12-ton breech-loading guns mounted on centre pivots,
one forward and one aft: guns so powerful and efficient compared with
any mounted in the Royal Navy, that the possibilities of the diminutive
craft were instantly appreciated. The contest between B.L. and M.L.
was approaching a climax. The 100-ton M.L. gun was undergoing proof at
Woolwich. In August a committee of naval officers visited Germany to
witness and report upon the trials of Krupp’s new breech-loaders, and
these trials, and those of Armstrong in this country, confirmed the
formidable character of the new ordnance. Armour was also improving
its power; compound armour (of combined steel and iron) was found to
possess unexpected powers of resistance to penetration.
The torpedo, moreover, in its growing efficiency was now beginning
to have an effect, not only on the details of ship design, but on
the whole nature of naval warfare. The influence of the torpedo in
its various forms had been appreciated in the early days of the
decade.[171] The catastrophic but, happily, fictitious Battle of
Dorking, fought in the pages of _Blackwood’s Magazine_ in 1871, had
been preceded by a naval action in which all but one of our fine
ironclads had been sunk by torpedoes in attempting to ram the French
fleet. The moral was obvious. From that time onwards the potential
effect of the torpedo was seen to be very great. The ram seemed at last
to have found a check. And it appeared that, in combating the ram, the
torpedo had once more given the primacy to the fast-improving gun.
Broadside actions of the old type, carried on at high range and speed,
were predicted.[172]
In 1880 a new type of battleship was evolved of sufficient permanence
to form the basis of whole classes of future ships.
An intimate account of the genesis of the _Collingwood_ design is given
us by the biographer of Sir Cooper Key, to illustrate the manner in
which that prescient administrator succeeded in forecasting the trend
of future construction. In ’66, he says, Captain Key had put on paper a
résumé of his ideas on warship design which was clearly several years
in advance of current opinion. Briefly, he had maintained that the
specifications for our first-class battleships of the future should be
drawn to cover the following features so far as possible:--moderate
speed, small length and great handiness; perfect protection for vital
parts and a complete water-line belt, rather than protection for
personnel and above-water structure; a main-deck armament of broadside
guns of medium calibre amidships, and of lighter calibre towards the
ends, in combination with an upper-deck armament of four large guns
in two unarmoured barbettes, one mounted before the foremast and
one abaft the mizzen-mast; no sails. But for some years no approach
was made to this ideal ship of Captain Key’s; the ideas it embodied
were antagonistic to those held by the great majority of his brother
officers.
“In 1878 there had been laid down by the French, at Toulon, a ship
called the _Caiman_. She was 278 feet long, and had a speed of 14½
knots. She carried a single 42-cm. breech-loading rifled gun at the
bow, and another at the stern, each mounted _en barbette_, and she
further carried on each broadside, between the barbettes, two 10-cm.
guns, besides machine-guns. She was heavily armoured by a water-line
belt 19½ inches thick amidships, and tapering in thickness towards bow
and stern. The middle part of the ship, between the barbettes, was
further protected by a steel deck 2·8 inches thick. Evidently, there
was in this ship some approach to that general ideal which had been
in Sir Cooper Key’s mind in 1866--not, however, more than this. She
gave a sort of hint to the constructors at the Admiralty, and, before
Sir Cooper Key joined the Board, a new design, based indeed on the
_Caiman’s_ hint, but yet differing widely from her, and, by as much as
she differed, approaching more nearly to Sir Cooper Key’s ideal, was in
process of completion there. The ship was the _Collingwood_.”
The _Collingwood_ was of 9150 tons displacement, 325 feet in length, 68
feet in breadth, and 15·7 knots speed. There was in her, for the first
time in the navy, that particular disposition of guns which Captain Key
had recommended in ’66: two guns at bow, two at stern, on turntables,
and a strong broadside armament between them. In the end the adoption
of a breech-loading system led to a larger barbette and a smaller
battery armament: to 43-ton guns at bow and stern and only 6-inch guns
on the broadsides; and in this way the final design differed more than
did the original from the ’66 ideal. “The bow and stern guns were
protected by barbette and other armour, but Key had required that
some protection should be given to the turntables and the machinery
for working them. Hydraulics had greatly increased the quantity and
importance of this machinery, and as by its means the crews of the
guns were very much diminished, we can imagine the admiral concurring
in the change as a natural development of his principle. So we can
understand him as now definitely concurring in the abandonment of sail
power for first-class battleships.” In ’78 he had flown his flag in the
_Thunderer_ at sea, and he had then experienced the reliability of the
gun machinery and the difficulties attendant on the manœuvring of a
modern fleet under sail.
Both in armament and in disposition of armour the _Collingwood_ was a
great but a natural advance on the citadel ships of the _Inflexible_
type. The symmetrical placing of the big gun turntables, one forward
and one aft, proclaimed the advent of new tactical ideas--the
recognition of the battleship as a unit which must take its place in
the line with others, and the rejection of “end-on” methods of fighting
which involved a concentration of bow-fire. The provision of the
powerful secondary armament was a tribute to the growing efficiency
of French torpedo craft, while at the same time serving, offensively,
to force an enemy to protect himself against it: to spread his armour
over as large a surface as possible in the attempt to preserve his
stability in a protracted action. The concentration of armour on the
fixed barbettes and on a partial belt over the central portion of the
ship was in accordance with the _Inflexible_ arrangement. But, in
consequence of the strictures which had been passed on that vessel
and on the exposure of her large unprotected ends, the _Collingwood_
was given a longer belt, though not so thick. Fifty-four per cent of
her length was covered with 18-inch compound armour, as compared with
42 per cent, and 24-inch armour, in the former ship. Although this
longer belt appeared to confer greater longitudinal stability on the
ship, its narrowness was such that it was of doubtful efficacy, as Sir
Edward Reed was not slow to point out. So narrow was this belt, so big
still remained the unarmoured ends, that the slight sinkage caused by
their filling would bring the whole of the armour belt, he said, under
water. Thus all the advantage arising from a longer citadel was more
than destroyed by this lowering of the armour, and, so great was the
consequent danger of the vessel capsizing, that he hesitated to regard
the _Collingwood_ as an armoured ship.
The _Collingwood_ was laid down in July, 1880. But what was there to
show that her design would be in any degree permanent? Was it safe to
consider it sufficiently satisfactory to form the master-pattern for a
number of new ships, urgently required?
For a short time there was uncertainty. “The French type, where there
were isolated armoured barbette towers generally containing single
heavy guns placed at the ends and sides of the ships upon the upper
deck, with broadside batteries of lighter guns, entirely unprotected
by armour, upon the deck below, did not commend itself to the English
naval mind, yet, in the sort of despair which possessed us, the new
Board turned somewhat towards the French system. The _Warspite_ and
_Impérieuse_ were laid down in 1881, and were again a new departure in
British design.... It was intended to adhere to sail power in these
new types, and it was only after they were approaching completion that
the utter incongruity of the proposal was realized, and sail power was
given up in the last of the armoured ships to which it was attempted to
apply it.”
But the Admiralty still wished, without alarming the public, to regain
as soon as possible a safe balance of armoured construction over that
of France. “There was no design before the Board which was more likely
to perpetuate itself than that of the unlaunched _Collingwood_. Suppose
a bold policy were adopted? Suppose it were assumed that the time had
come when diversities of type were to cease, would it be made less
likely by the frank abandonment of sail power?”
The bold step was taken. Four more ships to the _Collingwood_ design
were laid down in ’82, the five being thereafter spoken of as the
“Admiral” class. “At the time, little note was taken of this very
great step in advance. Even at this day it is scarcely remembered
that this is the step which made possible, and led up to, our
present great battle fleet, and that never before had so many as
five first-class ironclads of a definite type been on the stocks
together.... In the Admiral class there was the definite parting with
sail power, the rejection of the tactical ideas brought to a climax
in the _Inflexible_, and, above all, the definite adoption of the
long-barrelled breech-loading rifled gun. Without question, we must say
that we owe the Admiral class, and all that has followed, in great part
to the enterprising and yet well-balanced mind that then governed the
naval part of the Council at Whitehall.”
§
At this point in the evolution of the ironclad it is convenient to
bring our survey to an end. The _Collingwood_ marks the final return
(with one or two notorious exceptions) to the truly broadside ship,
the ship with armament symmetrically disposed fore and aft, intended
to fight with others in the line. From the Admiral class onwards the
modern battleship evolved for years along a continuous and clearly
defined curve of progression. It only remains to close this brief and
necessarily superficial historical sketch with a few remarks upon the
classification of warships.
In tracing the types of ironclads which superseded each other in direct
succession, no mention has been made of other than those which formed
in their time the chief units of naval force. Other war-vessels there
were, of course, subsidiary to the main fighting force, whose value and
functions we now briefly indicate.
So long as sails remained the sole motive power, warships retained the
same classification as they had received in the seventeenth century.
“Up to the time of the Dutch Wars,” says Admiral Colomb, “ships were
both ‘royal’ and of private contribution; of all sorts and sizes
and ‘rates.’ Fighting was therefore promiscuous. Fleets sailed in
the form of half-moons, or all heaped together and, except for the
struggle to get the weather gage, there were no tactics. Actions were
general.” Then, in order to protect their fleets from the fire ship,
the Dutch first introduced the Line of Battle: “in which formation
it was easy for a fleet to leeward to open out so as to let a fire
ship drift harmlessly through.” And so the efficacy of the fire ship
was destroyed. “But now, with a Line, each ship had a definite place
which she could not quit. Hence the diversities in sizes began to be
eliminated. The weakest ships, which might find themselves opposite
the strongest, were dropped for ships ‘fit to lie in the line,’ i.e.
for what were afterwards called ‘line-of-battle ships.’ These ships
would be individually as powerful as possible, only subject to the
objection of putting too many eggs in one basket. Uniformity would thus
be attained. The fleet of line ships, however, required look-outs or
scouts, which could keep the seas and attend, yet out-sail, the fleet.
Hence the heavy frigate. Lastly, there was the much lighter attendant
on commerce (either by way of attack or defence), the light cruiser.”