The Crimean War followed quickly, and in 1854 the wooden steamships of
the line of the allies, vessels identical in fighting characteristics
with those of Trafalgar, attempted to silence masonry works at
Sebastopol. Though the disaster was not so great, the lesson of Sinope
was reaffirmed. Louis Napoleon, a thoughtful man though scarcely a man
of action, had foreseen the difficulty, and had already directed the
construction of five floating batteries which were to carry armor.
Before the war ended these vessels attacked the forts at Kinburn, which
they compelled to surrender, losing, themselves, no men except by
shells that entered the gun ports. Their armor was not pierced.
Horizontal shell fire had called for iron armor, and the two, as
opposing factors, were now established in the recognition of men. The
contest between the two sums up the progression and the fluctuations
of military ideas which have resulted in the battle-ship of to-day,
which, as the fleet-ship, remains the dominant factor in naval warfare,
not only in actual fact but in present probability. From the first
feeble beginnings at Kinburn to the present time, although the strife
has waxed greatly in degree, it remains unchanged in principle and in
kind. To exclude the shell, because, starting as one projectile, it
became many after penetration, in what does it differ from excluding
the rapid-fire gun, whose projectiles are many from the first, and
penetrate singly?
There occurred, however, one singular development, an aberration from
the normal line of advance, the chief manifestation of which, from
local and temporary conditions, was in our own country. This was the
transient predominance of the monitor type and idea; the iron-clad
vessel, with very few very heavy guns, mounted in one or two circular
revolving turrets, protected by very heavy armor. The monitor type
embodied two ideas. The first was the extreme of defensive power, owing
to the smallness of the target and the thickness of its armor—the
hull of the vessel rising but little above the water—the turret was
substantially the only target. The second was an extreme compression
of offensive power, the turret containing two of the heaviest guns of
the day, consequently guns of the heaviest penetration, which could
fire, not in one direction, nor in several, but in all directions as
the turret revolved, and which were practically the sole armament
of the ship. The defensive power of the monitor was absolute up to
the extreme resisting endurance of its armor. Its offensive power
must be considered relatively to the target to which its guns were
to be opposed. If much in excess of that target’s resistance, there
was waste of power. Actually in our Civil War monitors were opposed
to fortifications, except in one or two instances when they had to
contend with the imperfect structures which the Confederates could put
afloat. The target, therefore, was not in excess of their gun power.
Moreover, being for coast warfare, the monitor then was necessarily of
small draught and small tonnage. Her battery weight, therefore, must
be small, and consequently lent itself to concentration into two guns,
just as the battery weight of a schooner a century since found its best
disposition in one long traversing gun.
This was the infancy period of the iron-clad ship. The race between
guns and armor was barely begun, and manufacturing processes still
were crude. As these improved, with astounding rapidity, the
successful production of rifled cannon of ever-increasing dimensions
and penetrative force imposed an increased armor protection, which at
the first was obtained chiefly by an increase of thickness, _i.e._,
of weight. As guns and armor got heavier, ships had to be bigger to
carry them, and, if bigger, of course longer. But the monitor idea,
admirably suited to small ships, had now fast hold of men’s minds—in
England especially, for the United States lapsed into naval somnolence
after the war—and it was carried irreflectively into vessels of huge
dimensions whose hulls rose much above the water. Weight for weight,
the power of the gun outstripped the resistance of armor, and it soon
became evident that even in a large ship perfect protection could be
given only to a part of the structure. Passing over intermediate steps,
the extreme and final development of the monitor idea was reached in
the _Inflexible_, planned in 1876 by the British Admiralty, built in
the following years, and still in service. This vessel was of eleven
thousand eight hundred and eighty tons displacement. She was three
hundred and twenty feet long, and of that length only the central one
hundred and ten feet had protection, but that was by armor two feet
thick, while armored partitions extended from each end of this side
belt across the vessel, forming a box one hundred and ten feet long by
seventy-four broad. Within this box were two turrets, each with sixteen
inches of armor, and carrying two guns which threw a shell of a ton
weight.