While the _Inflexible_ was building there was born the idea whose
present maturity enforces the abandonment of the pure monitor, except
for vessels comparatively small and for special purposes. Machine guns,
the Gatling, and the mitrailleuse were already known, and the principle
was being applied to throw projectiles of a pound weight and over,
which were automatically loaded and fired, requiring only to be aimed.
Upon these followed the rapid-fire gun, of weight greatly exceeding
theirs, the principle of which may be said to be that it is loaded
by hand, but with ammunition so prepared and mechanism for loading
so simple and expeditious as to permit a rate of firing heretofore
unparalleled. The highest extension of this principle is reached in the
five-inch gun, up to which size the cartridge and the projectile make a
single package called fixed ammunition, which is placed by one motion.
Together they weigh ninety-five pounds, about as much as an average
man can handle in a seaway, the projectile itself weighing fifty
pounds. There are, it is true, six-inch rapid-fire guns, but in them
the cartridge and shell are placed separately, and it is questionable
whether such increase of effect, through greater weight, as they give
is not gained at a loss of due rapidity.
The _Inflexible_ exemplified in an extreme form the elements of
offensive and defensive strength and weakness. Four guns of enormous
calibre and no other battery, except pieces so light as to be useless
against the thinnest armor, an impenetrable wall, covering a very
limited area, and the remainder of the hull exposed, to be cut to
pieces by a battery of numerous light cannon. When to the latter the
rapid-fire idea was successfully applied, multiplying their efficiency
three or fourfold, her position, as an example to be followed, became
untenable. The monitor idea, which refused to utilize the broadside for
developing fire, and aimed chiefly at minimizing the target, evidently
needed qualification after a certain moderate limit of size was passed;
and that limit of size was when the entire weight of battery the ship
could carry sufficed only for two, or, at the most, four guns of power
great enough to pierce heavy armor. Strictly, in the opinion of the
writer, the monitor type should not prevail beyond the size that can
bear only one turret.
In the strife of guns with armor, therefore, increase of power in
guns, outstripping continually the increase of resistance in armor,
called for bigger ships to bear the increased armor weight, till the
latter could not possibly be placed all over the ship’s body. Hence the
exposed target, upon which plays the smaller battery of rapid-fire guns.
To comprehend fundamentally the subsequent development, we must recur
to the rudimentary idea that a ship of war possesses two chief factors,
motive force and fighting force, the latter being composed of guns
mainly and of men. Corresponding to these two chief powers there were
of old, and there are still, two vulnerable elements, two targets, upon
one or the other of which hostile effort logically and practically
must be directed. A century ago the French, aiming at sails and spars,
sought the destruction of the motive force; the British directed their
fire upon the guns and men. In strict analogy now, the heavy guns seek
the motive power, over which the heaviest armor is concentrated; the
rapid-fire guns, searching the other portions of the ship, aim at the
guns and men there stationed.