The logical outcome of these leading ideas is realized in the present
battle-ships as follows: There are two turrets, protected by armor,
the thickest that can be given them, considering the other weights
the ship has to carry, and of the highest resisting quality that
processes of manufacture can develop. Armor of similar character and
weight protects the sides about the engines. In each turret are guns
whose power corresponds to the armor which protects them. Their proper
aim—not, of course, always reached—is the heavy armored part of
the enemy, chiefly the engines, the motive power. When they strike
outside of this target, as often must happen, there is excess of blow,
and consequent waste. The turrets are separated, fore and aft, by a
distance as great as possible, to minimize the danger of a single shot
or any other local incident disabling both. The fact that the ends
of ships, being comparatively sharp, are less waterborne and cannot
support extreme weights, chiefly limits this severance of the turrets.
Between the two, and occasionally before or abaft them, is distributed
the broadside rapid fire of the ship, which in its development is in
contradistinction to the compressed fire of the monitor. This fire is
rapid because the guns are many and because individually they can fire
fast. Thus, the turret gun, twelve or thirteen inch in bore, fires once
in five minutes; the five-inch rapid-fire gun thrice in one minute. The
rapid-fire battery aims outside of the heaviest armor. When it strikes
that, unless it chance to enter a gun port, its effect is lost; but as
much the greater part of the ship is penetrable by it, the chance of
wasting power is less than in the case of the heavier guns. As most of
a ship’s company are outside the protection of the heaviest armor, the
rapid-fire gun aims, as did the British in the old line-of-battle ship,
at the personnel of the enemy.
The reader will comprehend that in the application of these leading
ideas there is considerable variety in detail. The two turrets may be
looked upon at present as the least variable factor; and in disposing
armor all practice agrees that the turrets and engines receive the
greatest protection. But how to distribute the total available
weight of armor gives rise to varieties of practice which find
their reflection in similar variety in the sizes and numbers of the
rapid-fire guns, to whose penetrative force there is a corresponding
thickness of armor. For example, two battle-ships now building for the
United States navy have four thirteen-inch guns in turrets, and in
broadside fourteen five-inch, twenty six-pounder, and six one-pounder
rapid-fire guns; between the two classes they have four eight-inch
guns, also mounted in smaller turrets, superimposed on the main
turrets. A ship since designed will have the same thirteen-inch gun
fire, but in place of the eight-inch and five-inch will have fourteen
six-inch rapid-fire guns. An expert officer, discussing these, says:
“In the former the weight of fire per minute is two thousand and fifty
pounds on the broadside and five hundred ahead or astern, while with
the latter plan it is only one thousand seven hundred and fifty on the
broadside and five hundred ahead and astern. But the main objection
to the second plan is that the volume of effective fire is enormously
diminished by the omission of eight-inch guns. The larger area covered
with their armor is fairly safe from the six-inch gun at fighting
ranges, whereas the eight-inch projectile at any range, and at even a
considerable angle of incidence, will penetrate it.” In the judgment
of the present writer the weight of this argument depends upon what is
behind the armor the eight-inch only will penetrate. If battery and
men, it is strong, if not decisive; if motive power only, not.