the British Navy from one cause and another was little better than a
paper force. It is plain enough that little remained of the fleet of
the Nelson era. The fleet “worried through,” but very clearly it had
reached the end of its tether.
The reason why will be found in the next chapter.
* * * * *
The above paragraphs were originally written in 1912. Since then
much has happened. In this edition they have only been revised to
the extent of substituting the past for the present tense. Nothing
has occurred to alter what then was the obvious.
X.
THE COMING OF THE IRONCLAD.
The period immediately following the Crimean War saw a gradual change
in the relations between England and France. In 1858 a panic similar
to those with which later years have familiarised us began to arise,
and in December, 1858, and January, 1859, a committee sat under the
Administration of Lord Derby “to consider the very serious increase
which had taken place of late years in the Navy Estimates, while it
represented that the naval force of the country was far inferior
to what it ought to be with reference to that of other Powers, and
especially France, and that increased efforts and increased expenditure
were imperatively called for to place it on a proper footing.”
This committee found that whereas in 1850 there were eighty-six British
ships of the line to forty-five French ones, this ratio had altogether
ceased to exist; and that both Powers had now twenty-nine screw ships
of the line. Any other large ships had ceased to count.
In 1859 there also appeared the famous “Leipsic Article,” commenting on
the decline of the British Fleet and the rise of the French. Certain
extracts from this, though dealing with the past for the most part, are
here given _en bloc_, for they indicate very clearly the circumstances
in which, _under pressure from German influences, the modern British
Navy came to be founded_. It is, to say the least of it, questionable
whether but for this Teutonic agitation public opinion in England would
ever have been aroused from its lethargy in time. This epoch-making
article appeared in the _Conversations Lexicon_, of Leipsic.
After some prelude the article referred to the appearance of the French
Fleet in the Crimean War:--
“The late war in the East (Crimean) first opened the eyes of
Englishmen to the true position of affairs, and it was not without
some sensation of alarm that they gazed at this vision of the
unveiled reality. Here and there, indeed, an allusion, having
some foundation in fact, had been heard, during the Presidency of
Louis Napoleon, and had drawn attention to the menaced possibility
of an invasion of the British Isles; but such notions were soon
overwhelmed by the derision with which they were jeeringly greeted
by the national pride.
“Those expressions of contempt were, however, not doomed to be
silenced in their turn by the sudden apparition in the autumn
of 1854 of thirty-eight French ships of the line and sixty-six
frigates and corvettes, fully manned and ready for immediate
action. During the three preceding years Louis Napoleon had built
twenty-four line-of-battle ships, and in the course of the year
1854 alone thirteen men-of-war were launched, nine of which were
ships of the line. In addition to these, the keels of fifty-two
more, comprising three ships of the line and six frigates, were
immediately laid down. The English had thus the mortification to
be obliged not only to cede to their allies the principal position
in the camp, but also reluctantly to acknowledge their equality on
that element whereon they had hoped to reign supreme....
* * * * *
“If we carried our investigation no further than this we should
naturally conclude that, with such a numerical superiority,
sufficient in itself to form a very respectable armament for a
second-rate power, England has very little to fear from the marine
of France. We must not forget, however, that quality as well as
numbers must be considered in estimating the strength of a Fleet.
When we take this element into our calculations, we shall find
the balance very soon turned in favour of France. We perceive,
then, that while the English list comprises every individual sail
the country possesses, whether fit for commission or altogether
antiquated and past service (and some, like the _Victory_, built
towards the close of the last or the beginning of this century),
the French Navy, as we have observed, scarcely contains a single
ship built prior to the year 1840; so that nearly all are less than
twenty years old. This is a fact of the greatest importance, and
indicates an immense preponderance in favour of France. Though many
of England’s oldest craft figure in the ‘Navy List’ as seaworthy
and fit for active service, we have no less an authority than
that of Sir Charles Napier (in his Letter to the First Lord of
the Admiralty in 1849) that some are mere lumber, and many others
cannot be reckoned upon to add any appreciable strength to a Fleet
in case of need. Independently, too, of the introduction of the
screw, such fundamental changes have been introduced, within the
last fifty years, both into the principles of naval architecture
and of gunnery, that a modern 120-gun ship, built with due regard
to recent improvements, and carrying guns of the calibre now in
ordinary use, would in a very short space of time put _ten_ ships
like the _Victory_ _hors de combat_, with, at the same time, little
chance of injury to herself.
“It is time, however, to turn our attention to another important
part of the _material_, namely, artillery. Under this head we
purpose designating, not only to the number of guns and their
calibre, but also the mode in which they are served, for in
actual warfare this, of course, is a primary consideration. If we
take the received history of naval warfare for the basis of our
investigation, we cannot fail to remark one notable circumstance
in favour of the English, which can only be ascribed to their
superiority in the use of this arm. That circumstance is the
important and uniform advantage they have had in the fewer number
of casualties they have sustained as compared with other nations
with whom they may have chanced to have been engaged. To prove that
our assertions are not made at random, we subjoin some statistics
in support of this position. In April, 1798, then, the English ship
_Mars_ took the French _L’Hercule_; the former had ninety killed
and wounded, the latter 290. In the preceding February there had
been an engagement between the English _Sybil_ and French _La
Forte_, in which the killed and wounded of the former numbered
twenty-one, and those of the latter 143. In March, 1806, the
English ship _London_ took the French _Marengo_; the English with
a loss of thirty-two, the latter of 145 men. On the 4th November,
1805, two English ships of the line engaged four French vessels,
and the respective losses were, again, 135 and 730. On the 14th
February, 1797, in an action between the Fleets of England and
Spain, the English lost 300 and the Spaniards 800. On the 11th of
October of the same year, in the engagement off Camperdown between
the English and Dutch, the respective losses were 825 and 1,160. On
the 5th July, 1808, the English frigate _Seahorse_ took the Turkish
frigate _Badere Zuffer_, and of the Turks there fell 370 against
fifteen English. Finally, in the same year the Russian ship of the
line _Wsewolod_ was taken by two English ships of the line, with a
loss to the latter of 303, and to the former of only sixty-two.
“This contrast, so favourable to England, has been constantly
maintained, and can only be attributable to her superior artillery.
Her seamen not only aimed with greater precision, and fired more
steadily than those of the French and of other nations, but they
had the reputation of loading with far greater rapidity. It was
remarked, in 1805, that the English could fire a round with ball
every minute, whereas it took the French gunners three minutes
to perform the same operation. Then, again, the English tactics
were superior. It was the universal practice of the French to seek
to dismast an adversary; they consequently aimed high, while the
English invariably concentrated their fire upon the hulls of their
adversaries; and clearly the broadside of a vessel presents a much
better mark to aim at than the mere masts and rigging. British guns
were also usually of higher calibre, for though they bore the same
denomination, they were in reality much heavier. Thus, the English
_Lavinia_, though nominally a frigate of forty guns, actually
carried fifty; and thirty-six and 38-gun frigates nearly always
carried forty-four and forty-six. The English ship _Belleisle_,
at Trafalgar, though said to be a seventy-four, carried ninety
pieces of ordnance, while the Spanish ship she engaged, though
called eighty-four had, in fact, only seventy-eight guns. From this
disparity in the number and calibre of their guns, as well as in
the mode in which they were served, it resulted that France and her
allies lost eighty-five ships of the line and 180 frigates, while
her antagonist only suffered to the extent of thirteen ships of the
line and eighty-three frigates.
“It was not until the close of the war that France became fully
aware to what an extent her inferiority in the above respects had
contributed to her reverses; otherwise the unfortunate Admiral
Villeneuve would not invariably have ascribed his mishaps to the
inexperience of his officers and men, and to the incomplete and
inferior equipment of his vessels. The truth was, that not only was
the artillery, as we have shown, inferior, but the whole system in
vogue at that period on board French ships was antiquated, having
continued without reform or improvement for two hundred years; it
was deficient, too, in enforcing subordination, that most essential
condition of the power and efficiency of a ship of war.”
The French _inscription maritime_ is then dealt with at great length,
after which occur the following passages, even more interesting perhaps
to-day than when they were written:--
“In considering, then, what perfect seamanship really is, we
must first adopt a correct standard by which to estimate it. The
English sailor has been so long assumed as the perfect type of
the _genus_ seaman, that the world has nearly acquiesced in that
view, and _even we in Germany have been accustomed to rank our
crews below the English, though it is an unfair estimate_. _There
are no better sailors in the world than the German seamen, and
there is no foreign nation that would assert the contrary._[85] On
the other hand, it has also been the fashion universally to abuse
French seamanship, and to speak of her sailors as below criticism.
None proclaimed this opinion more loudly than the English; but
in doing so they recurred to the men they had beaten under the
Revolution and Bonaparte. The Crimean War, however, opened their
eyes, and taught them that the French sailors of to-day were no
longer the men of 1806, and that, to say the least, they are in
no respect inferior to the British. England had for years been
compelled to keep up a large effective force always ready for
action, in consequence of the nature of her dependencies, which, as
they consist of remote colonies across distant seas, required such
a provision for their protection. This gave her an immeasurable
superiority in days gone by. But since France in 1840 discovered
her deficiency, it has been supplied by the maintenance of a
permanent _experimental Fleet_, which, under the command of such
Admirals as Lalande de Joinville, Ducas, Hamelin, and Bruat, has
been the nursery of the present most effective body of officers
and men; which, since 1853, have not ceased to humble the boasted
superiority of England, besides causing her many anxious misgivings.
“Anyone who had the opportunity of viewing the two Fleets together
in the Black Sea or the Baltic, and was in a position to draw
a comparison, could not fail to be convinced that everything
connected with manœuvring, evolutions, and gunnery was, beyond
comparison, more smartly, quickly, and exactly executed by the
French than by the English, and _must have observed the brilliant
prestige which had so long surrounded England’s tars pale sensibly
beside the rising glories of her rival_.”[86]
That this was not merely captious criticism is borne out by the
following extracts from “The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir
Charles Napier, K.C.B.”:--
“We have great reason to be afraid of France, because she possesses
a large disposable army, and our arsenals are comparatively
undefended--London entirely so--and we have no sufficient naval
force at home. Of ships (with the exception of steamers) we have
enough; but what is the use of them without men? They are only
barracks, and are of no more use for defence than if we were to
build batteries all over the country, without soldiers to put into
them.
* * * * *
“Such were our inadequate resources for defence, had the Russians
been able to get out of the Baltic, and make an attempt on our
unprotected shores.
* * * * *
“The great difficulty consisted in the manning of such a fleet.
Impressment was no longer to be thought of; but, strange to say,
the Bill which had passed through Parliament, empowering, in case
of war, the grant of an ample bounty to seamen, was not acted
upon, and consequently most of the ships were very inefficiently
manned--some of them chiefly with the landsmen of the lowest class.
Nothing had been done towards the training of the men, and no
provision was even made to clothe them in a manner required by the
climate to which they were about to be sent....
“Our Ambassador likewise warned the British Government that the
Navy of Russia could not with safety be under-estimated, and,
moreover, the Russian gunners were all well trained, while those
of the British Squadron were _most deficient in this respect_.
The object of the Russians, in wishing to get their best ships
to Sveaborg, was the impression that Cronstadt would be first
attacked; in which case, calculating on the strength of the forts
to repel an assault, _they would have fresh ships wherewith to
assail our disabled and weakened fleet, should they be obliged to
retreat_.[87] Sir Hamilton Seymour warned our Government of the
great number of gunboats the Russians could bring out, eighty of
which were to be manned by Finns, fifty men to each boat....
* * * * *
“Such,” says the author of the biography, “were the reasons, no
doubt powerful enough, for hurrying off, even without pilots, the
ill-appointed and under-manned squadron placed under Sir Charles
Napier’s command, at this inclement season of the year, when the
periodical gales of the vernal equinox might be daily expected. The
squadron, on leaving Spithead, consisted of four sail-of-the-line,
four blockships, four frigates, and four steamers (not a single
gunboat); and with this force, hastily got together, for the most
part manned with the refuse of London and other towns, destitute of
even clothing, their best seamen consisting of dockyard riggers and
a few coastguard men--and without the latter, it has been alleged,
the squadron could not have put to sea--with this inefficient force
did Sir Charles Napier leave our shores, to offer battle to the
Russian Fleet, consisting of seven-and-twenty well-trained and
well-appointed ships of the line, eight or ten frigates, seven
corvettes and brigs, and nine steamers, besides small craft and
flotillas of gunboats, supposed in the aggregate to number one
hundred and eighty....
* * * * *
“It is, probably, an unprecedented event in the annals of war, or,
at least, in those of our history, that a fleet should be sent out,
on a most momentous service so ill-manned that the Commander was
directed to endeavour to ‘pick up,’ if possible, foreign seamen
in foreign ports, and so ill-provided with munitions of war, that
he was restricted in the use of what he most required, in order
to render his inexperienced crews as efficient as possible. It is
equally worthy of record that the Board of Admiralty, throughout
the whole campaign, never supplied the Fleet with a single Congreve
rocket, although it was no secret that great numbers had been
made in London for the Russians, to whom they were of far less
use than to the British Fleet, which could not well undertake any
bombardment without them. The Board of Admiralty must have been
perfectly aware of the conditions, in these respects, of that Fleet
on whose efficiency so much depended, and from which so much was
expected, for, in a letter to Sir Charles Napier, from a member of
that Board, I find it recorded as his opinion, that the Emperor of
Russia ought either to burn his Fleet, or try his strength with
the British Squadron whilst he mustered double their numbers, and
whilst our crews were ‘so miserably raw!’ Yet this inefficiency
was fully and frankly admitted by Sir James Graham, from whom
infrequent instructions arrived to supply the deficiency of good
men by picking up foreign sailors in the Baltic. The anxiety of
the First Lord upon this point was excessive. He was continually
inquiring whether the Admiral had been able to ‘_pick up any Swedes
or Norwegians_, who were good sailors and quite trustworthy.’ He
was told to ‘enter them quietly.’ If he could not get Swedes and
Norwegians, ‘even Danes would strengthen him, for they were hardy
seamen and brave. There was, it is true, a difficulty with their
Governments, but if the men enlisted freely, and came over to
the Fleet, the First Lord did not see why the Admiral should be
over-nice, and refuse good seamen without much inquiry as to the
place from whence they came.’
“Admiral Berkeley, moreover, instructed the Admiral to the same
effect. ‘Have any of your ships tried for men in a Norwegian port?
_It is said that you might have any number of good seamen from that
country._’ On the 18th of March the Admiral had been apprised that
the _James Watt_, the _Prince Regent_ and _Majestic_ would now join
him; ‘_but men are wanting_, and it is impossible to say how long
it will be before they are completed.’ On the 4th of April Admiral
Berkeley stated: ‘Notwithstanding the number of landsmen entered,
we are come nearly to a dead standstill as to seamen; and after the
_James Watt_ and _Prince Regent_ reach you, I do not know when we
shall be able to send you a further reinforcement, _for want of
men_! _Something must be done, and done speedily, or there will be
a breakdown in our present rickety system._’”
The German article produced a great stir in England. This was followed
up by the publication in 1859 of _The Navies of the World_, by Hans
Busk, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, while nominally casting
cold water on the “Leipsic Article,” added fuel to the fire. This
writer was one of the first to concentrate attention upon the fact that
the French were building “iron-plated ships.”
From this scarce and remarkably interesting work I quote the
following:--
“The determination of the French Government to build a number of
iron or steel-cased ships imperatively obliges us to follow their
example. The original idea of plating ships in this way, so as
to render them shot-proof, is due, not, as is generally supposed
in this country, to the present Emperor, but to a Captain in the
French Navy, who, about a quarter of a century since, suggested
that all wooden vessels should be sheathed with composite slabs of
iron of fourteen or fifteen centimetres in thickness; that is to
say, with stout plates of wrought-iron having blocks of cast metal
between. A similar suggestion was made among others by General
Paixhans; but one of the first to reduce it to practice was Mr.
Stevens, of New York, the well-known steamship builder, who about
ten years ago communicated to Mr. Scott Russell the results of a
long series of experiments, instituted by the American Government,
for the purpose of testing the power of plates of iron and steel
to resist cannon-shot. Mr. Lloyd, of the Admiralty, proposed the
adoption of plates 4ins. in thickness, instead of a number of
thinner sheets, as recommended by the Emperor. The English and
French floating batteries were, as is well known, protected upon
Mr. Lloyd’s plan. From trials recently made, however, it has been
pretty well ascertained that this iron planking, on whatever
principle applied, will only repel hollow shot or shells; heavy
solid projectiles of wrought iron, or those faced with steel,
having been found, on repeated trials, to perforate the thickest
covering which has ever been adopted, and that, too, even at
considerable ranges.
“Mr. Reed,[88] already alluded to, proposes to protect only the
midship portion of the ship, and to separate it from the parts fore
and aft by strong watertight compartments, so that, however much
the extremities might suffer, the ship would still be safe and
the crew below protected; but, as he himself admits, there would
obviously be no defence against raking shot.
“The French vessels last alluded to, follow the lines and
dimensions of the _Napoleon_ (one of the best, if not the
finest ship in their Navy); but they will only carry thirty or
thirty-six guns, and the metal sheathing will be from ten to eleven
centimetres (about 4¼ins.) in thickness. Two similar ships are to
be commenced here forthwith; and as the First Lord of the Admiralty
has prophetically warned us that they will be the most expensive
ships ever constructed in this country, it is earnestly to be hoped
that they may be found proportionately valuable, should their
powers ever come to be tested; they will each cost from £126,000
to £130,000, or £4,200 per gun; the ordinary expense of a sailing
man-of-war being about £1,000, and of a steamer from £1,800 to
£2,000 per gun.”
After this follow various statistics of the French Fleet of no
particular interest here except for the following passage:--
“Irrespective of the above are the four _frégates blindées_, or
iron-plated frigates, two of which are now in an advanced state at
Toulon.
“These ships are to be substituted for line-of-battle ships;
their timbers are of the scantling of three-deckers; they will be
provided with thirty-six heavy guns, twenty-four of them rifled,
and 50-pounders, calculated to throw an eighty pound percussion
shell. Such is the opinion of French naval officers respecting
the tremendous power of these ships, that they fully anticipate
the complete abolition, within ten or a dozen years, of all
line-of-battle ships.”[89]
Here it is desirable to leave ships for a moment and deal with the
corresponding stage of gunnery, which began to take on its modern form
contemporaneously with the ironclad ship. In 1858–9 began that contest
between the gun and armour, which can hardly be said to be ended even
in our own day, for improved kinds of armour are still being sought and
experimented with. To quote the work of Hans Busk and its contemporary
summary:--