Evolution of the Ironclad Battleship
"Our ironclads and torpedo-boats
Have never met the foe,
But times of peace don't alter us,
Our hearts are right, you know;
As right and tight as in the days
When glorious fights were won,
And if duty call, we'll on them fall
With torpedo, ram, and gun, my boys,
With torpedo, ram, and gun.
They may blow us up,
They may blow us down,
They may blow us every way;
But we'll sink or win,
And ne'er give in,
Though they blow us right away, my boys,
Though they blow us right away!"
"Sink or Win" (Joe the Marine). From "Per Mare",
Jane's _Naval Annual_, 1895.
WE are accustomed to think of the armour-clad war-ship as entirely a
thing of to-day, or at any rate of the last fifty or sixty years. This
is, however, not altogether correct. Armour is not necessarily steel or
iron--witness the derivation of "cuirass" from the French _cuir_, i.e.
"leather". A French battleship is called _cuirassé_.
Protective devices of various kinds and materials have been used for
hundreds, nay thousands, of years for the defence of ships specially
designed for fighting purposes, though never, it must be admitted, so
generally and extensively as at the present day. Raw hides were
constantly used in ancient and mediæval times to protect ships and the
wooden towers used in sieges on shore. Thick felt was also utilized for
this purpose. The Normans hung their galleys with this material in a
battle with the Saracens off Palermo in 1071, and it played not only a
defensive but a decorative part in the equipment of the big "dromons" of
the Saracens and Byzantines, which were covered with thick woollen cloth
soaked in vinegar to render it fire-proof, and hung with mantlets of red
and yellow felt--a rather gaudier war-jacket than the slate-grey of our
"Dreadnoughts".
Whatever the advantages of felt, there were naval constructors who stood
fast by the old "adage", "There's nothing like leather". Thus, at the
siege of Tyre in 1171 and the forcing of the entrance of the Nile in
1218, an extensive use was made of a species of small craft known as
"barbots" or "duck-backs", whose crews were protected by a strong domed
deck or roof covered with leather. Again, in 1276, Pedro III of Aragon
_cuirassed_ two of his biggest ships with leather--probably raw
hides--before sending them to engage the fleet of Charles of Anjou. Lead
was also used for ship armour in mediæval times. It is said that the
great dromon captured by Richard I off Beyrout had some kind of leaden
plating. Later on, this heavy metal preceded copper as a sheathing for
the under-water portions of ships: the _Grande Françoise_, launched in
1527, was lead-sheathed from her keel to the first wale above her
water-line. Three years later than this date a regular "lead-clad" was
launched at Nice, where she had been built to the order of the Knights
of Malta, who had not very long before been driven out of Rhodes by the
Turks.
This big vessel, the _Santa Anna_, was a regular "Dreadnought" in her
day. While as fast as other unprotected vessels of her time, she was
heavily plated with lead, fastened to her sides with brazen bolts, from
her upper deck down to her keel; and this armour was so strengthened by
the thick backing of her timbers that, "having been many times engaged,
and received much cannonading, she was never pierced below the
bulwarks". She carried fifty heavy guns, besides numerous smaller
pieces, of which not a few were carried aloft in her many fighting-tops.
It is interesting to note that she had a large armoury, a chapel,
forges, a bakery, and a band. "She had various lodges and galleries
round the poop, and chests and boxes full of earth, wherein were planted
cypresses and divers other trees and flowering shrubs, after the fashion
of a garden, small but beautiful." This is about the only garden I have
ever heard of afloat, except the mythical "garden in the main-top",
where are said to be grown any vegetables, "tin-bag" or other, which
arouse the inquisitiveness of ship-visitors. But the main-top has now
gone, and I suppose the "garden" with it.
It has been stated, but without any authority being quoted for the
statement, that "chain-netting of iron was suspended to the sides of
men-of-war, which were also strengthened by plates in the time of Henry
VIII and Elizabeth". I should say this is very doubtful, since Sir
William Monson, in his _Naval Tracts_, published at that period, does
not mention this practice, although he refers to a number of other
protective devices. But, as we have already seen, iron was used as a
protection--probably against ramming--by the Viking ships of many
centuries before this time.
The first regular ironclad ship armed with cannon appears to be that
quaint craft christened the _Finis Belli_, which was constructed by the
burghers of Antwerp what time they were closely besieged by the
redoubtable Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, in the year 1585. With
this floating battery, for it was little else, the besieged hoped to be
able to break the Spanish blockade. There are various accounts of her.
One states that she was protected by iron plates, another that her sides
were from 5 to 10 feet thick, "filled with rotten nets, well rammed in,
which made them firm and almost impenetrable". Probably the hull proper,
which was very low in the water, was protected in this way, and the
built-up battery or casemate, which she had amidships, was covered more
or less with iron. She mounted twenty heavy guns, besides lighter
pieces, and carried a large number of musketeers, some in her
fighting-tops, some behind a loopholed bulwark over her battery, and
others, "which could not be hurt, being lodged lower than the cannon
could batter".
[Illustration: The _Finis Belli_, the first regular Ironclad Ship armed
with Cannon
The funnel on the poop is presumably the galley funnel, though placed in
an unusual position.]
Unfortunately for _les braves Belges_ the _Finis Belli_ was a total
failure. In spite of her three rudders she was "very troublesome to
govern", and eventually ran aground and had to be abandoned. The Spanish
besiegers laughed prodigiously at this effort, and nicknamed the
abandoned ironclad the _Caramanjula_ or "Bogey-bogey". As for her
designers, they re-named her _Perditæ Expensæ_, or "Money thrown away".
[Illustration: Japanese Ironclad of about 1600 A.D.
(_From a drawing by a Japanese Naval Officer_)
With hull covered with plates of copper and iron, two rudders, one at
the bow and one at the stern; and a paddle-wheel as her propelling
machinery, fitted inside.]
The Dutch patriots struggling for freedom from Spanish tyranny had
tried their hands at a somewhat similar contrivance about ten years
earlier, which was known as _The Ark of Delft_. This seems to have been
a double-hulled arrangement, with three hand-turned paddle-wheels placed
between the two hulls. The _Ark_ only rose 5 feet above the water-line,
was 110 feet long and 46 feet broad. She mounted twenty guns, and "a
large gallery was suspended from her three military masts"--whatever
that may mean. It is a curious but generally accepted fact that a great
many more or less modern "inventions" have been forestalled in the Far
East. Gunpowder was first made in China; water-tight compartments were
commonly used in the ships of that country hundreds of years before they
found a place in our men-of-war. It is not altogether strange,
therefore, that the Japanese should have been in possession of what may
well have been a pretty formidable armour-clad so far back as the year
1600--a remarkable-looking craft, more like a big turtle than anything
else. She was cased with hexagonal plates of iron and copper, fitted
closely together. She had a rudder at both bow and stern, and was
propelled by a paddle-wheel amidships, something like the _Ark of
Delft_. A Captain Saris, who made a voyage to Japan in 1613, mentions
that he there saw a junk of from 800 to 1000 tons, sheathed all over
with iron. This was probably the one just described, which, by the way,
is stated to have carried a battery of cannon.
It is hardly necessary to point out that impenetrability does not
necessarily imply armoured protection. An earthen rampart may well be
impenetrable, as may a thick-sided wooden ship, as was the _Great
Michael_ to the artillery of her day; yet, while affording protection to
those behind it, neither the one nor the other is armoured. Between 1600
and 1800 there were many attempts at special forms of protection, from
the floating batteries employed by the English in the mismanaged
expedition to La Rochelle to the famous Spanish floating batteries
destroyed at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1781; but iron ship-armour does
not appear again till the year of Trafalgar.
In the _Naval Chronicle_ for that year we have an account of a vessel
designed by a son of the General Congreve who is famous as being the
inventor of the "Congreve rocket", once a somewhat highly esteemed
missile. The ship--it does not appear whether it was actually built or
not--was intended for the attack of the French invasion flotillas which
were blockaded inside their ports by our fleets. It was to have sloping
sides covered with iron plates and bars, proof against any gun of the
period, and was to be armed with four big mortars and the same number of
42-pound carronades. Her rudder, anchors, and cables were to be entirely
under water, and so not exposed to hostile artillery, while she was to
be rigged in such a way that masts, yards, and sails could be lowered or
erected in a quarter of an hour. When these were "struck" and housed
under the armour she could be moved--probably at a very slow pace--by
oars pulled by forty men, worked entirely under cover.
Fulton, the famous American inventor, who built a submarine boat, and
invented mines and torpedoes and other weapons of war, turned his
attention to the protection of war-vessels. He was probably responsible
for a little paddle-wheel-propelled vessel for towing torpedoes, which
is described as being covered with 1/2-inch iron plates, "not to be
injured by shot". Later on he built a steam frigate, which he called the
_Demologos_, or "Voice of the People". This relied on 13-feet-thick
sides to protect her crew, but was not armour-plated. She was blown up
by accident in 1829, and replaced by the _Fulton the Second_, which
seems to have been to some extent protected by iron armour.
But it was not till towards the end of the Crimean War that real
steam-propelled armour-clad ships appeared, in the shape of a series of
slow and unwieldy floating batteries, specially designed for the attack
of the massive Russian fortifications. If anyone would like to see what
these were like--that is, as regards their hulls, for the masts have
long since disappeared--he has only to travel as far as Chatham Dockyard
and ask the policeman on duty at the main gate to direct him to the
_Thunderbolt_ pier.
The _Thunderbolt_ is one of these old ironclads which has come down to
the useful but inglorious duty of acting as a landing-stage in the River
Medway. Neither she nor any of her English sisters was ever in action;
they were too late in the field--or rather the water. But several of the
French floating batteries, almost precisely similar vessels, took a
prominent part in the bombardment of the Russian fortress of Kinburn,
where their fire proved most effective. As for the shot and shell from
the Russian forts, they rebounded from their sloping iron sides like so
many tennis-balls. These armoured batteries were, however, slow, clumsy,
flat-bottomed affairs, with no speed under steam or sail and but
moderately seaworthy. It remained for the French--whose models in the
"days of wood and hemp" were generally better than our own--to go
another step forward and produce a regular sea-going ironclad.
This was the famous _La Gloire_. She was no beauty. She had an extremely
ugly bow and was very short in proportion to her beam. She was not a new
ship, but the old two-decker _Napoleon_ cut down, lengthened, and
covered along her whole side with iron plating 5 inches in thickness.
She took two years to finish, and was not ready till the end of 1859.
She naturally created a good deal of excitement, and it was at once seen
that we must follow suit.
But our naval men did not see why they need be content with so unsightly
a war-ship. They had been much impressed, a year or two before, by the
_Niagara_, a fine United States frigate which had visited the Thames,
and which had what was then regarded as the immense length of 337 feet.
Our constructors, therefore, were rather inclined to follow her lines
than those of _La Gloire_, and turned out the _Warrior_, a
magnificent-looking vessel, not improvised out of an old wooden ship,
but entirely built of iron. Her armour-plating, however, did not extend
from bow to stern, but only covered her battery amidships, which
occupied somewhere about two-thirds of her total length. The _Warrior_
was 382 feet long, and fitted with a not very obtrusive ram. As a matter
of fact, it was not perceptible at all, since the stem was finished off
with a very graceful swan bow adorned with one of the finest
figure-heads ever executed. She was fully rigged, did 14-1/2 knots under
steam at her trials, and carried an armament of thirty-eight
68-pounders, then the heaviest guns afloat. In short, the _Warrior_ was
a triumph of British shipbuilding, and a worthy ancestor of the
magnificent armour-clad fleet which has played such an important part in
the history of the nation. She had one sister, the _Black Prince_, after
which a few smaller ironclads were built, the _Defence_, _Resistance_,
_Hector_, and _Valiant_. Next came four bigger ships, the _Achilles_,
_Minotaur_, _Northumberland_, and _Agincourt_. These were all improved
_Warriors_, armoured along their whole length, with ram bows, a heavier
armament, and no less than five masts. They were imposing-looking ships,
though, of course, to-day about as obsolete as the _Henri Grace à Dieu_.
[Illustration: H.M.S. _WARRIOR_, OUR FIRST SEA-GOING IRONCLAD BATTLESHIP
She was a very efficient reply to the French _La Gloire_, which was a
wooden ship converted into an ironclad. Observe the Red-and-blue Ensign.
The White Ensign with St. George's Cross did not become universal in the
Royal Navy till 1864.]
I have a vivid recollection of a visit to the _Minotaur_ when a boy.
Possibly a few extracts from notes made at the time may be of interest.
"She has five masts and is a tremendous length. Her upper deck is
furnished with a good many small guns for repelling boat attacks. Round
the masts are placed some of the shot and shell for the large guns
below, painted white, and the knobs (i.e. studs to fit the rifling) and
points gilded. Were here shown a Gatling gun for service on shore or for
clearing the decks of boarders, &c. On going below we saw a couple of
rocket-tubes burnished like a looking-glass.... In the steerage we saw a
7- or 9-pounder boat gun polished beautifully (as was all the metalwork
in the ship) which had an arrangement for reducing the recoil by a
cylinder full of oil. The main-deck battery consisted of 12-ton guns,
lacquered to look like jet." The carriages, I remember, were painted
white and the slides under them scarlet, which, with their burnished
gun-metal machinery, gave them a most brilliant appearance, very
different from the slate-coloured monsters of to-day. These guns were
some which had replaced her original armament of more numerous but
lighter cannon, and in consequence every other port in the battery was
vacant. But the long line of guns presented a most imposing appearance.
"Between the guns were field-guns, boat-guns, &c. Round the hatchways
were ranged shot, shell, and canister, which also appeared in every
available corner."
Among other notes, too long to be transcribed, I find that the Whitehead
torpedoes in the _Minotaur_ were made of copper, a material which has
long since been superseded by steel, and that I was shown "the Rumpf
coil for generating the electric light which can be shown in three
places". Compare this very modest installation with the numbers of
powerful search-lights which a battleship carries to-day, to say nothing
of the thousands of incandescent lamps which light her interior. The
"cylinder full of oil" for checking the recoil of a small boat-gun,
which is referred to above, is noteworthy as the prototype of the almost
universal system now in use both ashore and afloat, though in the
_Minotaur_ none of the big guns were fitted with this very effective
apparatus.
As guns grew more powerful, and, in consequence, armour increased in
thickness and weight, the amount of side protection had perforce to be
reduced, so that as time went on the battleship's cuirass was cut down
to a comparatively narrow water-line belt, with a "box-battery"
containing her heavy guns amidships. In later types the foremost and
aftermost guns in these batteries were placed at an angle and the port
"recessed" in the ship's side, so that these guns could fire on the
broadside and nearly ahead as well. In some ships, such as the _Sultan_,
_Alexandra_--which, by the way, was long flagship of the Mediterranean
fleet and a notable ship in her day--_Triumph_, and _Iron Duke_, the
box-battery was arranged in two tiers, one above the other. All these
were broadside ships and fully rigged. If they could not get along very
fast under sail alone, the sails, under some circumstances, were useful
in "easing the engines" and getting a little more speed out of the ship.
But in any case naval officers had not then brought themselves to accept
the idea of relying on their engines alone; they liked to have a second
string to their bow. Besides, the work and evolutions aloft were
undeniably a splendid thing for the seamen; it rendered them quick,
smart, and self-reliant, and kept them in excellent physical training.
The reverse side of the picture was the weight of yards, rigging, and
sails, the resistance they offered to the wind when the ship was
steaming against it, the danger in action to those quartered on the
upper deck from the fall of yards, blocks, and spars from aloft, and
the time taken in preparing them for action. The top-gallant masts were
sent down on deck as well as the upper yards, the top-masts were
generally lowered till they only showed a few feet above the heads of
the lower masts, extra slings had to be put in place to secure the lower
yards, the shrouds supporting the masts on either side had to be "snaked
down", by coiling wire hawsers in a species of zigzag from top to
bottom, so that if one or more shrouds were cut the whole would hang
together, and many other precautions taken which occupied valuable time
and were, perhaps, after all of a merely negative nature--that is to
say, the rigging was more of a danger in action than a useful asset. The
tops were the only part of it that were of use. As in ancient days they
afforded stations for archers and stone-throwers, and later on for
musketry, swivel-guns, and grenade-throwers, so they were at this time
utilized for mounting machine-guns to fire down upon an enemy's decks.
For at that period "close action" was always expected. Boarders were
told off when the ship "went to quarters for action", and boarding-pikes
and cutlasses were provided for their use, while the small upper-deck
guns--usually breech-loading Armstrongs--were mounted on carriages which
enabled them to be fired downward to repel a boat attack or the rush of
a steamboat with a spar torpedo. The ideas of an action at sea were
practically the same as those which obtained in the days of Nelson.
"Masts and yards" were the source of yet another danger. The "smartness"
of a ship was still generally gauged by her "smartness" aloft. All
evolutions in the Navy are done "against time", and for a ship to get
her "royal yards across" some seconds before any other ship in the
squadron was a notable feat of which every soul on board was proud to a
degree. These ideas were those of the old sailing navy, and in spite of
the advent of steam, ironclads, rifled guns, and torpedoes, the
conservatism of our great sea service rendered them still paramount, so
that even gunnery took a second place. There were regulation quantities
of ammunition to be fired--"expended" was the usual term--at regulated
periods, there were orders that torpedoes were to be run at stated
intervals, that bluejackets and marines should be landed for drill
ashore every week when in harbour. But in most ships these things were
regarded as secondary and annoying performances, to be got over and done
with as soon as possible, if they could not be avoided altogether, so
that all hands might be set to their "games with sticks and string", as,
in course of time, irreverent observers began to call the cherished
evolutions with mast and yards, and the important business of cleaning
paintwork, burnishing "brightwork", and generally making the ship as
spick and span as possible.
"Spit and polish" were the idols worshipped in those days by captains
and more especially commanders, for it was almost universally recognized
that their promotion depended more on the brilliant appearance of their
ships at an inspection than on any other earthly matter. But for all
that the days of "sticks and string" were numbered, as were those of
broadside ironclads and box batteries.
The prime cause of the approaching change was the appearance of a
queer-looking little craft in the Civil War in America between 1861 and
1864. The United States Government had a fine fleet of wooden steamships
at the outbreak of hostilities, but the naval authorities of the
seceding Southern States, having raised the _Merrimac_, a 40-gun frigate
which had been sunk at the Norfolk navy yard, cut her down, built a
battery amidships armoured with two or three thicknesses of railway
iron, and attacked the Federal fleet. The _Merrimac_ had it all her own
way, rammed and sank the frigate _Cumberland_, set the bigger _Congress_
on fire and compelled her to surrender, and withdrew with all the
honours of war. But she was yet to meet her match. John Ericsson, a
Swedish engineer, was commissioned by the United States Government to
construct a small ironclad of his own designing. While the _Merrimac_
was engaged in defeating the wooden ships of the Federals in Hampton
Roads, the _Monitor_, as the new vessel was called, was on her way south
from New York. She joined the Federal fleet the very night before the
_Merrimac_ made a second sortie. On this occasion, as she came out into
the Roads and opened up the fleet she intended to attack, the _Merrimac_
spotted what someone described as looking "like a cheese-box on a raft".
It was an excellent description of the little _Monitor_, which was built
with a very low freeboard and had nothing on her deck but a cylindrical
revolving turret containing a couple of guns, no masts, and but the
merest apology for a funnel. Yet she proved one too many for the
_Merrimac_ with her more numerous battery of guns. She was unable
actually to pierce her sides, as her commander had received the most
peremptory orders not to use more than 15 pounds of powder to load his
guns, but the _Merrimac_ got so "rattled" that she had to sheer off.
[Illustration: The _Monitor_, the famous little ship that revolutionized
warship design
The upper figure is a broadside view, the lower one a transverse section
amidships. The upper portion of the hull was very like a raft, and was
heavily armoured all over, as was the turret and the little pilot-box
forward.]
This first duel between ironclad vessels attracted an enormous amount
of attention, as is only to be supposed. The net result in this country
was that Captain Cowper Coles, R.N., was allowed to have a cupola- or
turret-ship built which he had designed some years before. The _Royal
Sovereign_, a wooden three-decker, was cut down to within a few feet of
the water-line, plated with 5-1/2-inch iron, and fitted with four
turrets. The foremost one carried two guns, the remainder one apiece.
She had very light pole masts and light, hinged iron bulwarks, which
gave her 3-1/3 feet more freeboard at sea but had to be lowered before
she could fight her guns. Captain Coles, however, had the usual
hankering after "masts and yards", and, the _Royal Sovereign_ having
proved moderately successful, induced the Admiralty to build a fully
rigged turret-ship. This was the unfortunate _Captain_, whose low
freeboard, heavy turrets, superstructures, and fully-rigged tripod masts
caused her to turn turtle in a squall off Cape Finisterre on the night
of 6th September, 1870. Her inventor went down in her. Her gunner and
seventeen men were the sole survivors. One other full-rigged turret-ship
was built--the _Monarch_. As she had a very considerable freeboard she
proved a seaworthy ship, but she was the last of her kind.[42]
In the meantime several small coast-defence turret-vessels had been
built, such as the _Scorpion_ and _Wyvern_ in 1865, the _Abyssinia_,
_Magdala_, and _Cerberus_ in 1870, and the _Glatton_, _Gorgon_,
_Cyclops_, and others a year or so later. They had one or two masts, but
were not rigged ships. These little turret-ships developed into the
battleships _Devastation_, _Dreadnought_, and _Thunderer_, launched
between 1873 and 1877. Each had two turrets containing a couple of heavy
guns apiece. Their hulls were heavily armoured, and they had but one
mast fitted with a military top for machine-guns. It is from this branch
of our earlier armour-clad construction that our modern "Dreadnoughts"
derive their descent rather than from the broadside type.
To explain further developments it must be noted that while in this
country the success of the _Monitor_ induced us to experiment with
placing guns in revolving armoured turrets, in France the tendency was
to build a fixed armoured tower in the ship, and place the guns inside
on a turntable _en barbette_--that is to say, so mounted that they could
fire over the top of the armour in any direction. We tried to go one
better in the _Temeraire_ (1877). She was a broadside ship, with a
"box-battery" amidships, but forward and aft two pear-shaped armoured
barbettes were built into her, the tops of which rose about 1 foot or 18
inches above her upper deck. In each of these was placed a 25-ton
gun--we classified guns by weight in those days, and not by inches of
calibre as we do now--on a mounting, which enabled it to sink down on
being fired, and to be raised up again into its firing-position when
loaded. The _Temeraire_, it may be said, was an experimental ship in
many ways. Though heavily rigged, she had only two masts, so was like an
enormous brig. I believe I am right in saying that her mainyard was the
longest and heaviest in the Service. At one time, too, she was painted
grey, instead of the black which was then universal, except when ships
were in hot climates, when it was generally changed to white. Yellow
funnels were regulation, as was "mast-colour"--a sort of deep-yellow
ochre with a reddish tinge--for all masts and spars. Ships were, and had
been for very many years, painted white withinboard instead of the old
eighteenth-century red. Outboard the black sides were finished off
generally with a white water-line, and a broad white band along the
upper part of the bulwarks, known as a "boot-top". Sometimes another
white line was painted on the black side a few inches below it.
There was a good deal of controversy about this time as to the relative
merits of "broadside" fire and "end-on" fire. Space forbids us from
entering further into this question, but, generally speaking, if a
British ship carried four guns heavier than the rest, they were so
arranged that two could be fired ahead or astern, and all four on either
broadside. But in a French ship the four corresponding guns would be
each mounted singly in barbettes arranged diamond-fashion, so that three
could be fired either ahead, astern, or on either broadside. A couple of
armoured cruisers, the _Imperieuse_ and _Warspite_, were built, probably
as an experiment, on these lines, on the latter of which I had the
honour of serving for something like twelve months. They were originally
brig-rigged, like the _Temeraire_, but this was done away with later and
replaced by a single military mast. Personally I do not think they were
a success. The _Warspite_, at any rate, was a very wet ship. When
steaming against quite a moderate sea the water ran all over her, into
the barbettes and down below, and she was much cramped in many ways by
the arrangement of her guns. The _Devastation_ and her sisters proved
very formidable and successful ships, but with the idea of getting a
heavier fire ahead or astern a new departure was made in the
_Inflexible_--the biggest ironclad we had yet constructed--by placing
her turrets, not one forward and the other aft on the centre line of the
ship, but _en echelon_--that is to say, diagonally amidships.
Theoretically this arrangement, which had been copied from the big
Italian ships _Duilio_ and _Dandolo_, had a good deal to recommend it,
but practically there is more to be said against it than for it.
Nevertheless, four other smaller ships were built on these lines, the
_Ajax_ and _Agamemnon_--which gained notoriety as being almost
impossible to steer--and the _Edinburgh_ and _Colossus_. The last two
were armed with breech-loading guns, which were now superseding the old
muzzle-loaders to which the ordnance authorities had clung with such
obstinacy long after every other nation had consigned them to the scrap
heap.
Meanwhile a smaller single-turret ship, the _Conqueror_, had been
built, an unwieldy-looking craft which went by the name of the
"half-boot" from the resemblance her general outline had to that useful
article of military equipment. But she seems to have met with the
approval of the Admiralty, since an improved sister-ship, the _Hero_,
was launched about five years later. These ships probably suggested the
very much larger ones, _Victoria_ and _Sans Pareil_, each of which, on a
displacement of 10,470 tons only, carried a couple of 111-ton guns of
16·25-inch bore in a single turret--that is to say, as their main
armament. They had also a 10-inch gun aft, and a dozen 6-inch
breech-loading guns. These formed what is called her "secondary
battery". The provision of such batteries marks a step in the evolution
of war-ship construction which is very noteworthy. The bigger and bigger
guns carried by battleships necessitated stronger and stronger armour.
In spite of improvements in quality and manufacture the weight of armour
tended constantly to increase. The area covered had therefore to be more
and more restricted. To carry all this weight of guns and armour
comparatively large ships were necessary, and a great part of their
sides had to go without any protection at all. Their flotation might be
preserved--against attack by gun-fire--by the combination of armoured
belt and sloping armoured decks which had by now become almost
universal. But it was obvious that the unarmoured portions of the ship
above water could be torn to pieces by the fire of comparatively light
weapons. This led to the installation of "secondary batteries" of 4-,
5-, and 6-inch guns, for the purpose of attacking an enemy's ship in
this way and of neutralizing his attack by keeping down the fire of
_his_ secondary batteries.
[Illustration: _Photo. West & Son, Southsea_
A MONSTER GUN WHICH IS NOW OBSOLETE
The 111-ton gun on the old _Benbow_, which was very slow of fire and
whose life was estimated at little more than 70 rounds.]
The development of torpedo-attack brought about the Whitehead automobile
torpedo, and the improvements in the speed and construction of
destroyers and torpedo-boats caused also the introduction of "auxiliary
batteries" of rapid-firing 3- and 6-pounder-shell guns. The machine-guns
firing rifle bullets, and, later on, small steel shot, were found to
have no "stopping-power" against torpedo-craft, and more powerful
weapons became imperative.
The tragic end of the _Victoria_, which cost the nation, not only a fine
ship, but the lives of the greater portion of her crew, and that very
talented naval commander, Sir George Tryon, is a well-known tragedy of
the sea, and there is little doubt that the enormous weight forward of
her huge turret and guns, with nothing aft to counterbalance it, was one
of the causes contributing to the completeness of the catastrophe.
No more ships were built on such lines, but about this period an
important innovation was made by the introduction of a class of ships in
which the four heavy guns were carried in a couple of high barbettes
with sloping sides, instead of in turrets. The whole gun was exposed,
but not its mountings or crew, since the top of the barbette was closed
in by a flat shield which revolved with the guns. These were the
_Collingwood_, _Camperdown_, _Howe_, _Rodney_, _Anson_, and _Benbow_.
The last-named had one 111-ton gun in each barbette, instead of a pair
of rather smaller cannon. Amidships, between the barbettes, were
secondary batteries of half a dozen 6-inch guns (the _Benbow_ had ten).
These were entirely unprotected except from fire coming from ahead or
astern, from which they were covered by armoured bulkheads reaching
across the ship immediately behind each barbette.
I well recollect my first sight of these ships, which had all been
completed during four years I had been away on a distant station,
though, as a matter of fact, I had seen the _Rodney_ launched before I
left England. I was on board H.M.S. _Aurora_, a new cruiser which had
been specially commissioned for the naval manoeuvres. We left Plymouth
and proceeded to Spithead, where a large fleet had been assembled to do
honour to the Kaiser--with whom we were then on rather more friendly
terms than latterly, and who came over at the head of a squadron of his
war-ships. He was much more anxious to exhibit German war-ships to the
British fleet than his naval commanders seem to have been during the
Great War. We got into Spithead about six on a morning when there was a
thick drizzle almost amounting to a fog, and as one after another of
these monsters--as we thought them then--loomed up out of the mist and
vanished astern, they presented a most impressive picture of strength
and solidity. They really did look in the dim light like "castles
afloat"!
But they were not by any means among our most successful efforts. No one
liked the unprotected secondary batteries, and thought of the
well-armoured _Devastation_ and her sisters. _They_ had no secondary
batteries--but they were so well armoured that these were not necessary,
except for purposes of offence. This consideration doubtless led to the
building of the _Nile_ and _Trafalgar_, in which the four big guns were
carried in turrets and the secondary armament in an armoured battery
amidships. They were extremely well-protected ships and would have given
a very good account of any ship of their day. But the tendency was ever
for bigger ships, which allowed, generally speaking, for greater speed,
greater radius of action, greater seaworthiness, and afforded a steadier
gun platform.
This produced the "Royal Sovereign" class, of over 14,000 tons
displacement, a great advance in size on any ships which had preceded
them. They created a considerable sensation at the time of their
appearance, especially the _Royal Sovereign_ herself, the first of them.
My own first sight of her was somewhere in the Irish Sea, not far from
the Isle of Man. I was serving on board H.M.S. _Triumph_ in the naval
manoeuvres of 1892. The _Royal Sovereign_ passed us just at the time tea
was going on in the wardroom, which would be between half-past three and
four, and I remember how everybody rushed up on deck to get a look at
the new marvel in shipbuilding.
The _Royal Sovereign_ became practically the regulation type of
battleship until the advent of the "Dreadnoughts", though of course each
successive batch was an improvement on the preceding one in speed,
protection, and gun-power. All had four heavy guns in low barbettes,
covered with armoured hoods which revolved with the guns--so they may be
said to have been a combination of turret and barbette. The single
exception was the _Hood_ in the "Royal Sovereign" batch, which carried
her four heavy guns in two regular turrets. All had secondary batteries,
whose guns were distributed in armoured casemates at considerable
intervals from each other, and all had a couple of military masts, with
one or two fighting-tops on each, armed with light rapid-fire guns. This
fine series of battleships amounted to forty in all, and formed a
homogeneous and magnificent fleet, the like of which the world had never
seen. Nearly all had a displacement of from 14,000 to 15,000 tons, and a
speed of from 17 to 18 knots. Most are still in service, and though they
have been put rather in the background by our "Dreadnoughts" and
"Super-Dreadnoughts", we may still be very proud of them.
There were two intermediate steps between them and the epoch-making
_Dreadnought_. The first was the creation of the "King Edward" class of
five ships, dating from 1902-3. These were very similar to their
predecessors, but had over 1000 tons more displacement, were more
thoroughly armoured, and, in addition to the four 12-inch and ten or a
dozen 6-inch guns which formed their armament, were provided with four
guns of 9·2 inches calibre, each placed singly in a turret at the
corners of the superstructure. The final type before the _Dreadnought_
made her sensational appearance was the "Lord Nelson" class, which,
however, only comprised two ships--the _Lord Nelson_ herself and the
_Agamemnon_.[43] They were very little bigger than the "King Edwards",
but in their case the 6-inch guns were replaced by ten guns of 9·2-inch
calibre, a most formidable secondary battery, capable of penetrating a
considerable thickness of armour. The Battle of Tsushima, between the
Japanese and Russians, led to the temporary abandonment of the secondary
battery. It was considered that battles would in future be fought at
such immense ranges that a decision, one way or another, would be
reached before the smaller guns could be brought within effective range
of the enemy, and the events of the European War go to confirm this
theory. So it was that we once more arrived at the "all-big-gun ship",
and in the _Dreadnought_, launched in 1906, went back to the principle
followed in the armament of her namesake of 1875, and confined her
armament--except for a few small anti-torpedo-boat guns--to cannon of
the largest size. A comparison of the two _Dreadnoughts_ will form an
appropriate termination to this chapter, which has already occupied more
pages than I intended.
1875--H.M.S. _Dreadnought_. Displacement, 10,820 tons;
speed, 14 knots; guns, four muzzle-loaders; armour,
10, 11, 13, and 14 inches; weight of projectiles, 809
pounds; penetration of wrought iron at 1000 yards,
17-1/2 inches.
1906--H.M.S. _Dreadnought_. Displacement, 17,900 tons;
speed, 21 knots; guns, ten breech-loaders; armour, 6,
7, 9, and 12 inches; weight of projectiles, 850
pounds; penetration of wrought iron at 1000 yards, 36
inches.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] If we except the _Neptune_, which was built by a foreign Government
and eventually acquired by the Royal Navy.
[43] It would perhaps be more correct to call the _Lord Nelson_ and
_Agamemnon_ contemporaries of the _Dreadnought_. They were practically
experimental ships offering an alternative type. The cost of thirty of
these ships would have been the same as that of twenty-nine
_Dreadnoughts_. The annual upkeep of twenty-nine _Dreadnoughts_ would be
less by £15,000 than that of thirty _Lord Nelsons_.