half a century ago, with one sailing corvette and two gunboats; and,
in 1898, comprised 13 battleships and 179 other vessels of all types,
carrying 23,302 officers and men. The fleet of united Italy had its
inception, also, within the age of steam. It was on March 17, 1860,
that Italian national life began with the ascension of the throne
by Victor Emmanuel. From the beginning, the kingdom has been lavish
with its fleet, its expenditures within the first six years reaching
$60,000,000. In 1898 there were in the Italian navy 265 vessels of all
types, 17 of which were battleships. The force afloat was 24,200, of
all ranks and ratings.
The Crimean war found Russia but little advanced, either on the Black
Sea or the Baltic, in the substitution of steam for sail. Since that
time, however, she has re-created her battle fleet, which is now
especially strong in torpedo craft and cruisers of great steaming
radius. Her navy, in 1898, comprised 20 battleships and 263 other
vessels, with a force of 32,477 officers and men. Japan began her fleet
in 1866 with the purchase of an armor-clad from the United States. In
1898, she had a total of 145 vessels, built and building—8 of which
were battleships—carrying 23,000 men of all ranks and ratings.
[Illustration: ITALIAN BATTLESHIP SARDEGNA.]
Of minor navies little need be said. Austria had, in 1898, a fleet
of 115 vessels of all types, including 13 battleships and 79 torpedo
craft. Holland’s force was 185 vessels, 3 being battleships and 93
torpedo craft. The fleets of Turkey, Greece, Spain, and Portugal are
“paper-navies” mainly. Norway and Sweden have a combined strength
of 171 vessels of all types. Denmark, which began the century with
overwhelming naval disaster at Copenhagen, has now a force of 3000
men borne on 50 vessels, half of which are torpedo craft. Argentina,
Brazil, and Chili have afloat 102 torpedo vessels and 49 of other
types. The vast growth in naval armaments during the century may be
measured from the fact that the personnel of the leading navies of
Europe, with those of Japan and the United States, comprised, in the
year 1898, 368,028 officers and men, with a total force of 2749 vessels
of all types, including torpedo craft.
III. THE BATTLESHIP,—PAST AND PRESENT.
In tracing the evolution of the modern man-of-war, it will be
instructive to compare with her the type of the sailing age. There are
two ships of the old time which hold chief places in the memory of the
Anglo-Saxon race,—the Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, and the
Constitution, whose achievements under Hull, Bainbridge, and Stewart,
rang around the world. There were, even before the days of steam,
war-vessels twice as large and powerful as “Old Ironsides,” but over no
sea, in any age, has there sailed a ship with a more gallant record.
Plate I shows her as she was in her prime—before the wind, with all
sail set. On Plate II there is given a side view of her hull, which
is of historic interest, in that it is reproduced from the original
drawing made in October, 1796.
[Illustration: NELSON’S FLAGSHIP VICTORY.]
When her power and dimensions are compared with those of the Oregon,
our sea-fighter of to-day, one sees what time has wrought. The frigate
carried 456 men, the armor-clad, 500; and yet, with this approximately
equal force, the Oregon has a displacement 6½ times that of her famed
predecessor; and although the number of the guns—44—is the same
in each, she discharges a broadside 8.3 times heavier and in energy
overwhelmingly superior. The speed of the battleship is one half
greater than that of the Constitution, and she carries armor varying
from 18 inches to 4 inches thick, which the frigate wholly lacked. The
longitudinal section of the Oregon indicates the immense advance in
other directions. Her hull is, for safety, minutely subdivided, and is
provided with engines for propulsion, steering, lighting, drainage,
and ventilation, numbering in all 84, with miles of piping and
hundreds of valves. The time-honored frigate was but a sail-propelled
gun-platform, whose wants were as few as her construction was
simple; the steel-clad battleship is a mass of mechanism, a floating
machine-plant, which for full efficiency must be manned by a personnel
not only brave and daring as of old, but expert in many arts and
sciences, which in the age of sail were but rudimentary or unknown.
[Illustration: PLATE I. CONSTITUTION (1812) UNDER SAIL.]
IV. THE PROGRESS OF NAVAL ENGINEERING.
“_I have just read the project of Citizen Fulton, Engineer, which you
have sent me much too late, since it is one which may change the face
of the world._”
So, in the beginning of the century, wrote the first Napoleon from his
Imperial camp at Boulogne. Wrapped in his day-dream of a descent upon
the Thames, he saw, with prophetic vision, in the plans of the American
engineer, the future of navigation, and he strove to grasp—but too
late—the opportunity which might have made his armada victorious over
wind and tide.
His words, however, rang truer than he knew. On the sea, as on the
land, the engineer has indeed “changed the face of the world;” and in
no department of human progress has his influence been more radical or
more far-reaching than in the mechanism, the scope, and the strategy
of naval war. Fleets move now with a swiftness and surety unthought
of in the days of sail. Over the same western ocean which Nelson, in
his eager chase of Villeneuve, crossed at but four knots an hour, the
United States cruiser Columbia swept, ninety years later, at a speed
nearly four and three quarters times that of his lagging craft. When,
in 1898, war came, the great battleship Oregon, although far to the
northward on our western coast, was needed in the distant battle-line
off the Cuban shore. In 79 days she steamed 14,500 miles, making a run
which is without parallel or approach by any warship of any navy in
the world’s history. The magnificent manhood, the unconquerable pluck,
the engineering skill, which brought her just in time off Santiago,
won their reward when the Colon struck her flag. Speed has been a
determining factor in many a naval action. It was that which gave the
power to take and hold the old-time “weather-gauge.” None knew its
value better than Nelson, the chief fighter of the age of sail. Once
he said that there would be found, stamped upon his heart, “the want
of frigates,” the swift and nimble “eyes of the fleet” in his day. If
his career in warfare on the sea had been a century later, he would
be found foremost among the advocates of high-speed battleships and
quick-firing guns.
It is, however, not only in the speed of warships that steam and
mechanism have revolutionized fleets. For example, the displacement of
the battleship of to-day is fully three and one half times greater than
that of her heaviest ancestor of the sailing age. With due limitation
as to length of hull, it is evident that the wind would be, at best,
a wholly inadequate and untrustworthy motor for this huge structure
with its great weight of armor. It is true that, during the era of
transition, sail and steam were both applied to iron-clads—this
absurdity reaching its climax in the British Agincourt and her sisters,
which were 400 feet long, 10,600 tons’ displacement, and were fitted
with five masts. It is said that a merchant steamer narrowly escaped
collision at night with one of these vessels, believing from her length
and rigging that there were _two_ ships ahead, between which she could
pass. What these large displacements mean, in contrast with those of
past days, will be, perhaps, best illustrated by the statement that the
Italia of 13,600 tons—a ship with which, in her day, Italy challenged
the criticism of the world—carries on her deck a weight, in armor
and armament, of 2500 tons, or one fourth more than that of Nelson’s
flagship Victory.
[Illustration: PLATE II. SIDE VIEW OF CONSTITUTION FROM ORIGINAL
DRAWING.
(Furnished by the Author.)
Length 174 ft. 10½ ins.
Beam 43 ft. 6 in.
Mean Draught 20 ft. 0 in.
Displacement 2200 tons.
WILLIAM DOUGHTY, Fecit. 1796, Oct.
Joshua Humphreys, of Philadelphia, Designer. Cloghorne and Hartley, of
Boston, Builders. Launched Oct. 21, 1797.]
Again, the largest naval gun in the year 1800 was one firing but a
42-pound shot, while in the United States navy we have now the 13-inch
rifle of 60 tons, with a projectile of 1100 pounds, and Great Britain
has afloat 1800-pounder breech-loaders which weigh 111 tons. Before
monster ordnance such as this, the strength of man, unaided, is but
crude and futile. He must call to his help—as he has done—steam as
the source of power for the electric, hydraulic, or pneumatic engines,
which load, elevate, and train the gun.
In summing up the service of steam, directly or indirectly, to the
ship-of-war, it will be seen that the speed of the battleship has been
increased by fully 50 per cent., and that of the cruiser has been
doubled; that the displacement of the battleship is now three and
one half times that of her sailing predecessor; and that, since the
century’s birth, the gun has grown to such extent that the projectile
for the Oregon’s main battery weighs 26 times that of the heaviest shot
in the year 1800. This, however, is not all. Steam acts primarily,
as well, to raise the anchor, to steer the ship, and to effect her
lighting, heating, drainage, and ventilation. To the genius of James
Watt there must be ascribed the possibility for the growth and change
which have produced the modern man-of-war.
Closely allied with mechanism in this evolution, has been the
transformation of the structural material of the hull, which has passed
from the hands of the shipwright in wood to the engineer who works with
steel. The reasons for this are not far to seek. They lie, firstly,
in the greater strength of the metal construction to withstand the
vibration of swift and heavy machinery, and the strains arising from
the unequal distribution of massive weights in a hull which pitches or
rolls with the waves. With wooden ships, the present proportions would
have been unattainable. Again, there is a marked saving in the weight
of the hull proper of the steel vessel, which is not only stronger but
lighter. This weight in the days of timber averaged fully one half
of the displacement; while in the Oregon, whose tonnage, at normal
draught, is 10,288, the hull percentage is 44.06, leaving a gain over
the wooden vessel of 611 tons to be applied to armor, armament, or
equipment. Finally, the durability of the metal vessel, with adequate
care, greatly exceeds that of the wooden war steamer, whose average
life was but 13 years.
The creation of the steam machinery of navies has been the achievement
of the engineers of practically but three great nations. The daring of
France, the inventive genius of America, and the wide experience and
sound judgment of Great Britain, have united in this work. Our country
has led time and again in the march of improvement; although our
progress has been fitful, since, more than a generation ago, we turned
from the sea to the development of the internal resources of this
continent. Limits of space permit but brief review of a history which
has had its full share of triumphs, not only in battle, but over wave
and wind.
[Illustration: THE U. S. S. OREGON.]
A contemporary authority states that, when British Admiral Sir John
Borlase Warren ascended the Potomac River, during the war of 1812, his
expedition was reconnoitred by an American steamer. This appears to be
the first record of the use of such craft for military purposes. In
1814 the United States built the first steam war-vessel in the world’s
history. She was called the Demologos, later the Fulton, and her
completion marked truly, as her commissioners said, “an era in warfare
and the arts.” She was a double-ended, twin-hulled floating battery
of 2475 tons, carrying twenty 32-pdr. guns, protected by 4 ft. 10 in.
of solid timber. She was driven by a single central paddle-wheel; her
speed was 5½ miles per hour; and she was both handy and seaworthy.
France, in 1820, sent a commission to America to report upon steam
vessels of war; and in 1830 the French had nine armed steamers afloat
and nine building. In 1821, the Comet, a small side-wheeler, was
commissioned as the first steam war-ship in the British navy, and in
1840, at the bombardment of Acre, steam vessels fought their first
battle.
[Illustration: ACTION BETWEEN MONITOR AND MERRIMAC.]
The growth of steam in navies had been retarded by its application
solely to paddle craft, whose wheels and machinery were incapable of
protection in action. During the years 1842–43, however, the United
States built the sloop-of-war Princeton, of 954 tons. This vessel
was the product of the genius of John Ericsson, the ablest marine
engineer the world has ever seen. She was the first screw-propelled
steam warship ever built, and, in other respects, foreshadowed the
advances which were to come. Thus, her machinery was the first to be
placed wholly below the water-line beyond the reach of hostile shot;
her engine was the first to be coupled directly to the screw shaft, and
blowers, for forced draft, were with her first used in naval practice.
She was virtually the herald of the modern era.
The Princeton was followed closely by the Rattler, the first screw
vessel of the British fleet, and in 1843–44 the French 44-gun frigate
Pomone was fitted with propellers. In 1843, also, the English Penelope
was the first man-of-war to be equipped with tubular boilers, and the
year 1845 was notable for the building of the ill-fated Birkenhead,
the first iron vessel of the British fleet. In 1850, when the French
constructed the screw line-of-battle ship Napoleon, the English became
alarmed, and began with vigor the renovation of their navy with regard
to screw propulsion.
France, in 1854, laid the keels of four armored batteries, three of
which, forming the first ironclad squadron in history, went into action
a year later under the forts of Kinburn in the Crimea. They were of
1600 tons’ displacement, carried 4⅓ inch armor and sixteen 68-pdr.
guns, and had a speed of four knots. In 1862, Ericsson launched the
famous Monitor, the first sea-going ironclad with a revolving turret,
and an “engineers’ ship” from keel to turret top.
[Illustration: THE TURBINIA.]
The Civil War found us with a sailing navy, and left us one of steam.
Passing over its victories, in which steamers played always the chief
part on sea and river, we come to that most notable triumph of Chief
Engineer Isherwood, the cruiser Wampanoag of 4200 tons’ displacement.
This vessel, phenomenal in her day, steamed in February, 1868, from
Barnegat to Savannah, over a stormy sea, in 38 hours. Her average was
16.6 knots for the run, and 17 knots during a period of six consecutive
hours—a speed which for 11 years thereafter was unapproached by liner
or by warship. In 1879, the British despatch vessel Mercury, of 3730
tons and 18.87 knots, wrested the palm from America; but, in 1893, it
was won again for the United States by the triple-screw fliers Columbia
and Minneapolis of 7475 tons, with speeds respectively of 22.8 and
23.073 knots. The laurels rest now with the Buenos Ayres, which,
though built in England in 1895, flies the flag of Argentina. She has a
tonnage of 4500 and a speed of 23.202 knots.
[Illustration: ENGINE OF U.S.S.POWHATAN. A.D. 1849.
PLATE III.]
The British ironclad Pallas, completed in 1866, was remarkable for
having the first successful naval engines on the compound principle,
in which the steam is admitted at high pressure to a small cylinder,
and passes thence to a larger one which it fills by its expansion. To
Great Britain the world owes also the development of triple expansion,
i. e., the use of steam successively in three cylinders. This system
was inaugurated in naval engines by the British, in 1885–86, and is
now universally employed. Prior to 1879, the boilers of all modern
war-vessels had been those of the Scotch type, in which the flame
passes through tubes fixed in a cylindrical shell containing water. In
that year, however, France began a revolution in the steam generators
of navies by equipping a dispatch-vessel with the Belleville tubulous
boiler, in which the water to be evaporated is contained within tubes
surrounded by flame confined in an outer casing. The water-tube
principle, also, bids fair to become of universal application. It has
had its most noteworthy naval installation in the British cruisers
Powerful and Terrible, of 14,200 tons and 25,886 horse-power, completed
in 1895.
[Illustration: PLATE IV. ENGINE OF U. S. S. ERICSSON.]
The use of more than one screw for propulsion dates back to 1853.
During our Civil War multiple screws figured, to a small extent, in the
“tin clads” and larger monitors. The application of twin screws, in the
modern era, begins with the British ironclad Penelope of 1868. France,
in the years 1884–85, blazed the way for another naval advance of much
importance in conducting a series of trials with the launch Carpe,
equipped with triple screws. The system, however, although of much
value, from engineering and tactical points of view, was not adopted
in large, high-powered vessels until the advent of the French armored
cruiser Dupuy de Lôme in 1890, and the protected cruisers Columbia and
Minneapolis of the United States navy in 1893. It has now won full
approval in the navies of continental Europe, and triple-screw ships,
aggregating 500,000 tons, are built or building there.
The limits of space forbid more than a passing note of the triumphs
of the engineer in torpedo craft, the light cavalry of the sea. With
steamers of normal proportions, the speed and power depend largely
upon, and increase with, the displacement. As has been stated, the
maximum performance of large cruisers is now 23 knots on a tonnage
of 4500. These particulars give a faint glimpse of the extraordinary
problem which has confronted the torpedo-boat designer in driving
hulls of, at present, about 150 tons at a speed which now approximates
to 30 knots. With the brilliant record of success in this task, there
will be linked always the names of Yarrow and Thornycroft in England,
of Schichau in Germany, and of Normand in France. The achievement but
recently of a British inventor, the Hon. Charles Algernon Parsons, in
giving the Turbinia of 44.5 tons a speed of over 31 knots, has drawn
the attention of engineers the world over to the possibilities of the
steam turbine on the sea. This performance is phenomenal with such a
displacement. The French Forban, of 130 tons, has made 31.2 knots,
and a reported speed of 35 knots gives a Schichau boat her temporary
laurels as the fastest craft afloat.
A brief glance at the improvements which have made possible these
extreme speeds in cruisers and torpedo craft will be of interest. The
progress which has been made has been, firstly, in the economy in the
use of steam arising from higher pressures and multiple expansion;
secondly, in the reduction of weight, per horse power, due to increase
in strength of materials and in engine-speed with the employment of
forced draft—which was reintroduced by France—and the water-tube
boiler; and, finally, in the application of a more efficient propelling
instrument. The advances of half a century in propelling machinery are
shown, in some respects, by Plates III and IV, which contrast, on the
same scale, the side-wheel machinery of the United States war-steamer
Powhatan, of 1849, with the engines of the United States torpedo boat
Ericsson of to-day. The data of the former vessel are: horse-power,
1172; steam pressure 15 lbs.; weight of machinery per horse-power 972
lbs.; while, for the Ericsson, the figures are: horse-power, 1800;
steam pressure, 250 lbs.; weight of machinery per horse-power, 56 lbs.
This comparison, however, must be qualified by the statement that the
older engine was for a steamer of about 3760 tons, while the torpedo
boat is but 120 tons in displacement. The contrast lies, therefore,
only in the reduced weight of material per horse-power developed and in
the increased steam pressure, which, however, are in themselves most
striking.
V. THE GROWTH OF ORDNANCE.
At Trafalgar, the Victory drifted before the wind into action. In her
slow advance, at a speed of one and one half knots through but 1200
yards, she was for half an hour under the prolonged fire of 200 guns,
and yet she closed, practically unhurt, with her foes, and lived, not
only to win the day, but to bring undying glory to the English flag.
What a contrast the latest sea-fight of the century presents in the
power of modern ordnance as compared with the puny guns of Nelson’s
time! Our battleship Oregon, at a range of nearly five miles, with
one 1100-pound shell, drove the Colon, an armored cruiser, not only
shoreward, but to surrender, stranding, and wreck.
The largest naval guns in the year 1800 were the long 32 and
42-pounders, smooth-bore muzzle-loaders, with a range of about
1200 yards. Carronades—short pieces with a heavy shot but limited
range—found favor also, especially with British sailors, eager for
that close-quarter fighting in which the “Smasher”—as General Melville
called his carronade—would be most effective in shattering timbers
and in sending clouds of splinters among the foe. The projectiles were
spherical shot, canister, and grape, the diabolical shriek of the shell
being yet unheard. Both gun and shot were of cast metal, and the
mount was a wooden carriage on low trucks. The training, or horizontal
angle of the gun, was effected by rope tackles, and the amount of
elevation of its muzzle depended upon the position of a “quoin,” or
wooden wedge, thrust beneath the breech. The recoil was limited by
rope “breeching,” passing through the cascabel,—a knob behind the
breech,—and secured to ring-bolts in the ship’s side. The gun was
harnessed, as a horse is, in the shafts.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR.]
Aiming was largely a perfunctory process, since the gun had no sights
and the shot had excessive “windage,” its calibre being from one fifth
to one third inch less than the bore, making its outward passage
a series of rebounds and its final direction a matter of chance.
“Windage,” however, was essential to facilitate muzzle-loading and to
provide for the expanded diameter of red-hot shot. It is true that in
1801 a proposition to use sights was made to Lord Nelson. He, however,
rejected it with the words:—
“I hope we shall be able, as usual, to get so close to our enemies that
our shot cannot miss the object.”
His blind courage in this cost his countrymen dearly when, in 1812–14,
their shot flew wild, while their ships were hulled and their gallant
tars fell before the then sighted guns of the United States.
To ignite the charge the slow-match was still used, as is shown by
the sharp words of a sailor of that time. Hailed in the darkness by a
British ship and ordered to send a boat, his quick answer was:—
“This is the United States frigate Constitution, Edward Preble,
commodore, commanding, and I’ll be d—d if I send a boat!”
Then to his men, silent and eager by the shrouded battle-lanterns:—
“Blow your matches, boys!”
A full crew for a 32-pounder consisted of 14 men. An old rule as to
this was one man to every 500-lbs. weight of the gun, which would give
the Oregon 1100 men to handle the four 13-inch rifles of her main
battery, or more than twice her whole crew. Steam and mechanism have
wrought a magic change in this.