Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

CHAPTER V

IRON SHIPS OF WAR; FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF IRON ARMOUR
TO BROADSIDE AND TURRET SHIPS

When the Crimean War broke out, Great Britain and France shared the naval leadership of the world. Nearly all the other nations had warships of one kind or another, but the finest specimens were to be found in the fleets of those two powers. They included the Duke of Wellington, fitted with screw engines of 700 h.p. and carrying one hundred and thirty-one guns; the Agamemnon, of 600 h.p. and ninety-one guns; and the frigate Shannon, of 600 h.p. and fifty-one guns, to mention three of the best examples of their classes.

Russia had some powerful vessels, including a few steam warships, but her naval resources were not equal to those of either of the allies. The French and English naval reviews in 1853 and 1854 were instructive as showing the improvements which had been effected in the preceding fifteen or twenty years. The screw propeller was so advantageous a method of propulsion that the conversion of sailing vessels into steamers went on apace in all the navies of Europe, and the United States, which usually did not at that time trouble about European naval developments, caught the infection and not only built steam frigates, but transformed some of its smaller vessels also to augment the steam warships it had already found necessary for its operations in the Mexican Gulf, the West Indies, and elsewhere. The frigate was a favourite type of ship with the Americans, and whether in the sailing days or after the adoption of steam for warships, the American frigates were equal to those to be found anywhere.

The naval force which went to the Crimea was largely steam-driven. The Battle of Sinope, in November, 1853, in which the Russians annihilated a Turkish fleet, proved alike the superiority of a steam war fleet over a sailing fleet, and, incidentally, the range and power of the Russian guns. The Russian squadron was more powerful in every way, but its great superiority lay in its heavy artillery; all the Russian ships of the line carried smooth-bore guns which could fire shells, and the shells, exploding, set fire to and demolished the Turks in a few minutes. This demonstration of the effectiveness of the Muscovite weapons showed the allies for what they ought to be prepared when the expected war broke out; but the Russians knew that in fighting capacity their fleets were no match for the British and French fleets, so their vessels were kept under the protection of the Russian forts, and for the most part destroyed a few at a time as the war went on. The Russians are not to be blamed for shirking a naval battle, for the British and French were the greatest naval forces in the world, splendidly equipped and ready for the fray; whereas the Russians do not take kindly to naval warfare—as events half a century later showed. Many of the Russian ships were hastily equipped; it was currently reported in this country that some of them were engined with converted railway locomotives. All the Russian ships, however, were not of this type. Some were built on the Thames, among the number being the paddle frigate Vladimir, which gave a good account of herself in more than one engagement. She was a wooden vessel, and at the time of her construction in 1848, was considered to display a remarkable amount of symmetry of form, and to be of very considerable magnitude. Her length between perpendiculars was 200 feet, and her burthen 1,200 tons. She carried two 10-inch pivot guns, and four 8-inch guns mounted on sliding carriages.

H.M.S. “CENTAUR,” “BULLDOG” AND “IMPERIEUSE” ENGAGED WITH SIX
RUSSIAN GUNBOATS OFF CRONSTADT, 1855.

SECTIONAL MODEL OF RUSSIAN MAN-OF-WAR, 1854, IN THE MUSEUM OF
THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICE INSTITUTION.

The paddle frigate Retribution, a typical specimen of her class, launched at Chatham in 1844, was selected to proceed to Sebastopol in 1854 to demand the release of the engineers taken prisoners at the Battle of Sinope, who were in the service of the Porte. She was of about 1,641 tons and had engines on Maudslay’s Siamese pattern of 400 h.p., and carried a crew of three hundred men. Her armament consisted of twenty-eight guns of a “very persuasive size”—their persuasiveness was fully demonstrated in the subsequent proceedings in the Crimea.

The naval operations before Sebastopol and Cronstadt proved by no means satisfactory to the attacking vessels. The latter were not weak as fighting ships, for they constituted the most powerful line-of-battle ships ever constructed up to that period, and nearly all of them were screw-propelled. The principal guns in the Russian forts were heavier than any carried afloat by the allies, and not only fired a heavier and more penetrating shot, but shell also—this being the first war in which modern explosive shells were used—and had an effective range far in excess of that of the ships’ guns.

The great three-deckers which assailed the fortifications of Sebastopol and Cronstadt were prevented by the shallowness of the water from getting near enough to inflict serious damage irrespective of what they might themselves sustain, a course which was certainly urged, if channels could be found, especially by some strategists who, being at home, would not be exposed to the danger, and ignored the fact that the ships, if stranded, could be shelled at leisure. In the fleets’ attack upon Sebastopol the sailing warships were provided with attendant steamers lashed alongside to render them assistance when their positions had to be changed. But the range at which, for the most part, the allies’ warships had to operate rendered them comparatively ineffective, and when Kinburn, like Cronstadt, proved a tougher nut to crack—a characteristic it shared with many of the Russian defences—than the allies expected, the English and French could do nothing but blockade the places and adopt other means of reducing the fortresses than by bombarding them from their big wooden battleships.

Two fresh problems had thus been created for solution. The first and most pressing was to provide the type of ship best fitted to cope with the Russian batteries. Hitherto, engagements between fortresses and battleships had been fairly equal because the guns employed by one side would be much the same as those of the other, while the ships had the further advantages of being able to shift their positions as suited them best, and to concentrate the fire of their broadsides wherever necessary. The majority of shore and battery engagements ended in victories for the ships.

The second problem was how to carry more powerful guns afloat, and how to strengthen the sides of the hulls supporting them so as to offer adequate resistance to the projectiles of equally heavy guns carried by hostile ships or discharged from the enemy’s forts. The first problem was found to be comparatively easy, notwithstanding that the solution when proposed was declared by many to be impossible. It had, moreover, an important influence upon the attempted solution of the second problem. The latter was even thought to be no more difficult than the other, but the effort to grapple with it marked the beginning of the great struggle between guns and armour, and the introduction of the question of long range as against short range fighting, the end whereof is not yet.

Some little time before the war, the Emperor of the French expressed the opinion that armoured vessels of the types the Americans had devised, notably Stevens’s and Ericsson’s ships, were more suitable for purposes of war than the large two-deckers and three-deckers. He was confirmed in this opinion by the experiences of the big ships in the attack upon Fort Constantine, and though the opposition to his views was great, and it was pointed out that the forts must ultimately be starved into surrendering, he maintained that this would take too long and that the forts must be attacked by other means. His Majesty himself, who had devoted considerable attention to the subject, was largely responsible for the design of the five armoured French gunboats which were destined to bring about the abandonment of the great three-deckers and initiate as remarkable a revolution in warship construction as the introduction of steam was causing in naval tactics. These floating batteries—a term borrowed from the Americans—were the Lave, Tonnante, Congreve, Foudroyant and Dévastation. Their dimensions were similar: 1,400 tons displacement, 164 feet in length, 42 feet 6 inches beam, and drawing only 8 feet of water. They were built with massive wooden frames, to which were attached oaken sides 8 inches in thickness, and outside this was iron plating 4⅜ inches thick. The Tonnante, launched at Brest in March, 1855, was the first afloat—the first iron-clad citadel ship built in Europe. After the Emperor had decided on the plans and the vessels were in course of construction, Ericsson communicated with his Majesty on the subject. He was not aware that the Emperor had already determined on the plans of the ironclads, or he would scarcely have gone to the trouble of writing, for his experience of European governments was not such as to lead him to think that they would admit he was able to teach them anything. He is variously said to have offered to design a turret ship for the Emperor, and to have presented to the Emperor plans of a partially submerged armoured vessel with guns in a revolving shot-proof cupola placed centrally on the deck. In either case, however, he was too late. Whether he would have been called upon, had the Emperor’s gunboats been unsuccessful, is a point upon which there has been much conjecture.

In designing these vessels, the Emperor had in mind that they should be cheaper and more easily and rapidly built than ships of the line, that they should draw little water, that they should be capable of being served by a small crew, and that they should be covered with an armour against which hollow shot fired from Paixhan guns “should be broken like glass,” according to the Moniteur. Experiments made at Vincennes revealed the required strength and thickness of the defensive iron plates. The external protection was to be able to defy alike shell, solid or hollow shot, cold or red-hot shot. The Imperial designer even chose the name of the type to indicate that these vessels were not to be considered as built to pursue an enemy, but were siege batteries, capable of attacking with energy and persistence fortifications heretofore regarded as unassailable by sea.

The results of the preliminary artillery trials were communicated to the British, and trials made in England confirmed those of the French.

The British authorities, being convinced that iron-clad vessels were necessary for the reduction of the Russian forts, followed the example of the French and ordered several. These vessels were required both in the Baltic and before Sebastopol. One of these floating batteries, intended for the attack on the Cronstadt forts, was the Terror. Beauty was one characteristic she did not possess. She was equally bluff at the bows and stern, and could move either end foremost to facilitate her manœuvring in an engagement. She was built, armour-plated, and launched in about three months; this rapidity of construction, as it was then considered, was due to Palmer’s invention, whereby plates were rolled instead of being forged.

H.M.S. “WARRIOR.”

Photograph by permission of the Thames Ironworks, Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., Ltd.

THE “TERROR.”

By permission of Palmer’s Shipbuilding and Ironworks, Ltd.

The English-built Glatton and Trusty differed from the other floating batteries constructed at this time, as they were pierced for sixteen guns, as against twelve for the others. As innovations they were unmercifully criticised. Their portholes, measuring 3 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 10 inches, were considered much too large. They were rigged as three-masted schooners, of all rigs in the world, with two square sails on the foremast. “Why such things as these should be completely equipped and rigged, we cannot, for the life of us, divine. The Admiralty is decidedly masting mad.”[34]

They were 172 feet 9 inches between perpendiculars, 43 feet 8 inches extreme breadth, with 14 feet 7 inches depth of hold, and 7 feet 9 inches draught, and they were of 1,469 tons. The two decks were of oak 9 inches thick, resting on beams 10½ inches square, which were placed 21 inches apart from centre to centre, the beams being supported amidships by stanchions hinged so that they could be hung up out of the way in action. The frames, iron plates, and planking were altogether 2 feet thick on the sides. The engines were of 150 h.p., of the non-condensing type, and with four tubular, cylindrical, flat-ended boilers with two furnaces each, the pressure being 60 lb. to the inch above that of the atmosphere. Owing to their slow speed, for they could only make three knots, it was decided to give them two additional or wing screws. These batteries, according to those who had to handle them, would “neither sail, steam, stay, nor steer,” and might be depended upon to affect the men’s health injuriously. Jury rudders had to be rigged up to get them along. All these floating batteries, whether French or English, were equally slow, and equally bad sea-boats.

The gunboats of the Trusty class were wooden-built and armoured; the Erebus class, launched in 1854-56, were iron-built.

The floating batteries were regarded with hope by those who were prepared to believe that the ironclad system would prove effective, and with undisguised contempt by the majority. What, it was asked, could these little unwieldy vessels do when the great line-of-battle ships were not equal to the task of reducing the fortifications? Still, as the Emperor had ordered them, it was but right that the experiment should be made. So when, in October, 1855, the great attack was begun, the three floating batteries which had arrived, steamed slowly into position, and came to anchor between 700 and 800 yards of the Kinburn forts. A correspondent who visited the Dévastation after the bombardment, “left her with the conviction that, in the attack of maritime fortresses, a new era had commenced.... The bulwarks had been removed from the deck, to lessen the mark, and the funnels of the steam engine alone projected. The captain conned the ship standing on the companion, and giving directions to the helmsman below; and when the vessel came to an anchor he remained below. Twelve embrasures were opened, and the effect as witnessed from the village was terrific, whilst that of the enemy’s guns upon her was very slight indeed. She had three men killed and six or seven wounded through shots entering the portholes, one shell bursting inside. Not a shot from the enemy damaged the Dévastation in the slightest degree. She was hulled sixty or seventy times, the balls each time bounding from her sides harmless into the water, leaving their marks, it is true, in the shape of dents, in some cases an inch and a half deep, but inflicting no real damage on plates of iron four inches in thickness. This, the first experiment, proved that at a distance of 800 yards, 32- and 18-pounders are harmless against the sides of a floating battery, and the trial has been made first by the French, the arrival of the Meteor and Glatton being delayed.” When they did arrive the work for which they were intended had been accomplished. The Dévastation and her two sisters had platforms on stanchions near the water’s edge; upon each platform were fifty French riflemen who made excellent practice upon the Russian gunners.

The Prussian Government ordered from Messrs. Robinson and Russell, in 1851, two paddle-wheel gunboats called Nix and Salamander. They were double-ended and could go either end foremost, and though they could take enough coal to carry them two thousand miles, they only drew 7 feet. Their load displacement was 468 tons, and their oscillating cylinder condensing engines gave them, together with their sails, a speed of a little over 11½ knots. The British Government exchanged the 36-gun frigate Thetis for them, and having renamed them Recruit and Weser, sent them to the war.

They were the only vessels of their class in the British navy. The former was employed in the operations in the Sea of Azoff, and both were held to combine the three essential features of light draught, ability to carry heavy armament, and to possess the highest known rate of speed, so as to give them the power of choosing their own time and place of attack. The Recruit mounted four 68-pounders on her stanchions and bombarded the Russian positions at Taganrog at 1,400 yards, in company with a French steamer, the Mouette.

Among the numerous types of boats, recognised as belonging to the navy or improvised for some special circumstance, few acquired during the campaign in the Baltic greater renown than the mortar-boats, the gunboats, and the ships’ boats with their rocket apparatus. In the Baltic, as in the Black Sea, the need was felt of small, shallow, powerful ships which could engage the enemy’s batteries at short range, and similar batteries to those sent to the Crimea were forwarded to the Baltic also. The same difficulty of shallow water was experienced by the forces in the Sea of Azoff. So there was improvised by the officers and crew of the Stromboli a remarkable raft of twenty-nine casks placed in six rows and cradled in a framework of heavy spars, a portion of the upper part being planked over. The gun tackles were fastened to a spar lashed over the front of the planking, and the train tackle was similarly fixed aft. She was named the Lady Nancy. Her construction took twelve hours, and she carried a long 32-pounder, weighing over 2 tons, 100 rounds of ammunition, a heavy hawser, and a crew of eighteen. She gave a good account of herself at the Battle of Taganrog.

A fleet of screw gunboats, numbering nearly a hundred, and having engines of 60 h.p. each, was added to Britain’s naval strength during the war. These vessels were armed with 68- and 32-pounder pivot guns and 24-pounder brass howitzers. “The possession of this force,” according to a contemporary writer, “cannot be too highly estimated. No line-of-battle ship could be safe at 1,000 yards range, and, owing to their light draught of water (four and six feet), they could force their passage through the most shallow of the enemy’s creeks; besides which their 68-pound shells would tell at 4,000 yards upon a ship or arsenal.” Another hundred of these were all but completed, and the whole force was to take part in the great review at Spithead in 1856. “There will also,” said the chronicler, “be a new description of screw-gun despatch vessels, equally elegant and powerful. These beautiful specimens of British naval architecture have been built in the Government and private yards; they will average a speed of 16 knots an hour, and will mount five of the heaviest pivot guns. In addition to these there will be one hundred iron and wood mortar-vessels of the most powerful build, each armed with a 18-inch mortar, weighing five tons, besides half a dozen mortar-frigates (old 42’s converted). To sum up, then, England is prepared with:—Line-of-battle ships, 42; heavy frigates, 56; corvettes, 123; gunboats, 220; mortar-vessels, 100; troop frigates, 10; transports, 340. And nearly the whole of this gigantic force is composed of screw or paddle-box ships, besides an immense reserve. Well may Russia be desirous of coming to terms.”

After the feverish activity of the war came a period of comparative inaction. The whole political atmosphere of the world, however, was too heavily charged—too electric, as it were, to permit of hopes of lasting peace. In the United States of America the tension between the northern and southern states was already becoming acute, while in Europe the prevailing attitude of the powers towards one another was that of frigid politeness, which at any moment might thaw into hostilities. So there was no lack of incentive to continue the development of the fighting marine. The principal reasons why more was not done at this time were that naval architects and administrators were at the parting of the ways. Some urged that the types with which they were familiar should be adhered to, and that though armoured vessels were useful in the war against Russia, where peculiar conditions had to be met, it did not follow that such vessels would be of use in another war; and it was pointed out that they would be of no value whatever in a naval engagement on account of their unseaworthiness, or rather clumsiness, and the difficulty of handling them. Others, more far-seeing, urged that iron-clad vessels were bound to come sooner or later, and sooner rather than later, since it had been demonstrated that such were not only possible but, so far as they had been used in the war, effective, and that they showed that vessels of less size, armour-plated and carrying a few heavy guns, would be more than a match for any wooden line-of-battle ship afloat. It was contended that the gunboats which silenced the Kinburn forts would be able to give a good account of themselves against the best three-deckers in the allied fleets. But the Admiralty, still convinced of the excellence of the type which had done so well in the past, retained that type and went on building wooden ships, as for that matter did all the admiralties of the world.

In 1858, there was designed the last and the finest line-of-battle ship constructed of wood for the British navy. She was launched at Portsmouth in 1859, and commissioned in 1864, and under the name of the Victoria served as flagship in the Mediterranean, and was removed from active service three years later. She was a screw steamer, with horizontal return-connecting-rod engines by Maudslay, indicating 4,000 h.p., and with the boilers giving 22 lb. pressure she could steam at 12 miles an hour. She carried, on her upper deck, twenty-two 32-pounders and one 68-pounder; on her main deck thirty-four 32-pounders, on her middle deck thirty-two guns of the same size, and on her lower deck thirty-two 8-inch guns. A comparison of her armament and that of the next Victoria shows the remarkable change made in the course of a few years in naval artillery, no less than in the arrangement of the weapons on ship board.

But whatever may have been the conservative official view, the lessons of the armour-clads in the Crimean War were not thrown away, and many naval designers were attempting to solve the problem of the best means of applying those lessons to the altered conditions of modern naval warfare. Guns were invented, more powerful than any wooden ship could hope to withstand, and it was admitted to be impossible to place as many of them on a ship as of the ordinary weapons. The turret and the broadside systems had already been suggested, and both had their enthusiastic advocates.

The report presented by a Royal Commission appointed in 1858 to consider the relative strength of the British and French navies, first compared the state of the navies of the two powers before the Crimean War with that prevailing afterwards. In 1850 the line-of-battle ships of both countries were sailers, as were nearly all the frigates. The steam fleet of England at the time of the Crimean War was superior to that of France, which at one time had only one screw line-of-battle ship, the Austerlitz, available for the Baltic; but after the war the French lost little time in converting several of their sailing ships into steamships.

A return accompanying this report shows that although the British had five steam line-of-battle ships for every four possessed by France, including those completed or still under construction, the French had forty-six steam frigates to thirty-four possessed by this country. The report contained one significant item, viz., that four iron-plated ships were being built by France, and these, “appearing so ominously, had completely changed the situation.”[35]

The French naval architect, Dupuy de Lôme, was responsible for this innovation, and the four vessels were a testimony to his genius. The first of the quartette to be launched was the Gloire. Originally designed as a 90-gun battleship, she took the water as a 60-gun armoured frigate. She was of 5,650 tons displacement, and her three sisters were slightly smaller. Her armour was of iron, 4½ to 4¾ inches thick. She was not, as is sometimes asserted, armoured all over, but was plated her whole length along the water-line and for some little distance above it, and her central battery was also protected by a belt extending above the water-line belt. The engines worked up to about 4,200 h.p. indicated.

Iron armour over a wooden frame suggested a compromise in the matter of construction with which the Admiralty did not at all agree. It, therefore, decided on building an iron ship in reply to the Gloire, and the Warrior was the first seagoing ironclad. In her external appearance there was nothing to distinguish her from the average wooden steam frigate of the time, except her extraordinary length. She was a three-masted square-rigged ship, with a graceful overhanging cutwater, her dimensions being as follows: length, 380 feet, and 420 feet over all; draught, 25½ feet; depth from spar deck to keel, 41 feet 6 inches. Her engines of 1,250 h.p. nominal gave her a speed of nearly 14½ knots. She carried twenty-eight 7-inch muzzle-loading rifle guns, two other rifle guns, and two 20-pounder breech-loading rifle guns. She was built at what is now the Thames Ironworks, then the no less celebrated yard of Messrs. Ditchburn and Mare.

In describing the vessel, the builders say: “It may be of interest to note here that the Warrior’s armour plates were all fitted at edges and butts with tongues and grooves, the tongues being formed solid out of the plate 1¼ inch wide and ½ inch deep, the grooves being formed slightly larger to facilitate entering. This plan, which was very costly, and was suggested by the curving out of the plates tested at Shoeburyness after being struck by the shot, was not repeated in later vessels, in view of the great difficulty in replacing damaged plates. It is not generally known that the Warrior, though a sea-going warship, had a ram bow, the greatest projection being at about the water-line, the head knee or cutwater being brought on independently after the ram was completed, to maintain the then usual appearance of the frigates of the English navy.”[36]

Besides the side armour, the fore and after ends of the main deck carrying the battery were protected by armoured bulkheads. The great length of the vessel rendered it impossible to armour her entirely, as had she been armoured from end to end the protection afforded to the vital parts of the ship would have been insufficient to withstand the heaviest artillery of the time. Therefore, some 85 feet at either end were left unprotected, and the weight of armour thus saved was added to that covering the central portions of the ship, so that she would be enabled to withstand the worst fire an enemy could bring to bear upon her. It was contended that were her unarmoured ends to be shot away or riddled and rendered useless, her armoured portion would remain afloat, an invulnerable citadel. The belt of armour on the broadside was 22 feet deep, and was backed by 18 inches of teak.

In every respect, save, perhaps, that of manœuvring, she was an improvement upon her French rival. Her ports were about 8 feet 6 inches from the water as compared with 5 feet 8 inches in the Gloire, those of the latter, though comparing favourably with the distance which prevailed in the earlier ships of the line, both sail and steam, being considered much too near the water to permit of her main deck guns being fought except in fine weather. Her gun carriages, too, were a great improvement upon anything of the kind that had been fitted in an English ship. A system of pivoting the carriages under the trunnions of the guns was applied, so that the guns could be trained through portholes only 2 feet wide, or half the size of those fitted in other ships, and as the sides of the ports were plated with 7-inch iron, an additional measure of protection was afforded the crew. Her tonnage was 6,177 tons, builder’s measurement, but her total weight with stores and guns was about 9,000 tons.

The Warrior was a combination of the longitudinal system of ship construction designed by Scott Russell, and the ordinary method of transverse framing, the plans being prepared by the Admiralty. The sixth longitudinal was used to rest the backing and armour upon. The unprotected ends of the vessel were built on the transverse system, and were given a number of watertight compartments. An important feature in the construction was that the transverse plates between the longitudinals were solid but had three holes cut in them to lighten them, and it was in dealing with these plates that some of the earliest improvements were made in following ships. As a further means of giving strength, a vertical watertight longitudinal bulkhead extended from the third longitudinal on each side up to the main deck, to which it was rigidly secured, thus forming an exceedingly strong wing passage and box girder, which was further strengthened by transverse bulkheads. She had not a complete double bottom. Externally, she was fitted with two bilge keels to prevent rolling.

The Black Prince, which followed the Warrior, was 380 feet in length, and exceeded the length of the Gloire by 130 feet; her beam was 58 feet 4 inches, and her displacement 9,210 tons. She also was a full-rigged ship, and had an overhanging or schooner bow, the ram being thought unnecessary, as ramming was no longer looked upon as an important feature of naval tactics.

“These were the last, however, in which the essentials of pictorial beauty were held of paramount importance.”[37]

The attitude of the Admiralty in regard to steam had hitherto been that in many respects it must be auxiliary to sail. The Black Prince’s armour, though only 4½ inches thick, was considered to offer an adequate resistance to the 68-pounder gun’s projectile, and this, too, after the experience gained in the Crimean War; besides which no allowance whatever was made for the probability that more powerful guns, firing heavier projectiles than any yet known, would shortly be in existence, especially as they were already being designed. Although called an ironclad, the Black Prince would be better described as “armour-patched,” for only 213 feet on each side was armour-protected. The rest of the hull, including even the steering gear, was as unarmoured and unprotected as that of any sailer of a century before. The ends of the armoured belts, however, were united by iron plated bulkheads, so that the armoured portion of the ship formed a central or box battery. In order to add to the safety of the ship, in case of its penetration by a hostile shot, a number of watertight compartments was built into her, thereby ensuring a certain amount of buoyancy. This vessel, like the Warrior, was “unhandy,” to use a sailor’s phrase, as were all her class, their length making them difficult to steer, on account of the amount of room required in which to turn. Indeed, they were so awkward that in manœuvres it was necessary to keep them four cables’ lengths apart instead of the two cables’ lengths customary with other vessels. The Black Prince carried four 9-ton guns and twenty 6½-ton guns, all muzzle-loaders. These ships were unquestionably most impressive from the spectacular point of view, and, compared with the wooden ships they superseded, their fighting value was great. They were practically the forerunners of the class represented by the three iron sisters, Agincourt, Minotaur, and Northumberland. The last named, a ship-rigged, armoured, first-class cruiser, was begun in 1865, by the Millwall Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, and completed in 1868, the designs being prepared by the Admiralty. At first it was proposed that she should have only three masts, and as many as fifty-eight guns, but during the process of construction, it was decided to increase the number of masts to five and to reduce the number of guns to twenty-eight more powerful than those originally intended. Her design, and that of her sisters, represented a curious adherence to a belief in the necessity of sail, tempered by a desire to a compromise in the matter of more modern artillery. When launched, she had four 12-ton muzzle-loading rifle guns and twenty-two 9-ton 8-inch muzzle-loading rifles on the main deck, while on her upper deck were two 6.5-ton 7-inch breech-loading rifle guns. Her armour was 5½ inches thick, with 9 inches of teak backing, and was extended throughout her entire length with the double purpose of protecting the ends and steering gear, and of allowing her fore and after guns to be fired from behind armour. This, of course, meant a greater weight to be carried, and it could only be done, if speed were not to be sacrificed, by increasing the length of the vessel. So far as manœuvring was concerned, these ships were much worse than their predecessors.

H.M.S. “BLACK PRINCE.”

Photograph by Symonds & Co., Portsmouth.

THE “BANGOR,” FIRST IRON SEA-GOING PROPELLER STEAMER IN
THE UNITED STATES.

From a Print in the possession of, and reproduced by permission of, the Harlan & Hollingsworth
Corporation, U.S.A.

Their engines were on Penn’s trunk system, with two cylinders of 112 inches diameter, and a stroke of 52 inches. Each had ten boilers with four furnaces per boiler, the total grate area being 956 square feet, and the steam was supplied up to a pressure of 25 lb. per square inch. These ships each carried a four-bladed Mangin propeller of 24 feet diameter, which was adjustable so that the pitch could be altered from 22½ feet to 28½ feet. The Northumberland was the first war vessel on which Macfarlane Gray’s steam steering gear, originally invented for the Great Eastern, was installed. These three vessels were 400 feet 3 inches in length, and had a beam of a fraction over 59 feet, and drew 27 feet 3 inches, with a displacement of about 10,786 tons.

Before referring to the historic American ships of the third quarter of the last century, some attention may be given to a remarkable vessel which passed into the possession of the United States Government.

The steamer Bangor was built by the firm of Betts, Harlan and Hollingsworth (now the Harlan and Hollingsworth Corporation), in 1843-4, for the Bangor Steam Navigation Company, of Maine, and was the first iron sea-going propeller steamer constructed in the United States. The hull was formed of bar iron ribs or frames secured by numerous wrought-iron clamps, and her plating was put on in the lapped or “clinker” style, instead of the modern inside and outside method of arranging the sheets.

The Bangor measured 231 tons burthen; her length over all was about 131 feet; length between perpendiculars, 120 feet; beam moulded, 23 feet; and depth of hold from base line amidships, 9 feet. She had three wooden masts, with bowsprit and jib-boom, and was schooner-rigged, carrying a suit of eight sails. Passengers were carried aft in a commodious deck-house fitted up in a style of elegance unusual in those days, and considered particularly handsome by her owners and builders. There were but two deck-houses upon the vessel at the time she was built, the third or forward house, as shown in the illustration, having been added afterwards.

Her machinery consisted of independent twin-screw propeller engines, having cylinders 22 inches in diameter by 24 inches stroke of piston. The propeller wheels were of the Loper type and 8½ feet in diameter. Her boiler was placed in the hold and was of iron, 20 feet in length, of the type known as the “drop flue” boiler. On her trial trip she averaged 10.61 miles per hour at one time. The first five miles were run with low steam, making forty-four revolutions. The pressure of steam was under 46 lb. to the square inch during the whole trip. Afterwards with full steam the speed per hour was 14.07 miles. From this, however, there should be deducted 2½ miles for tide, giving an actual speed of 11.57 miles per hour. On the second trip of the Bangor from Boston, she caught fire, and was beached upon the New England coast, near Nantucket, in order to save the crew and freight. She was afterward adjudged a wreck, the insurance settlement was effected, and she was towed to a New England shipyard (probably at Bath, Me.), where she was repaired and rebuilt. She afterwards continued to run on the same line until she was, in 1846, purchased by the United States Government, and re-named the Scourge at the time of the outbreak of the Mexican War. During her employ as a war vessel she was equipped with three guns. After two years of war service, she was, on October 7th, 1848, finally sold by the Government to John F. Jeter, of Lafayette, Louisiana. From the date of this transfer no trace of her can be found. It is possible that she may have been either lost by fire or storm, or have been dismantled and altered for other than her natural purposes.

A visit was paid to England in October, 1856, on her trial cruise, by a ship which was destined to have considerable influence in the not distant future upon warship construction, and to help to revolutionise completely all the hitherto accepted theories. This was the famous Merrimac—the first of six steam frigates the United States had constructed. She was considered by her designers to be a match for any vessel afloat on the European side of the Atlantic, and as a specimen of the American fondness for fast and heavily armed frigates, a type of vessel in which they excelled, she left nothing to be desired. Naturally, she attracted a great deal of attention.

The Merrimac—she came to England under that name, and not as the Virginia, as sometimes stated—was 300 feet over all, and 250 feet on the keel, and 260 feet on the load water-line, and was 51 feet 4 inches beam, and drew 28 feet of water. She was of 3,987 tons measurement, and 4,500 tons displacement. Her engines were of 600 h.p. and presented several peculiarities. The cylinders were of 72 inches diameter, with a stroke of three feet, and there were two rods to each piston. Her screw propeller was on Griffith’s system, and had means of varying the pitch. Normally the screw had a pitch of 26 feet 2 inches; its diameter was 17 feet 4 inches. She had four of Martin’s vertical tubular boilers. The frame of the ship was of live oak, crossed internally with two sets of diagonal iron plates, inclined in opposite directions, and similar plates on the outside strengthened her bow and stern. Her model, or shape, is said to have been of considerable beauty, while her internal arrangements for the comfort and accommodation of the officers and crew were of a high order. She could spread 56,629 feet of canvas, and nautical men here were of opinion that she could easily have borne heavier masts and spars and so have spread more canvas still. However, the weight of her armament had to be considered, and this may have been one reason why she was not more heavily equipped aloft. She was pierced for sixty guns, but on account of the weight and size and effectiveness of those she had, the number on board was only forty. Nevertheless, she was claimed to be, and with good reason, as powerful as anything Europe could show. Two large pivot guns, of 10 inches calibre, and each weighing nearly 5½ tons, were on the upper deck, together with fourteen 8-inch guns, weighing more than three tons each; while on the gun-deck were twenty-four 9-inch guns, each weighing close upon 4½ tons. All these guns were strong enough to fire solid shot, but they were intended to take hollow shot or shell, a custom to which the Americans attached considerable importance. The guns were built on the Dahlgren system, which gave them throughout their length a thickness proportionate to the pressure caused by the explosion of an ordinary service charge of powder. The adaptation of these guns to the Paixhan system of shell-firing was another novelty she presented. As solid shot were more destructive against fortifications and heavy works than the shells or hollow shot—uncharged shells that is—the naval experts of Europe did not look favourably upon explosive shells, preferring to consider them more suitable for large swivel guns, such as were sometimes mounted on the sponsons of paddle boats. The Merrimac had not a solid shot on board. Her guns were of unusual thickness at the breech and thinner than the European guns in that part called the chase, which lies between the trunnions and the muzzle. Their mounting, also, presented some peculiarities. There was no hinder truck, the force of the recoil being taken up by the friction of the carriage against the deck, but the gun recoiled sufficiently on discharge to permit of reloading; while, instead of the hinder truck, a contrivance attached to the end of a handspike was thrust under the gun carriage. There were, in addition, a number of smaller guns.

THE “MERRIMAC” BEFORE CONVERSION.

THE “MERRIMAC” AS CONVERTED INTO AN IRONCLAD.

From Photographs supplied by the U.S. Navy Department.

The next that was heard of the Merrimac was that when the Federals found it necessary to burn certain stores and ships which could not be removed beyond reach of the Confederates after the American War began, she was one of those set on fire and then sunk. The Confederates, being short of ships—indeed, they seem to have been short of everything except enthusiasm and a belief in their cause—raised her to see what could be done with her. All her upper works had been destroyed, and her hull somewhat damaged, but she was held to be sound enough to be worth fitting out afresh. Accordingly, to meet Commander Brooke’s design, she was cut down to the water-line, and given a superstructure in the shape of an ugly, squat rectangular deck-house with sloping sides, and was referred to afterwards by her northern opponents as a floating barn. The over-all deck length of this casemate was about 170 feet. Its sloping walls were framed of pine twenty inches thick, upon which oak planking four inches thick was laid, and outside this two sets of iron plates, formed by rolling out railway rails, were laid, the first horizontally and the outermost vertically. Both sets of plates were fastened on by bolts 1⅜ inches thick, passing through to the back of the timber. The sides sloped considerably, according to some writers 35 degrees, while others put the inclination at 45 degrees. The intention was that any shot striking her should only inflict a glancing blow and ricochet harmlessly. For the same reason the ends of the casemate were given a similar angle, but instead of being straight like the sides, were semi-circular, or almost so. The top of the structure was covered by an iron grating, which served the double purpose of permitting the ventilation of the interior and keeping out missiles. This grating measured about 20 feet by 120 feet. Her armament consisted of two 7-inch rifle guns mounted on pivots so that they could be fired through any of the ports in the sides of the casemate, a 6-inch rifled gun on either broadside, and three 9-inch smooth-bore Dahlgren guns. Altogether she had fourteen gunports. To add to her effectiveness, an iron ram was affixed to the bow. Her stern lay very little above the water, but the highest point of the bow was about two feet above the sea. Her conning tower, a cone three feet high and protected by four inches of armour, was placed beyond the forward end of the casemate. Her funnel was unprotected. Though supposed to be renamed the Virginia, she never lost her old name of Merrimac.

Against the wooden ships in Hampton Roads she was invulnerable. Even at point-blank range their broadsides did not suffice to stop her. This was her trial trip, and her engines, patched up after their experiences in the fire and at the bottom of the harbour, could only get her along at about four miles an hour, and her crew had never been afloat in her before. Nevertheless her commander, Franklin Buchanan, combined the trial trip with active service, and attacked the northern ships with a determination which carried consternation to the North. The wooden Cumberland was blown up and the Congress sunk, the latter as the result of an application of the ram, which, however, injured the ramming vessel so much that the future effectiveness of her ram was greatly reduced. Buchanan was so badly wounded in this engagement that he was unable to command the Merrimac in her duel the next day with the Monitor.

The Monitor, designed by Ericsson, was built under very arbitrary conditions. When it became known that the Merrimac was under construction, President Lincoln advertised for something to meet her on equal terms, and Ericsson tendered. He pointed out that the armour plates of the Gloire or Warrior would be useless against the heavy 12-inch wrought-iron gun he had brought out in 1840, in connection with Colonel Robert Stockton, and as he pledged himself that he could complete in a hundred days a steam vessel carrying two of such guns placed in a turret which should be armour-plated and proof against the heaviest guns the Confederates could place in the Merrimac, his tender was accepted. Ericsson was hampered in his work by the interference of the government officials, hardly any of whom understood his plans, but all of whom thought themselves competent to improve upon them. Considering the limitations under which his undertaking had to be accomplished, the Monitor was a remarkable vessel in every respect. He had to draw out his plans to scale, have all the parts designed, see that everything was made as he designed it, and supervise the construction of the ship and engines, and the whole of this work had to be done within a stated time. The adventure, for such it unquestionably was, was hailed throughout the length and breadth of America as the work of a madman. Like all innovations destined to play an important part in the world’s history, it was greeted with derision and abuse. There were a few people on both sides of the Atlantic who recognised the importance of the change in naval construction which Ericsson’s ship inaugurated. These were they who had profited by the lessons of the armoured gunboats or floating batteries employed by the French and English in the Crimean War. They saw that if small but powerfully armed ships could effectively attack powerful shore batteries, and by reason of their shape could never receive a direct blow but only glancing shots, a vessel carrying a circular fort which also could not receive a direct blow must be superior to any vessel afloat, especially if its fort or turret were so heavily armoured as to be proof against the heaviest ordnance to whose fire it should be subjected. Moreover, if the hull were made to offer the least possible mark to an enemy, the difficulty of striking the vessel to sink it would be greatly increased. The form of the vessel was such that if it were used as a ram the weight behind the ram would be in a horizontal plane with the ram at the point of contact, and greater injury would thereby be inflicted upon the side of an opposing vessel than were there a greater amount of weight above the horizontal plane.

These considerations were ably supported by Admiral Porter, of the United States Navy, who was well aware of the value of such a means of attack even if the propelling engines could not give the ship a speed of more than four or five miles an hour. The gallant admiral himself was the butt of no slight amount of ridicule by his emphatic declaration that the Monitor “is the strongest floating vessel in the world and can whip anything afloat.” The vessel was built of iron, and can best be described as a shallow, oblong box, with sloping sides, having upon it a pointed, flat, shallow box or raft with a stumpy, circular tower or turret amidships. This box or upper part projected a considerable distance all round above the lower part, and especially so at the stern; and had not the whole vessel been very strongly constructed, the fearful blows which the under-part of the projection received from the sea as it rose and fell on the waves on its passage from New York to Hampton Roads would have driven the two parts asunder.

THE “MONITOR”-“MERRIMAC” DUEL.

From a Photograph of a Contemporary Drawing supplied by the U.S. Navy Department.

Up to the last Ericsson was bothered by the government officials. Had he been left to himself the ship would not have had such a narrow escape from going to the bottom. They interfered with the turret-bearings, with the result that when the sea washed over the low deck, the water poured into the hold from all round the turret and put out the fires in the engine room, when the fumes drove the engineers out of their quarters and nearly poisoned everybody in the turret through which all the outgoing ventilation had to be made. However, the tugs got the vessel safely into smoother water, the furnace was set going again, and the pumps were restarted, and by the time Hampton Roads was reached the vessel was labouring along as best it could under its own steam and with the aid of a couple of tugs. The narrow escape the Monitor had from foundering on this voyage served to stimulate the chorus of disapproval, and there were not wanting many on the northern side as well as on that of the south to predict the failure of “Ericsson’s folly.”

Ericsson had confidence in his ship. He had never forgiven the British Admiralty for its rejection of the screw propeller, nor for ignoring his suggestions in regard to the Princeton, and one reason why he chose the name of the Monitor, as he told the writer and others more than once, was that it should be a perpetual reminder to the British Admiralty of the chance it had lost.

In the turret were two 11-inch Dahlgren smooth-bores which fired solid iron shots weighing 135 to 136 lb. each with charges of 15 lb. of powder, and were even more powerful than his own gun. Solid iron stoppers closed the ports when the guns were run in. The deck had five projections besides the turret. Right forward was a small square pilot-house measuring four feet, and constructed of bars of iron nine inches thick, and provided with a flat iron roof two inches thick. In the sides of the pilot-house were narrow slits as sight holes. The other projections were two small chimneys six feet high, removable before an engagement, and two intake ventilators.

Neither side on the morrow shirked the coming duel. From the outset the Monitor was the better prepared. Her guns fired solid shot; the Merrimac had only shell and grape, neither of which was calculated to do much harm to the Monitor’s turret, whereas the blow of the Monitor’s shot upon the sloping sides of the Merrimac’s battery was bound to be delivered with terrific force, even though the blows were slanting. For another thing, the southern vessel was built of wood and had already suffered severely in the hard contest at short range with the battleships the previous afternoon; her engines were shaky, and her steering gear worked worse than before; and the experiences of some of her crew, coupled with the wounding of her commander, had not been such as to leave their confidence unshaken. The Merrimac was now commanded by Commodore Tatnall, the hero of the episode in the Anglo-American attack some years before upon the Chinese forts at Peiho, when he justified the participation of the Americans by the famous remark that “blood is thicker than water.” Tatnall proved himself a worthy successor to Buchanan.

When the Merrimac sallied forth the next morning intending to complete the destruction of the northern warships, she found the Monitor waiting for her. Notwithstanding the inferiority of his ammunition, Tatnall never hesitated for a moment. The firing between the two ships was mostly at short range, and by the time the battle was over both vessels had had enough of it. Neither side admitted defeat, but neither side had succeeded in destroying the other. The Monitor was struck twenty-two times, and in return she fired forty-one shots. Precisely how many of these were effective on the southern ship is not known, but including the fight of the previous day, she was found afterwards to have no fewer than ninety-seven indentations on her armour. Her layers of plating were shattered, and the heavy wooden backing was splintered, but not one of the heavy shots of the Monitor succeeded in penetrating the Merrimac. The backing only splintered where the heavy shot had struck direct blows. Nine of the Confederate shells struck the turret, and the pilot-house was struck twice, and the other projections and the deck also showed marks of the enemy’s fire. The result of the battle was that the Monitor was able to resume hostilities and the Merrimac was so badly crippled that she could not do so.

The steering gear and anchor of the Monitor were protected by the overhanging deck, and were out of reach of the Merrimac’s fire. This arrangement was repeated with modifications in most of the northern monitors afterwards built, and greatly puzzled the Confederates until they discovered the method by which the vessels could be anchored or lift anchor without anyone appearing on deck.

It should be remembered that the Merrimac had to contend not only against the Monitor, but also against the gunboats of the northern fleet, which fired upon her whenever they had a chance.

The subsequent fate of these two typical ironclads is interesting. The Monitor was sent to sea in weather she could never hope to contend against, and went to the bottom. When the fortunes of war drove the Confederates away from the positions they had occupied at Hampton Roads, the Merrimac was scuttled by her commander to prevent her falling into the hands of the Federals. Both sides went on building ironclads of the types they had introduced. The Federals rapidly acquired a fleet of monitors, because they were convinced of the superiority of that type of vessel, and had almost unlimited resources. The South built a few more broadside ironclads because it had no option in the matter. It was a case of taking wooden steamers and plating them as best it could with rolled-out railway metals, boiler plates, and, in fact, anything metallic that could be bolted on.

The Atlanta, formerly the English steamer Fingal, was cut down much as the Merrimac had been, and given a heavy wooden casemate plated with iron. The two monitors, Nahant and Weehawken, were waiting for her, and when she set out from Savannah to look for them, they followed. So also did some steamers carrying a large number of Southerners who went to see their ship defeat the monitors. The Atlanta fired one shot at the Weehawken and missed, and the monitor returned the compliment by steaming to within 800 yards and firing her heavy 15-inch gun. The projectile smashed the Atlanta’s armour and wooden backing, and the flying splinters wounded sixteen of the crew. She returned the fire two or three times without hitting once, but the Weehawken’s second shot smashed the pilot-house and the third started the casemate from the deck. The Atlanta surrendered in fifteen minutes after the firing of the first shot. Her subsequent employment was as a guardship in the northern fleet. The Nahant did not fire.

The Albemarle, another Confederate ram of the Merrimac type, had a short but exciting career. She carried only two 100-pounder rifled guns, pivoted to fire end-on or on the broadside. Her first exploit was to ram the northern gunboat Southfield, in the Albemarle Sound; her ram entered about 10 feet, and the Southfield began to sink so rapidly that, before she rolled off the Albemarle’s ram, she nearly took the latter down with her. The Albemarle afterwards fought a pitched battle with four northern paddle-wheel gunboats, and although she was rammed and damaged, she held her own. Her destruction may be said to have heralded the introduction of the torpedo boat, and for this reason is referred to in a subsequent chapter.

THE “MONITOR” AND “ALBEMARLE”

From a Painting by Müller.

FEDERAL GUNBOAT “ST. LOUIS.”

From Photographs supplied by the U.S. Navy Department.

Another most notable example in these improvised ironclads was the ram Tennessee, which was designed and commanded by Commodore Tatnall. This vessel played a conspicuous part in the defence of Mobile against the Federal fleet under Admiral Farragut, in August, 1864. The Tennessee was admirably designed for the purpose intended, which was that of an ironclad, heavily armed, and able to ram; but unfortunately for her, she could not be got completely ready in time, nor was it possible to give her the armoured protection or the weighty artillery which had been contemplated at first; nevertheless, her commander fought her well, and that she came absolutely to grief was due to hasty construction and lack of material to put into her, rather than to any fault in the design of the ship itself. Her battle with the Union fleet shows with what grim determination the ship was fought.

“There was a brush with the ironclad ram,” says an American writer, “but it was not serious, and the fleet came to anchor three miles up the bay. Farragut was planning to attack the ram as soon as it should be dark enough to prevent the garrison seeing which was friend and which foe; but the ram anticipated him and steamed direct for the flagship (the Hartford) in the midst of the fleet. The Admiral at once gave orders for every ship to attack her, not only with shot but by ramming, and a desperate contest ensued. The ram had the advantage in that she was sure of striking an enemy with every blow, while the fleet had to avoid running and firing into one another. Their shot had no effect on the sloping iron sides of the monster, and when the wooden vessels rammed her they only splintered their own bows and only heeled her over. But the monitors, with their enormous guns, shot away her smoke-stack and steering apparatus, and jammed her shutters, while one 15-inch shell actually penetrated her armour.”[38]

This heavy cannonade proved too much for her. With her armour battered, her machinery damaged, her commander badly wounded, her steering gear disabled, she lay helpless at the mercy of her foes and surrendered.

Another type of ironclad which the Confederates employed was known as the David, because though small it was hoped it would deal as effectively with the big northern warships as its Hebrew namesake had dealt with Goliath of old. The parallel, however, ceases with the name. The first American David was tried at Charleston, in October, 1863. She was cigar-shaped, 54 feet long, and 6 feet in diameter, and carried a small steam engine to drive a small screw propeller. Her one weapon was a spar torpedo, and when she had exploded it she was expected to go to the bottom with such of her crew as did not happen to be able to save themselves.

Many brave deeds have been done in war by combatants and non-combatants alike, but the cool courage of the pilot or steersman of the first David will take some beating. Her initial attack was directed against the ironclad ship Ironsides, named in commemoration of the “Old Ironsides,” and whether failure or success attended the attempted destruction of the ship, those on the David knew they were engaged in a forlorn hope. Only the funnel and pilot-house of the little vessel were discernible above the sea level, and even they were not very conspicuous. The David was hailed, and replied with a volley of musketry, and an instant later a torpedo exploded against the sides of the warship. It lifted her and shook her, but inflicted no material damage worth speaking of, but the moral effect was considerable, as the Federals knew the Confederates had now devised a new means of attacking them. At the moment of the explosion the four or five men composing the crew of the David jumped overboard, as it was thought she would be swamped by the backwash of the explosion. She did not sink, however, and the pilot held on to her for his life, for he was the only man on board who could not swim. The engineer swam to her, and together they took her back to Charleston.

On the Mississippi and the other American rivers both sides improvised as gunboats anything that had an engine in it and a platform upon which a gun could be carried. Small tug-boats were given turtle-back armour, too thin to be of use, whence some of them got the name of tin-clads in contradistinction to the ironclads; big side-wheel steamers were protected with anything that could be utilised for the purpose, from logs to bags of ashes, and ordinary river cargo steamers and barges were also found very adaptable. It may, indeed, be doubted if in any war there has been such an assemblage of opposing warships improvised from the most unpromising materials as in the American Civil War. The majority of them were not of great use as combatants, notwithstanding that their crews usually handled them with reckless bravery, and after the passage of the Mississippi mouth had been forced and the northern warships were able to ascend the river, the fighting value of these makeshifts became almost a negative quantity. In the absence of superior force, however, there was no telling what they might attempt, for their crews were as reckless as they were daring.

When the Civil War began, Edwin Stevens offered the Federal Government, at his own expense, a small vessel called the Naugatuck. This was a twin-screw vessel, which could be immersed two feet below her load-line and raised again in eight minutes by pumping out the water admitted into the tanks. The solitary gun was mounted on a revolving carriage, and the recoil taken by rubber disc springs. It was loaded, directed and fired from below the deck, the loading being accomplished by bringing the depressed gun opposite a hole in the deck, provided for the purpose.[39] She carried a Parrott gun, a 100-pounder, and was one of the fleet that attacked the Merrimac. Her twin screws enabled her to turn from end to end in seventy-five seconds. She did good service on the James River, until her gun burst; her crew, thanks to her protecting deck, escaping injury. This vessel is chiefly of interest because of the method of placing and loading the gun.

THE NAUGATUCK.

THE GUN-CARRIAGE OF THE NAUGATUCK.

Ericsson’s inventive genius was responsible in 1861, before the war broke out, for a vessel of 3,033 tons, which he named the Dictator, but she was not launched until 1863, the builders being the Delamater Iron Works. She was an iron-framed vessel, and had a wooden skin 3½ feet thick. The iron protecting her sides was 11 inches thick, 5 inches of which were solid bars measuring 3 inches by 5 inches, and the other portion was built up in single 1-inch plates. Her ram, a heavy structure of oak and iron, projected 22 feet beyond the bow. On deck she carried a single turret with an inside diameter of 24 feet. The walls of the turret were protected by 15 inches of iron plates, each 1 inch in thickness, and weighed 500 tons. Her engine was of Ericsson’s vibrating lever type with two cylinders 100 inches in diameter, and indicating 5,000 h.p. The screw was 21 feet 6 inches in diameter, with a pitch of 34 feet, and was cast in one piece, its weight being 17⅖ tons. The Dictator’s armament was two smooth-bore 15-inch guns, known as Ericsson guns, which were of the same type as he introduced into America on behalf of Col. Stockton, and with a charge of 80 lb. of powder, threw a round shot weighing 460 lb. The ship was 320 feet long, 50 feet broad, and drew 22 feet of water.

In the subsequent monitors the conning tower was placed above the turret as in the case of the Passaic. Monitors were built later with two turrets, and a flying deck connected them. They were of much greater dimensions than the single turret ships, and carried twice the number of guns, and being considerably heavier and faster and more extensively armoured, were exceedingly capable fighting machines.

But the wooden warships were not destined to pass away without making a gallant struggle well worthy of the traditions of centuries. The last great battles in which they engaged were at New Orleans and Mobile, and well they acquitted themselves. Stranded, rammed, and almost set on fire, as they were time after time, they yet carried on an unequal contest until they achieved splendid victories at these places. Not even torpedoes, as mines were then called, daunted Admiral Farragut, who, at Mobile, when a ship that was leading hesitated and nearly threw the whole line into disorder, inquired, “What is the matter?”

“Torpedoes,” was the answer.

“Damn the torpedoes,” roared Farragut from his usual place in the rigging, to which he was accustomed to mount in order to see over the smoke. Whereupon his ship, the Hartford, assumed the lead.

On the Atlantic coast the South endeavoured to maintain its unequal contest by means of blockade runners and privateers. Foremost among these were the Shenandoah, which has the distinction of being the only ship to carry the Confederate flag round the world; the Sumter, a small commerce destroyer, commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes, who afterwards had the Alabama; and the last-named herself. The Sumter was described by Captain Semmes as a “stone which had been rejected of the builders,” and he says that he endeavoured to work it into the building which the Confederates were then rearing. “The vessel was reported to him as a small propeller steamer of 500 tons burden, sea-going, with a low-pressure engine, sound, and capable of being so strengthened as to be enabled to carry an ordinary battery of four or five guns. Her speed was reported to be between nine and ten knots, but unfortunately, said the Board, she carried but five days’ fuel, and has no accommodation for the crew of a ship of war. She was, accordingly, condemned. When I finished reading the report, I turned to the Secretary and said, ‘Give me that ship; I think I can make her answer the purpose.’ My request was at once acceded to; the Secretary telegraphed to the Board to receive the ship, and the clerks of the Department were set at work to hunt up the necessary officers to accompany me, and make out the proper orders. And this is the way in which the Confederate States’ steamer Sumter, which was to have the honour of being the first ship of war to throw the new Confederate flag to the breeze, was commissioned.”

He got her into shape somehow, and she began her adventurous career by running the blockade in a most daring fashion at Pass a l’Outre, in spite of the presence of the Brooklyn, which was faster and more heavily armed. She beat the northern ship simply because she could sail nearer to the wind. After six months’ experience of this ship, he says that “in her best days the Sumter had been very inefficient, being always anchored, as it were, in the deep sea, by her propeller whenever she was out of coal. A fast ship propelled entirely by sail power would have been better.” She captured seventeen ships, consistently dodged five or six northern ships, and at last had to be laid up at Gibraltar. She afterwards sailed as the Gibraltar under the English flag as a merchant vessel, and made one successful voyage as a blockade runner to Charleston, South Carolina, and went to the bottom of the North Sea soon afterwards.

The Sumter’s battery consisted of an 8-inch shell gun pivoted amidships and four 32-pounders of 13 cwt. each for broadside firing. The slide and circle for the pivot gun were constructed of railway iron. She captured seven prizes in two days, and escorted six of them into the harbour of Cienfuegos at once.

The Alabama was built at Birkenhead under a contract with the Confederate States, and was paid for out of the Confederate treasury. “The Alabama had been built in perfect good faith by the Lairds. When she was contracted for, no question had been raised as to the right of a neutral to build and sell to a belligerent such a ship.”[40] Be that as it may, the settlement of the Alabama claims proved an expensive item for Great Britain. She was responsible for the destruction of no fewer than sixty-seven American ships, and such was the terror she inspired that the armed frigate Kearsarge was sent to hunt her down and exterminate her. Soon after embarking on her privateering, the Alabama fought and sank the Hatteras in the only engagement she was concerned in until she met her fate at the guns of the Kearsarge. There was not much to choose between the ships in size, but in all other respects the advantage lay with the northern ship, which had further strengthened her sides with a concealed belt of chain cables.

“As for the ships,” writes Captain Semmes in “Service Afloat,” “though the enemy was superior to me, both in size, staunchness of construction, and armament, they were of force so nearly equal, that I cannot be charged with rashness in having offered battle. The Kearsarge mounted seven guns—two 11-inch Dahlgrens, four 32-pounders, and a rifled 28-pounder. The Alabama mounted eight—one 8-inch, one rifled 100-pounder, and six 32-pounders. Though the Alabama carried one gun more than her antagonist, it is seen that the battery of the latter enabled her to throw more metal at a broadside, there being a difference of three inches in the bore of the shell-guns of the two ships. Still the disparity was not so great but that I might hope to beat my enemy in a fair fight. But he did not show me a fair fight, for, as it afterwards turned out, his ship was iron-clad. It was the same thing as if two men were to go out to fight a duel and one of them, unknown to the other, were to put a shirt of mail under his outer garment.... By Captain Winslow’s own account, the Kearsarge was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armoured, of course, my shot and shell, except in so far as fragments of the latter may have damaged his spars and rigging, fell harmless into the sea. The Alabama was not mortally wounded until after the Kearsarge had been firing at her an hour and ten minutes. In the meantime, in spite of the armour of the Kearsarge, I had mortally wounded that ship in the first thirty minutes of the engagement. I say ‘mortally wounded her,’ because the wound would have proved fatal but for the defect of my ammunition. I lodged a rifled percussion shell near her sternpost—where there were no chains—which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. If the cap had performed its duty and exploded the shell, I should have been called upon to save Captain Winslow’s crew from drowning, instead of him being called upon to save mine. On so slight an incident—the defect of a percussion cap—did the battle hinge. The enemy was proud of this shell. It was the only trophy they had ever got from the Alabama. We fought her until she would no longer swim, and then we gave her to the waves.”

CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS—ATTACK ON FORT PHILIP.

From a Contemporary Steel Engraving, showing improvised warships employed.

The Shenandoah was the name given by the Confederates to the Glasgow-built auxiliary steamer Sea-Horse, which was the only ship to carry the southern flag from Dixie’s Land to the Cape, thence to Australia, and up to the North Pacific. She found her chief prey among the American whalers.