Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

CHAPTER VI

IRON SHIPS OF WAR—continued

The Admiralties, naval architects, and a great many other people throughout the world were troubled for several years through trying to reconcile all the divergent and often contradictory claims put forward as to what should constitute a fighting ship. Those who troubled most were those who knew least of the subject. The naval architects, having to make the necessary calculations, were not without some knowledge of the limitations of the materials at their disposal; and the Admiralties left matters to the experts, whether employed by Governments or in private shipbuilding establishments, confident that those who were best acquainted with such a technical subject would be most likely to set forth something possible of attainment and destined to show certain definite results. And this has been the attitude of all Governments towards all inventors, whether their inventions were of practical utility or were merely the outcome of seeing visions and dreaming dreams. This does not imply, however, acceptance of the official theory that Government experts know everything.

Many people, after the American war, went turret-mad, and became possessed of the idea that this country should own a numerous fleet of monitors, so numerous, indeed, that every port all round the British coasts should have two or three of such vessels in order that an enemy’s fleet, usually conjectured by the turret enthusiasts to consist of large two or three-decked battleships, should be met by a succession of monitors each manned by a fresh crew and full of ammunition, and reduced to submission if possible, or sunk, or scattered as was the Spanish Armada, an historical allusion which these good people found very useful as adding a picturesque touch. Nor were the enthusiasts of other countries behind those of Great Britain in their advocacy of their pet theories. Naval economists, who yet wished to swim with the current of naval enthusiasm, did not hesitate to point out the economy of construction to be effected by a fleet of monitors or of small vessels carrying turrets. Some contended that no guns were too heavy to be sent afloat, so that they should smash any armour by the weight of their projectiles; and ingenious were the calculations to demonstrate how easy it would be for a heavy gun, such as was used for land fortifications, to be sent to demolish a hostile vessel whatever her dimensions and armament. Others clamoured for the heaviest possible armour, even if only moderately powerful artillery should be installed, coupled with great ramming power. That every part of the ship should be so heavily armoured as to be invulnerable was another contention which found much favour, its adherents forgetting that too much armour would sink the vessel; but its opponents rejected it in favour of the concentration of the armour over the vital parts of the ships, and leaving the ends unprotected or nearly so. Other claims were for high speed, great coal capacity, large sail power, lofty freeboards, seaworthiness, steadiness of gun platform, small size, shallow draught, and comparative invisibility to an enemy’s gunners.[41]

As it was manifestly impossible to build ships which should meet the requirements of all the nation’s advisers and be suitable to be sent to perform all kinds of duties anywhere, armoured ships began to be constructed of special types according to the work expected of them. The first division was into battleships, armoured cruisers, and coast defence ships.

As the result of Captain Coles’s advocacy of the turret system, which he began in 1861, the Admiralty, when converting a number of old and new wooden ships into ironclads, had one of them, the Royal Sovereign, cut down, covered with armour, and given four armoured revolving turrets placed on the upper deck in the middle line of the ship. She marked the conversion of the Admiralty to the new order of things which steam power and iron armour in combination had rendered possible. One step in the process of conversion was that sail power was no longer considered necessary in fighting vessels, another was that the combatant part of every ship intended for heavy fighting should be afforded as much protection as possible, and a third step was that the guns should be few in number, of considerable power, and so disposed as to have the widest possible range. This ship could fire all her guns on either broadside, and also had a direct fire ahead and astern. She started her career as a 131-gun line-of-battle ship, but after her alterations she carried five 12-ton muzzle-loading guns, of which two were in the foremost turret and one each in the others. She was also the first of the converted vessels to be given a steel protective deck, in her case two inches thick, but it was not curved so as to place the edges below the water-line, and it consequently would not have afforded any protection to the vessel had a shot penetrated the armour at the water-line. Her low freeboard would have rendered her difficult to hit, and she would have been able to approach an enemy and deliver a telling fire at comparatively short range without running undue risk of receiving much damage in return.

THE “PRINCE ALBERT” (SISTER SHIP TO THE “ROYAL SOVEREIGN”) AS
CONVERTED TO A TURRET SHIP.

From the Model in the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

H.M.S. “MINOTAUR.”

Photograph by Symonds & Co., Portsmouth.

The dimensions of the first British turret ship compare curiously with those turret ships which followed her in rapid succession, both in the British and other navies. She was 240 feet 7 inches in length, with an extreme beam of 62 feet and a draught aft of 24 feet 11 inches.

Even after the launch of the Warrior the Admiralty ordered a few wooden ships, but in 1866 decided upon the adoption of iron warships. One of the last and certainly one of the best to look at of the wooden armour-plated ships was the steam frigate Lord Clyde, but as a sailer she had many defects, of which slowness was not the least. In her case the armour extended to the ends of the ship, and nowhere was it less than 4½ inches in thickness, while at the water-line the armour plates were 5½ inches thick. The sides of the entire battery deck from stem to stern, and from 3 feet below to 3 feet above the ports, were plated with 6-inch armour, of which one thickness of 1½ inches was bolted to the ship’s frame, and the other, of 4½ inches, was placed upon the outside of the planking. The armour went 6 feet below the water-line amidships, and for the sake of lightness was only 4½ feet deep at the ends. The gun ports were 8 feet 9 inches above the water-line, or 2 feet 6 inches higher than those of La Gloire. She was the first vessel in the British Navy to carry an armour-plated bow battery on the main deck. This armour plating also was carried upwards to protect an upper-deck bow battery mounted under the ship’s forecastle. This arrangement enabled her to fire four guns ahead, while exposing to the enemy’s fire only the curved surface of her bow armour. She also had a distance of 15 feet between each gun port on her main deck. Her engines of 1,000 h.p. nominal, and 6,000 indicated, drove a two-bladed Griffith’s adjustable propeller 28 feet in diameter.

From 1860 to 1866 ten broadside ironclads were added to the navy, the last and the largest being the Northumberland of 10,780 tons. All these vessels, except the Hector and Minotaur, carried muzzle-loaders, but these two had breechloaders of the early Armstrong screw type, which were soon superseded by more powerful weapons. The Minotaur carried fifty guns, the Northumberland twenty-six.

Then followed the abandonment of the broadside and the confinement of the heavy armament of an ironclad to a central battery protected by thick iron side armour and armoured bulkheads, the only other portion of the ship to be thus protected being that near the water-line. The first of these in the British Navy was the Bellerophon, launched in 1865; she was of 7,550 tons displacement, and her engines, of 6,520 h.p. indicated, drove one screw and gave her a speed of fourteen knots. Her thickest armour was 6 inches, and her heaviest gun a 12-ton muzzle-loader. Altogether she carried fourteen guns, including one in a small armoured citadel in the bows.

Great though the advantages were of the screw propeller, it was admitted that it was not without many drawbacks. The single screw took up a lot of room, weakened to some extent the structure of the stern, and if anything happened to the engines or propeller the ship was helpless and had to depend entirely upon whatever sail power she might possess. To overcome this difficulty Messrs. J. and W. Dudgeon were the first to build, from the designs of Mr. John Dudgeon, a twin-screw ocean-going steamship. Twin and triple screws had been used before, but were driven by the one engine.

Before this, however, Messrs. Dudgeon experimented with a small iron vessel, of 400 tons, called the Flora, which was given two independent engines and screws. The propellers were placed under the counter, and proved the advantage of this position over that of the practice, where two screws were used, of placing one before, and the other behind the rudder. The advantage of placing the screw either in a space cut in the deadwood, or, in the case of twin propellers, under the counter, was much greater than the method at one time adopted of placing the screw behind the rudder. Under the newer method the steering power of the rudder was not impaired; but under the older method, when the screw shaft was carried beyond the rudder, a slit known as a “shark’s mouth” had to be made in the rudder so that the upper and lower portions would be able to pass the screw shaft. The practice of equipping the vessels with wells or recesses into which the screw could be lifted was found to possess but slight advantages for warships, and was ere long abandoned. The best that could be said for it was that when a ship was travelling under sail only, the screw could be lifted from the water and the strain upon the wooden stern caused by dragging the screw, whether of the fixed or folded patterns, through the water, or running loose, was avoided altogether.

The Hebe was the third vessel on this principle built and engined by Messrs. Dudgeon, and the advantages of the twin-screw system over the single screw were again strikingly manifested during a series of manœuvres. The Hebe was an iron vessel of 470 tons, and 165 feet long. The screws were three-bladed, 7 feet 6 inches in diameter, and had a pitch of 15 feet, and were worked by two separate and independent engines each having two cylinders 26 inches in diameter, with a 21-inch stroke of piston, and being collectively of 120 nominal h.p. The tests showed that the vessel with both screws working ahead could made a complete circle in four minutes or less, and in still shorter time with only one screw working and the helm thrown over, or with the two screws working in opposite directions.

The tests were severe, but they proved more effectively than any tests before had done the great superiority of the independent acting twin screw over the single screw; and the results in far greater manœuvring power, speed, and reliability were so satisfactory that the Admiralty was most favourably impressed. The Messrs. Dudgeon, in 1863, built the steamship Far East, and her launch and trial trip took place in the presence of the representatives of the Admiralty. She was fitted with twin screws which had a diameter of 8 feet 2 inches, and a pitch of 16 feet. The shafts of the screws were carried through a wrought-iron tube bolted to a false iron bulkhead clear of the ship’s frame. The Admiralty not long afterwards adopted twin-screw propellers. The advantages of the twin screw were that were one to be disabled, the other could propel the ship without trouble, and that as an aid to steering, one screw could be sent astern and the other worked ahead, so as to turn the vessel in little more than her own length.

The Penelope, launched in 1867, was the first twin-screw ocean-going ironclad belonging to the Navy, and she was, moreover, the first government owned warship in which each screw had its own engine, as compared to the two screws geared to one engine in the floating batteries of the Crimean days. She was of 4,470 tons displacement, and her engines of 4,700 indicated h.p. gave her a speed of between twelve and thirteen knots. Each of her twin screws was fitted to a distinct stern with separate deadwood and rudder, an arrangement which neither added to the steering capabilities of the ship nor increased its structural strength at the stern. The Penelope had recessed ports to allow of increased training of the guns.

Captain Coles, to whom, notwithstanding the sad fate which overtook the Captain, this country is somewhat indebted for his consistent advocacy of the adoption of the turret on sea-going ships, urged upon the Admiralty the superiority of the turret over the broadside system. His contrivance differed from that of Ericsson in the important particular that Ericsson’s turret was supported on a pivot which rested upon bearings at the bottom of the ship, whereas Captain Coles’s turret rested upon bearings supported in a specially constructed room resting upon the beams of the deck, which, in turn, were strongly supported from below. In regard to the thickness of armour there was little to choose between the two. Captain Coles brought his design before the notice of the United Service Institution in 1860, and although it attracted a great deal of attention among naval constructors and manufacturers of naval artillery, only one nation was then of sufficient courage to order an experimental ship. That nation was Denmark, and it is to that country that the honour must be given of having the first ship in which the broadside system of gun-fire was entirely abandoned and the turret system installed instead. This vessel was the Rolf Krake, an iron double-turreted monitor with lowering bulwarks. She was engaged in the war against Prussia, in 1864, when she took part in a fierce duel with the Prussian batteries at Eckernsünde. The batteries fired 24-pounder rifled Krupp guns, and though the ironclad was struck about one hundred and fifty times, her armour was sufficient to withstand the shot, and she certainly inflicted a great deal more damage than she received.

Numerous experiments were made in France and in this country with the object of determining the special characteristics of a vessel which should meet the rapidly altering condition of affairs caused by the increase of the power of the guns and the development of the torpedo from the stationary mine, which was so terrifying in the American War, to the torpedo which could attack a vessel at anchor, or even be directed at one moving slowly. The requirements were a moderate displacement, increased protection, and ability to carry heavier guns capable of fore and aft fire as well as over the broadside. The problem was not an easy one by any means. The cellular double bottom system was extended as a precaution against torpedoes; the number of guns and the extent of the armour were lessened, but the thickness of the armour was increased in order to protect the vital parts and the guns from the fire of the newer and more powerful ordnance, while to compensate for the increased weight in the middle third of the ship, the beam was made greater in proportion to the length.

FOUNDERING OF THE “AFFONDATORE” IN THE HARBOUR OF ANCONA.

Reproduced by permission of the “Illustrated London News.”

WRECK OF THE “CAPTAIN.”

From a Contemporary Wood Engraving.

Matters were in this experimental stage when the first engagement was fought between European fleets, each of which included sea-going ironclads. The battle of Lissa, in 1866, was no less remarkable for the crushing defeat which the Austrians inflicted on the Italians than for the fact that that defeat was against all that the naval experts had considered to be the natural order of things. The Italian fleet was more numerous than the Austrian; it had more ironclads, its armament was greater, it had a greater number of wooden warships of various sorts and sizes; but as a powerful offset to all these advantages it had an amount of muddle and disorganisation truly appalling. The Italian fondness for big ships and big guns was as much in evidence in the fleet of 1866 as in the immense armoured ships Duilio and Dandolo, which that country built a few years later, and to which a more extended reference is made on another page. Its principal ships in the attack on Lissa and the subsequent engagement with the Austrian fleet were the Re d’Italia and the Re di Portogallo—two American-built vessels of 5,700 tons, old measurement. They were plated with armour 7 inches thick. They were designed to carry, the former two 150-pounders, and thirty 6-inch guns and four smooth-bore guns; and the latter two 300-pounders, and twenty-six 6-inch guns. These ships were poorly constructed, and the design was so faulty that the rudders were left without protection and open to destruction by ramming or gun-fire—a weakness of which the Austrians took full advantage. There was also a turret ram called the Affondatore, 4,070 tons, built at Millwall, and armed with two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in two turrets, which was supposed to epitomise all the lessons of the American War. Her ram projected 26 feet, and what with this and her big guns and her thick armour, the Italians expected her to do wonders. As sea-boats the three were about equally bad. There were also two French-built small rams, Terribile and Formidabile, of 2,700 tons. The French at that time favoured comparatively small ships with large rams for coast and harbour defence, giving them iron plating 4½ inches thick, and 6-inch rifled guns as their principal weapons. Of the broadside ironclads there were four, of about 4,700 tons each, and belted from stem to stern at the water-line. There were, besides, two armoured gunboats which carried two 150-pounder Armstrongs and some smaller guns. The Italian fleet also had a number of steam-engined wooden vessels. The Austrian fleet had six very indifferent ironclads, slow, none too well armed, smooth-bores of no great size predominating, and a few other vessels, mostly of wood, of little fighting value, but capable of holding in check the Italian wooden ships for a time at all events. The Austrian ships were the Drache, Kaiser Maximilian, Prinz Eugen, and Salamander, whose tonnage ranged from 3,400 to 3,800, each carrying 4½-inch armour of home manufacture; the steam line-of-battle ship Kaiser, four steam frigates, and some smaller boats. These were practically ready for sea when hostilities were commenced. The two unfinished ironclads Habsburg and Ferdinand Maximilian were got ready in an improvised fashion and given smooth-bore guns; and the Don Juan, another vessel in a state of even greater unpreparedness, had the deficiencies in her armour made good with heavy wooden beams. The Italians had two hundred and seventy-six rifled cannon to one hundred and twenty-one on the Austrian ships.

The Austrian Admiral, Tegethoff, was a man who left nothing to chance. He knew what he had to do, and he had that genius for command which enables a man to do his best with the materials at his disposal. Great though he knew the discrepancy to be between his own fleet and that of the Italians, it is a remarkable testimony to his organising power that he was able at the first glimpse he had of the Italian fleet to understand the extraordinary lack of cohesion that characterised it from first to last, and to prepare to meet it with every expectation of victory. He placed his fleet in wedge formation with the intention of breaking the enemy’s line of ironclads with his own ironclads, so as to avoid subjecting his weaker vessels to the fire of the heavier Italian vessels, as might have been done had he attacked the Italian line near or beyond its centre. He also intended to ram the Italian ships whenever he had a chance, but though the chances later were numerous, the ram proved a less effective weapon than had been expected. The duty of the Austrian smaller vessels was to rake with their guns the Italian ships after the heavier Austrian ships should have thrown them into confusion, for owing to the longer range of the Italian guns and the heavier weight of their projectiles, the Italians had a superiority at long-range fighting which the Austrian commander was by no means disposed to allow them to turn to their advantage.

The ships on both sides were slow, those of the Austrians being worse even than those of the Italians. This may to some extent explain the comparative ineffectiveness of the ram, the blow being of not sufficient force to inflict much harm. The Austrian ships were to “ram everything grey,” the Italian fleet having been painted a conspicuous light grey which made them easily distinguishable; whereas the Austrian ships were black, but their funnels were differently painted, so that any one of them could be identified in a moment. The shock when the Ferdinand Maximilian rammed the Re d’Italia was not very violent, but, possibly on account of the weakness of construction of the hull, the ram did its work. A gaping wound was formed in its side through which the water rushed, and the great ship, after giving a couple of rolls, like some ocean leviathan in agony, heeled heavily over and went down, the first sea-going ironclad to be lost in this manner. The Austrians were appalled for the moment at the result of the experiment, for such, indeed, it was. Disablement had been expected, but that such a powerful ship should be sent under the waves in a few moments by a single blow was a result that had not been anticipated. The Austrian ship rammed three Italian vessels, but this was the only one of her victims to succumb. The Re di Portogallo received a similar attention from the Kaiser, but the blow, though delivered with all the force of which the ship was capable, did herself as much harm as the other, for she lost her bowsprit and foremast, and left her figurehead in the gap formed in the side where it was wrenched off by the blow. The Kaiser had previously passed three of the Italian ships, but thanks to her armour the few shots which struck her caused no damage. The Re di Portogallo was little the worse for the ramming, and when it had the Austrian ship at its mercy a moment later, lost, by delay and incompetence, the opportunity to pour in a broadside.

The Kaiser was not built to be used to ram heavy vessels, or else her designers had underestimated the resistance she would have to encounter in striking another ship, the iron plates forming her bows being carried rather forward so that she had really a blunt projecting nose under water. Curiously enough, the only damage she sustained was a few plates started from the bows under the water-line.

As to the results of the fighting, the armour fully justified its use. The Austrian ships were struck several times by the heavy Italian shot and shells, but not once did the Italian projectiles penetrate both the armour and the backing, while for the most part the injuries caused by them were insignificant. The Italians lost two ironclads, and a third, the Affondatore, went down a few days afterwards as the result of the knocking about the Austrians gave her. But the injuries which caused the loss of these three Italian vessels were received below the water-line. Their armour was badly battered, but the ships themselves were little the worse. The 4-inch armour of one of the Italian ships was penetrated, but the backing prevented the shot going farther. The Austrians did not lose one ship, and on their armoured ships they had only three men killed, while on the wooden ships they lost thirty-eight killed and one hundred and thirty-eight wounded. The Italian losses are unknown, as a number of men were drowned when the two ironclads went under.

Even after the Italians were defeated they were still as strong as their opponents, but dared not attack them; while the Austrian commander deemed discretion the better part of rashness, and, contenting himself with having compelled the Italians to retire from Lissa, was confident that they would not attempt to attack him after the losses they had sustained, which had rendered them even more hopelessly disorganised than before the battle, if that were possible. The Italians, in spite of the vainglorious boasting in which they were pleased to indulge, were in no mood for another sea-fight. They were short now of ammunition, and their sailors were completely disheartened. Some of the commanders and all the crews showed extraordinary bravery in maintaining the fight when the circumstances, though not the odds, were against them, but the other commanders were remarkable for incompetence and some of them for cowardice, for they had no plan of action, one at least fled as soon as the shooting began, and one or two others were careful to keep out of harm’s way. The main lessons drawn from this engagement were that armour was indispensable in protecting a ship from the effects of hostile shot, and that the gun must remain the chief weapon of naval warfare. The advantage given to a numerically weaker side by superiority in organisation and efficiency had been too often demonstrated in previous engagements in the world’s history to render attractive a repetition of the lesson, but it is to be feared that the need of such lessons at frequent intervals has not yet passed. It also showed that big ships and gigantic guns are not of much account if the men who are to use them are untrained, and that no matter how heavy the guns and far-reaching their range they are of little use if the gunners miss nearly every time. The Austrian concentration of fire upon a given spot, even though the firing were only maintained by comparatively small guns, told its own tale. Ramming only sent one ship down as the immediate result of the blow, but the moral effect of the fear of being rammed was very great, as no crew, seeing an enemy making straight for their ship, could foresee the result. In any case, the damage was sure to be considerable. Yet the Italian Admiral, when he had two splendid opportunities of ramming his opponents with his most powerful vessel, the Affondatore, deliberately turned his ship aside and shrank from delivering the blows. The battle was noteworthy for its demonstration of the importance of accurate gunnery; nearly all the Italian projectiles passed over the Austrian ships, and the Italian gunners were heedless whether they fired when their vessels were on the upward or the downward roll. The trained Austrian gunners fired to hit.

Such lessons as the battle of Lissa was regarded as having presented were accepted, more or less, in the ironclads constructed in the five years immediately subsequent to that engagement.

The Hercules, begun in 1866, launched in 1868, and completed in 1869, was intended to combine the best features of the Black Prince and Minotaur. She was built entirely of iron, was 325 feet long between perpendiculars, 55 feet beam, and drew 34 feet 6 inches. The ram, a solid forging, weighed 5 tons, the armour plate was 8 to 9 inches thick, and weighed 1,145 tons; the weight of the bolts, nuts, and washers used in securing the armour plates was 73 tons, and there were also 91 tons of armour plates for the bulkheads, and 4 tons of bolts to secure them. The bulwarks were of wood, but below them were two iron strakes 6 inches thick, next a strake of 8-inch armour covering the lower portion of the main deck or central box battery, then two strakes of 6-inch plates, and then a belt of armour with a maximum thickness of 9 inches extending the length of the ship and amply protecting her some distance above and below the water-line; under this was another strake of 6-inch plates resting on the double skin of the hull itself. The 9-inch plates were backed by 10 inches of teak, inside which was an iron skin 1½ inches thick supported by vertical frames 10 inches deep and 2 feet apart, further stiffened by other beams. From the lower deck downwards the wing passages were strengthened with 18 to 20 inches of teak, and backed by a ¾-inch iron skin, which was also most substantially supported. The rest of the armour was backed by 10 or 12 inches of teak fastened to an iron skin 1½ inches thick, with a similar strengthening of vertical and longitudinal frames. She carried eight 10-inch 18-ton guns, four on either broadside, the two foremost and the two hindmost training through embrasures at the ends of the thwartship bulkheads and through recesses in the iron-clad sides. These four guns were established on what was known as Captain Scott’s turn-table and racers. Two 12½-ton guns were in protected batteries on the same deck, one at the bow and the other at the stern; three portholes were provided for each of these guns, so that it could be fired either in line of keel or on either side as necessary. Their weight made her pitch deeply and recover slowly, thereby impeding her speed and lessening the value of her gun-fire. She also carried some 6½-ton guns on her upper deck. Special attention was paid to the protection of the rudder head and steering apparatus, events at the battle of Lissa having showed the imperative necessity of doing so. It was contended on behalf of the Hercules that her armour could not be penetrated by the guns of any ship afloat. The 18-ton guns were the heaviest ever worked in an ocean-going vessel up to that time, and were only 1½ tons lighter than the famous 15-inch Rodman guns, which were the heaviest that the American monitors had managed to work with success. Although the immense guns of the Hercules were muzzle-loaders, and discharged 400 lb. shots, it was found possible to fire the gun a second time in 1 minute 15 seconds after it had been fired once, but naturally this rate of firing could not be kept up for long owing to the overheating of the gun.

In the same year the Monarch, a full-rigged, double-turreted, ocean-going ship, was launched, with a displacement of 8,320 tons. Her turrets had 10-inch armour, while that of her belt and bulkheads was 7 inches. Her engines were of 7,840 indicated h.p., and she had a speed of about fourteen knots. The Monarch was intended to have all the advantages of a turreted vessel combined with the freeboard of a sea-going ship. Her armament included four 25-ton 10-inch muzzle-loading guns, and some lighter weapons under her raised poop and forecastle, she being the first of the turreted vessels to have a secondary armament. The raised poop and forecastle were added to increase her seaworthiness, but though they accomplished this they only did so at the expense of her direct fire ahead and astern from her turret guns.

The adherents of the low freeboard sea-going turreted ship, as advocated by Captain Coles, pinned their faith to the Captain, which was launched at Birkenhead in 1869, and was of 6,950 tons register. Probably no warship’s designs were ever more bitterly criticised and condemned by one party and upheld by another than those of the Captain. This ship had several features to recommend her, and several others which more than counterbalanced the conditions she was supposed to embody. The believers in the Captain argued that she represented what a sea-going turret ship should be, being powerfully armed, of good speed, well armoured, powerfully engined, and able to use extensive sail power if necessary. That she possessed all these qualities is unquestionable. Her engines of 900 h.p. nominal gave her a speed of thirteen knots. Her heaviest gun was the 25-ton 12-inch muzzle-loader. Her freeboard as designed was 8 feet 6 inches, but when she was in sea-going trim it was found that her actual freeboard was 6 feet 8 inches, through some error in the calculations, and this, added to the fact that she carried a large spread of canvas, caused many misgivings as to her stability. In two cruises in the Channel she gave every satisfaction, and it was contended that she really had solved the problem of a low freeboard ship carrying canvas and turrets, and able to go to sea. Her third cruise, in company with the Channel fleet, marked the end of her career and of all the theories she was supposed to represent with such conspicuous success, for during a squall at night she rolled over and went to the bottom, taking nearly all on board with her, among the lost being Captain Coles. The exact circumstances of the disaster were never established; all that is known is that with her low freeboard and small margin of stability she rolled beyond the point at which recovery was possible.

As a reply to the Monarch the Captain was a failure, and the high freeboard turret ship was a success. Whether the Captain would have done better under steam alone it is impossible to say; perhaps she would, though she was under shortened sail at the time of the disaster. Some professed to believe that the hull would have been stable had it carried only one mast for signalling purposes, and suggested that another vessel should be constructed to take her place, but the experiment was never made. The Captain was too heavy for her size, and therefore lacked buoyancy; her weight was too much distributed, and she had not the power to throw off quickly the water she took on board, but “lay down under it,” to use a seaman’s expression.

Some six months before the Captain was lost a ship was launched which introduced another and most successful type, yet she was rather an improvement on certain earlier vessels than an entirely modern conception. This was the Devastation, and she was at once recognised as the most powerful ship of war in the world. The Glatton, a single turret ship, launched in 1869, may in some respects be regarded as the forerunner of the Devastation. The Glatton was a low freeboard coast-defence monitor, modified to suit the conditions prevailing on the English side of the Channel; but the Devastation, while still being of comparatively low freeboard, was a sea-going ship, mastless, so far as sails were concerned, and double turreted.

The Devastation was the historical reply of the British naval constructors to the much-vaunted American monitors, and also the Admiralty’s reply to the Captain. She was so unlike anything else afloat, that the writers of those days had difficulty in finding anything to which they could compare her. One describes her as like an “impregnable piece of Vauban fortification with bastions mounted upon a fighting coal mine.” As a mastless turret ship or fighting machine, she possessed powers of offence, defence, and manœuvring greater than those of any other ship in the world. This ship, which was built at Portsmouth, and the Thunderer, built at Pembroke, were the pioneers of this class of vessel, and were the first to embody in their construction the most perfect examples of the turret principle as at that time understood, applied to a sea-going ship.[42] They were superior to any others built or building as fighting machines, and in their coal-carrying capacity. They were of 4,406 tons burden under the old system of measurement. They were given 12 inches of rolled armour plating on a teak backing built into an immensely strong framing, 18 inches in thickness, which was further backed with an iron skin 1½ inches thick. There was not only the increased thickness of the armour, but also its quality to be taken into consideration in comparing these vessels with the Warrior and Minotaur, for the resistance offered by the rolled armour of the new ships increased very nearly as the square of the thickness, so that the sides of the Devastation and the Thunderer were, all things considered, about seven times as strong as those of the Warrior. The thickest armour carried in the French navy was that of the peculiar rams of the “Taureau” or “Bélier” type, mentioned on another page, viz. 8¼ inches, while that of the American monitors was 6 inches of plating on a system of armour stringers. The two English ships by reason of their higher freeboard were better sea-boats than any monitors built on the American principle could ever hope to be. The American turrets leaked badly whenever it was necessary to place their weight on the spindles to enable them to revolve, and their low sides allowed almost every other wave to wash over their decks. The turrets of the Devastation and Thunderer were worked on Captain Coles’s system of rollers fixed at the circumference of the base of the turret and centring at the central cylindrical spindle, but their base rested upon the upper deck within the breastwork.

In measurements these vessels were considerably smaller than the Warrior or Minotaur classes. The Warrior’s 4½-inch hammered plates would have offered little more resistance than so much glass to the heavy blows which the Devastation’s guns could inflict, nor would the Minotaur’s rolled plates have had much more defensive effect. Even when the Devastation was built, it was contended that the Hercules armour was practically impenetrable to the heaviest of British guns afloat yet, and that of the Devastation was three inches thicker still. One reason why this vessel was so strongly constructed was that she was built on an improvement of the bracketed frame system first introduced by the Admiralty in the Bellerophon. These improvements enabled a lighter framework to be constructed without reducing the strength, and the weight thus saved was put into the defensive armour. The Devastation’s upper deck when the ship was in sea-going order was about 4½ feet above water, except at the bows, where a sunk forecastle raised the height to 9 feet, and increased her capacities for going head to sea. The turret ports were 13 feet above the water, so that the guns were carried higher than those of any broadside-armed ironclad afloat. Those of the Hercules, for instance, were 11 feet above the water.

As at first designed, the Devastation would have had a less freeboard than the Captain, but after that disaster the plans of the Devastation were altered considerably, and the Admiralty committee decided that it would be safer and wiser to increase the freeboard amidships. This was done with iron plates raised to a level with the walls of the armoured breastwork, the freeboard for about half the ship’s length being as much as 12 feet.

The turrets were placed one at each end of this breastwork, with the funnels, ventilators, and so on, between them. The breastwork deck, as it was called, was strongly plated as compared with the main-deck plating of all existing ironclads, and the protective plating of the upper deck was from two to three inches thick. Above the turrets was the usual hurricane deck. She carried two 30-ton guns in each turret, the guns being of an Armstrong type improved upon at Woolwich, and throwing projectiles weighing 600 lb., and of the Palliser pointed type. Her two turrets gave her an absolutely all-round fire, a consummation which was impossible with any vessel depending at all upon sails. Her engines, which constituted her sole motive power, were the largest which had yet been applied to working twin screws and were each of 800 h.p. nominal, and gave her a speed of twelve and a half knots.

H.M.S. “DEVASTATION.”

Photograph by Symonds & Co. Portsmouth.

She was 285 feet in length between perpendiculars, with an inside beam amidships of 58 feet, and an extreme beam of 62 feet 3 inches, with an average draught of 26 feet. The depth from the midship portion of the covering-in deck to the top of the keel was 18 feet. The double bottom contained the water-tanks, and above these were a series of watertight compartments containing the engines and so on, and above these again were another series of watertight compartments used as coal bunkers and lockers, and another series, formed of watertight bulkheads, enclosed the officers’ accommodation. They were said to be as strongly constructed as the strong room of a bank.

The Devastation was probably the first ship in which a built-up keel of steel was introduced. The plates of steel were ⅝-inch in thickness, and the depth of the keel was 4 feet 6 inches, and it was strengthened by an angle-iron 1 inch thick. The stem was a solid forging, the upper deck part being 9 inches thick, and the lower part which formed the ram was 36 inches thick. This immense prow was strengthened by longitudinal iron frames. The stern-post was also forged solid, and was 26 feet in length and weighed 15 tons, and measured 12 inches deep by 8 inches thick. Steel plates riveted vertically over the transverse frames and running longitudinally and crossed by vertical fixed iron plating formed the double bottom. The interior of the hull was divided both longitudinally and transversely into a great number of watertight compartments. The two magazines, one near each end of the ship, were protected from a dropping fire by a bulkhead covered with 5-inch armour plating, and above the magazines again was a strongly constructed deck 4 feet 6 inches below the load water-line. The armoured belt was 9 feet 6 inches broad amidships, but tapered off gradually towards the ends. The armour-plating was 18 inches thick amidships, and gradually reduced to 9 inches towards the extremities. The breastworks or armoured walls built up from the upper deck near the forecastle, and extending to a wall behind the after turret, were 7 feet high, 74 feet long, and had an interior breadth of 50 feet. Their armour-plating varied from 10 to 12 inches, with the usual backing of wood and iron frames, and an inner iron skin. The deck was 2 inches of iron covered with 4 inches of oak. The turrets, which stood at either end of the breastwork, were 31 feet 3 inches in exterior diameter, and 24 feet 1 inch interior diameter; they were built up as follows: Outside, 9 inches of iron plating, then 9 inches of Italian oak set in iron frames, then 6 inches of iron plating, then 6 inches of Italian oak set in iron frames, then two thicknesses of iron plating each ¾-inch thick, to form the inner skin, then iron frames 10 inches in depth, and finally a series of rope mantlets, or nets, to protect the men working the guns from injury through fragments of rivets or bolts being driven in by a shot striking the outside of the turret in battle.

The military mast was introduced in the sea-going turret ships like the Devastation, and a few years later all such masts were given fighting-tops or platforms upon which machine guns or small quick-firing guns were mounted, or were equipped with search-lights. These masts were of steel and hollow, and in some ships the tops could be reached by ratlines and shrouds in the old-fashioned way, and in others by means of internal or external ladders affixed to the masts themselves. Conning-towers were introduced later, but to meet the wishes of naval officers alternative places of control are also provided in all large ships, for use in case the conning-tower should be made the target for the concentration of the fire of a hostile ship.

The experiments with the Glatton’s turret proved the unsuitability of turret armour being made with horizontal joints, as there is always the chance that a projectile may strike the actual line of joining, where the resistance would be less than at any other part. The plates for the Devastation turrets were, therefore, rolled sufficiently broad to cover the faces of the turrets from the breastwork deck to the upper edge, and only vertical joints were exposed to fire. The forward end of the ship was raised to form what was called a sunk forecastle. This considerably added to the freeboard forward and to the buoyancy at that end of the ship, and this was further augmented by the armour belt being reduced as much as possible so as to avoid unnecessary weight. Some critics of this design maintained that the end was too weak, and that the advantage it was sought to gain in sea-going qualities would not materialise; but when the vessel afterwards went to sea and was tested in all sorts of weather, and against heavy seas, in broadside seas, and in following seas, and in seas running a few points off the bow, or on the quarter, she proved herself an admirable sea-boat. An account of the sea trials in which she was accompanied by the Agincourt and Sultan includes a description written by a “scientific observer,” who was on board the Devastation. Her sea trials took place during the summer of 1873. The Sultan was one of the more modern ironclads carrying a two-deck battery on a protected water-line, and the Agincourt was a five-masted ship reminiscent of the steam frigate days.

The scientific observer states:—

“For purposes of comparison in pitching and lifting, etc., the Sultan had the height of the Devastation’s upper deck at side painted on her in a broad white stripe, so that the behaviour of the two ships might be quickly appreciated apart from the records of instruments. The lowness of the extremities of the Devastation gives a great deal of interest to the pitching and lifting (really the longitudinal rolling) of the vessel. Two trials were made, one on the 9th and the other on the 15th of September. On the first of these occasions, she was accompanied by the Sultan only, and on the second she was accompanied by the Agincourt only. The seas met with on the 9th of September were lumpy and irregular, the wind having shifted somewhat suddenly during the previous night. Having got well out to sea, about forty miles off land, the wind was found to be blowing rather north of west with a force of a moderate gale, its speed varying from forty to forty-five miles per hour; and the largest of the waves were found to vary from 300 to 350 feet in length from crest to crest, occasionally reaching 400 feet—the greatest heights from hollow to crest being 15 and 16 feet. Going head to sea, at from six to seven knots, both vessels pitched considerably; the Devastation, however, had the best of it, pitching through smaller angles than the Sultan. The latter vessel was remarkably lively; at one moment she was to be seen with her fore-foot completely out of water, and the next with her bow dipped down to so great an extent that it was difficult to see from the flying deck of the Devastation—although the ships were pretty close together—whether the sea did not really break inboard; and this notwithstanding that the bow of the Sultan rises forward some 30 feet above the surface of the water. On the other hand, the forecastle deck of the Devastation was repeatedly swept by the seas, to each of which she rose with surprising readiness; indeed, it invariably happened that the seas broke upon her during the upward journey of the bow, and there is no doubt it is to this fact that her moderate pitching was mainly due, as the weight of the water on the forecastle-deck during the short period it remained there acted as a retarding force, preventing the bow from lifting as high as it otherwise would, and this, of course, limited the succeeding pitch, and so on. The maximum angle pitched through on this occasion, i.e. the angle between the extreme elevation and depression of the bow, was 7½ degrees. Each vessel behaved extremely well when placed broadside on to the sea, rolling very little. The trial of the ship on the 15th of September, in company with the Agincourt, was by far the most severe of any. Early in the morning the vessel got under weigh and steamed out to sea, accompanied by the Agincourt. The wind was blowing with considerable force from the north-west, while the sea was at times very regular, long, and undulating; just the sort to test the rolling propensities of a ship, but scarcely long enough to be most effective in doing so, either in the case of the Devastation or Agincourt. The largest waves ranged from 400 to 650 feet long, and from 20 to 26 feet high. The ships were tried in almost every position with regard to the direction of the sea, and at various speeds, the result in point of comparison being extremely interesting, and, so far as the Devastation was concerned, very satisfactory. With the sea dead ahead, and proceeding at about seven knots, the Devastation pitched rather more than the Agincourt, although the great length of the latter compared with that of the former caused her bow to rise and fall through a much greater height, giving her the appearance of pitching through a greater angle. The usual angles pitched through by the Devastation, measuring the whole arc from out to out, were from 5 degrees to 8 degrees; the maximum angle pitched through was, however, 11¾ degrees. The scene from the fore end of the frying deck when the vessel was thus going head to sea was very imposing. There was repeatedly a rush of water over the forecastle, the various fittings, riding-bitts, capstan, anchors, etc., churning it up into a beautiful cataract of foam; while occasionally a wall of water would appear to rise up in front of the vessel and, dashing on board in the most threatening style, as though it would carry all before it, rushed aft against the fore turret with great violence, and, after throwing a cloud of heavy spray off the turret into the air, dividing into two, pass overboard on either side. All the hatchways leading below from the upper deck were closed; it was not, however, thought necessary to close the doors in the sides of the trunks leading from the main hatchways to the flying deck, most of the men on deck preferring to remain here under the overhang of the flying deck. It was quite the exception for the water coming over the bow to get much abaft the fore turret; but this, however, occurred occasionally. The foremost turret makes a most perfect breakwater; it receives with impunity the force of the water, which, after spending itself against it, glances off overboard, leaving two-thirds of the deck seldom wetted. There was one sea which came on board, while thus proceeding head to sea, which was much heavier than any other; it rose in front of the vessel some 10 or 12 feet above the forecastle, and broke on the deck with great force, for the moment completely swamping the fore end of the vessel. A mass of broken water swept up over the top of the fore turret, and heavy volumes of spray extended the whole length of the flying deck, some small portion of it even finding its way down the funnel-hatchway—which had been left uncovered—into the fore stokehole. It should be borne in mind that the angles pitched through, given above, do not measure the inclination of the ship to the surface of the water, but only her inclination to the true vertical. Pitching and lifting are produced by the vessel endeavouring to follow the slope of the waves, or, roughly speaking, to keep her displacement the same as in still water, both as to volume and to longitudinal distribution.

“As to the depressing effect of the water on the bow, a layer of water one foot deep over the entire forecastle exerts a pressure of 65 tons; this will produce a change of trim of 11 inches, together with an increase in the mean draught of 1¾ inches; i.e. the draught of water forward will be increased by 7¼ inches, while that aft will be diminished by 3¾ inches. A layer 2 feet deep will have double this effect; one 3 feet thick will have treble this effect; and so on up to a considerable angle. This follows from the fact that the front slope of the longitudinal curve of stability, up to a considerable angle, is very nearly straight. Hence the effect, even of a large body of water passing over the forecastle, tending to make the vessel dive down head foremost, is small, and of no importance. It modifies, however, the transverse stability. When proceeding head to sea there was no appreciable rolling motion. With the wind and sea on the bow she pitched considerably less than when going head to sea, but rolled through 5 degrees or 6 degrees. With the wind and sea abeam, lying passively in the trough of the waves, the maximum angle rolled through was 14 degrees from port to starboard, 6½ degrees to windward, and 7½ degrees to leeward, and this without perceptible pitching. When, however, proceeding at about seven and a half knots, with the wind and sea on her quarter, she rolled through 27½ degrees from port to starboard, 13 degrees off the perpendicular to windward, and 14½ degrees off the perpendicular to leeward, besides also pitching through some 4 or 5 degrees. This is by far the greatest angle she has ever rolled through. It is the apparent period of the waves, i.e. their period relatively to the ship, which operates in making a vessel roll. The motions of the vessel, both as to pitching and lifting and to rolling, were extremely easy. She, indeed, claims to have behaved better than her companion, the Agincourt. Certainly, her rolling motion was somewhat slower, and she rolled less deeply; when the Agincourt was rolling 17 degrees from port to starboard, the Devastation was only rolling 14 degrees. As to pitching, the Devastation may fairly claim to have had the advantage, for, as we have seen, although the Agincourt pitched rather less, her bow moved vertically through a greater distance, so much so that while going head to sea at seven knots she shipped a sea over her high forecastle, showing that she could not be driven under the circumstances at a much higher speed with at least anything like comfort.”[43]

THE OLD “DREADNOUGHT.”

Photograph by E. Sankey, Barrow.

THE BIG GUNS OF THE OLD “DREADNOUGHT.”

Photograph by E. Sankey, Barrow.

The Thunderer, a sister ship in some respects to the Devastation, and the Fury, afterwards called the Dreadnought, followed, but each one included improvements and modifications suggested by the experience gained with the Devastation. Hydraulic machinery was installed for working the 38-ton guns of the Woolwich rifle pattern, but in the Thunderer the two 35-tons were worked by hand. Their guns were by no means generally approved, many artillerists being of opinion that Whitworth hexagonal guns would have been better.

The important feature in the Thunderer, and one which contributed very materially to her safety, was the introduction of a longitudinal watertight bulkhead between the two sets of engines and boilers, so that if one set should be disabled from any cause, the vessel would still have the other set to depend upon. The Dreadnought was engined on the compound system, which gave her a better speed on a proportionately less coal consumption.

It is an old saying that the speed of a fleet is that of its slowest ship. When the situation was further complicated by the varying sailing powers of the ships the difficulty of the admiral in command to keep his fleet together must sometimes have been very great. Admiral Yelverton, for instance, when in command of a Channel squadron, in 1866, consisting of the Caledonian, Lord Clyde, Bellerophon, Achilles, Hector, Pallas, Ocean, Wyvern, Research, and Helicon, reported that he “took every opportunity of trying them to their utmost, always placing them in positions as to wind and sea most likely to test their capabilities as sea-boats, without much regard to the safety of their spars or the risk of shipping far more water than under ordinary circumstances ships of war would be exposed to....

“The Pallas and Research were the only two ships that could not keep company with the squadron. The Pallas appeared to plunge heavily, and carried away her jib-boom, but took her place in the squadron on the following morning. The Research, from her very small steam power, was out of sight at sunset, and put into Plymouth to fill up with coal. On the 23rd we reached the prescribed rendezvous ... when steaming ceased for a while, and the trials of sailing began.” The ships varied as much under sail as they did under steam.

The Wyvern, which was not a good sea-boat, and her sister ship, the Scorpion, were built for the Confederate States, in 1864, at Birkenhead, and were bought by the British Admiralty. They were 220 feet by 42 feet, and of 1,827 tons, and had engines of 350 nominal h.p. Each had two turrets containing two 300-pounders. They had ram bows, and, except on the poop and forecastle, the bulwarks could be let down when the ships were cleared for action.

The Pallas, an armour-plated six-gun ship, and the Research were given recessed ports, in order to increase their firing range, but the ports were constructed angularly and did not allow the guns to be sufficiently depressed to hit a small boat close at hand; thus the weapons would have been no defence against a torpedo-boat attack, if the latter got to close quarters. This fault was remedied in the Venezuelan transport and cruiser Bolivar, in which the recessed ports were fitted under the personal superintendence of their inventor, Captain Symonds, and were slanted outside the gun ports so that they would allow of a gun being depressed to strike a small boat lying nearly alongside, while their wall was curved instead of flat as in the British ships mentioned. Her sister ship, so far as dimensions were concerned, the Mary, was devoted to the more peaceful requirements of the cattle-trade between London and Gothenburg. The Bolivar was a twin-screw vessel, and it is curious to note that even then, when this method of propulsion had proved its superiority, it was gravely stated concerning her trials that “To keep time in all weathers and in all seasons nothing is superior to the paddle, but in long voyages, especially where sails are occasionally used, the screw may be employed with advantage.”[44]

Several vessels followed in rapid succession after the turret ships, and an upper deck battery was added in the Sultan, a vessel which otherwise much resembled the Hercules, and then followed a class to which the Iron Duke and Vanguard belonged. The conditions imposed in the construction of this class were that they should draw 22 feet 6 inches of water, that they should carry armour not less than 8 inches thick at the water-line and 6 inches elsewhere except at the bow and stern, that they should have a speed of thirteen and a half knots, and that their guns should be capable of firing in any direction. This class was named after the Audacious, and proved fairly successful. The principal event which distinguished the class was the accidental ramming of the Vanguard by the Iron Duke, in September, 1875, off the coast of Ireland. They were all broadside ships, and the type was brought much nearer to perfection in the Alexandra, which was then the largest masted ironclad that had ever been designed; and though she was a central battery ship, four of her twelve guns could fire right ahead, and two right astern, and four to six guns could fire one either broadside. She carried two Woolwich rifled muzzle-loading guns of 25 tons each, and ten 18-ton guns. The two big guns were placed in the upper deck battery forward. As a further protection, besides her armour, the main deck battery between decks was divided in two by an armoured bulkhead. She was the first cruising armoured broadside ship in the British Navy to have engines on the compound system, and her twin screws were each driven by an independent set of engines with an aggregate indicated h.p. of 8,000. Her speed at her official trials was about fifteen knots.

Yet another type of turret ship was the Temeraire, launched in 1876, which marked a noteworthy combination of the central battery and barbettes or turrets. Her upper-deck armament was in two fixed turrets open at the top and pear-shaped instead of circular, and placed, one near the stern and the other near the bow. These stood about 6 feet above the deck, and measured about 33 feet by 21½ feet. They were placed with their length in the direction of the ship, and the rounded end of each pear, if it may so be called, was towards the nearer extremity of the vessel. Inside each of these batteries was a turn-table, hydraulically worked, on which was mounted a 25-ton gun borne on a carriage after the Moncrieff principle. This permitted of the gun being loaded in the turret and raised above it to be fired. The recoil caused it to sink into the turret to be reloaded. An armoured tube or hoist communicated with the ammunition chambers below, and the gun always had to be brought back into the same position for reloading. It will thus be seen that the guns were fired as barbette guns and loaded as turret guns, and many were the discussions as to the category in which they ought to be placed. The armour of the fore turret was 10 inches thick, and that of the rear turret 8 inches. On the main deck was a divided battery. The front portion had two 25-ton guns firing through ports at the corners, which were provided with oblique armoured bulkheads, and the guns were pivoted at the muzzle to allow of a fire from right ahead to abeam. The other portion of the battery was given four 18-ton guns to be fired on the broadside. She was preferred as a fighting ship by many to the Alexandra, which preceded her, in which the main armament was carried in a central battery. The Temeraire was heavily armoured down to below the ram, to protect her from an attempt to rake her bows when pitching, for it will be evident to anyone that when the fore part of a vessel is on the crest of a wave the bows are greatly exposed, sometimes nearly to the foot of the stem, and would be peculiarly vulnerable to hostile shot. The last central battery ship for the British Navy was the Superb. She was built to the order of the Turkish Government, but was acquired by this country. She carried sixteen 10-inch muzzle-loading rifle guns and six 4-inch breechloaders. She was a sister ship to the Turkish armour-clad Mesoudiye.

Though not launched until 1876 and completed in 1881, the Inflexible was described by her designer, in 1874, at a meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects as follows:—

“Imagine a floating castle, 110 feet long and 75 feet wide, rising 10 feet out of water, and having above that again two round turrets, planted diagonally at its opposite corners. Imagine this castle and its turrets to be heavily plated with armour, and that each turret has two guns of about 80 tons each. Conceive these guns to be capable of firing, all four together, at an enemy ahead, astern, or on either beam, and in pairs towards every point of the compass. Attached to this rectangular armoured castle, but completely submerged, every part being 6 to 7 feet under water, there is a hull of ordinary form with a powerful ram bow, with twin screws and a submerged rudder and helm. This compound structure is the fighting part of the ship. Seaworthiness, speed, and shapeliness would be wanting in such a structure if it had no addition to it; there is, therefore, an unarmoured structure lying above the submerged ship and connected with it both before and abaft the armoured castle, and as this structure rises 20 feet out of water from stem to stern without depriving the guns of that command of the horizon already described, and as it moreover renders a flying deck unnecessary, it gets over the objections which have been raised against the low freeboard and other features in the Devastation, Thunderer, and Dreadnought. These structures furnish also most luxurious accommodation for officers and seamen. The step in advance has, therefore, been from 14 inches of armour to 24 inches; from 35-ton guns to 80 tons; from two guns ahead to four guns ahead; and from a height of 10 feet for working the anchors to 20 feet. And this is done without an increase in cost, and with a reduction of nearly 3 feet in draught of water. My belief is that in the Inflexible we have reached the extreme limit in thickness of armour for sea-going vessels.”

Seeing that the Inflexible had armour two feet thick, the belief of her designer that the limit had been reached was justifiable. She was the only one of her class built for this country, though Italy, as will be seen, tried to copy and even to improve upon her. Her displacement was 11,800 tons, and her engines of 6,500 indicated h.p. were designed to give her a speed of twelve and a half knots, though on occasion she attained nearly fifteen knots. Her length was 320 feet, beam 75 feet, and draught 26 feet 4 inches. Her armament consisted of four 16-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns in her turrets and eight 4-inch breechloaders, besides twenty-one anti-torpedo boat guns and four torpedo tubes. The weight of a single discharge was 6,800 lb., which was not exceeded until 1906, though the energy in foot tons in that interval was increased several times over. She was, moreover, the first vessel in which the turrets were placed en echelon, i.e. diagonally, instead of one behind the other on the centre line.

H.M.S. “INFLEXIBLE,” 1880.

Photograph by Symonds & Co., Portsmouth.

The affection of the Italians for immense ships and guns to match was demonstrated even more remarkably by those which were built after the battle of Lissa than by those which took part in that memorable and disastrous engagement. Probably the two finest specimens were of the mastless turret type, the sister ships Duilio and Dandolo, which were designed to surpass any other fighting ship in existence, no matter what her nationality, and especially to show that Italian naval architects and constructors could surpass the Inflexible, on which Britain so justly prided herself. The Duilio was built at Castellamare, and the Dandolo at Spezzia. Their turrets were on much the same plan as those of the Inflexible, and quite a dispute arose between Italian and British naval architects as to whom the credit should be given of having first designed this type of ship.

The Duilio was of 10,650 tons displacement; her length between perpendiculars was 339 feet 7 inches, her extreme breadth 64 feet 7 inches, and her mean draught was 25 feet 11 inches. The height of her main deck above water was 11 feet, and that of her battery 15 feet 9 inches. The hulls of both these ships were built of iron and steel. Each had a double bottom extending for 230 feet of her length, and the numerous watertight compartments into which the double bottoms were subdivided were so arranged that any one or more of them could be filled with water or emptied as might be found necessary.

The central armoured citadel protecting the machinery and boilers and the magazines, besides part of the machinery for working the turrets and the guns, was no less than 58 feet in breadth, and extended to within a fraction of 6 feet below the load water-line, and was 107 feet in length. Above the citadel was a second central armoured compartment protecting the turret bases and a part of the machinery for loading and working the guns; and above this compartment were the turrets themselves. The turrets of the Duilio were not placed amidships, but the experiment was tried for the first time on an Italian ship of setting them at opposite corners of the central citadel, so that one should command the stern and the other the bows, and that each should be able to fire ahead or astern, or on the broadside, without interfering in any way with the other. The decks before and abaft the citadel were 4 feet 9 inches below the water-level, and were protected by horizontal armour. Extensive experiments were conducted at Spezzia with a 100-ton gun, and guns of 10- and 11-inch calibre, on different types of targets. As first designed these ships were to carry two 60-ton guns in each turret, but when the British Admiralty announced that the Inflexible would have guns of 81 tons, the Italians equipped these two warships with 100-ton guns manufactured at the Elswick works. The armour at the water-line was 22 inches thick on the central portion, and that of the turrets was 18 inches, further strengthened by heavy teak backing. Each ship had a heavy projecting ram, and also had an apparatus for discharging Whitehead torpedoes. Although these ships were described as Italian-built and were certainly put together in Italy, it is interesting to note that the Duilio had trunk engines by Messrs. John Penn and Sons, that practically all the iron and steel put into the vessel’s frames, etc., were made in France, that the armour-plates came from Cammell’s establishment at Sheffield, and that the guns were made at Elswick. Only the heavy forgings for the ship were made in Italy. The Dandolo, although described as a sister ship, differed in many particulars from the Duilio. The Dandolo had engines of Maudslay’s inverted vertical compound type, a pair of which was given to each of her screw propellers, and she had eight boilers, heated with thirty-four furnaces, and working at a pressure of 60 lb. per square inch. These great ships were out of date soon after being completed, as the discovery of the means of making steel cheaply, and the much greater strength and lightness of the homogeneous metal, as it was called, rendered it possible for ships and guns to be built of much greater power than ever before. Indeed, so great was the progress in these two departments that in a very few years these vessels would no longer have been invulnerable, but would have been relegated, as being slow and unwieldy, to harbour or coast defence work, and thence to the scrap-heap.

One remarkable ship on the turret system was the Peter the Great, belonging to Russia, which was very like the British turret ship Devastation, and carried four 12-inch guns in her two turrets. She had no ram. Russia also possessed the Minin, which carried turrets on Captain Coles’s system and had a very low freeboard, but after the loss of the Captain, the Minin’s turrets were removed, and she was given a central battery, 98 feet in length and rising 10 feet above the water-line. The guns were mounted en barbette and were placed on turntables. Russia also had two three-turret ships carrying six 25-ton rifled guns, and two double-turret ships each carrying four 35-ton guns, besides a considerable number of single turret ships and some smaller two-turreted vessels. These were mostly monitors copied from Ericsson’s plan, and were similar to those which he designed for the war in America. Most of these turrets were on Captain Coles’s system.

The turret system was developed to such an extent by Admiral Popoff that he gave his name to the type of ships he designed. They were immense circular floating fortresses intended only to operate in shallow and comparatively smooth water. Their sea-going qualities were conspicuous by their absence, which is not to be wondered at when their shape is taken into consideration. Although described as circular it would be more correct to say that they were circular only at the water-line, for on one side to form a stern a projection was constructed to facilitate steering, and at the opposite side a bow was built on. These ships carried on the central part of the upper deck a circular breastwork 7 feet high, in which were two 12-inch 40-ton guns, two quick-firers on each side of the superstructure, and six smaller guns, mounted en barbette 13 feet 3 inches above the water-line, on fixed slides. When it was necessary to train or change the direction of the guns, the whole ship had to be turned. In the citadel was the accommodation for the officers and crew. The extreme diameter of the vessel was 121 feet, the length over all, including the stern and bow, was about 150 feet, and her total displacement was 3,553 tons. She drew only 13 feet. The ship was built of iron, and had a double bottom sheathed with wood and copper. She was, of course, flat-bottomed. A peculiar feature of her construction was that she had a dozen external box girders or keels, each about 12 inches square, carried parallel to the intended axis of the vessel. There were eight radial frames and two rings of web frames, the vessel being divided into twenty-four compartments. These two vessels, the Admiral Popoff and Novgorod, were alike in most particulars, except that the latter was the smaller of the two. The height of the armour on each vessel was 1 foot 6 inches above the water-line, while below the water-line it was 4 feet 6 inches; they each had six screw propellers driven by three sets of engines. Their average speed was about six and a half knots. Although Admiral Popoff is usually given the credit of the invention of this type of vessel, Mr. John Elder, the Glasgow shipbuilder, designed and patented a circular floating battery in 1867. He proposed that the circular ship should carry twenty-six guns in a lower battery and ten in a central one, and that the sharp edge of the circumference should be used as a ram. According to his design his vessel would have had a diameter of 144 feet, a freeboard of 6 feet, and a draught of 9 feet.

The great ironclads described and their armament represent what may be regarded as the apotheosis of the iron turret ship and the heavy iron gun. Before passing on to the great change introduced by the adoption of steel in shipbuilding and gun manufacture it may be as well to note something of what has been accomplished in the production of warships of other types and modifications of types, and how some of them acquitted themselves in actual conflict.

One drawback to all the heavy British ironclads of this period was that so much weight and space were taken up by the armour and its backing, that comparatively little space was left for bunker accommodation. Obviously the very heavily armoured ships could not travel for long at high speed under steam without exhausting their coal supply. In order to obtain speed and allow space for the engines of the necessary dimensions, together with adequate coal supplies, the amount of armour carried had to be reduced, and in July in the summer of 1869 the first of a new class of armoured frigates, the Inconstant, was launched for the Navy. She was constructed of iron sheathed with three thicknesses of wood and coppered. She was the first vessel which had a stern post and rudder frame made of brass. She carried sixteen guns, viz. ten 9-inch muzzle-loading guns on the main deck, and six 7-inch muzzle-loading rifles on the upper deck; her engines, of 1,000 h.p. nominal, gave her a speed of about sixteen knots, at which she was faster than any other warship in the world. She was unusually narrow for her length, in order to add to her speed, her length being 337 feet 4 inches, and her beam 50 feet 3½ inches. At one time on her trials she made nearly eighteen and a half knots.

A series of coast-defence monitors was decided upon in deference to public clamour, and the first of these, the Glatton, was begun in 1868, and finished in the latter part of 1870. She was intended to be for coast-defence purposes only, and not an ocean-going ship in any sense of the term. Consequently her coal capacity was small, and she was very heavily armoured. She had but one turret, and this was so disposed that as the vessel had no masts the turret could be turned to give the guns a range of fire all round except for a small section astern, only about 20 degrees being thus uncovered. Although her design was admittedly founded upon the American monitor type, several important improvements were introduced. The American monitors had shown on several occasions that a heavy shot striking near the base of the turret was liable to cause the turret to jam or become unworkable. To render this impossible in the case of the Glatton she was equipped with a heavy breastwork built outside the base of the turret, in such a position that the lower part of the turret was absolutely protected and consequently could not be disabled, while if a shot were to strike the upper part of the turret it would do little damage. The Glatton had a freeboard of only 3 feet; the hull was plated with iron 12 inches thick above the water-line, and 10 inches thick below it, and behind this was a teak backing 20 inches thick, and behind this again two thicknesses each of 1 inch of iron forming an inner skin, while the frames to which this was attached were no less than 10 inches deep, and were only 2 feet apart. Altogether the sides of this vessel were 3 feet 8 inches in thickness. The turret contained two 25-ton guns; its armour was 14 inches thick in the most exposed parts, and 12 inches thick elsewhere. And besides this it had a wood backing of 15 inches, and an iron inner skin ⅝-inch thick. It was 30 feet in diameter, and similar to the turrets of the Captain and Monarch. The breastwork rose 6½ feet on each side of the vessel from the upper deck, and was plated with 12 inches of iron, with a 15-inch backing of teak. The upper deck had a sheathing of 3 inches of iron. The total length of the vessel was 245 feet, its breadth 54 feet, and it drew 19 feet of water. It was of 2,700 tons burden, and the engines were of 500 h.p. nominal. Its bunkers were designed to carry 250 tons of coal, but its ballast tanks were so designed that if necessary they could take another 250 tons of coal. With such dimensions and such a weight of armour to carry, she was, of course, a slow vessel, but in regard to her fighting power it was estimated that she would give a good account of herself against even such a vessel as the Monarch.

Powerful though the Glatton’s turret appeared, the experimental turret on the same pattern fired upon at Portland by the 21-ton gun of the Hotspur suffered somewhat badly. The shot struck the turret at the horizontal joint of the upper and lower plates, forcing the upper plate and the lower plate apart and damaging the turret generally.

A series of breastwork monitors was added to the Navy in the late ’sixties. Besides the Magdala, Cerberus and Abyssinia for colonial coast and harbour defence, the Admiralty ordered four similar but larger vessels for home defence, much to the general surprise. For some unfathomable reason the Cerberus and Magdala were barque-rigged. False bows and sterns were added to them to enable them to make the voyages to their respective destinations. They carried two 18-ton guns in each of their turrets. On her outward voyage the Cerberus earned a reputation for rolling which she never lost. The first reports of her voyage as far as Gibraltar described it as being successful and prosperous, but when her commander’s report was received it showed that the voyage was successful in the sense that the ship succeeded in getting that far, but prosperous it never was. She had dirty weather in crossing the Bay of Biscay, and for twelve hours rolled so heavily that it was thought she would not get through it. It is said she rolled 40 degrees each way, which is far more than the Captain rolled, and she pitched so heavily that sometimes the whole fore part of the ship as far as the foremast would be lost sight of, and the decks be quite under water. She was very slow under steam, the utmost speed that could be got out of her being six knots. The crew detested her so thoroughly that they deserted whenever they found the opportunity, three of them had to be punished and sent to prison by way of example by the time Malta was reached, and six volunteered to go to prison rather than continue the voyage. However, she arrived at Melbourne at last, and lay year in and year out at her moorings in Hobson’s Bay except for such short intervals when she went down the bay for firing practice. One of the war scares which arise from time to time came near to conferring on the Cerberus a celebrity of a unique character. Irresponsible and irrepressible politicians of a sort find colonial life offers them more scope for the display of their exuberance, and as the scare revived the question whether the defences of Melbourne at Queenscliffe were sufficiently strong, a politician of this variety proposed that the Cerberus should be sent out to sea and then endeavour to steam back past the batteries, which should fire upon her, in order to test both her armour and the strength of the defences. Strange to say, this suggestion actually met with some support, notwithstanding the chorus of ridicule and protests with which it was received, but the common-sense of the community vetoed the proposition. At the time of their construction these three vessels were the most powerful warships of their size to be found anywhere, and were among the ugliest.

In the early ’seventies there were added to the British Navy, and less numerously to other navies, several vessels of composite construction. That is to say, that all her framing was of iron and the outside and deck planking was of wood. Most of these vessels were sloops or light cruisers, and though they were useless for defensive purposes against armoured ships, their offensive powers were very great for vessels of their size, as they were generally given four of the heaviest guns it was possible for them to carry. Under steam they were fast, but as their bunker capacity was not large they had to depend on their sails when possible. One of these vessels, which may be regarded as a specimen of her class, the Albatross, was 160 feet in length between perpendiculars, of 894 tons displacement, and carried two 4½-ton 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns, two 64-pounder guns, and the usual number of smaller weapons for boat and land service.

One small corvette, the Druid, had an innovation which must have brought tears to the eyes of sailors of the old school who loved the ship’s figure-head, and were never tired of keeping it clean and brightly painted. The necessity of end-on fire and bow chasers was admitted, and some unsentimental reformer actually had her figure-head constructed so as to open in two parts like a folding door to permit of the space being used as a porthole for a heavy bow gun.

The steam engine as a means of propulsion was not to be allowed to remain unchallenged, but the only attempt at rivalry to merit serious consideration was that associated with the Waterwitch, in 1866, and Mr. Ruthven’s system of hydraulic propulsion. Although the first patent was taken out in 1839 and another followed in 1849, and a small boat fitted with the Ruthven machinery was placed on the Thames and a working model was shown at the Exhibition of 1851, engineers did not take kindly to it. The objections, apparently insuperable, were that the water had to overcome the resistance of a very large rubbing surface, and that the perforated bottom of the ship was liable to be choked in shallow water, and it was also contended that the cost of increasing the power beyond a certain rate was prohibitive. The advantages of the system, and they were undeniable, were that the ship could be propelled either end foremost, or turned, or brought to a stop and restarted without stopping or reversing the engines. A vessel was built, partly at the expense of the Prussian Government, and fitted with engines of this type, and was said some years afterwards to be still running on the Oder. In 1863, Mr. Murray, Chief Engineer of Portsmouth Dockyard, reported, on the application by Mr. Ruthven, of Greenock, for an extension of his father’s patent, that he saw no reason why the speed attained with the Ruthven propeller should not equal that obtained with the paddle or screw, and that he had been on official duty for the Admiralty to Belgium to inspect and report upon a vessel built by the Cockerill firm and called the Seraing, which was equipped with the Ruthven propeller. He recommended the Admiralty to give the principle serious attention.

RUSSIAN CIRCULAR MONITOR “NOVGOROD.”

From a Contemporary Wood Engraving.

THE FRENCH IRON-PLATED SHIP “MAGENTA.”

From “The Illustrated Times.”

In consequence of this report the Admiralty ordered the Waterwitch to be built for the trial of the Ruthven propeller. In order to check the vessel by a comparison with one fitted with the ordinary screw, the trials of the armour-plated twin-screw gun-vessel Viper were selected. The Waterwitch was of iron, 778 tons measurement, 162 feet in length by 32 feet beam, and 13 feet 9 inches depth; she was rather broad in proportion to her length, and had a rudder at both ends. Her armour plating was of the usual 4½ inches in thickness at the water-line and on her broadside, and she had athwartship armoured bulkheads across her upper deck with gunports in them, through which it was proposed to fight guns on the line of keel. The main interest of the vessel centred in her machinery. Her first trials on the Thames were so satisfactory that a more extended series at Stokes Bay was determined upon, the two sets of trials lasting about a year. A portion of her bottom was made flat and without external keel. From what may be regarded as a semi-official and certainly expert report of the ship and the Stokes Bay trials, the following description of the vessel may be quoted:—

“In the fore part of this flat surface, in a space about 12 feet square, are one hundred and forty-four perforations 12 inches each in length, and cut laterally through the bottom plates of the vessel, the plate being bent inwards on each side of the cuts to a central depth of about 3 inches. Through these perforations the water on which the vessel is floating finds admission to an oblong iron box, fixed longitudinally and parallel with the vessel’s keelson, closed when the vessel is not under steam by four sluice valves, each having an opening of 2 feet 10½ inches by 1 foot 11½ inches. With the vessel under steam these valves are open, and give further admission to the water to the watertight cast-iron casing, in which is fixed, on a vertical axis, the turbine. This wheel is 14 feet 4 inches in diameter at the bottom plate, and 14 feet at the top. It has twelve blades, and these, with the top and bottom plates, are made of boiler plate about ⅜-inch thick, vertical at the periphery and with the lower edge gradually twisted from near the circumference towards the centre in the direction of its motion. From the cast-iron casing which encloses the wheel, branch off laterally copper pipes, which convey the water from the wheel, or centrifugal pump as it might not inaptly be called, to the discharge pipes and ejection nozzles on the outside of the ship. By this arrangement, therefore, the water which enters through the perforated bottom of the ship passes by way of the sluice valves into the wheel casing, and thence, by the action of the wheel, through the copper conducting pipes and out into the sea again from the nozzles at the end of the discharge pipes on the outside of the ship. The wheel is driven by three cylinders fixed round it at equidistance, each of the connecting rods being coupled on the one crank; one eccentric gives motion to each of the slide valves for the three cylinders. The cylinders are each 38½ inches in diameter, with a stroke of 3 feet 6 inches.”

There was little to choose between the performances of the Waterwitch and her screw rivals, the Vixen and Viper, tried at the same time, and it was admitted that with certain modifications in the existing machinery of the first-named and the ejection nozzles, a much greater speed would no doubt be possible. It was also stated that with a suitably designed screw propeller a greater speed could have been obtained with the same power. Be that as it may, the experiment does not seem to have been repeated on so large a scale, and the improvements made in the steam engine soon outclassed completely the hydraulic propeller.

In Europe there was a disposition to disregard the power of the American ships, but when public opinion in this country and in Europe turned in their favour it went to the other extreme, and turreted ships with low freeboards were advocated irrespective of the totally different conditions prevailing on this side of the Atlantic. It was claimed that no turreted ship with a low freeboard could possibly be a good sea-boat, or undertake an ocean voyage. The double-turreted monitor Miantonomoh, built at New York, in 1865, proved the contrary in the latter detail, when in 1866 she crossed the Atlantic under her own steam, in company with two other monitors, and visited some English and European ports. She was never tried in any engagement, but was considered by her designers to be superior to any vessel of the kind constructed for war both as a sea-going ship and for fighting purposes. Her armament made up in weight what it lacked in number. Each of her turrets contained two Dahlgren guns throwing projectiles weighing 480 lb., and she also had a 12 lb. howitzer. The turrets were 18 feet in diameter, and were protected by armour 11 inches thick. She did not, however, prove a good sea-boat, which is not to be wondered at when her low freeboard is remembered, and though she made the voyage in the summer months when the Atlantic is usually fairly calm, she proved very wet. However, her advent was quite sufficient to demonstrate to the European powers that she could make the voyage, and her novel appearance gave the impression that her fighting value was tremendous. When the American War was over the United States Government had no further need of a number of its vessels, and disposed of some of them, France buying two of the most powerful, and one or two other European powers were also purchasers.

Among the vessels France acquired was the Dunderberg, which was renamed Rochambeau by her new owners. It consisted of a long iron fortress mounted with guns to fire on the broadside and also ahead and astern. The hull, also of iron, was but little above the water, and the decks were iron-plated. The central portion had armour 7 inches thick with a heavy wooden backing, and the decks fore and aft of the fortress were plated 8½ inches thick. Her two engines, developing 5,000 h.p., gave her at a pinch a speed of between eleven and twelve knots, but when she crossed the ocean she made the voyage under her own steam at between eight and nine knots. The after part, containing the screw propeller and steering gear, was also shot-proof. She had an immense beak or ram. Her total length was 378 feet, her breadth 73 feet, and her depth 81 feet, and she drew 22 feet of water.

As purchased by the French she had an armament of five 15-inch Rodman guns, and twelve 11-inch Dahlgrens. Another vessel, the Onondaga, was also purchased from America by the French, and both were altered at Cherbourg to meet French views.

When the French decided to adopt ironclad ships carrying a very few guns of great power, they did not hesitate to make some extraordinary experiments. One of their vessels, built in 1866, was the Taureau. It was like nothing that had been afloat before or has been launched since. Viewed from the stern, it resembled a sphere with a deck-house, a couple of masts, and a chimney. Much the same aspect was presented by a front view, except that before the deck-house was a small turret in which was one large gun. The turret was carried very far forward and could be revolved so that the gun had almost an all-round fire, the only limitation being the funnel and deck erections. The bow was extended enormously from the deck level to some distance below the water, and projected no less than 40 feet under the surface. The turret was not built on the deck, but descended to the bottom of the hold, and was protected by nearly 5 inches of armour, and a similar thickness was placed over the bows. The sides were plated 3 feet above the water-line, this belt extending to the stern. The engines were of 250 h.p. The Taureau was about 48 feet maximum width, and 197 feet in length without the ram. The idea underlying the construction of this unwieldy ship was that she should be able to deliver a heavy shot at close range to an enemy’s ship, and follow this up by ramming it, thereby completing its destruction; while her convex bows and circular turret would present no plane surface to the enemy, so that any shot which might strike it could only give a glancing blow and bound away harmlessly.

In 1862 another remarkable vessel called the Magenta was added to the French fleet. She was iron-plated and carried eighty guns on two decks, and in addition had a raised forecastle with ports on either bow, through which guns could be fired. She also had an immense blunt ram which projected like a cone upon the bows of the vessel and extended from the forecastle almost to the fore-foot. She presented an attempt to combine some of the features of the Monitor with the broadside ironclad, one American invention copied being the provision of a shot-proof tower just abaft the funnel for the accommodation and shelter of the officers during an engagement. She was barquentine rigged, and under sail and steam could get up a speed of about eight or nine knots.

The Marengo, another wooden ship which was plated with 8-inch iron armour, was designed to carry twelve guns. She had a central battery extending to the upper deck, and above this at each corner of the battery was an open armour-plated turret. The turrets each carried a large pivot gun, mounted en barbette, this being one of the first vessels France possessed in which it was sought to combine the advantages of the turret system with those of the barbette. These guns could fire in line of keel, and there were also four heavy guns on each broadside. She was 280 feet long by 57 feet 6 inches beam, and 28 feet draught, and was intended to have a speed of twelve knots. Her rudder was on the balanced principle. The rigging was brought down inside the bulwarks, something after the fashion of some modern sailing ships, so as to present a clean side outside. All the French ships were broad for their length.

The first large armour-plated ship to enter the Pacific was the Spanish screw steam frigate Numancia, constructed at La Seyne by the Société des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée. She was 317 feet in length by 57 feet 2 inches beam, and depth 37 feet, and her draught of water was 27 feet 6 inches, with a displacement of 7,303 tons, according to English measurement. She was built of iron throughout, and had 5 inches of armour-plate backed with 16 inches of teak from end to end of the ship, and from no less than 7 feet 9 inches below the water-line up to the level of the upper deck. Her armament was forty 68-pounders. She was built in less than two years, a piece of unusually quick work for a French yard, and was launched in 1864.

In 1868 the Dutch Government received from English builders two single turret ironclad monitors, intended for harbour defence, which were stated to be the first of the low freeboard type completed in this country, and carrying turrets on Captain Coles’s system. These vessels, the Krokodil and Heiligerlee, were about 180 feet in length, with a beam of 44 feet, and a depth of 11 feet 6 inches. From the gunwale to 8 feet below the water-line they had iron armour-plates of a total thickness of 5½ inches, tapering off to 4½ inches at the extreme ends. This armour rested against a teak backing 10 inches in thickness, behind which was an inner skin of 1-inch iron, and inside this again was a series of longitudinal iron girders. For their size they were exceedingly strongly constructed, but as they were designed to be able to meet any hostile vessel which might approach any of the harbours of the shallow Dutch coast where they might be stationed, the reason for such substantial construction is apparent. The turret armour was 11 inches thick at the gunports, and 8 inches thick elsewhere. The armament consisted of two 12½-ton rifled guns firing a 300 lb. projectile, which could be discharged from within four degrees of aft on either side to direct ahead. The turrets could be revolved by steam or hand power as desired. The twin-screw engines were of 140 h.p. nominal.

Another vessel of considerable interest, designed and built for the Dutch Government by Napier, was the turret gunboat De Tygre, which inaugurated a type which found much favour in Holland. This vessel, of 187 feet in length, 44 feet breadth, and moulded depth 11 feet 6 inches, and of 1,613 tons, builder’s measurement, was built in compartments and with watertight doors, and was like most of the turret ships of the monitor variety, as she had a double bottom which could be filled with water to sink her to her fighting level. Thus only about 2 feet of her topsides would be exposed to the enemy. As an improvement upon her came another vessel from the same builders, which was described as “of a build which has long seemed to us as one of those most likely to become employed for the ‘ship of the future,’ not because she is a ram, but because she is essentially a sea-going turret ship.” She was “the De Tygre over again, with the following exceptions: She has about 3 feet less beam, a rather greater draught of water, and light topsides are raised over the armour-plating and the deck, with which it terminates to the level of another deck; the vessel is thus in appearance an ordinary sea-going ship of war, for she is pierced for a few light guns on the lower deck; but her fighting strength consists in her turret, which is similar to that of the De Tygre, except that the ports are at a higher elevation. This vessel is, therefore, a cruiser, unarmoured, higher than a level of 2 feet from the water; but practically for a fight at close quarters she is a monitor exposing only a turret and a low topside as parts vulnerable to shot.”[45]

The Greek armour-clad King George, of 1,774 tons, built at Blackwall by the Thames Ironworks, was remarkable for the smallness of her dimensions in proportion to the strength and extent of her armour-plating. This was 6 inches thick, and had a 10-inch backing, and extended from the gunwale to 8 feet below the water-line, and from end to end of the vessel. She was 200 feet in length, and with engines of 2,105 h.p. indicated attained a speed of nearly fourteen knots on her trials. She was also notable for the peculiar arrangement of a central hexagonal box-battery on the Mackrow system for two 21-centimètre breech-loading Krupp guns (300-pounders), with the portholes so designed that the guns could be fired on both sides forward in line of keel, and nearly so aft; on the actual broadside the guns could be fired direct and parallel at the same time, or made to converge their fire at 70 yards distance from the ship’s side, the racers being so placed that the guns pivoted from the muzzle and could each be trained over on the broadside, through an angle of 93 degrees, the front gun in this way pointing three degrees abaft.

In 1864 Germany made a start with its modern navy by ordering from Messrs. Samuda the cupola ship Arminius. One or two others were added, and then, in 1867, the powerful armour-cased screw frigate Kron Prinz was launched from the same yards. She was of 286 feet in length, and of 3,404 tons, builder’s measurement, with engines of 1,800 nominal h.p. Her armour-plating extended entirely round the vessel from 6 feet below the water-line up to the main deck. The armour was 5 inches thick except near the ends where it was reduced to 4½ inches, and arrangements were made for the protection of the rudder and steering apparatus, as well as of the whole of the lower deck. The armour extended 14 feet upwards about 120 feet along each side, so as to protect the amidship battery, which was also protected by cross bulkheads. She was fitted with a considerable number of watertight compartments, a double bottom, and steel plating over the deck beams. She carried fourteen steel breech-loading guns of 7 tons each in her battery, a pivot gun on the deck at the bow protected by an armour-plated shield, and a pivot gun aft. Her iron lower masts served to ventilate the interior, and her lower yards were of steel; her speed was estimated at thirteen knots.

Apparently so well satisfied were the Prussians with this product of a British yard, that when the opportunity offered two years later to acquire one of the most powerful warships yet designed, they took advantage of it. There had been laid down at Blackwall for the Ottoman Government, a vessel designed by Mr. Reed, Chief Constructor to the British Navy, but Turkey, either seeing a profit in the transaction or being short of cash—deficiencies not being unknown in the history of Ottoman finance—permitted her, when about half finished, to be acquired by the Prussian Government. She was 365 feet in length, or 30 feet longer than the Hercules, with a beam of 60 feet, and a mean draught of 26 feet of water, with a burden of 6,000 tons. Her engines, by Maudslay, were of 1,150 h.p. nominal, and 7,000 effective. She was constructed on the longitudinal system, and within both frames and ribs was another iron skin an inch thick, making her a double ship, the inner one being 4½ feet from the other. The armour was 8 inches thick amidships, and tapering downwards to a thickness of 7 inches to 7 feet below the water-line. It also tapered towards the bow and stern, diminishing from 8 inches to 6 inches. Under the counter or bows, where it was considered almost impossible a shot could strike, the armour was only 4 inches thick. But elsewhere there was never less than 6 inches of armour, besides the 10-inch teak backing and double iron skin. Aft of the bowsprit and forward of the stern were two heavy bulkheads, each of 6 inches of armour and 18 inches of teak, which were continued from the lower deck, through the main deck, and up to 7 feet above the spar deck, where they were curved to form shields, each pierced with four portholes for cannon and loop-holed for musketry. Within these shields were four Krupp’s steel breech-loading 400-pounders, which could be fired forward or aft, or as broadside guns; and there were also twenty-three similar guns between decks. She was at that time the heaviest vessel which had been docked in the Thames.

Her new possessors evidently thought very highly of her, or they desired to pay her builders a compliment, for the German Government selected her to represent the German Navy at the Jubilee Review in 1887.