THE BRITISH NAVY.
By SIR EDWARD J. REED.
When timber gave place to iron and steel in the construction of war-ships, the naval possibilities of Great Britain became practically illimitable. Prior to that great change the British Admiralty, after exhausting its home supplies of oak, had to seek in the forests of Italy and of remote countries those hard, curved, twisted, and stalwart trees which alone sufficed for the massive framework of its line-of-battle ships. How recently it has escaped from this necessity may be inferred from the fact that the present writer, on taking office at the Admiralty in 1863, found her Majesty’s dockyards largely stored with recent deliveries of Italian and other oak timber of this description.
And here it may not be inappropriate for one whose earliest professional studies were devoted to the construction of wooden ships, but whose personal labors have been most largely devoted to the iron era, to pay a passing tribute of respect to the constructive genius of those great builders in wood who designed the stanch and towering battle-ships of the good old times. Skilful, indeed, was the art, sound, indeed, was the science, which enabled them to shape, assemble, and combine thousands of timbers and planks into the Grace de Dieu of Great Harry’s day (1514), the Sovraigne of the Seas of Charles’s reign (1637), the Royal William of half a century later (1682-92), the Victory, immortalized by Nelson, and in our own early day such superb ships as the Queen, the Howe, and scores of others. Only those who have made a study of the history of sea architecture can realize the difficulties which the designers of such structures had to overcome.
With the introduction of iron and steel for ship-building purposes the necessity for ransacking the forests of the world for timber suitable for the frames and beam-knees of ships passed away, and Great Britain, which early became, and thus far remains, first and greatest in the production of iron and steel, was thus invited to such a development of naval power as the world has never seen. The mercantile marine of England at the present time furnishes a splendid demonstration of the readiness with which the commercial classes have appreciated this great opportunity; but the Royal Navy, by almost universal assent, supplies a melancholy counter-demonstration, and shows that neither the capabilities of a race nor the leadings of Providence suffice to keep a nation in its true position when it falls into the hands of feeble and visionary administrators. Any one who will contrast the British navy of to-day with the British navy as it might and would have been under the administration, say, of such a First Lord of the Admiralty as the present Duke of Somerset proved himself in every department of the naval service five-and-twenty years ago, will understand the recent outcry in England for a safer and more powerful fleet.
THE “VICTORY.”
From a photograph by Symonds & Co., Portsmouth.
It is impossible, as will presently appear, to describe the existing British navy without making reference to those administrative causes which have so largely and so unhappily influenced it; but the primary object of this chapter is, nevertheless, to describe and explain it, and only such references will be made to other circumstances as are indispensable to the fulfilment of that object.
It is fitting, and to the present writer it is agreeable, in this place, to take early note of a matter which has, perhaps, never before been fully acknowledged, viz., the indebtedness of Great Britain and of Europe to the United States for some invaluable lessons in naval construction and naval warfare which were derived from the heroic efforts of their great civil war. The writer is in a position to speak with full knowledge on this point, as his service at the Admiralty, in charge of its naval construction, commenced during the American conflict, and continued for some years after its fortunate conclusion. There can be no doubt whatever that from the Monitor and her successors European constructors and naval officers derived some extremely valuable suggestions. The Monitor system itself, pure and simple, was never viewed with favor, and could never be adopted by England, except under the severest restrictions, because the work of England has mainly to be done upon the high seas and in distant parts of the world, and the extremely small freeboard of the Monitor, or, in other words, the normal submersion of so very much of the entire ship, is highly inconvenient and not a little dangerous on sea service, as the fate of the Monitor itself demonstrated. But for the work the Monitor was designed to do in inland waters she was admirably conceived, and her appearance in the field of naval warfare startled seamen and naval constructors everywhere, and gave their thoughts a wholly novel direction. In saying this I am not unmindful that seven years previously England had constructed steam-propelled “floating batteries,” as they were called, sheathed with iron, and sent them to operate against the defences of Russia. But useful as these vessels were in many respects, their construction presented no striking novelty of design, and their employment was unattended by any dramatic incidents to powerfully impress the naval mind. The Monitor was both more novel and more fortunate, and opened her career (after a severe struggle for life at sea) with so notable a display of her offensive and defensive qualities that all eyes turned to the scene of her exploits, and scanned her with a degree of interest unknown to the then existing generation of sailors and ship-builders. Her form and character were in most respects singular, her low deck and erect revolving tower being altogether unexampled in steamship construction. He must have been a dull and conservative naval architect, indeed, whose thoughts Ericsson’s wonderful little fighting ship did not stimulate into unwonted activity. But the service rendered to Europe was not confined to the construction and exploits of the Monitor itself. The coasting passages, and, later on, the sea-voyages, of other vessels of the Monitor type, but of larger size, were watched with intense interest, and gave to the naval world instructive experiences which could in no other way have been acquired. Some of these experiences were purchased at the cost of the lives of gallant men, and that fact enhanced their value.
THE “GLATTON.”
It is not possible to dwell at length upon the means by which the Monitor influence took effect in the navies of Europe, but it may be doubted whether ships like the Thunderer, Devastation, and Dreadnought, which naval officers declare to be to-day the most formidable of all British war-ships, would have found their way so readily into existence if the Monitors of America had not encouraged such large departures from Old-world ideas. In this sense the Times correctly stated some years ago that the “American Monitors were certainly the progenitors of our Devastation type.” The one ship in the British navy which comes nearest to the American Monitor, in respect of the nearness of her deck to the water, is the Glatton, a very exceptional vessel, and designed under a very peculiar stress of circumstances. But even in her case, as in that of every other armored turret-ship of the present writer’s design, the base of the turret and the hatchways over the machinery and boilers were protected by an armored breastwork standing high above this low deck, whereas in the American Monitors the turret rests upon the deck, which is near to the smooth sea’s surface.
We have here, in the features just contrasted, the expression of a fundamental difference of view between the American system, as applied to sea-going turret-ships, and the European system of sea-going ships introduced by the writer. It has never been possible, in our judgment on the British side of the Atlantic, to regard even such Monitors as the Puritan and Dictator were designed to be, as sufficiently proof to sea perils. At the time when these lines were penned the following paragraph appeared in English newspapers: “The Cunard steamer Servia arrived at New York yesterday, being three days overdue. During a heavy sea the boats, the bridge, and the funnel were carried away, and the saloon was flooded.” Any one who has seen the Servia, and observed the great height above the smooth sea’s surface at which her boats, bridge, and funnel are carried, will be at no loss to infer why it is that we object to ships with upper decks within two or three feet only of that surface. In short, it can be demonstrated that ships of the latter type are liable, in certain possible seas, to be completely ingulfed even to the very tops of their funnels. In the case of the Glatton, which had to be produced in conformity to ideas some of which were not those of the designer, one or two devices were resorted to expressly in order to secure in an indirect manner some increase of the assigned buoyancy, and thus to raise the upper deck above its prescribed height. The officers who served in her, however, judiciously regarded her, on account of her low deck, as fit only for harbor service or restricted coast defence.
A very dangerous combination, as the writer regards it, was once proposed for his adoption by the representative of a colonial government, but was successfully resisted. This was the association of a “Coles” or English turret (which penetrates and passes bodily through the weather deck) with a low American Monitor deck. This was opposed on the ground that with such an arrangement there must of necessity be great danger at sea of serious leakage around the base of the turret as the waves swept over the lower deck. It would be extremely difficult to give to the long, circular aperture around the turret any protection which would be certain, while allowing the turret to revolve freely, both to withstand the fire of the guns and to resist the attack of the sea.
It will now be understood that while the Monitor system was from the first highly appreciated in Europe, and more especially in England, it never was adopted in its American form in the British navy. Russia, Holland, and some other powers did adopt it, and the Dutch government had to pay the penalty in the total disappearance of a ship and crew during a short passage in the North Sea from one home port to another. In a largely altered form, and with many modifications and additions due to English ideas of sea service, it was, however, substantially adopted in the three powerful ships already named, of which one, the Dreadnought, lately bore the flag of the British admiral who commands the Mediterranean fleet. If the opinion of officers who have served in these ships may be accepted as sufficiently conclusive, it was a great misfortune for the British navy when the ruling features of this type of ship were largely departed from in its first-class ships, and made to give place to a whole series of so-called first-class iron-clads, of which only about one-third of the length has been protected by armor, and which are consequently quite unfit to take a place in any European line of battle.
THE “DREADNOUGHT.”
The characteristic differences between the American type and the English type of sea-going Monitors (if we may apply that designation to the Devastation type) have already been stated, but may be restated here in a single sentence, viz., the elevation in the English ship of the turret breastwork deck to a height of eleven or twelve feet above the sea’s surface, and the raising of the upper deck generally, or of a considerable part of it, to at least that height, by means of lightly built superstructures. Over these again, and many feet above them, are built bridges and hurricane decks, from which the ships may be commanded in all weathers. Lofty as these ships are by comparison with American Monitors, it is only gradually that they have acquired the confidence of the naval service, so freely do the waves sweep over their weather decks when driven, even in moderate weather, against head-seas.
The British navy, having very diversified services to perform during both peace and war, requires ships of various kinds and sizes. Its first and greatest requirement of all is that of line-of-battle ships in sufficient numbers to enable England to stand up successfully against any European naval force or forces that may threaten her or her empire. If any one should be disposed to ask why this requirement—which is obviously an extreme one, and an impossible one for more than a single power—is more necessary for England than for any other country, the answer must be, Circumspice! To look round over England’s empire is to see why her failure on the sea would be her failure altogether. France, Germany, Italy, and even Holland, might each get along fairly well, losing nothing that is absolutely essential to their existence, even if every port belonging to them were sealed by an enemy’s squadron. But were Great Britain to be cut off from her colonies and dependencies, were her ships to be swept from the seas, and her ports closed by hostile squadrons, she would either be deprived of the very elements of life itself, or would have to seek from the compassion of her foes the bare means of existence. It is this consideration, and the strong parental care which she feels for her colonies, that make her sons indignant at any hazardous reduction of her naval strength. There are even in England itself men who cannot or will not see this danger, and who impute to those who strive to avert it ambitious, selfish, and even sordid motives. But it is to no unworthy cause that England’s naval anxieties are due. We have no desire for war; we do not hunger for further naval fame; we cherish no mean rivalry of other powers who seek to colonize or to otherwise improve their trade; we do not want the mastery of the seas for any commercial objects that are exclusively our own. What we desire to do is to keep the seas open thoroughfares to our vast possessions and dependencies, and free to that commercial communication which has become indispensable to our existence as an empire. To accomplish that object we must, at any cost, be strong, supremely strong, in European waters; and it is for this reason that England’s line-of-battle ships ought to be always above suspicion both in number and in quality.
THE “INFLEXIBLE.”
It is not a pleasant assertion for an Englishman to make when he has to say that this is very far from being the case at present. A few months ago this statement, from whomsoever it emanated, would have been received with distrust by the general public, for the truth was only known to the navy itself and to comparatively few outsiders. But the official communications made to both Houses of Parliament early in December, 1885, prepared the world for the truth, the First Lord of the Admiralty in the Chamber of Peers and Lord Brassey in the House of Commons having then proposed to Parliament a programme of additional ship-building which provided for a considerable increase in the number of its first-class ships and cruisers, and which also provided, on the demand of the present writer, that the cruisers should be protected with belts of armor—an element of safety previously denied to them. It need hardly be repeated, after this wholesale admission of weakness by the Admiralty, that Great Britain is at present in far from a satisfactory condition as regards both the number and the character of its ships. Were that not so, no public agitation could have moved the government to reverse in several respects a policy by which it had for so long abided.
It will be interesting to broadly but briefly review the causes of the present deplorable condition of the British navy. In the first place, in so far as it is a financial question, it has resulted mainly from the sustained attempt of successive governments to keep the naval expenditure within or near to a fixed annual amount, notwithstanding the palpable fact that every branch of the naval service, like most other services, is unavoidably increasing in cost, while the necessities of the empire are likewise unavoidably increasing. The consequence is that, as officers and men of every description must be paid, and all the charges connected therewith must in any event be fully met, the ship-building votes of various kinds are those upon which the main stress of financial pressure must fall. From this follows a strong desire, to which all Boards of Admiralty too readily yield, to keep down the size and cost of their first-class ships, to the sacrifice of their necessary qualities. This may be strikingly illustrated by the fact that, although the iron Dreadnought, a first-class ship, designed fifteen or sixteen years ago, had a displacement of 10,820 tons, and was powerful in proportion, the Admiralty has launched but a single ship (the Inflexible) since that period, of which the displacement has reached 10,000 tons. In fact, every large iron-clad ship for the British navy since launched has fallen from twelve hundred to twenty-four hundred tons short of the Dreadnought’s displacement, and has been proportionally feeble.
If this cutting down in the size of the principal ships of Great Britain had been attended by a corresponding reduction in the sizes of the ships of other powers, or even by some advantages of design which largely tended to make up for the defect of size, there might be something to say for it. But the French ships have shown no such falling off in size, and have benefited as fully as the English ships by the use of steel and by the improved power and economy of the marine steam-engine.
Simultaneously with the reduction in the size of the English ships there has been brought about—voluntarily, and not as a consequence of reduced size, for it was first applied in the largest of all British men-of-war, the Inflexible—a system of stripping the so-called armored ships of the English navy of a large part of their armor, and reducing its extent to so deplorable a degree that, as has already been said, they are quite unfit to take part, with any reasonable hope of success, in any general engagement. Here, again, there might have been something to say for a large reduction in the armored surface of ships if it had been attended by some great compensation, such as that which an immense increase in the thickness of the armor applied might have provided, although no such increase could ever have compensated for such a reduction of the armored part of the ship as would have exposed the whole ship to destruction by the mere bursting in of the unarmored ends, which is what has been done. But although in the case of the large Inflexible the citadel armor was of excessive thickness, that is not true of the more recent ships of England, the armor of which sometimes falls short of that of the French ships, in two or three instances by as much as four inches, the French ships having 22-inch armor, and the English 18-inch. But by the combined effect of injudicious economy and of erroneous design, therefore—both furthered by a sort of frenzied desire on the part of the British Admiralty to strip the ships of armor, keep down their speed, delay their completion, and otherwise paralyze the naval service, apparently without understanding what they were about—the British navy has been brought into a condition which none but the possible enemies of the country can regard without more or less dismay.
SECTION OF THE “AMIRAL DUPERRÉ.”
SECTION OF THE “INFLEXIBLE.”
SECTION OF THE “COLLINGWOOD.”
NEW ADMIRALTY SHIP.
In order to illustrate the extent to which side armor has been denied to the British ships, as compared with the French, we refer the reader to these diagrams of the Amiral Duperré (French) and of the Inflexible and Collingwood (both English). The black portions represent the side armor in each case. It is scarcely possible for any one friendly to Great Britain to look at these diagrams, and realize what they signify, without profoundly regretting that a sufficient force of public opinion has not yet been exerted to compel the Admiralty to a much more liberal use of armor in the new first-class ships, the intended construction of which was announced to Parliament in December, 1885. In these new ships, while the length of the partial belt has been slightly increased, no addition to its height above water has been made (as compared with the Collingwood or “Admiral” class), so that the slightest “list” towards either side puts all the armor below water. To describe such ships as “armored ships” is to convey a totally false impression of their true character. A side view of one of these new ships shows that the two principal guns are carried high up forward in an armored turret, which sweeps from right ahead, round the bow on each side, and well towards the stern, while several smaller guns are carried abaft with very thin armor protection to complete the offensive powers of the ship. The arrangement of the two principal guns in a turret forward resembles that of the Conqueror, but in her the armor rises high above the water, and a belt extends to the bow and nearly to the stern. It is a matter of inexpressible regret that the armored surface of these new ships is so excessively contracted as to be wholly insufficient to preserve the ship from that terrible danger to which so many of their predecessors have been exposed, viz., that of capsizing from loss of stability when the unarmored parts alone have been injured.
THE “DEVASTATION.”
There is a sense in which all the British ships to which reference has thus far been made may be roughly regarded as developments of, or at least as starting from, the Devastation, or British Monitor type of ship, for in all of them masts and sails have been done away with, and steam propulsion relied upon, a single military mast alone remaining.[1] We have now to notice another and more numerous class of ships, which may be regarded as the lingering representatives of those sailing-ships which have come down to us through the long centuries, but which are now rapidly disappearing, yielding to the all-prevalent power of steam. Some of these ships were built for the line of battle, in their respective periods, but as they range in size from about one thousand tons of displacement up to nearly eleven thousand tons, it is obvious that many of them were built for various other employments. In dealing with the full-rigged ships, we are taking account of types of war-ships which, for all but secondary purposes, are passing away. It fell to the lot of the present writer (under the rule of Mr. Childers, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and of Admiral Sir Robert Spencer Robinson, then Controller of the Navy) to introduce the mastless war-ship, and thus to virtually terminate what had certainly been for England a glorious period, viz., that of the taunt-masted, full-rigged, and ever-beautiful wooden line-of-battle ship. It is now, alas! but too apparent (from what has gone before) that in virtually terminating that period, and opening the era of the steam and steel fighting engine, we were also introducing an era in which fantastic and feeble people might but too easily convert what ought to have been the latest and greatest glory of England into her direct peril, and possibly even her early overthrow.
The first British iron-clad (neglecting the “floating batteries” of 1854) was the Warrior, a handsome ship 380 feet long, furnished with steam-power, and provided with masts, spars, and a large spread of canvas. Her ends were unprotected by armor, and her steering gear consequently much exposed. She was succeeded by a long series of full-rigged iron-clads, all of them supplied with steam-power likewise, the series continuing down to the present time. The little dependence which is now placed in the British navy upon the use of sail-power in armored ships will be seen, however, when it is stated that of all the ships protected by side armor which are now under construction in the royal dockyards, but two are to be given any sail-power at all, and these are to be rigged on two masts only, although the ships are of large size, and intended for cruising in distant seas.[2]
It is unnecessary in a popular subject of this description to dwell upon, or even to state, the minor differences which exist between the different types of rigged iron-clads. There are, however, some points of interest in connection with their armor and armament to be mentioned. In the design of the first group (speaking chronologically) were commenced those changes in the disposition of the armor which continue down to the present time, the British Admiralty being so mixed and so virtually irresponsible a body that it is not obliged to have a mind of its own for any great length of time, even when many of the same men continue in office.
The Warrior, as we saw, and the sister ship Black Prince, had a central armored battery only; the same is true of those reduced Warriors, the Defence and the Resistance. But the next succeeding ships of the Warrior’s size, the Minotaur and Agincourt, were fully armored from end to end; and the somewhat smaller ship the Achilles was furnished with a complete belt at the water-line. The Hector and Valiant (improved Defences) had complete armor above the water, but, oddly enough, had part of the water-line at each end left unarmored. A third ship of the Minotaur class, the Northumberland, was modified by the present writer at the bow and stern on his entering the Admiralty, the armor above water being there reduced, and an armored bow breastwork constructed. Within this armored breastwork were placed two heavy guns firing right ahead. With this exception, all these early ships, nine in number, were without any other protected guns than those of the broadside.
These ships were followed by a series of rigged ships of the writer’s design, viz., the Bellerophon, Hercules, Sultan, Penelope, Invincible, Iron Duke, Vanguard, Swiftsure, and Triumph, all with hulls of iron, or of iron and steel combined, together with a series of rigged ships constructed of wood, converted from unarmored hulls or frames, viz., Enterprise, Research, Favorite, Pallas, Lord Warden, Lord Clyde, and Repulse. Every one of these ships was protected by armor throughout the entire length of the vessel in the region of the water-line, and in some cases the armor rose up to the upper deck. Most of them, however, had the armor above the belt limited to a central battery. The chief interest in these vessels now lies in the illustrations they furnish of the evolution, so to speak, of bow and stern fire. In several of them a fire approximately ahead and astern (reaching to those directions within about twenty degrees) was obtained by means of ports cut near to the ship’s side, through the transverse armored bulkheads. In others these bulkheads were turned inward towards the battery near the sides of the ship in order to facilitate the working of the guns when firing as nearly ahead and astern as was practicable. In the Sultan an upper-deck armored battery was adopted for the double purpose of forming a redoubt from which the ship could be manœuvred and fought in action, and of providing a direct stern fire from protected guns. In the five ships of the Invincible class a direct head and stern fire was obtained from a somewhat similar upper-deck battery, which projected a few feet beyond the side of the ship.
THE “SULTAN.”
The rigged ships of later design than the writer’s present a still greater variety in the disposition of their armor and armaments. This variety may be in part illustrated by four examples, which for convenience are principally taken from Lord Brassey’s book.[3] The scales of these small drawings, as given there, are not all the same. These examples are the Alexandra, the Téméraire, the Nelson, and the Shannon. The Alexandra (of which a separate view, in sea-going condition, is given), which is probably the best of the rigged iron-clads of the British navy, may be regarded as a natural, but not the less meritorious, development of the combined broadside and bow and stern fire of the central-battery ships which preceded her. In her were provided a broadside battery on the main-deck, a direct bow fire, also on that deck, and both a direct bow and a direct stern fire on the upper deck from within armor, as in the Invincible class. The guns employed for bow and stern fire were all available for broadside fire. The upper-deck battery did not project beyond the main-deck as in the Invincible class, the forward and after parts of the ship above the main-deck being greatly contracted in breadth in order to allow the guns to fire clear both forward and aft. The Téméraire is a smaller ship than the Alexandra, and has a battery similar to hers on the main-deck, but with one gun less on each side, the danger of a raking fire entering through the foremost battery port being met by a transverse armored bulkhead, as shown in the plan of the ship. She is provided with an additional bow gun and a stern-chaser, carried high up in barbette towers, but worked on Colonel Moncrieff’s disappearing principle.
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “ALEXANDRA.”
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “TÉMÉRAIRE.”
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “NELSON.”
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “SHANNON.”
“The Téméraire fires three 25-ton guns right ahead, against two 25-ton and two 18-ton guns in the Alexandra; on either bow, two 25-ton against one 25-ton and one 18-ton; right aft, one 25-ton against two 18-ton; on either quarter, one 25-ton against one 18-ton; on either beam, if engaged on one side at a time, two 25-ton and two 18-ton, with a third 25-ton available through only half the usual arc, against three 18-ton guns, with two of the same weight and one of 25-tons, each available with the limitation just described.”[4]
THE “ALEXANDRA.”
The Alexandra is a ship of 9500 tons displacement, the Téméraire is of 8500 tons; after them came the Nelson (to which the Northampton is a sister ship), of 7320 tons displacement. This vessel cannot be regarded as an armored ship at all, in the usual sense of the word, having but a partial belt of armor, and none of her guns being enclosed within armor protection, although two guns for firing ahead and two for firing astern are partially sheltered by armor. Even less protection than this is afforded to the guns of the Shannon, which also has but a partial belt of armor, and protection for two bow guns only. The comparatively small size of the Shannon (5400 tons displacement) relieves her in some degree from the reproach of being so little protected; but it is difficult (to the present writer) to find a justification for building ships of 7320 tons, like the Nelson and Northampton, and placing them in the category of armor-plated ships, seeing that their entire batteries are open to the free entrance of shell fire from all guns, small as well as large. Where a ship has a battery of guns protected against fire in one or more directions, but freely exposed to fire coming in other directions, to assume that the enemy will be most likely to attack the armor, and avoid firing into the open battery, appears to be a reversal of the safe and well-accepted principle of warfare, viz., that your enemy will at least endeavor to attack your vulnerable part. No doubt, when the size or cost of a particular ship is limited, the designer has to make a choice of evils, but where people are as free as is the British Board of Admiralty to build safe and efficient ships, the devotion of so much armor as the Nelson and Northampton carry to so limited a measure of protection is a very singular proceeding, and illustrates once more with how little wisdom the world is governed.
THE “TÉMÉRAIRE.”
Before passing from the armored ships of the navy—or, rather, as we must now say, in view of some of the ships just described and illustrated, before passing from the ships which have some armor—it is desirable to take note of a few exceptional vessels which cannot be classed either with the pretentious and so-called line-of-battle ships or with the rigged iron-clads generally. Among these will be found two comparatively small ships, designed by the writer many years ago to serve primarily as rams, but to carry also some guns. These were the Hotspur and Rupert. The water-line of the Hotspur was protected with very thick armor for her day (11-inch), extending from stem to stern, dipping down forward to greatly strengthen the projecting ram. She carried (besides a few smaller guns) the largest gun of the period, one of twenty-five tons, mounted on a turn-table, but protected by a fixed tower pierced with four ports.[5] This fixed tower was years afterwards replaced by a revolving turret, similar to that which the writer gave in the first instance to the Rupert, designed soon after the Hotspur. Both the armor and the armament of the second vessel were heavier than those of the first, but the ram, as before, was the chief feature of the ship.
It is needless here to describe some of the very early turret-ships, such as the Prince Albert, Scorpion, Wyvern, and Royal Sovereign, all of which embodied the early (though not by any means the earliest) views of that able, energetic, and lamented officer, the late Captain Cowper Coles, R.N., who was lost at sea by the capsizing of his own ship, the Captain, her low sides failing to furnish the necessary stability for enabling her to resist, when under her canvas, the force of a moderate gale of wind. Had he been able to foresee the coming abandonment of sail-power in rigged ships, and had he been placed, as the writer advised, in charge of the revolving turrets of the navy, leaving ship-designing to those who understood it, he might have been alive to this day, to witness the very general adoption in the British navy of that turret system to which he for some years devoted and eventually sacrificed his life.
THE “HOTSPUR.”
The first real sea-going and successful ship designed and built to carry the revolving turret of Coles was, by universal consent, the Monarch, whose sea-going qualities secured for her the distinction of transporting to the shores of America—as a mark of England’s good-will to the people of the United States, and of her admiration of a great and good citizen—the body of the late Mr. George Peabody. “The performances of the Monarch at sea,” says Brassey’s “British Navy,” “were in the highest degree satisfactory;” and nothing could exceed the frank and liberal praises bestowed upon her for her performances during the voyage to New York by the officers of the United States man-of-war which accompanied her as a complimentary escort.
A great deal has been written and said at different times about four other turret-ships of the British navy, viz., the Cyclops, Gorgon, Hecate, and Hydra—far less terrible vessels than these formidable names would seem to import. Whether these four comparatively small turret-ships possess the necessary sea-going qualities for coast defence (as distinguished from harbor service) is a question which has been much discussed, and is not yet settled. The truth is that the defence of the coasts of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland is a service in which the sea-going qualities of vessels may be called into requisition as largely as in any service in the world. There are some (this writer among them) who much prefer the mid-Atlantic in a heavy gale of wind to many parts of these coasts, more especially if there be any doubt about the perfect obedience of the ship to her steam-power and her helm. The worst weather the writer has ever experienced at sea was met with in the English Channel, and the only merchant-ship which he ever even in part possessed was mastered by a Channel storm, had to cast anchor outside of Plymouth Breakwater, was blown clean over it, and sank inside of it, with her cables stretched across that fine engineering work. It is therefore difficult, and has always been difficult, not to say impossible, for him to regard a “coast-defence ship,” which certainly ought to be able to defend the coast, and to proceed from one part of it to another, as a vessel which may be made less sea-worthy than other vessels. Only in one respect, viz., that of coal supply, may such a ship be safely made inferior to sea-going ships.
But whether the four vessels under notice be fit for coast defence or not, it ought to be known that they were not designed for it. They were hastily ordered in 1870, when the Franco-German war was breaking out, under the impression that Great Britain might get involved in that war. The British Admiralty knew then (as it knows now, and as it has known for years past) that the navy had not been maintained in sufficient strength, and it consequently seized the first design for a small and cheap ship that it could lay hands on, and ordered the construction, with all despatch, of four such vessels. The design which it happened to take, or which seemed to it most suitable, was that of the Cerberus—a breastwork Monitor designed by the writer for special service in inland colonial waters, and made as powerful as was then possible on 3300 tons of displacement, both offensively and defensively, but with no necessity for, and no pretensions whatever to, sea-going qualities. It is scarcely to be supposed that four vessels having such an origin could be expected to take their place as sea-going ships of the British navy; nor could they, either, for reasons already suggested, be expected to possess any high qualities as vessels for the defence of
“That land ’round whose resounding coasts
The rough sea circles.”
The Admiralty which ordered their construction may possibly be able to state why it built them, but even that is not at all certain. One of the evil results of mean economies in national enterprises in ordinary times is extravagant and aimless expenditure in times of necessity.
A later example of this kind of expenditure under very similar circumstances was furnished during Lord Beaconsfield’s administration, when war with Russia seemed likely to occur. Again the insufficiency of the navy was strongly felt, and again public money to the extent of two millions sterling or more was expended upon the acquisition of such ships as could be most readily acquired, regardless of cost. At this time the Neptune (of 9170 tons displacement), the Superb (of 9100 tons), and the Belleisle and Orion (each of 4830 tons), were purchased into the service, and having been built for other navies, and under very peculiar circumstances in some cases, required large dockyard expenditure to convert them to their new uses in the British navy.
It only remains, in so far as existing armored, or rather “partly armored,” ships are concerned, to advert to the Impérieuse and Warspite, two cruisers building for distant service. These ships are three hundred and fifteen feet long, and to them has been allowed, by the extraordinary generosity of the Admiralty, as much as one hundred and forty feet of length of armored belt. If this had been extended by only twenty feet, these British cruisers, which Lord Brassey—whether grandiloquently or satirically it is hard to say—calls “armored cruisers,” would have actually had one-half of their length protected by armor-plating at the water-line. In what spirit and with what object is not known, but Lord Brassey, in his outline sketch of these ships, writes the word “coals” in conspicuous letters before and abaft the belt. Can it be possible that he, undoubtedly a sensible man of business, and one who laboriously endeavors to bring up the knowledge and sense of his fellow-countrymen to a level with his own, and who was once Secretary to the British Admiralty—can it be possible that he considers coal a trustworthy substitute for armor, either before or after it has been consumed as fuel?
It is very distressing to have to write in these terms, and put these questions about Admiralty representatives and Admiralty ships; but what is to be done? Here are two ships which are together to cost nearly half a million of money, which are expressly built to chase and capture our enemies in distant seas, which are vauntingly described as “armored cruisers,” which cannot be expected always by their mere appearance to frighten the enemy into submission, like painted Chinese forts, which must be presumed sometimes to encounter a fighting foe, or at least to be fired at a few times by the stern guns of a vessel that is running away, and yet some eighty or ninety feet of the bows of these ships, and as much of their sterns, are deliberately deprived of the protection of armor, so that any shell from any gun may pierce them, let in the sea, and reduce their speed indefinitely; and in apparent justification of this perfectly ridiculous arrangement—perfectly ridiculous in a ship which is primarily bound to sustain her speed when chasing—a late Secretary to the Admiralty tells us that she is to carry in the unprotected bow some coals! May my hope formerly expressed in Harper’s Magazine find its fruition by giving to the British Admiralty a piece of information of which it only can be possibly ignorant, viz., that even while coal is unconsumed, it differs largely from steel armor-plates in the measure of resistance which it offers to shot and shell; and further, that coal is put on board war-ships that it may be consumed in the generation of steam? It is very desirable that this information should somehow be conveyed to Whitehall in an impressive manner, and possibly, if the combined intelligence of the two great nations to which Harpers’ publications chiefly appeal be invoked in its favor, it may at length be understood and attended to even by the Admiralty, and one may hear no more of the protection of her Majesty’s ships by means of their “coal.”
THE “WARSPITE.”
TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE “MERSEY.”
Passing now from the so-called iron-clads of the British navy, we come to a class of vessels which have their boilers, etc., protected from above by iron decks sweeping over them from side to side. The section of the Mersey, one of the most important British ships of this type, will illustrate the system of construction. Various attempts have been made to impose numerous ships of this kind upon a sometimes too credulous public as armored vessels, and Lord Brassey, while publishing descriptions and drawings which demonstrated beyond all question that the buoyancy and stability of these ships are not at all protected by armor, nevertheless deliberately includes some of them in his list of “armored ships.”[6] Now, the thick iron deck certainly protects (in some degree, according to its thickness) all that is below it against the fire of guns, and armor itself is sometimes employed to protect the gun machinery; but the existence of a thickish deck under the water, or mainly under the water, occasionally associated with patches of armor above water here and there to protect individual parts, does not constitute the ship itself an armored ship in any such sense of the term as is ordinarily accepted and understood. How can that be properly called an “armored ship” which can be utterly destroyed by guns without any shot or shell ever touching such armor as it possesses? The British Admiralty, in the “Navy Estimates” for 1883-84, under some unknown influence, put forward two ships of this description as armored vessels, and was afterwards forced to remove them from that category, but only removed them to place them in another not less false, not less misleading, not less deceptive and dangerous, viz., that of “protected ships.” And this most improper description is still applied to various ships of which the special characteristic is that they themselves are not protected. If the ship’s own coal and stores may be regarded as her protection, or if the existence of a certain number of exposed and extremely thin internal plates can be so regarded, then may these vessels be deemed partly, but only partly, “protected;” but if “protected ship” means, as every honest-minded person must take it to mean, that the ship herself is protected by armor against shot and shell, then the designation “protected ship,” as employed by the British Admiralty, is nothing less than an imposition. These ships are not protected. Neither their power to float, nor their power to keep upright, nor their power to exist at all, after a few such injuries as even the smallest guns afloat can inflict, is “protected,” as any war whatever is likely to demonstrate.
Those who employ such language ignore the essential characteristic of a ship-of-war, and some of the gravest dangers which menace her. It is conceivable that in the old days, when men wore armor, the protection of the head with an “armet,” and of the breast by a breastplate, might have justified the description of the man so defended as an “armored man,” although it is difficult to see why, since he might have been put hors de combat by a single stroke. But protect the boilers and magazines of a ship how you will, if you do not protect the ship itself sufficiently in the region of the water-line to prevent such an invasion of the sea as will sink or capsize her, she remains herself essentially unprotected, liable to speedy and complete destruction, and cannot truly be called a “protected ship.”
It must not for a moment be supposed that this is a mere question of words or designations. On the contrary, it is one of the most vital importance to all navies, and most of all to the navy of Great Britain. What the Admiralty says, the rest of the government, and beyond them the country, are likely to believe and to rely upon, and when the stress of naval warfare comes, the nation which has confidingly understood the Admiralty to mean “armored ships” and “protected ships” when it has employed these phrases, and suddenly finds out, by defeat following defeat, and catastrophe catastrophe, that it meant nothing of the kind, may have to pay for its credulity, allowable and pardonable as it may be, the penalty of betrayal, and of something worse even than national humility.
On the other hand, it is not to be inferred from the objections thus offered to the employment of deceptive designations that objection is also offered to the construction of some ships with limited or partial protection, falling short of the protection of the buoyancy and the stability, and therefore of the life, of the ship itself. It is quite impossible that all the ships of a navy like that of Great Britain, or of the navies of many other powers, can be made invulnerable, even in the region of the water-line, to all shot or shell. Indeed, there are services upon which it is necessary to employ armed ships, but which do not demand the use of armored or protected vessels. Unarmored vessels, with some of their more vital contents protected, suffice for such services. Moreover, even where it would be very desirable indeed to have the hull protected by armor to a sufficient extent to preserve the ship’s buoyancy and stability from ready destruction by gun-fire, it is often impracticable to give the ship that protection. This is true, for example, of all small corvettes, sloops, and gun-vessels, which are too small to float the necessary armor-plates, in addition to all the indispensable weights of hull, steam-machinery, fuel, armament, ammunition, crew, and stores. It would be both idle and unreasonable, therefore, to complain of the construction of some ships with the protecting armor limited, or even, in certain cases, with no protecting armor at all. Such ships must be built, and in considerable number, for the British navy. But this necessity should neither blind us to the exposure and destructibility of all such vessels, nor induce us to endeavor to keep that exposure and destructibility out of our own sight. Still less should it encourage us to sanction, even for a moment, such an abuse of terms as to hold up as “armored” and “protected” ships those which, whether unavoidably or avoidably, have been deprived of the necessary amount of armor to keep them afloat under the fire of small or even of moderately powerful guns.
We are now in a position to review the British navy, and to see of what ships it really consists. In this review it will not be necessary to pass before the eyes of the reader that large number of vessels of which even the boilers and magazines are without any armor or thick-plate protection whatever. It will help, nevertheless, to make the nature and extent of the navy understood if these are grouped and summarized in a few sentences. Neglecting altogether all large vessels with timber frames (which may be regarded as out of date, seeing that all the war vessels of considerable size now built for the navy have iron or steel frames), it may be first said that there are but three ships of the large or frigate class in the British navy which carry no thick protecting plate at all, viz., the Inconstant, the Shah, and the Raleigh. Of much less size than these, and equally devoid of protection, are the two very fast vessels, the Iris and Mercury, built as special despatch-vessels, steaming at their best at about eighteen knots. Among the unarmored corvettes are the Active, Bacchante, Boadicea, Euryalus, Rover, and Volage, all exceeding fourteen knots in speed, and all more than three thousand tons displacement. Then follow thirty-six smaller and less swift corvettes, nearly one-half the number being built wholly of wood, most of which exceed, however, thirteen knots in speed; and below these about an equal number of sloops of less speed and tonnage. The smaller gun-vessels and gun-boats need not be summarized.
THE “INCONSTANT.”
Passing on to vessels which, although themselves unarmored, have thick-plate decks to give some protection to the machinery, we observe first that there are eight ships of three thousand five hundred to three thousand seven hundred tons built and under construction, viz., the Amphion, Arethusa, Leander, Phaeton, Mersey, Severn, Forth, and Thames.[7] Lord Brassey very properly classes such of these vessels as he mentions in his lists as “unarmored ships,” although, as before mentioned, when two of them—the Mersey and Severn—were designed, with a deck two inches thick, the Admiralty at first ventured to put them forward as “armored ships.”
Ascending in the scale of protection, and dealing for the present with sea-going vessels only, we come to a long series of ships which are undeserving of the designation of armored ships, because they are liable to destruction by guns without the limited amount of armor which they carry being attacked at all. These ships are the Impérieuse and Warspite, previously discussed, and also the Ajax, Agamemnon, Colossus, Edinburgh, and the six large ships of the “Admiral” class. Any one who has intelligently perused the report of the committee on the Inflexible would justify the inclusion of that ship in this category; but she is omitted here out of deference to the strenuous exertions which were made to invent or devise some little stability for her, even when her bow and stern are supposed to be badly injured, and out of compassion upon those officers of the Admiralty who have long ago repented those trying compromises with conscience by aid of which they expressed some slight confidence in her ability to float upright with her unarmored ends badly damaged. She is omitted also out of gratitude to Lord Brassey for a sentence in which, while saving her from being placed in so dreadful a category, he honestly places some of the other ships in it without qualification or circumlocution. He says: “In one important particular the Ajax and Agamemnon are inferior to the Inflexible. The central armored citadel is not, as it is in the case of the Inflexible, of sufficient displacement to secure the stability of the ship should the unarmored ends be destroyed.”[8] In another place the former Secretary to the Admiralty, referring to the report of the Inflexible committee (which was nominated by the Admiralty, and under heavy obligations to support it), says: “It is doubtless very desirable that our armored ships should possess a more ample margin of stability than is provided in the armored citadel of the Inflexible. The ideas of the committee and of Sir Edward Reed on this point were in entire accord.”[9]
THE “COLOSSUS.”
It has recently been acknowledged that, as Lord Brassey states, the Ajax and Agamemnon are so constructed that they are dependent for their ability to float, the right side uppermost, upon their unarmored ends. To call such ships “armored ships” is, as we have seen, to mislead the public. But some pains have been taken of late to show that the “Admiral” class is better off in this respect, and certainly the known opinions of the present writer have been so far respected in these ships that their armored citadels, so called, have been made somewhat longer and of greater proportionate area. The following figures have been given:
| Percentage of water-line area | |
| covered by armor. | |
| Inflexible | 42. |
| Agamemnon | 45.4 |
| Collingwood | 54.15 |
| Camperdown | 56.35 |
But any one who understands this question knows perfectly well that “percentage of water-line area covered by armor” in no way represents the relative stabilities of these ships. Indeed, that is obvious upon the face of the matter, because we have seen the Ajax and Agamemnon pronounced devoid of the necessary stability when injured, while the Inflexible is said to possess it, although the former vessel has 45½ per cent. of the water-line area covered, while the latter has but 42 per cent. But this is not the consideration which has led to the condemnation of the whole “Admiral” class of so-called iron-clads as not possessing the essential characteristic of an armored ship, viz., the power to float, and to float with needful buoyancy and stability, all the time the armor is unpierced. The ground of that condemnation is to be found in the introduction into the “Admirals” of a dangerous combination from which the Inflexible and Agamemnon and other like ships are exempt—the combination of long unarmored ends comprising about forty-five per cent. of the water-line area with so shallow a belt of armor that, when the unarmored ends are injured and filled by the sea (as they would be in action), there would remain so little armor left above water that a very slight inclination of the ship would put it all below water. In the Agamemnon class, small as the initial stability may be (and with the unarmored ends torn open it would be nothing), the armor is carried up to a reasonable height above water. But in the “Admiral” class all the advantage arising from a slightly lengthened citadel is more than destroyed by this lowering of the armor. So great is the consequent danger of these ships capsizing, if ever called upon to engage in a serious battle at close quarters, that the writer cannot conscientiously regard them as “armored ships,” but must in common fairness to the officers and men who are to serve in them, and to the nation which might otherwise put its trust in them, relegate them to the category of ships with only parts protected.
It will be observed that nothing has yet been said about thickness of armor, although that is, of course, a very important element of a ship’s safety or danger. But important as it is, it has to be kept scrupulously separated from the question just discussed—the limitation of the armor’s extent—because no misrepresentation and no misconception can well arise concerning the relative power or trustworthiness of ships armored variously as to thickness, while much misrepresentation has actually taken place, and much consequent misconception has actually arisen, on the other matter, more than one European government having deliberately placed in the category of “armored ships” ships which in no true sense of the word can be so classed.
The following classifications will conform to the foregoing views, describing as “armored ships” only those which have sufficient side-armor to protect them from being sunk or capsized by the fire of guns all the time the armor remains unpierced:
BRITISH SHIPS OF WAR, BUILT AND BUILDING.
ARMORED SHIPS WITH THICK ARMOR.
| Name of Ship | Tons Displacement. | Indicated Horse-power. | Speed, in Knots. | Maximum Thickness of Armor, in Inches. | Largest Guns, in Tons. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alexandra | 9,490 | 8,610 | 15 | 12 | 25 |
| Belleisle | 4,830 | 3,200 | 12¼ | 12 | 25 |
| Conqueror | 5,200 | 4,500 | 15 | 12 | 43 |
| Devastation | 9,330 | 6,650 | 13¾ | 12 | 35 |
| Dreadnought | 10,820 | 8,200 | 14½ | 14 | 38 |
| Hero | 6,200 | 4,500 | 15 | 12 | 43 |
| Inflexible[10] | 11,400 | 8,000 | 14 | 24 | 80 |
| Neptune | 9,170 | 9,000 | 14½ | 12 | 38 |
| Orion | 4,830 | 3,900 | 13 | 12 | 25 |
| Rupert | 5,440 | 4,630 | 13½ | 12 | 18 |
| Superb | 9,100 | 7,430 | 14 | 12 | 18 |
| Thunderer | 9,330 | 6,270 | 13½ | 12 | 38 |
| Glatton[11] | 4,910 | 2,870 | 12 | 12 | 25 |
ARMORED SHIPS WITH MEDIUM ARMOR.
| Name of Ship | Tons Displacement. | Indicated Horse-power. | Speed, in Knots. | Maximum Thickness of Armor, in Inches. | Largest Guns, in Tons. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hercules | 8,680 | 8,530 | 14¾ | 9 | 18 |
| Hotspur | 4,010 | 3,500 | 12¾ | 11 | 25 |
| Sultan | 9,290 | 8,630 | 14 | 9 | 18 |
| Téméraire | 8,540 | 7,700 | 14½ | 11 | 25 |
ARMORED SHIPS WITH THIN ARMOR.[12]
| Name of Ship | Tons Displacement. | Indicated Horse-power. | Speed, in Knots. | Maximum Thickness of Armor, in Inches. | Largest Guns, in Tons. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Achilles | 9,820 | 5,720 | 14½ | 4½ | 12 |
| Agincourt | 10,690 | 6,870 | 15 | 5½ | 12 |
| Audacious | 6,910 | 4,020 | 13 | 8 | 12 |
| Bellerophon | 7,550 | 6,520 | 14¼ | 6 | 12 |
| Black Prince | 9,210 | 5,770 | 13¾ | 4½ | 9 |
| Gorgon[13] | 3,480 | 1,650 | 11 | 9 | 18 |
| Hecate[13] | 3,480 | 1,750 | 11 | 9 | 18 |
| Hector[13] | 6,710 | 3,260 | 12½ | 4½ | 9 |
| Hydra[13] | 3,480 | 1,470 | 11¼ | 8 | 18 |
| Invincible | 6,010 | 4,830 | 14 | 8 | 12 |
| Iron Duke | 6,010 | 4,270 | 13¾ | 8 | 12 |
| Minotaur | 10,690 | 6,700 | 14½ | 5½ | 12 |
| Monarch | 8,320 | 7,840 | 15 | 7 | 25 |
| Northumberland | 10,580 | 6,560 | 14 | 5½ | 12 |
| Penelope | 4,470 | 4,700 | 12¾ | 6 | 9 |
| Prince Albert | 3,880 | 2,130 | 11¾ | 4½ | 12 |
| Swiftsure | 6,640 | 4,910 | 15¾ | 8 | 12 |
| Triumph | 6,640 | 4,890 | 14 | 8 | 12 |
| Valiant | 6,710 | 3,560 | 12¾ | 4½ | 9 |
| Warrior | 9,210 | 5,470 | 9¼ | 4½ | 9 |
SHIPS ARMORED IN PLACES.
The ships in this list, although having some armor upon their sides, being liable to capsize at sea from injuries inflicted upon their unarmored parts, cannot be classed with the armored ships.
| Name of Ship | Tons Displacement. | Indicated Horse-power. | Speed, in Knots. | Maximum Thickness of Armor, in Inches. | Largest Guns, in Tons. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ajax | 8,490 | 6,000 | 13 | 18 | 38 |
| Agamemnon | 8,490 | 6,000 | 13 | 18 | 38 |
| Anson | 10,000 | 7,500 | 14 | 18 | 63 |
| Benbow | 10,000 | 7,500 | 14 | 18 | 110 |
| Camperdown | 10,000 | 7,500 | 14 | 18 | 63 |
| Collingwood | 9,150 | 7,000 | 14 | 18 | 43 |
| Colossus | 9,150 | 6,000 | 14 | 18 | 43 |
| Edinburgh | 9,150 | 6,000 | 14 | 18 | 43 |
| Howe | 9,600 | 7,500 | 16 | 18 | 63 |
| Rodney | 9,600 | 7,500 | 14 | 18 | 63 |
| Impérieuse[14] | 7,390 | 8,000 | 16 | 10 | 18 |
| Warspite[14] | 7,390 | 8,000 | 16 | 10 | 18 |
To the preceding list may now be added two ships of 10,400 tons displacement, with 18-inch armor, and five cruisers of 5000 tons displacement, with 10-inch armor, recently ordered by the Admiralty to be built by contract.
UNARMORED SHIPS WITH UNDER-WATER STEEL DECKS.[15]
| Name of Ship | Tons Displacement. | Indicated Horse-power. | Speed, in Knots. | Maximum Thickness of Armor, in Inches. | Largest Guns, in Tons. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amphion | 3,750 | 5,000 | 16¾ | 1½ | 6 |
| Arethusa | 3,750 | 5,000 | 16¾ | 1½ | 6 |
| Leander | 3,750 | 5,000 | 16¾ | 1½ | 6 |
| Phaeton | 3,750 | 5,000 | 16¾ | 1½ | 6 |
| Mersey | 3,550 | 6,000 | 17 | 2 | 6 |
| Severn | 3,550 | 6,000 | 17 | 2 | 6 |
| Thames | 3,550 | 6,000 | 17 | 2 | 6 |
| Forth | 3,550 | 6,000 | 17 | 2 | 6 |
Armored ships with 12-inch armor and upward are called ships with thick armor; those with armor less than twelve inches but more than eight inches thick are designated as ships with medium armor; and those with 8-inch armor or less as ships with thin armor.
A number of vessels of the “Scout” class are now under construction for the Admiralty. There is a disposition in certain quarters to include these among the ships of the class recorded in the last table. A transverse section of one of these is given here, in which the so-called protective deck is but three-eighths of an inch in thickness, and can therefore be pierced by any gun afloat, from the largest down to the very smallest. It would be quite absurd to speak of this class of vessels as being in any way “protected” against gun fire.
The first-class ships, so called, and the armored cruisers referred to in the former part of this chapter as having been promised to Parliament by the Admiralty representatives, were ordered, and work upon them is well under way in the yards of those firms to whom their building has been intrusted. The former are two in number, and their principal dimensions and particulars are as follows: length, 340 feet; breadth, 70 feet; draught of water, 26 feet; displacement, 10,400 tons; indicated horse-power, 10,000; estimated speed, 16 knots; thickness of armor, 18 inches; largest guns, 110 tons. The armor-belt in these ships is a little more than 160 feet long, or about half their length, but rises to a height of only two feet six inches above the water. Before and abaft the belt under-water armored decks extend to the stem and stern respectively, as in the “Admiral” class. Besides the two 110-ton guns, which, as has been said, are placed in a turret forward and fire over the upper deck, there are twelve 6-inch guns ranged round the after-part of the ship on the upper deck. A certain amount of protection has been given to these guns by means of armor-plating, but as this is only three inches thick, it can be said to do little more than protect the gun crews from the fire of rifles and of the smallest machine-guns.
TRANSVERSE SECTION OF ONE OF THE NEW “SCOUTS”
Of the armored cruisers,[16] five have been contracted for. Their principal dimensions and particulars are: length, 300 feet; breadth, 56 feet; draught of water, 21 feet; displacement, 5000 tons; indicated horse-power, 8500; estimated speed, 18 knots; thickness of armor, 10 inches; largest guns, 18 tons. These vessels are protected by an armor-belt nearly two hundred feet long, which extends to a height of one foot six inches above the water, and to a depth of four feet below it, and they also have under-water decks before and abaft the belt. They carry two 18-ton guns, one well forward, ranging right round the bow, and the other well aft, ranging right round the stern, as well as five 6-inch guns on each broadside, the foremost and aftermost of which are placed on projecting sponsons, by which they are enabled to fire right ahead and right astern respectively. None of these guns is protected except by the thin shields usually fitted to keep off rifle fire from those actually working the guns.
No mention has yet been made of the troop or transport ships of the British navy. There are in all about a dozen of these, but by far the most conspicuous and important of them are the five Indian transports which were built about twenty years ago, conjointly by the Admiralty and the government of India, and ever since worked by those departments of the State with general satisfaction. One of these, the Jumna, is illustrated in the annexed figure. So satisfied was the late Director of Transports, Sir William R. Mends, K.C.B., with the services of these ships that, before retiring from his office, he informed the writer that if he had to assist in the construction of a new fleet of such transports he would desire but a single improvement in them, as working ships, and that was the raising of the lower deck one foot, in order to increase to that extent the stowage of the holds.
THE “JUMNA.”
In the early part of this chapter the writer made reference to the influence exerted upon European ship-building by the incidents of the American civil war. He will conclude by a reference to an influence exerted upon his own mind and judgment by the most distinguished naval hero of that war, the late Admiral Farragut. On the occasion of that gallant officer’s visit to England the Board of Admiralty invited him, as a wholly exceptional compliment, to accompany it on its annual official visit of inspection to her Majesty’s dockyards. On the way from Chatham to Sheerness in the Admiralty yacht, the writer had a most instructive conversation with the admiral as to the results of his practical experience of naval warfare at the brilliant capture of New Orleans, and elsewhere, and one of those results was this: “Never allow your men to be deceived as to the ships in which you expect them to fight. They will fight in anything, and fight to the death, if they know beforehand what they are going about, and what is expected of them. But if you deceive them, and expose them to dangers of which they know nothing, and they find this out in battle, they are very apt to become bewildered, to lose heart all at once, and to fail you just when you most require their utmost exertions.” The writer has not forgotten this, and will not forget it. The British Admiralty is, unhappily, altogether unmindful of it.
NOTES.[17]
There is no rigorous law by which a universal naval policy may be formulated, for a nation’s environment, geographical and political, defines the conditions that must be obeyed. Underneath all, however, the immutable principle exists that the first and supreme duty of a navy is to protect its own coasts. The measures required to achieve this end are as various as a country’s necessities, resources, opportunities, and temperament. England, for example, has always guarded her homes, not at the hearth-stone nor the threshold, but within gunshot of her enemy’s territory; her defence has been an attack upon his inner line, and her vessels have been, not corsairs preying upon merchantmen, but battle-ships, ready for duel or for fleet engagement, whether they had the odds against them or not. This is the true sailor instinct; this has made England’s greatness.
To-day the question is so much governed by the complexities of modern progress that the details must be altered to suit the new demands; for it is not the England of the British Islands nor of the sparsely settled colonies that is now to be defended—it is a Greater Britain. The trade and commerce of England have increased so enormously in late years that no figures are necessary to show the interests she has afloat; but as proof of her growth in territory and in population outside of the mother-country, these statistics, taken from a late number of the Nineteenth Century, may perhaps be quoted:
FIFTY YEARS’ GROWTH OF INDIA AND THE COLONIES.
INDIA.
| 1835. | 1885. | |
|---|---|---|
| Area governed in square miles | 600,000 | 1,380,000 |
| Population of European stock | 300,000 | 500,000 |
| Population, colored | 96,000,000 | 254,000,000 |
| State revenues | £19,000,000 | £74,000,000 |
COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES.
| 1835. | 1885. | |
|---|---|---|
| Area governed in square miles | 520,000 | 7,000,000 |
| Population of European stock | 1,800,000 | 9,500,000 |
| Population, colored | 2,100,000 | 8,000,000 |
| State revenues | £5,000,000 | £51,000,000 |
That is to say, in fifty years England has added 7,260,000 square miles to her territory, and nearly trebled the population she controls in India and her colonies. Is it necessary to add that with all this at stake the ocean highways which her ships traverse must be held toll free; that the nations which she has peopled and owns must be protected; that the enemy’s squadrons which will seek to cut off her food supply, destroy her commerce, and burn her coaling stations, must be chased and captured; or that in the line of battle her ships must meet his and conquer? Sea-going and sea-keeping fleets and their auxiliaries must always be ready; transferable forts for protection abroad, and coast-defence ships for safety at home, must be kept afloat; and, in a word, every means must be employed which, through successful sea-war, will maintain her integrity as a nation. Her navy must be eclectic in types, the exact instrument for any expected operation being always at hand; her maritime administration must be comprehensive; and her preparation ever such as will anticipate and surpass that of all her rivals. Enormously armored battle-ships may be economically wrong, but while other countries build them so must she; for her immunity depends not upon treaties nor the friendly but false protestations of rivals, but upon the fear of her unassailable superiority. A mistaken naval policy is to any nation a grave disaster, but to England it means ruin. “We cannot allow,” wrote Lord Brassey, “any foreign power to possess vessels which we cannot overhaul, or to carry guns at sea which may inflict a damaging blow to which it is impossible for us to reply. We must have ships as fast as the fastest, and guns at least equal to the most powerful which are to be found in the hands of any possible enemy.”
Knowing, then, the interests imperilled, English designers are keen to achieve the best results; and when, as they believe, this has been accomplished, is it a wonder that they fall tooth and nail in a white-heat of positive assertion and flat contradiction upon all who differ from them? All are striving so honestly for the common good of the great country which they love with such intense and insular patriotism that even their imbittered differences of belief command the respect of right-thinking men everywhere. But in these variant faiths where is the truth? The question has run the gamut of experiment without being solved, the pendulum has swung from side to side and found no point of rest, and to-day there is a fixed agreement only as to the dangers which threaten.
The most marked tendencies, however, in all modern design are the diminution of side armor, the increase of deck protection, and the development of speed. The public mind is so familiar with the great speed of the large mail-boats that a common question, often put as an inquiry of disparaging comparison, is why war-vessels do not steam as fast. The simplest answer to this is that they do, and in types which, like the big steamers, are special, the boasted achievements have been surpassed. Of course the number of vessels that can make nineteen knots is limited, because the man-of-war is hampered by necessities of space, weight, and safety, which do not obtain with the others. Mr. White, who has been so often, and, it is to be hoped, so advantageously, quoted in this editing, says: “The necessity for giving protection to the engines and boilers of war-ships introduces special restrictions and difficulties in the design which are not known in merchant-ships, wherever in war-ships the overshadowing necessities of fighting power compel the acceptance in many cases of limited space and other inconveniences.... Merchant-steamers of all classes are built and engined for the purpose of steaming continuously at certain maximum speeds, and making fairly uniform passages; they consequently possess a considerable reserve of boiler power to meet adverse conditions of wind and sea. War-ships, on the contrary, ordinarily cruise at very low speeds, and yet must be capable of reaching very high speeds when required in action or chasing. A war-ship, for instance, that attained about sixteen knots on the measured mile, and could steam continuously at sea, as long as her coal lasted, at a speed of about fifteen knots, would ordinarily have to cruise at from nine to ten knots. At this low speed she would require, say, only one-seventh of the indicated horse-power which would be developed at her full sea speed, or say one-tenth of what would be developed on the measured mile. This obviously introduces conditions of a character entirely different from those of the merchant-ship. The war-ship’s machinery must be so designed that the power necessary to give her high speed at long intervals and for short periods should be secured with the least expenditure of weight consistent with insuring the maximum performance when required, and with the provision of proper strength and durability.”
The very vague ideas existing as to the cost of increased speed may be illustrated by a statement of the penalty this imposes in a 10,000 ton armored vessel. If at 10 knots this ship develops 1700 horse-power, there will be required at 15 knots, not one-third more, but 6200 horse-power—that is, over three times as much—and for 17 knots 12,000 horse-power, or an increase of 10,300 must be developed. This also demonstrates how much the ratio between speed and power falls; because if at 2000 horse-power 2.3 knots are gained for an increase of 1000 horse-power, at 12,000 for a similar increment of 1000 only one-quarter of a knot is obtained. In 1830 the steam pressure carried was from two to three pounds, and the coal expenditure each hour for every horse-power reached nine pounds; in 1886 the pressure had increased to 150 pounds, and the fuel consumption had fallen to 1.5 pounds, and to-day pressures of 200 pounds are to be utilized. As the swifter vessel with the higher economy is enabled to choose its range and position, and keep the sea for longer periods, it is easily seen that this question of speed is universally accepted as vital.
A parliamentary statement made in February shows that the following additions to the English fleet will be passed this year into the first-class reserve, and held ready for sea service at forty-eight hours’ notice.
| Thick armor battle-ship (Hero) | 1 |
| Partially armored ships of the Admiral class (Rodney, Howe, and Benbow) | 3 |
| Partially armored cruisers (Warspite, Orlando, Narcissus, Australia, Galatea, and Undaunted) | 6 |
| Partially protected cruisers (Severn and Thames) | 2 |
| Torpedo cruisers—six of the Archer class, one of the Scout class (Fearless) | 7 |
| Torpedo gun-boats of the Rattlesnake class | 3 |
| Composite gun-boats and sloops of the Buzzard and Rattler class | 3 |
| Total | 25 |
At the end of 1887-88 one armored ship, the Camperdown, and one protected cruiser, the Forth, will be nearly finished, the Anson will be approaching completion, and the new belted cruisers of the Orlando class will be far advanced. The armored battle-ships Victoria and Sanspareil, of 10,470 tons displacement, are to be delivered according to contract in October, 1888, and the Trafalgar and Nile, the largest war-vessels yet laid down in England, are being pushed rapidly. Out of the thirty-seven ships building or incomplete at the commencement of 1887-88, twenty-six will be completed by the end of the year, thus leaving only nine of those specified, and two others not ordered, in the programme of 1885 to be finished subsequently. The ships projected for this year include:
| 20-knot steel-bottomed partially protected cruisers (Medea, Medusa) | 2 |
| 19¾-knot copper-bottomed partially protected cruisers (Melpomene, Marathon, Magicienne) | 3 |
| Composite sloops of the Buzzard class (Nymphe, Daphné) | 2 |
| Composite gun-boats, improved Rattlers, (Pigmy, Pheasant, Partridge, Plover, Pigeon, Peacock) | 6 |
| Torpedo gun-boat of the Grasshopper class (Sharpshooter) | 1 |
| Total | 14 |
Besides the ships that have been or will be finished in 1886-87, it is believed that thirty-five of the fifty-five first-class torpedo-boats (125 to 150 feet in length) will be added to the twenty which were completed in June.
In addition to the vessels mentioned above there are others not described nor noticed in the text. The two battle-ships referred to upon [page 55] are the Sanspareil and the Victoria, the latter formerly known as the Renown, but named anew in April last. These ships are to carry 1180 tons of coal, and under forced draught are expected to develop 12,000 horse-power and a speed of 16.75 knots. The 9.2-inch 18-ton stern pivot gun originally intended for these vessels has been replaced by a 10-inch 26-ton rifle, and the secondary battery now includes twenty-one 6 and 3-pounder rapid fire guns. The other prominent departures from the central-citadel type are the Nile and Trafalgar. These 11,940-ton ships are the largest war machines ever laid down for the British service. They are to carry revolving turrets on the fore and aft line amidships, and will have an intermediate broadside battery mounted in a superstructure which covers the full width of the ship between the turrets. A water-belt line 230 feet in length rises in the waist for a distance of 193 feet, and both belt and citadel are covered by a three-inch steel deck, which is curved forward and aft to strengthen the ram and protect the steering gear. The armor is compound—eighteen inches thick on the turret and twenty inches thick as a maximum on the water-line—and to support the backing there is an inner skin two inches thick. The armament consists of four 13½-inch 68-ton breech-loading rifles, two in each turret; of eight 5-inch guns in broadside on a covered deck protected by three inches of vertical armor, and of eight 6-pounder rapid fire, ten 3-pounder Maxim, and four Gardner guns. The horse-power under forced draft is to be 12,000, and the estimated speed is 16½ knots. The main battery originally designed for these ships included only one 68-ton breech-loading rifle for each turret; subsequently this plan was rejected, and the armament stated above was adopted. “The economy of mounting the heavy guns in pairs arises not only from the increased power thus obtained from a given weight of guns, but from the fact that it requires but little more armor to protect two guns than to protect one. It also requires more machinery to work two guns separately than in pairs, and the magazine and ammunition supply arrangements of guns mounted separately are necessarily more complicated, and require more men to operate them than those mounted in pairs.
“The French idea in mounting their heavy guns singly in three or four armored barbettes is evidently so to distribute the gun-power as to leave a reserve of heavy guns in event of damage to one or more. But the demands for economy in weight are so great that two armored structures widely separated would seem to furnish as satisfactory a scattering of the heavy gun-power as is justifiable. Guns mounted on the middle line suffer less disturbance in rolling than those mounted either in the waist or en échelon, and their fire should be correspondingly more accurate.”[18]
The Impérieuse and Warspite have powerful ram bows, a steel protective deck, and a belt of compound armor which is 139 feet in length on the water-line, 8 feet in width, and 10 inches thick. The engines were designed to develop 7500 horse-power and a speed of 16 knots, but on her trial the Impérieuse attained with forced draft a maximum speed of 18.2 knots and 10,344 horse-power, and a mean speed, after four runs on the measured mile, of 17.21 knots. In September, 1886, with all guns and stores in place, and with 900 tons of coal in the bunkers, the Impérieuse developed a mean speed of 16 knots. The armament is composed of four 9.2-inch guns, mounted in four 8-inch plated circular barbettes, and situated one forward, one aft, and two in the waist; on the gun-deck there are six 6-inch guns, and the secondary battery is made up of twelve 6-pounder rapid fire, ten 1-inch Nordenfeldt, and four Gardner guns, and of four above-water and two submerged torpedo-tubes. Owing to the increased weights of the armament, stores, machinery, and equipments put in these vessels since they were first designed, the draught of water is now found to be nearly three feet greater than was intended. It is only fair to state that they were originally expected to carry but 400 tons of coal, though curiously enough, when this fuel capacity was subsequently increased to 1200 tons, no allowance was made for the additional armored surface required.
The armored free-board was to have been 3 feet 3 inches at a draught of 25 feet, but the supplementary weights increased the draught 11½ inches and reduced this free-board to 2 feet 3½ inches; and later, when the full bunker capacity of 900 tons was utilized, the draught was again increased 14 inches, and the free-board lowered to 1 foot 1½ inches. Finally it was for a time determined to carry 1200 tons of coal, though this would result, when the ship was fully equipped for sea, in bringing the top of the armored belt nearly flush with the water.
“As four of the torpedo tubes are above water, and have ports cut through the armor-belt, this decrease of free-board rendered them useless, it having been shown during an experimental cruise on the Impérieuse in December, 1886, with but 800 tons of coal on board and in a calm sea, that in attempting to discharge the broadside torpedoes they jammed in the tubes, and altered shape to a dangerous degree. In order to make them of any use they will have to be restored to their intended height above the water-line. It is believed this can be accomplished by removing part of the superstructure, by dispensing with all top-hamper and its attendant supply of stores, equipments, etc., and by limiting the maximum coal supply to the bunker capacity of 900 tons. The masts are accordingly being removed from both vessels, leaving them but one signal mast stepped between the funnels, and fitted with a military top.”[19]
In May, 1886, the Warspite, when very light, developed with natural draft 7451 horse-power and a speed of 15½ knots on a consumption of 2.69 pounds of coal each hour per horse-power; and with forced draft 10,242 horse-power and a speed of 17¼ knots were obtained on a similar consumption of 2.9 pounds of coal.
In the minority report of the 1871 Committee on Designs Admiral Elliot and Rear-Admiral Ryder “strongly advocated the use of a protective deck in conjunction with other features, instead of side-armor, for protection to stability. The idea as regards cruisers was first carried out in the full-rigged ships of the English Comus class of 2380 tons displacement and 13 knots speed, launched in 1878, in which the engines, boilers, and magazines were covered by a horizontal 1½-inch steel deck placed below the water-line, the space immediately above containing cellular subdivisions.
“Then followed, in 1882, the Leander and her three sister bark-rigged vessels, which are a compromise between the speed of the Iris and the protection of the Comus. They are of 3750 tons displacement and 17 knots maximum speed; they carry ten 6-inch 4-ton B. L. R., and 725 tons of coal, and have a ‘partial protective deck,’ covering engines, boilers, and magazines, which is 1½ inches thick, and which bends down below the load water-line at the sides. Our new cruisers, the Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta, bear a closer resemblance to this type than they do to any other in respect of their protection. About this time the Chilian cruiser Esmeralda, of 3000 tons, appeared, having a protective deck complete from stem to stern-post, carrying an exceptionally heavy battery and coal supply, and withal attaining the unprecedented speed of 18.28 knots. Italy was not slow to perceive the advantages of this type, and accordingly bought an improved Esmeralda, the Giovanni Bausan, and at once commenced to build four others, the Vesuvio, Stromboli, Etna, and Fieramosca, each of 3530 tons. Japan ordered two improved Esmeraldas, the sister ships Naniwa-Kan and Tacachiho-Kan, from Armstrong, in England, and a similar vessel, the Unebi, in France, while England laid down a similar class, the Mersey and three others, and France a similar cruiser, the Sfax, of 4400 tons.”[20] The Unebi was a bark-rigged, twin-screw, protected steel cruiser of 3651 tons. Her armament consisted of four 9.45-inch breech-loaders on sponsons, six 5.9-inch breech-loaders in broadside, one 5.9-inch bow pivot, twelve rapid fire and two Nordenfeldt machine guns, and a supply of Whitehead torpedoes. In September, 1886, she developed with forced draft 7000 horse-power and an average speed of 18.5 knots during four runs over the measured mile. She sailed for Japan in November, 1886, with a French crew numbering seventy-eight men, left Singapore for Yokohama on December 3, 1886, and has never been seen nor heard of since. She is said to have been top-heavy, and to have rolled dangerously in a sea way.
The Naniwa-Kan, a steel cruiser, 300 feet in length and 46 feet in beam, has on an extreme draught of 19 feet 6 inches a displacement of 3730 tons; the steel hull is fitted with a double bottom under the engines and boilers, and has a strong protective deck, two to three inches thick, which extends from the ram to the stern-post, and carries its edges four feet below, and its crown one inch above, the load water-line. There are ten complete transverse and several partial water-tight bulkheads; the space between the protective and the main deck is minutely subdivided into compartments, which are utilized as coal-bunkers, store-rooms, chain-lockers, and torpedo-rooms; the conning-tower is protected by two inches of steel armor; and two ammunition hoists, three inches thick, lead from the shell-rooms to the loading towers at the breech of the two heavy guns. The armament consists of two 10-inch 28-ton breech-loading rifles on central pivots, with 2-inch steel screens, and of six 6-inch guns, with a secondary battery of two 6-pounder rapid fire, eight 1-inch Nordenfeldt, four Gardner guns, and four above-water torpedo tubes. The engines are of the horizontal compound type, situated in two compartments, one abaft the other, and there are six single-ended locomotive three-furnace boilers in two separate compartments, with athwartship fire-rooms; the indicated horse-power under a forced draft was 7650, and the maximum speed 18.9 knots. This has since been exceeded. The Mersey and her class—the Severn, Thames, and Forth—like the Naniwa are unarmored steel cruisers, with a complete protective deck, the horizontal portion of which is one foot above, and the inclined three inches below, the water-line. The main battery of these ships consists of two 8-inch guns, mounted on central pivots forward and abaft a covered deck which carries ten 6-inch guns; the secondary battery has ten 1-inch Nordenfeldt and two Gardner machine guns, and there are six above-water torpedo-tubes in broadside.
“The development of the Mersey design has resulted in the new English ‘belted cruisers,’ in which, to satisfy the demand for a water-line belt of armor, the displacement has been increased to 5000 tons.”
The five originally projected—the Orlando, Narcissus, Australia, Galatea, and Undaunted—together with the Immortalité, subsequently laid down, have already been launched, and an additional cruiser of the same type, the Aurora, is well advanced. The general construction is similar to the Naniwa and Mersey, the larger tonnage being given in order to carry a water-line belt, which is ten inches thick, stretches for 190 feet amidships, and was intended to extend from 1½ feet above to four feet below the load water-line. The armored deck is from two to three inches thick, and the conning-tower is thirteen inches. The triple-expansion engines are planned to develop 8500 horse-power and a speed of 18 knots. Like the Impérieuse and Warspite, these vessels are found to draw much more water than was originally proposed. When designed in 1884 they were expected to have, with all weights on board, a mean draught of twenty-one feet, and to carry above water eighteen inches of the five feet six inch armor-belt. But a fever for improvement set in so valorously that the changes made in armament and machinery added one hundred and eighty-six tons to the displacement and increased the draught seven inches—that is, an amount which left the top of the protective belt only eleven inches above the smooth water-line. This submersion did not, however, cool the ardor of the Admiralty officials, for it has been decided that the nine hundred tons of coal originally fixed as the fuel supply must be carried; the immediate result of this is said to be an increase in the draught of eighteen inches, and a disappearance of the armor-belt to a point nearly six inches below the water-line. Subsequent improvements will be awaited with great interest, especially by those American journalists of inquiring tendencies who envyingly detect between the promise and performance of these ships opportunities which, had they occurred at home, would have enabled them to swamp our naval service and its administration in billows of pitiless ink.
The most popular naval event of the year was the review in July of the British fleet assembled at Spithead. The one hundred and twenty-eight war-vessels participating included three squadrons of armored vessels and cruisers, aggregating thirty-four ships, seventy-five torpedo-boats and gun-boats, divided into five flotillas, six training brigs, and thirteen troop-ships. Besides these there were the troop-ships appointed to carry the distinguished visitors, and the small vessels and dockyard craft allotted to the corporation of Portsmouth.
The war-ships were drawn up in four lines, facing up channel, the starboard column lying opposite the Isle of Wight, and the port column off Portsmouth. The ships were two cables and the columns three cables apart. The flotillas were ranged in double columns between the port line of the armored vessels and the main-land, and the troop-ships were placed in single column between the starboard line and the Isle of Wight. This made four lines of vessels on one side of the channel and three on the other, extending from South Sea Castle to the Rye Middle Shoals, or a distance of two miles. No such fleet was ever seen before in time of peace, for every class of the British navy was so well represented that the review of the Crimean fleet by the Queen and the Prince Consort, thirty-one years ago, suffered by comparison. Some of the wooden ships which figured at that time were present, and the wide differences in everything bore strong testimony to the developments which have been made within a generation. Nelson’s old ship, the Victory, was a conspicuous object, and her timbers echoed again and again with cheers as boat after boat passed her. More than that, the old ship mounted a gun or two and joined in the universal salute to the Queen. Shortly after two o’clock the Euphrates, Crocodile, and Malabar hove to off Osborne as an escort to the royal yachts when the Queen embarked.
The Queen left Osborne House a few minutes before three o’clock, went aboard the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, and left the buoy in the bay promptly at the hour fixed. She was preceded by the Trinity yacht and followed by the royal yachts Osborne and Alberta, and by the war-vessels Enchantress, Helicon, Euphrates, Crocodile, and Malabar. The royal procession proceeded straight to its destination and passed between the lines, leaving the coast-defence ships, gun-boats, and torpedo-boats on the port hand. After steaming as far as the Horse Elbow buoy the Victoria and Albert turned to starboard, passed between the two columns of large ships, and then between the lines of the foreign war-vessels. As the yacht steamed slowly by the war-ships the crews cheered loudly, but it was not until the Queen had gone through the double line that the royal salute was fired. On board such vessels as had no masts the turrets, breastworks, and decks were lined with the crews, and the spectacle was as splendid as it was potent with an earnest evidence of mighty power. Altogether the fleet extended over four miles, and even this length was added to by the great troop-ships which steamed into line and saluted the Queen as she made her progress.
The jubilee week was not without its accidents, for the Ajax and Devastation collided at the rendezvous, and subsequently the Agincourt and Black Prince had a similar experience. These mishaps evoked much hostile criticism, and among other things gave currency to an extract from a speech made by Lord Randolph Churchill several weeks before. Speaking of the navy, he had declared that, “In the last twelve or thirteen years eighteen ships have been either completed or designed by the Admiralty to fulfil certain purposes, and on the strength of the Admiralty statements Parliament has faithfully voted the money. The total amount which either has been or will be voted for these ships is about ten millions, and it is now discovered and officially acknowledged that in respect of the purposes for which these ships were designed, and for the purposes for which these ten millions either have been or will be spent, the whole of the money has been absolutely misapplied, utterly wasted and thrown away.”
Sir Charles Dilke does not agree with this pessimism of his political opponent, though he, too, has something to say of the British fleet, in relation to its influence upon the present position of European politics, which is well worth quoting.
“There is less to be said in a hostile sense with regard to the present position of the navy,” he concedes, “than may be said, or must be said, about the army. Clever German officers may write their ‘Great Naval War of 1888,’ and describe the destruction of the British fleet by the French torpedo-boats, but on the whole we are not ill-satisfied with the naval progress that has been made in the last three years. There is plenty of room for doubt as to whether we get full value for our money; but at all events our navy is undoubtedly and by universal admission the first navy in the world, and relatively to the French we appear to show of ships built and building a number proportionate to our expenditure. The discovery of the comparative uselessness of automatic torpedoes is an advantage to this country, and no great change in the opposite direction has recently occurred. M. Gabriel Charmes has pointed out to France the manner to destroy our sea-borne trade, but excellent steps have been taken since his book appeared to meet the danger which he obligingly made clear to us. It remains a puzzle to my civilian mind how Italy can manage to do all that in a naval sense she does for her comparatively small expenditure, and how, spending only from a fourth to a sixth what we spend upon our navy, she can nevertheless produce so noble a muster of great ships. But our naval dangers are, no doubt, dangers chiefly caused rather by military than by naval defects. Our navy is greatly weakened for the discharge of its proper duties by the fact that duties are thrown upon it which no navy can efficiently discharge. As Admiral Hoskins has said, it is the duty of the commander of the British fleet to drive the hostile squadrons from the seas, and to shut up the enemy’s ships in his different ports; but, on the other hand, he has a right to expect that our own ports and coaling stations shall be protected by batteries and by land forces. This is exactly what has not yet been done, although the defence of our coaling stations by fortresses and by adequate garrisons is essential to the sustaining of our maritime supremacy in time of war.
“It is only, however, by comparison with our army that I think our navy in a sound position. In other words, our military situation is so alarming that it is for a time desirable to concentrate our attention upon that, rather than upon the less pressing question of the condition of the navy. I must not be thought, however, to admit, for one single instant, that our navy should give us no anxiety. As long as France remains at peace, and spends upon her navy such enormous sums as she has been spending during the last few years, she will be sufficiently near to us in naval power to make our position somewhat doubtful; make it depend, that is, upon how the different new inventions may turn out in time of war. Our navy is certainly none too large (even when the coaling stations and commercial ports have been fortified, and made for the first time a source of strength rather than of weakness to the navy) for the duties which it has to perform. It would be as idle for us, with our present naval force, to hope to thoroughly command the Mediterranean and the Red Sea against the French without an Italian alliance, as to try to hold our own in Turkey or in Belgium with our present army. Just as the country seems now to have made up its mind to abandon not only the defence of Turkey against Russia, but also the defence of the neutrality of Belgium, so it will have to make up its mind, unless it is prepared to increase the navy, to resort only to the Cape route in time of war. Italy being neutral, and we at war with France, we could not at present hope to defend the whole of our colonies and trade against attack, and London against invasion, and yet to so guard the Mediterranean and the Red Sea as to make passage past Toulon and Algiers, Corsica and Biserta, safe. Our force is probably so superior to the French as to enable us to shut up their iron-clads; but it would probably be easier to shut in their Mediterranean iron-clads by holding the Straits of Gibraltar than to attempt to blockade them in Toulon. I confess that I cannot understand those Jingoes who think that it is enough to shriek for Egypt, without seeing that Egypt cannot be held in time of war, or the Suez route made use of with the military and naval forces that we possess at present.
“As against a French and Russian combination of course we are weaker still. Englishmen are hardly aware of the strength of Russia in the Pacific, where, if we are to attack at all, we must inevitably fight her, and where, if we are to adopt the hopeless policy of remaining only on the defensive, we shall still have to meet her for the protection of our own possessions. Just as the reduction of the horse artillery, comparatively unimportant in itself, has shown that the idea of the protection of Belgian neutrality has been completely given up, so the abandonment of Port Hamilton, instead of its fortification as a protection for our navy, seems to show that we have lost all hope of being able to hold our own against Russia in the North Pacific. On the 1st of August Russia will have upon her North Pacific station—cruising, that is, between Vladivostock and Yokohama—three new second-class protected ships—the Vladimir, Monomakh, and the Dmitri Donsköi, of nearly six thousand tons apiece, and the Duke of Edinburgh, of four thousand six hundred tons; one older protected ship, the Vitiaz, of three thousand tons; four fast-sailing cruisers—the Naïezdnik, the Razboïnik, the Opritchnik, and the Djighite; and four gun-boats, of which two are brand-new this year. While talking about their European fleets, the Russians are paying no real attention to them, and are more and more concentrating their strength in the North Pacific.”
“The British navy,” says another writer,[21] “is not in danger, and the British navy, whatever its shortcomings, is relatively far stronger than its thoughtless detractors would have us believe. Our ships do steer and our ships do steam—at least as well as those of other powers; and, what is more, our ships will ‘fight’ and our ships will ‘win,’ in spite of the dismal forebodings of interested panic-mongers.
“With the resources at our command, our armaments afloat admit of a rapid development, in which no other country can compete with us. A French writer has truly said, ‘La puissance d’une marine est moins dans son matériel à flot, que dans l’outillage de ses arsenaux, et dans la puissance productive de ses chantiers.’
“As a maritime power we are unequalled, and if we be true to ourselves we shall remain so.”
In 1886 the fighting-ships of the British navy were summarized as follows:
| Ships. | No. | Guns. | Displacement. | Horse-power. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARMORED. | Tons. | |||
| In commission and in reserve | 50 | 508 | 339,750 | 241,390 |
| Deduct ships of doubtful value | 7 | 137 | 50,780 | 30,970 |
| Total reliable armored ships | 43 | 371 | 288,970 | 210,420 |
| UNARMORED. | ||||
| In commission and in reserve | 197 | 1121 | 221,957 | 245,692 |
| Deduct ships of doubtful value | 15 | 76 | 27,760 | 27,470 |
| Total reliable unarmored ships | 182 | 1045 | 194,197 | 218,222 |
| Armored ships building | 12 | 148 | 89,660 | 114,000 |
| Unarmored ships building | 21 | 112 | 24,650 | 53,250 |
| Total | 33 | 260 | 114,310 | 167,250 |
| Armored ships being completed | 10 | 93 | 84,880 | 84,750 |
| Unarmored ships being completed | 10 | 90 | 26,790 | 41,800 |
| Total | 20 | 183 | 111,670 | 126,550 |
| Total armored ships | 72 | 749 | 514,290 | 440,140 |
| Total unarmored ships | 228 | 1323 | 273,397 | 340,742 |
| Grand total of ships | 300 | 2072 | 787,687 | 780,882 |
During the last year thirty-seven vessels of the following classes were stricken from the list, viz., five armored ships, seven cruisers of the third class, sixteen gun-vessels, one despatch-boat, and eighteen special service gun-boats. The total net value, excluding ordnance equipments, of the fleet when it is kept at a normal war strength is $191,568,720, and the annual ship-building expenditures required to sustain this standard of efficiency is $8,793,440. This is a very cheap insurance upon the property, material and moral, which is at stake.
The following table shows the armored and partially protected ships now under construction or lately finished:
| Name of Ship. | Tons. | Horse- power. | Speed. | Total Cost. | Armament. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TURRETS. | |||||
| Trafalgar | 11,940 | 12,000 | 16.5 | £844,318 | 4 67-ton, 8 5-in. |
| Nile | 11,940 | 12,000 | 15.5 | 889,421 | 4 67-ton, 8 5-in. |
| Victoria | 11,470 | 12,000 | 16.75 | 829,979 | 2 110-ton. |
| Sanspareil | 11,470 | 12,000 | 16.75 | 825,468 | 1 10-in., 12 6-in. |
| Edinburgh | 9,150 | 7,500 | 15.4 | 683,609 | 4 45-ton, 5 6-in. |
| Hero | 6,200 | 6,000 | 15.5 | 421,500 | 2 45-ton, 4 6-in. |
| BARBETTES. | |||||
| Anson | 10,000 | 12,500 | 17.5 | 752,288 | 4 67-ton, 6 6-in. |
| Camperdown | 10,000 | 11,700 | 17.5 | 743,074 | 4 67-ton, 6 6-in. |
| Benbow | 10,000 | 10,850 | 17.5 | 810,633 | 2 110-ton, 10 6-in. |
| Howe | 9,700 | 11,500 | 17.0 | 720,771 | 4 67-ton, 6 6-in. |
| Rodney | 9,700 | 11,500 | 17.0 | 726,482 | 4 69-ton, 6 6-in. |
| Collingwood | 9,150 | 9,570 | 16.5 | 670,752 | 4 44-ton, 6 6-in. |
| Impérieuse | 8,500 | 10,344 | 17.21 | 559,901 | 4 9.2-in., 6 6-in. |
| Warspite | 8,500 | 10,242 | 17.25 | 558,449 | 4 22-ton, 6 6-in. |
| BELTED CRUISERS. | |||||
| Immortalité | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 302,920 | 2 22-ton, 10 6-in. |
| Aurora | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 308,585 | 2 22-ton, 10 6-in. |
| Australia | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 290,613 | 2 9.2-in., 10 6-in. |
| Galatea | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 290,300 | 2 9.2-in., 10 6-in. |
| Narcissus | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 290,751 | 2 9.2-in., 10 6 in. |
| Orlando | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 299,905 | 2 9.2-in., 10 6-in. |
| Undaunted | 5,000 | 8,500 | 18.0 | 299,525 | 2 9.2-in., 10 6-in. |
| PARTIALLY PROTECTED CRUISERS. | |||||
| Mersey | 3,500 | 6,000 | 18.0 | 236,435 | 2 8-in., 10 6 in. |
| Severn | 3,500 | 6,000 | 18.0 | 234,282 | 2 8-in., 10 6-in. |
| Thames | 3,500 | 5,700 | 18.0 | 227,980 | 2 8-in., 10 6-in. |
| Forth | 3,500 | 5,700 | 18.0 | 221,913 | 2 8-in., 10 6-in. |
In the notes upon the next chapter, additional data referring to gun-boats and torpedo-boats will be found.