CHAPTER XI
Evolution of the Ironclad Battleship
"Our ironclads and torpedo-boats
Have never met the foe,
But times of peace don't alter us,
Our hearts are right, you know;
As right and tight as in the days
When glorious fights were won,
And if duty call, we'll on them fall
With torpedo, ram, and gun, my boys,
With torpedo, ram, and gun.
They may blow us up,
They may blow us down,
They may blow us every way;
But we'll sink or win,
And ne'er give in,
Though they blow us right away, my boys,
Though they blow us right away!"
"Sink or Win" (Joe the Marine). From "Per Mare",
Jane's Naval Annual, 1895.
We are accustomed to think of the armour-clad war-ship as entirely a thing of to-day, or at any rate of the last fifty or sixty years. This is, however, not altogether correct. Armour is not necessarily steel or iron—witness the derivation of "cuirass" from the French cuir, i.e. "leather". A French battleship is called cuirassé.
Protective devices of various kinds and materials have been used for hundreds, nay thousands, of years for the defence of ships specially designed for fighting purposes, though never, it must be admitted, so generally and extensively as at the present day. Raw hides were constantly used in ancient and mediæval times to protect ships and the wooden towers used in sieges on shore. Thick felt was also utilized for this purpose. The Normans hung their galleys with this material in a battle with the Saracens off Palermo in 1071, and it played not only a defensive but a decorative part in the equipment of the big "dromons" of the Saracens and Byzantines, which were covered with thick woollen cloth soaked in vinegar to render it fire-proof, and hung with mantlets of red and yellow felt—a rather gaudier war-jacket than the slate-grey of our "Dreadnoughts".
Whatever the advantages of felt, there were naval constructors who stood fast by the old "adage", "There's nothing like leather". Thus, at the siege of Tyre in 1171 and the forcing of the entrance of the Nile in 1218, an extensive use was made of a species of small craft known as "barbots" or "duck-backs", whose crews were protected by a strong domed deck or roof covered with leather. Again, in 1276, Pedro III of Aragon cuirassed two of his biggest ships with leather—probably raw hides—before sending them to engage the fleet of Charles of Anjou. Lead was also used for ship armour in mediæval times. It is said that the great dromon captured by Richard I off Beyrout had some kind of leaden plating. Later on, this heavy metal preceded copper as a sheathing for the under-water portions of ships: the Grande Françoise, launched in 1527, was lead-sheathed from her keel to the first wale above her water-line. Three years later than this date a regular "lead-clad" was launched at Nice, where she had been built to the order of the Knights of Malta, who had not very long before been driven out of Rhodes by the Turks.
This big vessel, the Santa Anna, was a regular "Dreadnought" in her day. While as fast as other unprotected vessels of her time, she was heavily plated with lead, fastened to her sides with brazen bolts, from her upper deck down to her keel; and this armour was so strengthened by the thick backing of her timbers that, "having been many times engaged, and received much cannonading, she was never pierced below the bulwarks". She carried fifty heavy guns, besides numerous smaller pieces, of which not a few were carried aloft in her many fighting-tops.
It is interesting to note that she had a large armoury, a chapel, forges, a bakery, and a band. "She had various lodges and galleries round the poop, and chests and boxes full of earth, wherein were planted cypresses and divers other trees and flowering shrubs, after the fashion of a garden, small but beautiful." This is about the only garden I have ever heard of afloat, except the mythical "garden in the main-top", where are said to be grown any vegetables, "tin-bag" or other, which arouse the inquisitiveness of ship-visitors. But the main-top has now gone, and I suppose the "garden" with it.
