The Finis Belli, the first regular Ironclad Ship armed with Cannon
The funnel on the poop is presumably the galley funnel, though placed in an unusual position.
It has been stated, but without any authority being quoted for the statement, that "chain-netting of iron was suspended to the sides of men-of-war, which were also strengthened by plates in the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth". I should say this is very doubtful, since Sir William Monson, in his Naval Tracts, published at that period, does not mention this practice, although he refers to a number of other protective devices. But, as we have already seen, iron was used as a protection—probably against ramming—by the Viking ships of many centuries before this time.
The first regular ironclad ship armed with cannon appears to be that quaint craft christened the Finis Belli, which was constructed by the burghers of Antwerp what time they were closely besieged by the redoubtable Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, in the year 1585. With this floating battery, for it was little else, the besieged hoped to be able to break the Spanish blockade. There are various accounts of her. One states that she was protected by iron plates, another that her sides were from 5 to 10 feet thick, "filled with rotten nets, well rammed in, which made them firm and almost impenetrable". Probably the hull proper, which was very low in the water, was protected in this way, and the built-up battery or casemate, which she had amidships, was covered more or less with iron. She mounted twenty heavy guns, besides lighter pieces, and carried a large number of musketeers, some in her fighting-tops, some behind a loopholed bulwark over her battery, and others, "which could not be hurt, being lodged lower than the cannon could batter".
Unfortunately for les braves Belges the Finis Belli was a total failure. In spite of her three rudders she was "very troublesome to govern", and eventually ran aground and had to be abandoned. The Spanish besiegers laughed prodigiously at this effort, and nicknamed the abandoned ironclad the Caramanjula or "Bogey-bogey". As for her designers, they re-named her Perditæ Expensæ, or "Money thrown away".
Japanese Ironclad of about 1600 A.D.
(From a drawing by a Japanese Naval Officer)
With hull covered with plates of copper and iron, two rudders, one at the bow and one at the stern; and a paddle-wheel as her propelling machinery, fitted inside.
The Dutch patriots struggling for freedom from Spanish tyranny had tried their hands at a somewhat similar contrivance about ten years earlier, which was known as The Ark of Delft. This seems to have been a double-hulled arrangement, with three hand-turned paddle-wheels placed between the two hulls. The Ark only rose 5 feet above the water-line, was 110 feet long and 46 feet broad. She mounted twenty guns, and "a large gallery was suspended from her three military masts"—whatever that may mean. It is a curious but generally accepted fact that a great many more or less modern "inventions" have been forestalled in the Far East. Gunpowder was first made in China; water-tight compartments were commonly used in the ships of that country hundreds of years before they found a place in our men-of-war. It is not altogether strange, therefore, that the Japanese should have been in possession of what may well have been a pretty formidable armour-clad so far back as the year 1600—a remarkable-looking craft, more like a big turtle than anything else. She was cased with hexagonal plates of iron and copper, fitted closely together. She had a rudder at both bow and stern, and was propelled by a paddle-wheel amidships, something like the Ark of Delft. A Captain Saris, who made a voyage to Japan in 1613, mentions that he there saw a junk of from 800 to 1000 tons, sheathed all over with iron. This was probably the one just described, which, by the way, is stated to have carried a battery of cannon.
It is hardly necessary to point out that impenetrability does not necessarily imply armoured protection. An earthen rampart may well be impenetrable, as may a thick-sided wooden ship, as was the Great Michael to the artillery of her day; yet, while affording protection to those behind it, neither the one nor the other is armoured. Between 1600 and 1800 there were many attempts at special forms of protection, from the floating batteries employed by the English in the mismanaged expedition to La Rochelle to the famous Spanish floating batteries destroyed at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1781; but iron ship-armour does not appear again till the year of Trafalgar.