In the Naval Chronicle for that year we have an account of a vessel designed by a son of the General Congreve who is famous as being the inventor of the "Congreve rocket", once a somewhat highly esteemed missile. The ship—it does not appear whether it was actually built or not—was intended for the attack of the French invasion flotillas which were blockaded inside their ports by our fleets. It was to have sloping sides covered with iron plates and bars, proof against any gun of the period, and was to be armed with four big mortars and the same number of 42-pound carronades. Her rudder, anchors, and cables were to be entirely under water, and so not exposed to hostile artillery, while she was to be rigged in such a way that masts, yards, and sails could be lowered or erected in a quarter of an hour. When these were "struck" and housed under the armour she could be moved—probably at a very slow pace—by oars pulled by forty men, worked entirely under cover.
Fulton, the famous American inventor, who built a submarine boat, and invented mines and torpedoes and other weapons of war, turned his attention to the protection of war-vessels. He was probably responsible for a little paddle-wheel-propelled vessel for towing torpedoes, which is described as being covered with ½-inch iron plates, "not to be injured by shot". Later on he built a steam frigate, which he called the Demologos, or "Voice of the People". This relied on 13-feet-thick sides to protect her crew, but was not armour-plated. She was blown up by accident in 1829, and replaced by the Fulton the Second, which seems to have been to some extent protected by iron armour.
But it was not till towards the end of the Crimean War that real steam-propelled armour-clad ships appeared, in the shape of a series of slow and unwieldy floating batteries, specially designed for the attack of the massive Russian fortifications. If anyone would like to see what these were like—that is, as regards their hulls, for the masts have long since disappeared—he has only to travel as far as Chatham Dockyard and ask the policeman on duty at the main gate to direct him to the Thunderbolt pier.
The Thunderbolt is one of these old ironclads which has come down to the useful but inglorious duty of acting as a landing-stage in the River Medway. Neither she nor any of her English sisters was ever in action; they were too late in the field—or rather the water. But several of the French floating batteries, almost precisely similar vessels, took a prominent part in the bombardment of the Russian fortress of Kinburn, where their fire proved most effective. As for the shot and shell from the Russian forts, they rebounded from their sloping iron sides like so many tennis-balls. These armoured batteries were, however, slow, clumsy, flat-bottomed affairs, with no speed under steam or sail and but moderately seaworthy. It remained for the French—whose models in the "days of wood and hemp" were generally better than our own—to go another step forward and produce a regular sea-going ironclad.
This was the famous La Gloire. She was no beauty. She had an extremely ugly bow and was very short in proportion to her beam. She was not a new ship, but the old two-decker Napoleon cut down, lengthened, and covered along her whole side with iron plating 5 inches in thickness. She took two years to finish, and was not ready till the end of 1859. She naturally created a good deal of excitement, and it was at once seen that we must follow suit.
But our naval men did not see why they need be content with so unsightly a war-ship. They had been much impressed, a year or two before, by the Niagara, a fine United States frigate which had visited the Thames, and which had what was then regarded as the immense length of 337 feet. Our constructors, therefore, were rather inclined to follow her lines than those of La Gloire, and turned out the Warrior, a magnificent-looking vessel, not improvised out of an old wooden ship, but entirely built of iron. Her armour-plating, however, did not extend from bow to stern, but only covered her battery amidships, which occupied somewhere about two-thirds of her total length. The Warrior was 382 feet long, and fitted with a not very obtrusive ram. As a matter of fact, it was not perceptible at all, since the stem was finished off with a very graceful swan bow adorned with one of the finest figure-heads ever executed. She was fully rigged, did 14½ knots under steam at her trials, and carried an armament of thirty-eight 68-pounders, then the heaviest guns afloat. In short, the Warrior was a triumph of British shipbuilding, and a worthy ancestor of the magnificent armour-clad fleet which has played such an important part in the history of the nation. She had one sister, the Black Prince, after which a few smaller ironclads were built, the Defence, Resistance, Hector, and Valiant. Next came four bigger ships, the Achilles, Minotaur, Northumberland, and Agincourt. These were all improved Warriors, armoured along their whole length, with ram bows, a heavier armament, and no less than five masts. They were imposing-looking ships, though, of course, to-day about as obsolete as the Henri Grace à Dieu.
H.M.S. WARRIOR, OUR FIRST SEA-GOING IRONCLAD BATTLESHIP
She was a very efficient reply to the French La Gloire, which was a wooden ship converted into an ironclad. Observe the Red-and-blue Ensign. The White Ensign with St. George's Cross did not become universal in the Royal Navy till 1864.