I have a vivid recollection of a visit to the Minotaur when a boy. Possibly a few extracts from notes made at the time may be of interest. "She has five masts and is a tremendous length. Her upper deck is furnished with a good many small guns for repelling boat attacks. Round the masts are placed some of the shot and shell for the large guns below, painted white, and the knobs (i.e. studs to fit the rifling) and points gilded. Were here shown a Gatling gun for service on shore or for clearing the decks of boarders, &c. On going below we saw a couple of rocket-tubes burnished like a looking-glass. . . . In the steerage we saw a 7- or 9-pounder boat gun polished beautifully (as was all the metalwork in the ship) which had an arrangement for reducing the recoil by a cylinder full of oil. The main-deck battery consisted of 12-ton guns, lacquered to look like jet." The carriages, I remember, were painted white and the slides under them scarlet, which, with their burnished gun-metal machinery, gave them a most brilliant appearance, very different from the slate-coloured monsters of to-day. These guns were some which had replaced her original armament of more numerous but lighter cannon, and in consequence every other port in the battery was vacant. But the long line of guns presented a most imposing appearance. "Between the guns were field-guns, boat-guns, &c. Round the hatchways were ranged shot, shell, and canister, which also appeared in every available corner."
Among other notes, too long to be transcribed, I find that the Whitehead torpedoes in the Minotaur were made of copper, a material which has long since been superseded by steel, and that I was shown "the Rumpf coil for generating the electric light which can be shown in three places". Compare this very modest installation with the numbers of powerful search-lights which a battleship carries to-day, to say nothing of the thousands of incandescent lamps which light her interior. The "cylinder full of oil" for checking the recoil of a small boat-gun, which is referred to above, is noteworthy as the prototype of the almost universal system now in use both ashore and afloat, though in the Minotaur none of the big guns were fitted with this very effective apparatus.
As guns grew more powerful, and, in consequence, armour increased in thickness and weight, the amount of side protection had perforce to be reduced, so that as time went on the battleship's cuirass was cut down to a comparatively narrow water-line belt, with a "box-battery" containing her heavy guns amidships. In later types the foremost and aftermost guns in these batteries were placed at an angle and the port "recessed" in the ship's side, so that these guns could fire on the broadside and nearly ahead as well. In some ships, such as the Sultan, Alexandra—which, by the way, was long flagship of the Mediterranean fleet and a notable ship in her day—Triumph, and Iron Duke, the box-battery was arranged in two tiers, one above the other. All these were broadside ships and fully rigged. If they could not get along very fast under sail alone, the sails, under some circumstances, were useful in "easing the engines" and getting a little more speed out of the ship.
But in any case naval officers had not then brought themselves to accept the idea of relying on their engines alone; they liked to have a second string to their bow. Besides, the work and evolutions aloft were undeniably a splendid thing for the seamen; it rendered them quick, smart, and self-reliant, and kept them in excellent physical training.
The reverse side of the picture was the weight of yards, rigging, and sails, the resistance they offered to the wind when the ship was steaming against it, the danger in action to those quartered on the upper deck from the fall of yards, blocks, and spars from aloft, and the time taken in preparing them for action. The top-gallant masts were sent down on deck as well as the upper yards, the top-masts were generally lowered till they only showed a few feet above the heads of the lower masts, extra slings had to be put in place to secure the lower yards, the shrouds supporting the masts on either side had to be "snaked down", by coiling wire hawsers in a species of zigzag from top to bottom, so that if one or more shrouds were cut the whole would hang together, and many other precautions taken which occupied valuable time and were, perhaps, after all of a merely negative nature—that is to say, the rigging was more of a danger in action than a useful asset. The tops were the only part of it that were of use. As in ancient days they afforded stations for archers and stone-throwers, and later on for musketry, swivel-guns, and grenade-throwers, so they were at this time utilized for mounting machine-guns to fire down upon an enemy's decks.
For at that period "close action" was always expected. Boarders were told off when the ship "went to quarters for action", and boarding-pikes and cutlasses were provided for their use, while the small upper-deck guns—usually breech-loading Armstrongs—were mounted on carriages which enabled them to be fired downward to repel a boat attack or the rush of a steamboat with a spar torpedo. The ideas of an action at sea were practically the same as those which obtained in the days of Nelson. "Masts and yards" were the source of yet another danger. The "smartness" of a ship was still generally gauged by her "smartness" aloft. All evolutions in the Navy are done "against time", and for a ship to get her "royal yards across" some seconds before any other ship in the squadron was a notable feat of which every soul on board was proud to a degree. These ideas were those of the old sailing navy, and in spite of the advent of steam, ironclads, rifled guns, and torpedoes, the conservatism of our great sea service rendered them still paramount, so that even gunnery took a second place. There were regulation quantities of ammunition to be fired—"expended" was the usual term—at regulated periods, there were orders that torpedoes were to be run at stated intervals, that bluejackets and marines should be landed for drill ashore every week when in harbour. But in most ships these things were regarded as secondary and annoying performances, to be got over and done with as soon as possible, if they could not be avoided altogether, so that all hands might be set to their "games with sticks and string", as, in course of time, irreverent observers began to call the cherished evolutions with mast and yards, and the important business of cleaning paintwork, burnishing "brightwork", and generally making the ship as spick and span as possible.
"Spit and polish" were the idols worshipped in those days by captains and more especially commanders, for it was almost universally recognized that their promotion depended more on the brilliant appearance of their ships at an inspection than on any other earthly matter. But for all that the days of "sticks and string" were numbered, as were those of broadside ironclads and box batteries.
The prime cause of the approaching change was the appearance of a queer-looking little craft in the Civil War in America between 1861 and 1864. The United States Government had a fine fleet of wooden steamships at the outbreak of hostilities, but the naval authorities of the seceding Southern States, having raised the Merrimac, a 40-gun frigate which had been sunk at the Norfolk navy yard, cut her down, built a battery amidships armoured with two or three thicknesses of railway iron, and attacked the Federal fleet. The Merrimac had it all her own way, rammed and sank the frigate Cumberland, set the bigger Congress on fire and compelled her to surrender, and withdrew with all the honours of war. But she was yet to meet her match. John Ericsson, a Swedish engineer, was commissioned by the United States Government to construct a small ironclad of his own designing. While the Merrimac was engaged in defeating the wooden ships of the Federals in Hampton Roads, the Monitor, as the new vessel was called, was on her way south from New York. She joined the Federal fleet the very night before the Merrimac made a second sortie. On this occasion, as she came out into the Roads and opened up the fleet she intended to attack, the Merrimac spotted what someone described as looking "like a cheese-box on a raft". It was an excellent description of the little Monitor, which was built with a very low freeboard and had nothing on her deck but a cylindrical revolving turret containing a couple of guns, no masts, and but the merest apology for a funnel. Yet she proved one too many for the Merrimac with her more numerous battery of guns. She was unable actually to pierce her sides, as her commander had received the most peremptory orders not to use more than 15 pounds of powder to load his guns, but the Merrimac got so "rattled" that she had to sheer off.
The Monitor, the famous little ship that revolutionized warship design