The tragic end of the Victoria, which cost the nation, not only a fine ship, but the lives of the greater portion of her crew, and that very talented naval commander, Sir George Tryon, is a well-known tragedy of the sea, and there is little doubt that the enormous weight forward of her huge turret and guns, with nothing aft to counterbalance it, was one of the causes contributing to the completeness of the catastrophe.
No more ships were built on such lines, but about this period an important innovation was made by the introduction of a class of ships in which the four heavy guns were carried in a couple of high barbettes with sloping sides, instead of in turrets. The whole gun was exposed, but not its mountings or crew, since the top of the barbette was closed in by a flat shield which revolved with the guns. These were the Collingwood, Camperdown, Howe, Rodney, Anson, and Benbow. The last-named had one 111-ton gun in each barbette, instead of a pair of rather smaller cannon. Amidships, between the barbettes, were secondary batteries of half a dozen 6-inch guns (the Benbow had ten). These were entirely unprotected except from fire coming from ahead or astern, from which they were covered by armoured bulkheads reaching across the ship immediately behind each barbette.
I well recollect my first sight of these ships, which had all been completed during four years I had been away on a distant station, though, as a matter of fact, I had seen the Rodney launched before I left England. I was on board H.M.S. Aurora, a new cruiser which had been specially commissioned for the naval manœuvres. We left Plymouth and proceeded to Spithead, where a large fleet had been assembled to do honour to the Kaiser—with whom we were then on rather more friendly terms than latterly, and who came over at the head of a squadron of his war-ships. He was much more anxious to exhibit German war-ships to the British fleet than his naval commanders seem to have been during the Great War. We got into Spithead about six on a morning when there was a thick drizzle almost amounting to a fog, and as one after another of these monsters—as we thought them then—loomed up out of the mist and vanished astern, they presented a most impressive picture of strength and solidity. They really did look in the dim light like "castles afloat"!
But they were not by any means among our most successful efforts. No one liked the unprotected secondary batteries, and thought of the well-armoured Devastation and her sisters. They had no secondary batteries—but they were so well armoured that these were not necessary, except for purposes of offence. This consideration doubtless led to the building of the Nile and Trafalgar, in which the four big guns were carried in turrets and the secondary armament in an armoured battery amidships. They were extremely well-protected ships and would have given a very good account of any ship of their day. But the tendency was ever for bigger ships, which allowed, generally speaking, for greater speed, greater radius of action, greater seaworthiness, and afforded a steadier gun platform.
This produced the "Royal Sovereign" class, of over 14,000 tons displacement, a great advance in size on any ships which had preceded them. They created a considerable sensation at the time of their appearance, especially the Royal Sovereign herself, the first of them. My own first sight of her was somewhere in the Irish Sea, not far from the Isle of Man. I was serving on board H.M.S. Triumph in the naval manœuvres of 1892. The Royal Sovereign passed us just at the time tea was going on in the wardroom, which would be between half-past three and four, and I remember how everybody rushed up on deck to get a look at the new marvel in shipbuilding.
The Royal Sovereign became practically the regulation type of battleship until the advent of the "Dreadnoughts", though of course each successive batch was an improvement on the preceding one in speed, protection, and gun-power. All had four heavy guns in low barbettes, covered with armoured hoods which revolved with the guns—so they may be said to have been a combination of turret and barbette. The single exception was the Hood in the "Royal Sovereign" batch, which carried her four heavy guns in two regular turrets. All had secondary batteries, whose guns were distributed in armoured casemates at considerable intervals from each other, and all had a couple of military masts, with one or two fighting-tops on each, armed with light rapid-fire guns. This fine series of battleships amounted to forty in all, and formed a homogeneous and magnificent fleet, the like of which the world had never seen. Nearly all had a displacement of from 14,000 to 15,000 tons, and a speed of from 17 to 18 knots. Most are still in service, and though they have been put rather in the background by our "Dreadnoughts" and "Super-Dreadnoughts", we may still be very proud of them.
There were two intermediate steps between them and the epoch-making Dreadnought. The first was the creation of the "King Edward" class of five ships, dating from 1902-3. These were very similar to their predecessors, but had over 1000 tons more displacement, were more thoroughly armoured, and, in addition to the four 12-inch and ten or a dozen 6-inch guns which formed their armament, were provided with four guns of 9·2 inches calibre, each placed singly in a turret at the corners of the superstructure. The final type before the Dreadnought made her sensational appearance was the "Lord Nelson" class, which, however, only comprised two ships—the Lord Nelson herself and the Agamemnon.[43] They were very little bigger than the "King Edwards", but in their case the 6-inch guns were replaced by ten guns of 9·2-inch calibre, a most formidable secondary battery, capable of penetrating a considerable thickness of armour. The Battle of Tsushima, between the Japanese and Russians, led to the temporary abandonment of the secondary battery. It was considered that battles would in future be fought at such immense ranges that a decision, one way or another, would be reached before the smaller guns could be brought within effective range of the enemy, and the events of the European War go to confirm this theory. So it was that we once more arrived at the "all-big-gun ship", and in the Dreadnought, launched in 1906, went back to the principle followed in the armament of her namesake of 1875, and confined her armament—except for a few small anti-torpedo-boat guns—to cannon of the largest size. A comparison of the two Dreadnoughts will form an appropriate termination to this chapter, which has already occupied more pages than I intended.
1875—H.M.S. Dreadnought. Displacement, 10,820 tons; speed, 14 knots; guns, four muzzle-loaders; armour, 10, 11, 13, and 14 inches; weight of projectiles, 809 pounds; penetration of wrought iron at 1000 yards, 17½ inches.
1906—H.M.S. Dreadnought. Displacement, 17,900 tons; speed, 21 knots; guns, ten breech-loaders; armour, 6, 7, 9, and 12 inches; weight of projectiles, 850 pounds; penetration of wrought iron at 1000 yards, 36 inches.