A brief comparison between Cromwell’s Kentish and her lineal successor of our own day, His Majesty’s ship the Kent, may be of interest in conclusion.
The Kentish was of 601 tons burthen, 187 feet in length of hull, 32½ feet beam, and 15 feet draught. Our modern Kent is 440 feet between perpendiculars (463½ feet over all), 66 feet beam, and 24½ feet depth. The first Kent, under full sail, might perhaps do nine knots at her best speed; the present Kent, with her engines of 22,000 horse power, has done twenty-three knots an hour. The first Kent’s guns, forty in number, were identical with the guns that Queen Elizabeth’s fleet carried when it fought the Spanish Armada; the same kind of guns, practically, that Henry the Eighth’s Mary Rose had on board when she capsized at Spithead. The same quaint old mediæval style of nomenclature, indeed, was still in vogue for the Kentish’s guns. They were called culverins (18-pounders), demi-culverins (9-pounders), and sakers (6-pounders). The heaviest of them, the culverins, weighed 48 cwt. each, and were 5½ inches in calibre. The Kentish’s guns also were of brass, specially cast for her; refounded, for the most part, according to an existing Ordnance order, out of condemned pieces and captured Royalist cannon. According to a curious manuscript list of the ship’s equipment, the Kentish when ready for sea had on board as her establishment of war stores—908 round shot, 468 double-headed shot, 100 barrels of powder, 60 muskets; and for close-quarter fighting, 7 blunderbusses, 60 pikes, and 40 hatchets. The modern Kent carries as her main armament 6-inch quick-firing steel guns, each firing 100-pounder shot and shell, and able to discharge, each piece in half a minute, heavier metal than the whole broadside (270 lb.) of the original Kentish. The old ship, of course, was built of wood, oak timber; most of which, as a curious fact, seems to have been cut on the confiscated estates of delinquent Royalists in the County of Kent. The new Kent, built of steel, and with 4-inch Krupp armour along her water line, cost to complete for sea upwards of three-quarters of a million sterling; the Kentish frigate, guns and all, cost £5000, or in present-day money from £20,000 to £25,000.
That the gallant “Kents” of His Majesty’s navy at the present hour are quite ready to give a satisfactory account of themselves before the enemy, should occasion arise, may be judged from their firing record in the “gunlayers competition” for 1907. With the 12-pounder, the average per gun for the whole ship was 11·18 hits a minute. Petty Officer Nash achieved fourteen hits in fourteen rounds, the run, during which the score was made, being only of fifty-five seconds duration. In his fifty-five seconds Able Seaman Ramsden fired fifteen rounds, the time taken to load and fire each time being just over three and a half seconds, and he hit the target thirteen times. During the light quick-firing gunlayers’ test, the Kent fired, in the short space of fifty-five seconds, 107 rounds, scoring 83 hits, from her 12-pounders; and 42 rounds, scoring 35 hits, from her 3-pounders. Some of the guns hit the target with every shot they fired, and the loading was wonderfully smart, averaging 15 rounds per gun for the fifty-five seconds.
The Kent of King Edward’s fleet was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard on the 12th of February, 1900, as a first-class armoured cruiser, and launched on Wednesday, the 6th of March, 1901, Lady Hotham, the wife of the Admiral Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, naming the ship in the orthodox way, with wine grown and produced within the British Empire, and specially presented for the ceremony by the Agent General of South Australia. The Kent was the first to be launched of our modern set of County Cruisers. She was also the first to hoist the pennant and join the fleet at sea.
The Scene of the Operations under Admiral Watson and Clive
[From Major James Rennell’s “Bengal Atlas,” published in 1781. Reproduced by the courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society.]