The Evolution of Naval Armament

by Frederick Leslie Robertson

From a photograph in the possession of Dr. Oscar Parkes, O.B.E.

Firstly, her size in relation to her armament caused general surprise. Admittedly the policy of restricting dimensions, pursued with such rigour from the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, had operated to the detriment of our naval construction; admittedly the long and fine-shaped sailing vessels built during recent years were greatly superior to those of the older models; yet no reason presented itself for building a ship, of armament equal to that of the 5000-ton French frigate, which would displace over 9000 tons. Were not cost and tonnage directly related, and was there some real necessity forcing us to build ships of so large a size? Was it true that the basins at Portsmouth would require to be enlarged to take such a ship, and that her draught would be such that she could only be docked at certain tides? The question was debated vigorously by the Board itself. Three considerations, according to an authoritative statement made to parliament, prompted the decision to depart widely from the design adopted by the French: considerations one or more of which have influenced all subsequent construction in this country. Firstly, the world-wide duties of the British navy demanded a type of ship capable of making long and distant voyages either with steam or sail: in short, a fully rigged ship, a good sailer, and at the same time one with sufficient carrying capacity to enable her to keep the seas for a long time. Secondly, to ensure good sailing qualities and to avoid a defect which had been experienced in our own ships fitted with heavy pivot guns, and which was predicted in the case of the Gloire, the extremities must be as lightly loaded as possible, and not weighed down with heavy armour. Thirdly—and this was more or less special to the period—since artillery was already in a state of rapid transition to higher power, any protective armour approved must sooner or later be insufficient and require to be augmented. These conditions, and the advantages which increase of length were known to give in reducing the propeller power necessary to obtain a certain speed, governed the specifications to which the Warrior was built. She was given a length of 380 feet, machinery for a speed of nearly 14 knots, full canvas, telescopic funnels, and waterline armour over her central parts: the ends being left unarmoured, but subdivided by watertight compartments. Of her forty-eight smooth-bore guns, twenty-six were behind armour and twelve were outside of the protective belt; the remaining ten were mounted on the upper deck, also without protection.

In another respect the Warrior bore witness to the foresight of the Board. Hidden behind, and altogether disguised by, the shapely bow with its surmounting figure-head, was a stout iron ram-stem, worked to the knee and side-plates of the bow: an inconspicuous but significant feature. Ever since steamers had been established in the navy the possibilities of ramming had been discussed. The revolution in tactics resulting from the introduction of steam as motive power had been examined by authorities such as Bowles and Moorson, Douglas, Dahlgren and Labrousse, and all of them saw in the new conditions an opening for the use of the ram. In ’44 Captain Labrousse had suggested strengthening the bows of wooden ships for this purpose, and in England Admiral Sartorius had become the advocate of a special type of warship built expressly to ram. The circumstances of the naval warfare of the Crimea, in which slow-moving steamers operated in restricted waters, had displayed to naval men the advantages to be obtained from actual collision—from the use of their ship itself as a projectile against the enemy’s hull. In the case of the Warrior an additional argument was now to hand for providing a ram. The use of iron as armour had restored the equilibrium between defence and attack which had been disturbed by the adoption of shell fire; nay more, it had actually turned the scale against artillery, the 68-pounder being unable to penetrate the armour of the ship in which it was carried. For this reason, that for the moment armour had the ascendancy over the gun, a ram was considered to be necessary as an additional means of offence; and a ram was accordingly embodied in the Warrior, to the strength of which her converging iron-plate structure aptly contributed.

And now, leaving the Warrior for a moment, it will be convenient to glance ahead and note the part played by the ram and the value set upon it in connection with later types of warships.

In 1860 no doubt was felt but that ramming would play a very important part in future warfare. The experiences of the American Civil War of ’62 seemed to supply a perfect confirmation of this opinion. “We fought the Merrimac for more than three hours this forenoon,” wrote the engineer of the Monitor to John Ericsson, “and sent her back to Norfolk in a sinking condition. Ironclad against ironclad, we manœuvred about the bay here (Hampton Roads), and went at each other with mutual fierceness.... We were struck twenty-two times, the pilot house twice, the turret nine times, the side armour eight times, deck three times.... She tried to run us down and sink us, as she did the Cumberland yesterday, but she got the worst of it. Her bow passed over our deck, and our sharp upper-edged side cut through the light iron shoe upon her stem, and well into her oak. She will not try that again. She gave us a tremendous thump but did not injure us in the least.... The turret is a splendid structure....”

On the preceding day the iron-covered Merrimac had sunk the wooden sailing ship Cumberland by ram alone, without the aid of artillery, the shots from her victim’s guns glancing off her iron casing “like hailstones off a tin roof.” She had then opened on the wooden Congress with shell fire, and in a short time the crowded decks of that ship had been reduced to a shambles. Then she had fought the inconclusive duel with the armoured Monitor. What lessons were at length driven home by these three single actions! What a novel warfare did they not foretell! The helplessness of the wooden ship when attacked by an ironclad was apparent, the terrific effects of shell fire were once again conclusively proved. The value of thick armour was once more shown, but, above all, the power of the ram, the new arme blanche of sea warfare, seemed to be indisputably demonstrated. On both sides of the Atlantic a revision of values took place: the wooden navies of the world sank into insignificance, the Warrior and her type were seen to be the main support and measure of each nation’s naval power. “The man who goes into action in a wooden ship is a fool,” Sir John Hay was quoted as saying, “and the man who sends him there is a villain.” The ocean-sceptre of Britain was broken, thought an American writer forgetful of the limitations of monitors, by the blow which crushed the sides of the Cumberland and Congress.

Four years later the battle of Lissa, in which the ironclad squadrons of Austria and Italy were engaged with one another, gave confirmation that the lessons of Hampton Roads were also applicable to blue-water actions. “Full speed. Ironclads rush against the enemy and sink him,” was the signal made by the Austrian admiral, Tegetthof. The ram was his chief weapon of offence, the gun being a useful auxiliary in gaining him the victory; gunfire, by disabling the steering gear of the Ré d’Italia, making her an easy prey for the ram of his flagship, Ferdinand Max.

Of all the factors influencing the evolution of naval material, the experiences and records of actual warfare are naturally considered to carry the greatest weight in council: they are, indeed, the only data whose acceptance is indisputable. The claims and achievements put forward in time of peace, however their excellence may have been attested by the most realistic experiments, are all referred to actual war for trial, and are accepted only in so far as they fit in with war experience. But sea actions between ironclads have been few and far between. It has been the more difficult, therefore, to draw from them the true lessons conveyed; the fixed points have been insufficient in number, so to speak, to allow of the true curve of progress being traced. Not only has this insufficiency been evident, but the restriction in the area of war experience has had another harmful effect, in that undue weight has been given to each individual experience. Difficult as it always is to strip each experience of its special circumstances and deduce from it the correct conclusion, errors have undoubtedly been made; and these errors have had a prominence which would not have been theirs if the number of experiences had been greater. On the other hand, an altogether insufficient weight has commonly been given to the experiences of peace-time.

These remarks find one application in the ram, and in the value placed upon it in the ’sixties and ’seventies. During this period artillery was undergoing a continuous and rapid improvement, eventually turning the scales against defensive armour; steam power was expanding and the manœuvring capacities of ships were being extended, so as to make ramming an operation more and more difficult to perform. Yet faith in the ram grew rather than decreased, influenced almost entirely by the evidence of the two sea-actions.

What was the actual experience of ramming gained in peace-time? In ’68 Admiral Warden, commanding the Channel Fleet, reported: “So long as a ship has good way on her, and a good command of steam to increase her speed at pleasure, that ship cannot be what is called ‘rammed’; she cannot even be struck to any purpose so long as she has room, and is properly handled. The use of ships as rams, it appears to me, will only be called into play after an action has commenced, when ships, of necessity, are reduced to a low rate of speed—probably their lowest.” As time progressed the chances of ramming certainly grew less. Yet Lissa and Hampton Roads continued to influence opinion to such a degree, as to lead to a glorification of ram tactics; in the press, and in the technical institutions which had now come into being, the ram retained a lustre which it no longer deserved. So long as artillery was feeble and gunnery of low efficiency, and so long as speeds of ships were slow and manœuvring power restricted, the ram was of great potential value. As these conditions changed, the value of the ram declined. But for a time it was actually in question which of the two forms of power, the steam engine or the gun, would ultimately exert the greater influence as a weapon in action. The subject of a Prize Essay for 1872 was, “The Manœuvres and System of Tactics which Fleets of Ships should adopt, to develop the powers of the Ram, Heavy Artillery, Torpedoes, etc., in an action in the open sea”; and it was the opinion of the prize-winner, Commander G. H. Noel, that the ram was at that time fast supplanting the gun in importance. “The serious part of a future naval attack,” wrote Captain Colomb, in Lessons from Lissa, “does not appear to be the guns, but the rams.” And the French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the principal weapon in naval combats—the ultima ratio of maritime warfare.” “There is a new warfare,” said Scott Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her alongside, but, Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.” And he predicted fleets of high-speed vessels, equipped with powerful rams and twin-screw engines, in which both guns and armour were merely of secondary importance. And writers on tactics discerned future squadrons in action charging each other after the manner of heavy cavalry.