THE MONARCH
From a photograph by Symonds, Portsmouth
On the night of September 6th, 1870, the Captain capsized in a heavy sea off C. Finisterre. In St. Paul’s Cathedral the memorial brass, erected in commemoration of this disaster, records that the Captain was built in deference to public opinion expressed in parliament and through other channels, and in opposition to the views and opinions of the Controller and his department; and that the evidence all tended to show that they generally disapproved of her construction.
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The difficulty of combining the turret system with a full rig of masts and sails had for a long time been recognized. Some eighteen months before the loss of the Captain, the Admiralty, in the presence of the increasing efficiency of steam machinery, had decided to construct a mastless sea-going turret ship.
American experience greatly influenced this decision. In America, where the principle of machinery for propulsion and for working the guns had been accepted with a greater readiness than in Europe, the line of development had been more direct. From the original Monitor a whole series of derivatives had been produced, and from coast-defence vessels of a single turret advance had been made to ocean-going mastless turret ships of low freeboard, carrying the largest smooth-bore guns. These ocean monitors, lacking though they did some features which were considered indispensable in British warships, yet exerted an undoubted influence upon our own construction. Weakly designed in many respects, with small fuel capacity, and unsteady as gun platforms, they were regarded by some writers as the true progenitors of the class of warship which now superseded the masted vessels of the ’sixties.
The problem of the naval architect henceforth was greatly simplified. Masts and sails, which had in the past proved such an embarrassment, were now frankly abandoned, with the result that a thousand difficulties which had beset the designer of the turret ship were swept away. No longer had the stability curve to conform to the conflicting requirements of the sailing vessel and the gun platform. The large weight gained by dispensing with masts and sails could be embodied as an addition to the armament or to the fuel carried. The single screw, which in the case of a ship intended to use sails had been almost a necessity, could be replaced by twin screws of greater power; and the change would remove the liability of complete disablement, and give a number of constructive advantages which it is unnecessary to enumerate. Indeed, it may be said conversely, that the adoption of twin screws so improved the reliability of the propelling machinery as to make practicable the abandonment of masts and sails.
In April, 1869, the Devastation was commenced. Designed by Sir Edward Reed, she “forestalled, rather than profited by, the dreadful lesson of the Captain and by her success gave proof of the judgment and initiative of the Board and their adviser.” Sir Edward Reed had recognized, more fully than his critics, the conflicting elements inherent in the rigged turret ship. And it is significant that, just at a time when the assured success of the Monarch must have been a gratification to her designer, he should record: “My clear and strong conviction at the moment of writing these lines [March 31st, 1869] is that no satisfactorily designed turret ship with rigging has yet been built, or even laid down.”
The Devastation design was a development of those of some previous mastless turret ships, the Cerberus, the Hotspur, and the Glatton class, which had embodied Sir Edward Reed’s ideas as to the requirements of coast-service vessels. At first given four 25-ton guns, the Devastation was ultimately armed with four M.L. guns each weighing 35 tons and carried in turrets on the centre-line, one at each end of a central breastwork, 150 feet in length, built round the funnels.