Of the development of torpedo craft this is not the place to write; although the torpedo was fast growing in efficiency and importance, it had not, before 1880, become the centre and cause of a special craft and a special system for its employment in action. But after that date the creation of torpedo flotillas began to exercise a marked and continuous effect upon the evolution of the ironclad. The fish-torpedo, improving at a phenomenal rate in the first years of its development, and at first esteemed as of defensive value and as a counter to the ram, became, after 1880, an offensive weapon of the first importance. The ram, already suspected of being placed too high in popular estimation, suffered a decline; the danger of its use in action was emphasized by naval officers, whose opinion alone was decisive: its use, as an eminent tactician explained, reduced the chances of battle to a mere toss-up, since there was “only half a ship’s length between ramming and being rammed.” The gun developed in power, in range, and accuracy; but not (up to the end of the century) at so great a rate as its rival, the torpedo. The steam engine affected all weapons by its continuous development. It depressed the ram, enhanced the importance of the gun, and endowed the torpedo with a large accession of potential value in placing it, in its special fast sea-going craft, within reach of the battleship; moreover, it enabled the cruiser to regain its old supremacy of speed over the line-of-battle unit. Armour, quick-firing guns, secondary armament, watertight construction, net defence, all influenced the development of the various types. But it was the torpedo, borne into action by the high-speed steam engine, which had the greatest effect on naval types in the last two decades of the century, and which at one time bid fair to cause a constructional revolution as great as that of 1860. The torpedo, according to a school of French enthusiasts, had destroyed the ironclad battleship and dealt a heavy blow at English sea power by paving the way for an inexpensive navy designed for a guerre de course. The ironclad was dead, they cried, and might as well be placed in the Louvre museum along with the old three-deckers! In Italy and Germany, too, the logic of facts seemed to point to a vast depreciation in the power of existing navies: the fate of the expensive ironclad seemed assured, in the presence of small, fast, sea going torpedo-boats. Still, it was noticed, England laid down battleships. True; this was quite in keeping with her machiavellian policy. Had she not resisted—“not blindly, but with a profound clairvoyance”—all the inventions of the century? Had she not successfully baulked the development of Fulton’s mines, steam navigation, the shell gun, and the ironclad itself? And, now that steam had made the blockade impossible and the torpedo had attacked the ironclad effectually, making sea-supremacy an empty term, could not the British Empire be destroyed by taking the choice of weapons out of England’s hands?
The prospect was alluring. Yet the ironclad survived the menace and remained the standard unit of naval power. Expensive, designed with several aims and essentially complex,—a compromise, like man himself,—it could not be replaced by a number of small, cheap, uni-functional vessels, each constructed for one sole and special purpose, without loss of efficiency and concentration of power. Nor could it be supplanted by a type which, like the sea-going torpedo-boat, could only count on an ascendancy over it in certain moments of its own choosing—for example, at night-time or in a fog. To every novel species of attack the ironclad proved superior, calling to its aid the appropriate defensive measures.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Sir Harry Nicolas: History of the Royal Navy.
[2] The greatest authoritative works on ancient and medieval shipping, it should be mentioned, are the Archéologie Navale and the Glossaire Nautique of M. Jal, published in 1840 and 1848 respectively.
[3] Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy.
[4] Corbett.
[5] Oppenheim.
[6] Corbett.
[7] Navy Records Soc.: Edited by Sir John Laughton.