The honour of being the first British steam iron warship belongs to the Trident, a paddle-steamer, launched from Ditchburn and Mare’s shipbuilding yard at Blackwall in December 1845. Her length was 280 feet, the length of engine-room 45 feet, her beam 31 feet 6 inches, her breadth over paddles 52 feet 6 inches, her depth of hold 18 feet, and she was of 900 tons burden, including machinery, coals, water, guns, and stores. Her displacement at launching was 385 tons; the engines of 330 horse-power had oscillating cylinders, and her boilers were of a tubular pattern. She was designed by the builders. Her ribs were double, each rib being composed of two angle irons 4 inches by 3¹⁄₂ inches by half an inch thick, riveted together, and in one entire length from the gunwale to the keel, there being 270 pairs of these double ribs. The iron skin was three-quarters of an inch thick at the keel, and half an inch at the gunwale. The skin contained 1400 plates of iron which were riveted to each other and to the ribs and the keel by 200,000 rivets. Each rivet was wrought red-hot and required the united labours of three workmen and two boys to fix it in its corresponding hole. The price of iron when the ship was commenced was £8 10s. per ton, and when it was launched £16. The Trident carried two long swivel guns of 10-inch bore, one forward and one aft, to fire in line with the keel, and had also four 32-pounder broadside guns.
The Greenock, built by Scott, Sinclair and Co. at Greenock in 1849, was a second-class steam frigate and was the first steam frigate ever launched on the Clyde for the British Navy. Her length was 213 feet and her tonnage 1413 tons Admiralty measurement, with engines of 565 horse-power by the same builders. The screw propeller was 14 feet in diameter, constructed on F. P. Smith’s principle, and though it weighed seven tons, could be disengaged from the machinery and raised from the sea with ease. “The funnel also is to have some peculiar mode by which its hideous and crater-like physiognomy can be made at once to disappear, and leave the ship devoid at once of this unsightly feature, and of those cumbrous excrescences, paddle-boxes, giving her all the appearance and symmetry of a perfect sailing ship.”[96] Her figure-head was a bust of the late Mr. John Scott, father of the head of the firm who built her. The keel, stem, and stern were of solid malleable iron, measuring 5 inches thick by 9 inches deep. The Greenock was the only one of four vessels ordered by the then Board of Admiralty, to be fitted as a frigate and propelled with full power. She was armed on the main deck, and her model was so designed as to enable her to fight her bow and stern guns in line with the keel, in which important qualification she stood almost alone in the Navy.
[96] Illustrated London News, May 12, 1849.
The value of private shipbuilding yards able to undertake Admiralty work at short notice was abundantly proved during the Crimean War.
“In 1854, at the commencement of the Crimean War,” said the Times in an article on the building of warships in private establishments, “when Admiral Napier found himself powerless in the Baltic for want of gunboats, it became imperative to have 120 of them, with 60 horse-power engines on board, ready for next spring, and at first the means for turning out so large an amount of work in so short a time puzzled the Admiralty. But Mr. Penn pointed out, and himself put into practice, an easy solution of the mechanical difficulty. By calling to his assistance the best workshops in the country, in duplicating parts, and by a full use of the admirable resources of his own establishments at Greenwich and Deptford, he was able to fit up with the requisite engine-power ninety-seven gunboats. This performance is a memorable illustration of what the private workshops of this free country can accomplish when war with its unexpected requirements comes upon us.... Altogether during the Crimean War 121 vessels were fitted with engines for our Government by Mr. Penn.”
Two paddle-wheel gunboats, Nix and Salamander, were launched in 1851 by Messrs. Robinson and Russell for the Prussian Government, which exchanged them during the Crimean War for a frigate called the Thetis, and they were renamed Recruit and Weser. They were double-ended and could steam in either direction without turning. The paddle-frigate Dantzig, built by the same firm for the same foreign Government, had the peculiarity of being able to carry guns on her sponsons. The last wooden battleship built for the Navy was the Victoria, 121 guns, launched in 1859, commissioned in 1864, and discarded in 1867. She was engined by Maudslay with horizontal return connecting-rod engines indicating 4400 horse-power and giving her a speed of 12 knots. The Bann and Brune were built by Scott Russell as improvements on the Salamander, and were on the longitudinal system with wave-lines, and they had internal bulkheads separating the engine and boiler rooms from the bunkers.
The success of the floating batteries at the Crimea was held by the French to justify the construction of a sea-going ironclad, and the Gloire resulted. Experiments in America had shown the possibility of the plan, but the French naval architect, Dupuy de Lôme, considered that it would be sufficient to plate existing vessels. The Gloire was a big wooden ship cut down and iron-plated.
This stirred the Admiralty to activity and the Warrior was ordered. The launch of this vessel on the Thames was regarded as an event of national importance, and in spite of the cold day at the end of December 1860 on which she took the water, the attendance was exceedingly large, even the tops of the tall chimneys of the neighbourhood having been let out for the day to enthusiastic sightseers. She was frozen down to the ways so firmly that it was with the utmost difficulty that she could be got into the water at all. Tugs, hydraulic presses, the hammering by hundreds of men on the ways, and the firing of cannon from her deck to start her by concussion were all tried separately and then together, and at last the ship glided slowly into the water. The beauty of her lines was remarkable as she floated in her light trim, and afterwards, when she was properly equipped and in sea-going trim, she was one of the most beautiful ships the country ever possessed. She was iron built throughout, frame and plating being alike of the metal. She was 420 feet over all, 58 feet in breadth, and 41 feet 6 inches in depth from spar deck to keel. She was of 6177 tons builders’ measurement. Her engines, which were of 1250 nominal horse-power, weighed about 950 tons, but her bunkers only held 950 tons, or enough coal for six days’ steaming. She was divided into twenty-seven water-tight compartments at the bows and stern, and as the whole of her sides were so armoured as to afford protection to the vital parts of the ship, it was stated that even if the fore and stern parts of the ship were shot away, the centre would remain as a floating battery.
The “Waterwitch.”