Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

Meanwhile Francis Pettit Smith in this country had adapted the screw propeller to steam navigation, and after one or two experimental boats had been successful, the Archimedes, fitted with a screw propeller of his design, made her memorable journey from port to port of the British Islands in 1838. The Novelty, a slightly larger vessel, of 117 feet in length, was launched the next year, both coming from the yard of Mr. Wimshurst, at Blackwall.

About this time Ericsson brought out his screw propeller, and having equipped a small steamer with it, towed the Admiralty barge a considerable distance upon the Thames with the Lords of the Admiralty on board, besides making other experiments, all of which were not without a fair measure of success. The navy officials were not convinced, however, that the application of the power at the stern was of practicable value for warships. So Ericsson went to America, and devoted his remarkable inventive genius to the welfare of his adopted country. Had he remained in England, and had his inventions been taken up by the Government, the history of the ’sixties might have been very different, for it was he who designed the Monitor, the small turret ship which prevented the Confederates from obtaining the command of the sea in the American Civil War.

In 1841, he accepted an order from the United States Government to furnish the designs for a screw warship, the Princeton, this being the first vessel which had the machinery wholly below the water-line and out of reach of an enemy’s shot. This vessel is claimed by Americans to have “dictated the reconstruction of the navies of the world.”[31] Several mechanical novelties and contrivances strange to warships, and for the most part owing the form in which they were introduced into this vessel to the fertile brain of the inventor, made their appearance in the Princeton. She had a direct-acting, semi-cylindrical steam engine of great compactness and simplicity, independent centrifugal blowers for ventilating the machinery compartment and assisting the combustion in the furnaces, so as to avoid the exposure during an engagement of the smoke stack which, as a greater measure of safety, was made on the telescopic principle. The 12-inch wrought-iron gun, with which the vessel was armed, was the first of its kind, and was at that time the largest and most powerful weapon afloat. He designed the wrought-iron gun carriages, and provided them with contrivances for dispensing with breeching and taking up the recoil. There were also an optical instrument to enable the commanding officer by mere inspection accurately to ascertain the distance of the object to be aimed at.

The Admiralty relented towards iron for shipbuilding in 1840, when it had the paddle-steamer Dover built at Birkenhead, and three small iron gunboats followed from the same establishment before the end of the year. The demonstration afforded by the Garry Owen has been alluded to. The Great Britain, that magnificent pioneer of the iron screw steamship, launched at Bristol, in December, 1844, ran on the rocks at Dundrum Bay on the coast of Ireland, in 1846, and was successfully refloated after being ashore for nearly eleven months, during which she withstood several severe gales. After this it was no longer possible either to ignore the superiority of iron over wood for constructional purposes, or to doubt the immense strength with which an iron ship could be built.

The enterprise and daring of Brunel in designing this ship without any data to go upon stamp this vessel as an evidence of his extraordinary genius. She was in a sense the forerunner of the Great Eastern, for she demonstrated what could be done with iron; and the Great Eastern, constructed on the longitudinal system, though a commercial failure, proved the advantages of that system for vessels of such remarkable length, as to a large extent her design solved the problem of overcoming the sagging and hogging strains and showed the Admiralty what could be achieved in contending with this difficulty. This success helped in no slight degree to the introduction of the iron-clad citadel system some years later.

The success of the Archimedes and the Great Britain demonstrated the power of the screw, and in the latter that iron must be the material for future ship construction, whether in the navy or the mercantile marine. The Government clung to wood for all its fighting ships as long as it could, but it decided to try the screw propeller, without, however, abandoning the paddle-wheel, and many fine vessels were launched.

Before this, Messrs. Ditchburn and Mare built at Blackwall, in 1842, and Messrs. J. and G. Rennie engined, a small iron steamer of 164 tons builders’ measurement, and 98 tons displacement, called the Mermaid. She was a screw steamer, and was fitted with George Rennie’s conoidal propeller; this was a three-bladed screw propeller with the blades arranged to resemble a cone with its widest part at the boss of the propeller shaft and tapering towards the tips of the blades. The engine, having two vertical cylinders of 40 inches diameter each, and 32 inches stroke, and with a pressure of 8 lb. in the boiler, indicated 216 h.p. A spur gearing transmitted the power to the screw shaft, giving it 153 revolutions per minute and driving the vessel at its trial, in May, 1843, at a little above 10½ knots, or over 12 miles; as the Admiralty had promised to take over the vessel if she attained a speed of 12 miles, she was accordingly purchased and under the name of H.M.S. Dwarf has the honour of being the first iron screw steamer the British Government possessed. The Dwarf was largely used afterwards for experimenting with various kinds of screw propellers.

With the exception of the bombardment of Acre, in 1840, there was a long interval during which the world’s navies were not called upon for any serious engagements, and the development of warship building which took place during that period was the result rather of scientific research than of actual fighting experience, and there was consequently no need, while the nations were recovering from the wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for any remarkable advances to be made. For the first fifty years of the nineteenth century the warships were much as they were in Nelson’s time, except that some of them were fitted with mechanical means of propulsion.

The battle at Acre was the first in which war steamers took part, four paddle-wheel boats, the Gorgon, Vesuvius, Stromboli and Phœnix, being included in the British force. They were not of a size to do much fighting, the bulk of which devolved upon the big sailing warships, the duty of the steamers being rather to wait upon the three-deckers in the capacity of armed tugs. The engagement had little, if any, influence upon the admiralties of Europe in deciding them as to the position steam navigation should take in the fighting marine. These steamers were not the first to fire a shot in war. That honour, if honour it be, is attributed to the Canadian-built Royal William, which crossed the Atlantic partly under sail and partly under steam in 1833, and it is on this performance that the Canadians claim to have sent the first steamer eastward across the Atlantic. While she was lying at London she attracted the attention of the Spanish authorities by reason of her speed, and after satisfying themselves that they could depend upon her to steam in a calm and even against the wind, they purchased her, with the consent of the Portuguese, to whom she was chartered, renamed her the Ysabel Segunda, gave her six guns, and used her against the Carlist revolutionaries. She was wrecked not long afterwards.

In order to test the advantages of the paddle-engine in a fighting ship, the wooden 46-gun frigate Penelope, which was built for a sailer, was cut in two in 1843, and lengthened to enable her to accommodate the engines and 600 tons of coal. She and about thirty or forty sister ships had been constructed on the model of the French Hebe class of frigates, but as they were now hopelessly outclassed by the heavier frigates introduced by other nations, this experiment was about the best use to which she could have been put. The sudden transformation of this out of date and none too powerful frigate into a vessel capable of holding her own against any vessel afloat created a tremendous sensation both in British and Continental nautical circles, and paddle-driven frigates of various sorts and sizes were introduced in the course of a few years in most of the European navies. When lengthened she was faster under sail than before, and her steam power made her independent of the wind and would have enabled her to choose her own position had she been called upon to participate in a naval engagement. Her new armament consisted of two large 10-inch pivot guns of 84 cwt. each, eight 68-pounders able to fire both shot and shell, and fourteen 32-pounders, “making a total of twenty-four guns of this immense calibre.”[32] Her steam engines, of 625 h.p. nominal and 700 indicated, were described as of greater power than any previously placed afloat in the navy or the mercantile marine. The cylinders were of 92 inches with a length of stroke of nearly 7 feet; the engines were of the direct acting type, such as were supplied to many other vessels of the time, and the paddles could be disconnected. Hall’s patent tubular condensers were fitted, and her four tubular boilers each had five fireplaces. One peculiar feature was that the main mast was stepped between two of the boilers. The Penelope carried a crew of three hundred officers and men, and could accommodate a thousand soldiers with provisions and water for a voyage to the Cape. Inasmuch as her tonnage was only 1,780 tons, she must have been uncomfortably crowded, especially if the soldiers’ wives and families accompanied them.