Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

The paddle frigate Retribution, a typical specimen of her class, launched at Chatham in 1844, was selected to proceed to Sebastopol in 1854 to demand the release of the engineers taken prisoners at the Battle of Sinope, who were in the service of the Porte. She was of about 1,641 tons and had engines on Maudslay’s Siamese pattern of 400 h.p., and carried a crew of three hundred men. Her armament consisted of twenty-eight guns of a “very persuasive size”—their persuasiveness was fully demonstrated in the subsequent proceedings in the Crimea.

The naval operations before Sebastopol and Cronstadt proved by no means satisfactory to the attacking vessels. The latter were not weak as fighting ships, for they constituted the most powerful line-of-battle ships ever constructed up to that period, and nearly all of them were screw-propelled. The principal guns in the Russian forts were heavier than any carried afloat by the allies, and not only fired a heavier and more penetrating shot, but shell also—this being the first war in which modern explosive shells were used—and had an effective range far in excess of that of the ships’ guns.

The great three-deckers which assailed the fortifications of Sebastopol and Cronstadt were prevented by the shallowness of the water from getting near enough to inflict serious damage irrespective of what they might themselves sustain, a course which was certainly urged, if channels could be found, especially by some strategists who, being at home, would not be exposed to the danger, and ignored the fact that the ships, if stranded, could be shelled at leisure. In the fleets’ attack upon Sebastopol the sailing warships were provided with attendant steamers lashed alongside to render them assistance when their positions had to be changed. But the range at which, for the most part, the allies’ warships had to operate rendered them comparatively ineffective, and when Kinburn, like Cronstadt, proved a tougher nut to crack—a characteristic it shared with many of the Russian defences—than the allies expected, the English and French could do nothing but blockade the places and adopt other means of reducing the fortresses than by bombarding them from their big wooden battleships.

Two fresh problems had thus been created for solution. The first and most pressing was to provide the type of ship best fitted to cope with the Russian batteries. Hitherto, engagements between fortresses and battleships had been fairly equal because the guns employed by one side would be much the same as those of the other, while the ships had the further advantages of being able to shift their positions as suited them best, and to concentrate the fire of their broadsides wherever necessary. The majority of shore and battery engagements ended in victories for the ships.

The second problem was how to carry more powerful guns afloat, and how to strengthen the sides of the hulls supporting them so as to offer adequate resistance to the projectiles of equally heavy guns carried by hostile ships or discharged from the enemy’s forts. The first problem was found to be comparatively easy, notwithstanding that the solution when proposed was declared by many to be impossible. It had, moreover, an important influence upon the attempted solution of the second problem. The latter was even thought to be no more difficult than the other, but the effort to grapple with it marked the beginning of the great struggle between guns and armour, and the introduction of the question of long range as against short range fighting, the end whereof is not yet.

Some little time before the war, the Emperor of the French expressed the opinion that armoured vessels of the types the Americans had devised, notably Stevens’s and Ericsson’s ships, were more suitable for purposes of war than the large two-deckers and three-deckers. He was confirmed in this opinion by the experiences of the big ships in the attack upon Fort Constantine, and though the opposition to his views was great, and it was pointed out that the forts must ultimately be starved into surrendering, he maintained that this would take too long and that the forts must be attacked by other means. His Majesty himself, who had devoted considerable attention to the subject, was largely responsible for the design of the five armoured French gunboats which were destined to bring about the abandonment of the great three-deckers and initiate as remarkable a revolution in warship construction as the introduction of steam was causing in naval tactics. These floating batteries—a term borrowed from the Americans—were the Lave, Tonnante, Congreve, Foudroyant and Dévastation. Their dimensions were similar: 1,400 tons displacement, 164 feet in length, 42 feet 6 inches beam, and drawing only 8 feet of water. They were built with massive wooden frames, to which were attached oaken sides 8 inches in thickness, and outside this was iron plating 4⅜ inches thick. The Tonnante, launched at Brest in March, 1855, was the first afloat—the first iron-clad citadel ship built in Europe. After the Emperor had decided on the plans and the vessels were in course of construction, Ericsson communicated with his Majesty on the subject. He was not aware that the Emperor had already determined on the plans of the ironclads, or he would scarcely have gone to the trouble of writing, for his experience of European governments was not such as to lead him to think that they would admit he was able to teach them anything. He is variously said to have offered to design a turret ship for the Emperor, and to have presented to the Emperor plans of a partially submerged armoured vessel with guns in a revolving shot-proof cupola placed centrally on the deck. In either case, however, he was too late. Whether he would have been called upon, had the Emperor’s gunboats been unsuccessful, is a point upon which there has been much conjecture.

In designing these vessels, the Emperor had in mind that they should be cheaper and more easily and rapidly built than ships of the line, that they should draw little water, that they should be capable of being served by a small crew, and that they should be covered with an armour against which hollow shot fired from Paixhan guns “should be broken like glass,” according to the Moniteur. Experiments made at Vincennes revealed the required strength and thickness of the defensive iron plates. The external protection was to be able to defy alike shell, solid or hollow shot, cold or red-hot shot. The Imperial designer even chose the name of the type to indicate that these vessels were not to be considered as built to pursue an enemy, but were siege batteries, capable of attacking with energy and persistence fortifications heretofore regarded as unassailable by sea.

The results of the preliminary artillery trials were communicated to the British, and trials made in England confirmed those of the French.

The British authorities, being convinced that iron-clad vessels were necessary for the reduction of the Russian forts, followed the example of the French and ordered several. These vessels were required both in the Baltic and before Sebastopol. One of these floating batteries, intended for the attack on the Cronstadt forts, was the Terror. Beauty was one characteristic she did not possess. She was equally bluff at the bows and stern, and could move either end foremost to facilitate her manœuvring in an engagement. She was built, armour-plated, and launched in about three months; this rapidity of construction, as it was then considered, was due to Palmer’s invention, whereby plates were rolled instead of being forged.