H.M.S. “WARRIOR.”
Photograph by permission of the Thames Ironworks, Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., Ltd.
THE “TERROR.”
By permission of Palmer’s Shipbuilding and Ironworks, Ltd.
The English-built Glatton and Trusty differed from the other floating batteries constructed at this time, as they were pierced for sixteen guns, as against twelve for the others. As innovations they were unmercifully criticised. Their portholes, measuring 3 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 10 inches, were considered much too large. They were rigged as three-masted schooners, of all rigs in the world, with two square sails on the foremast. “Why such things as these should be completely equipped and rigged, we cannot, for the life of us, divine. The Admiralty is decidedly masting mad.”[34]
They were 172 feet 9 inches between perpendiculars, 43 feet 8 inches extreme breadth, with 14 feet 7 inches depth of hold, and 7 feet 9 inches draught, and they were of 1,469 tons. The two decks were of oak 9 inches thick, resting on beams 10½ inches square, which were placed 21 inches apart from centre to centre, the beams being supported amidships by stanchions hinged so that they could be hung up out of the way in action. The frames, iron plates, and planking were altogether 2 feet thick on the sides. The engines were of 150 h.p., of the non-condensing type, and with four tubular, cylindrical, flat-ended boilers with two furnaces each, the pressure being 60 lb. to the inch above that of the atmosphere. Owing to their slow speed, for they could only make three knots, it was decided to give them two additional or wing screws. These batteries, according to those who had to handle them, would “neither sail, steam, stay, nor steer,” and might be depended upon to affect the men’s health injuriously. Jury rudders had to be rigged up to get them along. All these floating batteries, whether French or English, were equally slow, and equally bad sea-boats.
The gunboats of the Trusty class were wooden-built and armoured; the Erebus class, launched in 1854-56, were iron-built.
The floating batteries were regarded with hope by those who were prepared to believe that the ironclad system would prove effective, and with undisguised contempt by the majority. What, it was asked, could these little unwieldy vessels do when the great line-of-battle ships were not equal to the task of reducing the fortifications? Still, as the Emperor had ordered them, it was but right that the experiment should be made. So when, in October, 1855, the great attack was begun, the three floating batteries which had arrived, steamed slowly into position, and came to anchor between 700 and 800 yards of the Kinburn forts. A correspondent who visited the Dévastation after the bombardment, “left her with the conviction that, in the attack of maritime fortresses, a new era had commenced.... The bulwarks had been removed from the deck, to lessen the mark, and the funnels of the steam engine alone projected. The captain conned the ship standing on the companion, and giving directions to the helmsman below; and when the vessel came to an anchor he remained below. Twelve embrasures were opened, and the effect as witnessed from the village was terrific, whilst that of the enemy’s guns upon her was very slight indeed. She had three men killed and six or seven wounded through shots entering the portholes, one shell bursting inside. Not a shot from the enemy damaged the Dévastation in the slightest degree. She was hulled sixty or seventy times, the balls each time bounding from her sides harmless into the water, leaving their marks, it is true, in the shape of dents, in some cases an inch and a half deep, but inflicting no real damage on plates of iron four inches in thickness. This, the first experiment, proved that at a distance of 800 yards, 32- and 18-pounders are harmless against the sides of a floating battery, and the trial has been made first by the French, the arrival of the Meteor and Glatton being delayed.” When they did arrive the work for which they were intended had been accomplished. The Dévastation and her two sisters had platforms on stanchions near the water’s edge; upon each platform were fifty French riflemen who made excellent practice upon the Russian gunners.
The Prussian Government ordered from Messrs. Robinson and Russell, in 1851, two paddle-wheel gunboats called Nix and Salamander. They were double-ended and could go either end foremost, and though they could take enough coal to carry them two thousand miles, they only drew 7 feet. Their load displacement was 468 tons, and their oscillating cylinder condensing engines gave them, together with their sails, a speed of a little over 11½ knots. The British Government exchanged the 36-gun frigate Thetis for them, and having renamed them Recruit and Weser, sent them to the war.