Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

WRECK OF THE “CAPTAIN.”

From a Contemporary Wood Engraving.

Matters were in this experimental stage when the first engagement was fought between European fleets, each of which included sea-going ironclads. The battle of Lissa, in 1866, was no less remarkable for the crushing defeat which the Austrians inflicted on the Italians than for the fact that that defeat was against all that the naval experts had considered to be the natural order of things. The Italian fleet was more numerous than the Austrian; it had more ironclads, its armament was greater, it had a greater number of wooden warships of various sorts and sizes; but as a powerful offset to all these advantages it had an amount of muddle and disorganisation truly appalling. The Italian fondness for big ships and big guns was as much in evidence in the fleet of 1866 as in the immense armoured ships Duilio and Dandolo, which that country built a few years later, and to which a more extended reference is made on another page. Its principal ships in the attack on Lissa and the subsequent engagement with the Austrian fleet were the Re d’Italia and the Re di Portogallo—two American-built vessels of 5,700 tons, old measurement. They were plated with armour 7 inches thick. They were designed to carry, the former two 150-pounders, and thirty 6-inch guns and four smooth-bore guns; and the latter two 300-pounders, and twenty-six 6-inch guns. These ships were poorly constructed, and the design was so faulty that the rudders were left without protection and open to destruction by ramming or gun-fire—a weakness of which the Austrians took full advantage. There was also a turret ram called the Affondatore, 4,070 tons, built at Millwall, and armed with two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in two turrets, which was supposed to epitomise all the lessons of the American War. Her ram projected 26 feet, and what with this and her big guns and her thick armour, the Italians expected her to do wonders. As sea-boats the three were about equally bad. There were also two French-built small rams, Terribile and Formidabile, of 2,700 tons. The French at that time favoured comparatively small ships with large rams for coast and harbour defence, giving them iron plating 4½ inches thick, and 6-inch rifled guns as their principal weapons. Of the broadside ironclads there were four, of about 4,700 tons each, and belted from stem to stern at the water-line. There were, besides, two armoured gunboats which carried two 150-pounder Armstrongs and some smaller guns. The Italian fleet also had a number of steam-engined wooden vessels. The Austrian fleet had six very indifferent ironclads, slow, none too well armed, smooth-bores of no great size predominating, and a few other vessels, mostly of wood, of little fighting value, but capable of holding in check the Italian wooden ships for a time at all events. The Austrian ships were the Drache, Kaiser Maximilian, Prinz Eugen, and Salamander, whose tonnage ranged from 3,400 to 3,800, each carrying 4½-inch armour of home manufacture; the steam line-of-battle ship Kaiser, four steam frigates, and some smaller boats. These were practically ready for sea when hostilities were commenced. The two unfinished ironclads Habsburg and Ferdinand Maximilian were got ready in an improvised fashion and given smooth-bore guns; and the Don Juan, another vessel in a state of even greater unpreparedness, had the deficiencies in her armour made good with heavy wooden beams. The Italians had two hundred and seventy-six rifled cannon to one hundred and twenty-one on the Austrian ships.

The Austrian Admiral, Tegethoff, was a man who left nothing to chance. He knew what he had to do, and he had that genius for command which enables a man to do his best with the materials at his disposal. Great though he knew the discrepancy to be between his own fleet and that of the Italians, it is a remarkable testimony to his organising power that he was able at the first glimpse he had of the Italian fleet to understand the extraordinary lack of cohesion that characterised it from first to last, and to prepare to meet it with every expectation of victory. He placed his fleet in wedge formation with the intention of breaking the enemy’s line of ironclads with his own ironclads, so as to avoid subjecting his weaker vessels to the fire of the heavier Italian vessels, as might have been done had he attacked the Italian line near or beyond its centre. He also intended to ram the Italian ships whenever he had a chance, but though the chances later were numerous, the ram proved a less effective weapon than had been expected. The duty of the Austrian smaller vessels was to rake with their guns the Italian ships after the heavier Austrian ships should have thrown them into confusion, for owing to the longer range of the Italian guns and the heavier weight of their projectiles, the Italians had a superiority at long-range fighting which the Austrian commander was by no means disposed to allow them to turn to their advantage.

The ships on both sides were slow, those of the Austrians being worse even than those of the Italians. This may to some extent explain the comparative ineffectiveness of the ram, the blow being of not sufficient force to inflict much harm. The Austrian ships were to “ram everything grey,” the Italian fleet having been painted a conspicuous light grey which made them easily distinguishable; whereas the Austrian ships were black, but their funnels were differently painted, so that any one of them could be identified in a moment. The shock when the Ferdinand Maximilian rammed the Re d’Italia was not very violent, but, possibly on account of the weakness of construction of the hull, the ram did its work. A gaping wound was formed in its side through which the water rushed, and the great ship, after giving a couple of rolls, like some ocean leviathan in agony, heeled heavily over and went down, the first sea-going ironclad to be lost in this manner. The Austrians were appalled for the moment at the result of the experiment, for such, indeed, it was. Disablement had been expected, but that such a powerful ship should be sent under the waves in a few moments by a single blow was a result that had not been anticipated. The Austrian ship rammed three Italian vessels, but this was the only one of her victims to succumb. The Re di Portogallo received a similar attention from the Kaiser, but the blow, though delivered with all the force of which the ship was capable, did herself as much harm as the other, for she lost her bowsprit and foremast, and left her figurehead in the gap formed in the side where it was wrenched off by the blow. The Kaiser had previously passed three of the Italian ships, but thanks to her armour the few shots which struck her caused no damage. The Re di Portogallo was little the worse for the ramming, and when it had the Austrian ship at its mercy a moment later, lost, by delay and incompetence, the opportunity to pour in a broadside.

The Kaiser was not built to be used to ram heavy vessels, or else her designers had underestimated the resistance she would have to encounter in striking another ship, the iron plates forming her bows being carried rather forward so that she had really a blunt projecting nose under water. Curiously enough, the only damage she sustained was a few plates started from the bows under the water-line.

As to the results of the fighting, the armour fully justified its use. The Austrian ships were struck several times by the heavy Italian shot and shells, but not once did the Italian projectiles penetrate both the armour and the backing, while for the most part the injuries caused by them were insignificant. The Italians lost two ironclads, and a third, the Affondatore, went down a few days afterwards as the result of the knocking about the Austrians gave her. But the injuries which caused the loss of these three Italian vessels were received below the water-line. Their armour was badly battered, but the ships themselves were little the worse. The 4-inch armour of one of the Italian ships was penetrated, but the backing prevented the shot going farther. The Austrians did not lose one ship, and on their armoured ships they had only three men killed, while on the wooden ships they lost thirty-eight killed and one hundred and thirty-eight wounded. The Italian losses are unknown, as a number of men were drowned when the two ironclads went under.

Even after the Italians were defeated they were still as strong as their opponents, but dared not attack them; while the Austrian commander deemed discretion the better part of rashness, and, contenting himself with having compelled the Italians to retire from Lissa, was confident that they would not attempt to attack him after the losses they had sustained, which had rendered them even more hopelessly disorganised than before the battle, if that were possible. The Italians, in spite of the vainglorious boasting in which they were pleased to indulge, were in no mood for another sea-fight. They were short now of ammunition, and their sailors were completely disheartened. Some of the commanders and all the crews showed extraordinary bravery in maintaining the fight when the circumstances, though not the odds, were against them, but the other commanders were remarkable for incompetence and some of them for cowardice, for they had no plan of action, one at least fled as soon as the shooting began, and one or two others were careful to keep out of harm’s way. The main lessons drawn from this engagement were that armour was indispensable in protecting a ship from the effects of hostile shot, and that the gun must remain the chief weapon of naval warfare. The advantage given to a numerically weaker side by superiority in organisation and efficiency had been too often demonstrated in previous engagements in the world’s history to render attractive a repetition of the lesson, but it is to be feared that the need of such lessons at frequent intervals has not yet passed. It also showed that big ships and gigantic guns are not of much account if the men who are to use them are untrained, and that no matter how heavy the guns and far-reaching their range they are of little use if the gunners miss nearly every time. The Austrian concentration of fire upon a given spot, even though the firing were only maintained by comparatively small guns, told its own tale. Ramming only sent one ship down as the immediate result of the blow, but the moral effect of the fear of being rammed was very great, as no crew, seeing an enemy making straight for their ship, could foresee the result. In any case, the damage was sure to be considerable. Yet the Italian Admiral, when he had two splendid opportunities of ramming his opponents with his most powerful vessel, the Affondatore, deliberately turned his ship aside and shrank from delivering the blows. The battle was noteworthy for its demonstration of the importance of accurate gunnery; nearly all the Italian projectiles passed over the Austrian ships, and the Italian gunners were heedless whether they fired when their vessels were on the upward or the downward roll. The trained Austrian gunners fired to hit.

Such lessons as the battle of Lissa was regarded as having presented were accepted, more or less, in the ironclads constructed in the five years immediately subsequent to that engagement.

The Hercules, begun in 1866, launched in 1868, and completed in 1869, was intended to combine the best features of the Black Prince and Minotaur. She was built entirely of iron, was 325 feet long between perpendiculars, 55 feet beam, and drew 34 feet 6 inches. The ram, a solid forging, weighed 5 tons, the armour plate was 8 to 9 inches thick, and weighed 1,145 tons; the weight of the bolts, nuts, and washers used in securing the armour plates was 73 tons, and there were also 91 tons of armour plates for the bulkheads, and 4 tons of bolts to secure them. The bulwarks were of wood, but below them were two iron strakes 6 inches thick, next a strake of 8-inch armour covering the lower portion of the main deck or central box battery, then two strakes of 6-inch plates, and then a belt of armour with a maximum thickness of 9 inches extending the length of the ship and amply protecting her some distance above and below the water-line; under this was another strake of 6-inch plates resting on the double skin of the hull itself. The 9-inch plates were backed by 10 inches of teak, inside which was an iron skin 1½ inches thick supported by vertical frames 10 inches deep and 2 feet apart, further stiffened by other beams. From the lower deck downwards the wing passages were strengthened with 18 to 20 inches of teak, and backed by a ¾-inch iron skin, which was also most substantially supported. The rest of the armour was backed by 10 or 12 inches of teak fastened to an iron skin 1½ inches thick, with a similar strengthening of vertical and longitudinal frames. She carried eight 10-inch 18-ton guns, four on either broadside, the two foremost and the two hindmost training through embrasures at the ends of the thwartship bulkheads and through recesses in the iron-clad sides. These four guns were established on what was known as Captain Scott’s turn-table and racers. Two 12½-ton guns were in protected batteries on the same deck, one at the bow and the other at the stern; three portholes were provided for each of these guns, so that it could be fired either in line of keel or on either side as necessary. Their weight made her pitch deeply and recover slowly, thereby impeding her speed and lessening the value of her gun-fire. She also carried some 6½-ton guns on her upper deck. Special attention was paid to the protection of the rudder head and steering apparatus, events at the battle of Lissa having showed the imperative necessity of doing so. It was contended on behalf of the Hercules that her armour could not be penetrated by the guns of any ship afloat. The 18-ton guns were the heaviest ever worked in an ocean-going vessel up to that time, and were only 1½ tons lighter than the famous 15-inch Rodman guns, which were the heaviest that the American monitors had managed to work with success. Although the immense guns of the Hercules were muzzle-loaders, and discharged 400 lb. shots, it was found possible to fire the gun a second time in 1 minute 15 seconds after it had been fired once, but naturally this rate of firing could not be kept up for long owing to the overheating of the gun.