Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

In the same year the Monarch, a full-rigged, double-turreted, ocean-going ship, was launched, with a displacement of 8,320 tons. Her turrets had 10-inch armour, while that of her belt and bulkheads was 7 inches. Her engines were of 7,840 indicated h.p., and she had a speed of about fourteen knots. The Monarch was intended to have all the advantages of a turreted vessel combined with the freeboard of a sea-going ship. Her armament included four 25-ton 10-inch muzzle-loading guns, and some lighter weapons under her raised poop and forecastle, she being the first of the turreted vessels to have a secondary armament. The raised poop and forecastle were added to increase her seaworthiness, but though they accomplished this they only did so at the expense of her direct fire ahead and astern from her turret guns.

The adherents of the low freeboard sea-going turreted ship, as advocated by Captain Coles, pinned their faith to the Captain, which was launched at Birkenhead in 1869, and was of 6,950 tons register. Probably no warship’s designs were ever more bitterly criticised and condemned by one party and upheld by another than those of the Captain. This ship had several features to recommend her, and several others which more than counterbalanced the conditions she was supposed to embody. The believers in the Captain argued that she represented what a sea-going turret ship should be, being powerfully armed, of good speed, well armoured, powerfully engined, and able to use extensive sail power if necessary. That she possessed all these qualities is unquestionable. Her engines of 900 h.p. nominal gave her a speed of thirteen knots. Her heaviest gun was the 25-ton 12-inch muzzle-loader. Her freeboard as designed was 8 feet 6 inches, but when she was in sea-going trim it was found that her actual freeboard was 6 feet 8 inches, through some error in the calculations, and this, added to the fact that she carried a large spread of canvas, caused many misgivings as to her stability. In two cruises in the Channel she gave every satisfaction, and it was contended that she really had solved the problem of a low freeboard ship carrying canvas and turrets, and able to go to sea. Her third cruise, in company with the Channel fleet, marked the end of her career and of all the theories she was supposed to represent with such conspicuous success, for during a squall at night she rolled over and went to the bottom, taking nearly all on board with her, among the lost being Captain Coles. The exact circumstances of the disaster were never established; all that is known is that with her low freeboard and small margin of stability she rolled beyond the point at which recovery was possible.

As a reply to the Monarch the Captain was a failure, and the high freeboard turret ship was a success. Whether the Captain would have done better under steam alone it is impossible to say; perhaps she would, though she was under shortened sail at the time of the disaster. Some professed to believe that the hull would have been stable had it carried only one mast for signalling purposes, and suggested that another vessel should be constructed to take her place, but the experiment was never made. The Captain was too heavy for her size, and therefore lacked buoyancy; her weight was too much distributed, and she had not the power to throw off quickly the water she took on board, but “lay down under it,” to use a seaman’s expression.

Some six months before the Captain was lost a ship was launched which introduced another and most successful type, yet she was rather an improvement on certain earlier vessels than an entirely modern conception. This was the Devastation, and she was at once recognised as the most powerful ship of war in the world. The Glatton, a single turret ship, launched in 1869, may in some respects be regarded as the forerunner of the Devastation. The Glatton was a low freeboard coast-defence monitor, modified to suit the conditions prevailing on the English side of the Channel; but the Devastation, while still being of comparatively low freeboard, was a sea-going ship, mastless, so far as sails were concerned, and double turreted.

The Devastation was the historical reply of the British naval constructors to the much-vaunted American monitors, and also the Admiralty’s reply to the Captain. She was so unlike anything else afloat, that the writers of those days had difficulty in finding anything to which they could compare her. One describes her as like an “impregnable piece of Vauban fortification with bastions mounted upon a fighting coal mine.” As a mastless turret ship or fighting machine, she possessed powers of offence, defence, and manœuvring greater than those of any other ship in the world. This ship, which was built at Portsmouth, and the Thunderer, built at Pembroke, were the pioneers of this class of vessel, and were the first to embody in their construction the most perfect examples of the turret principle as at that time understood, applied to a sea-going ship.[42] They were superior to any others built or building as fighting machines, and in their coal-carrying capacity. They were of 4,406 tons burden under the old system of measurement. They were given 12 inches of rolled armour plating on a teak backing built into an immensely strong framing, 18 inches in thickness, which was further backed with an iron skin 1½ inches thick. There was not only the increased thickness of the armour, but also its quality to be taken into consideration in comparing these vessels with the Warrior and Minotaur, for the resistance offered by the rolled armour of the new ships increased very nearly as the square of the thickness, so that the sides of the Devastation and the Thunderer were, all things considered, about seven times as strong as those of the Warrior. The thickest armour carried in the French navy was that of the peculiar rams of the “Taureau” or “Bélier” type, mentioned on another page, viz. 8¼ inches, while that of the American monitors was 6 inches of plating on a system of armour stringers. The two English ships by reason of their higher freeboard were better sea-boats than any monitors built on the American principle could ever hope to be. The American turrets leaked badly whenever it was necessary to place their weight on the spindles to enable them to revolve, and their low sides allowed almost every other wave to wash over their decks. The turrets of the Devastation and Thunderer were worked on Captain Coles’s system of rollers fixed at the circumference of the base of the turret and centring at the central cylindrical spindle, but their base rested upon the upper deck within the breastwork.

In measurements these vessels were considerably smaller than the Warrior or Minotaur classes. The Warrior’s 4½-inch hammered plates would have offered little more resistance than so much glass to the heavy blows which the Devastation’s guns could inflict, nor would the Minotaur’s rolled plates have had much more defensive effect. Even when the Devastation was built, it was contended that the Hercules armour was practically impenetrable to the heaviest of British guns afloat yet, and that of the Devastation was three inches thicker still. One reason why this vessel was so strongly constructed was that she was built on an improvement of the bracketed frame system first introduced by the Admiralty in the Bellerophon. These improvements enabled a lighter framework to be constructed without reducing the strength, and the weight thus saved was put into the defensive armour. The Devastation’s upper deck when the ship was in sea-going order was about 4½ feet above water, except at the bows, where a sunk forecastle raised the height to 9 feet, and increased her capacities for going head to sea. The turret ports were 13 feet above the water, so that the guns were carried higher than those of any broadside-armed ironclad afloat. Those of the Hercules, for instance, were 11 feet above the water.

As at first designed, the Devastation would have had a less freeboard than the Captain, but after that disaster the plans of the Devastation were altered considerably, and the Admiralty committee decided that it would be safer and wiser to increase the freeboard amidships. This was done with iron plates raised to a level with the walls of the armoured breastwork, the freeboard for about half the ship’s length being as much as 12 feet.

The turrets were placed one at each end of this breastwork, with the funnels, ventilators, and so on, between them. The breastwork deck, as it was called, was strongly plated as compared with the main-deck plating of all existing ironclads, and the protective plating of the upper deck was from two to three inches thick. Above the turrets was the usual hurricane deck. She carried two 30-ton guns in each turret, the guns being of an Armstrong type improved upon at Woolwich, and throwing projectiles weighing 600 lb., and of the Palliser pointed type. Her two turrets gave her an absolutely all-round fire, a consummation which was impossible with any vessel depending at all upon sails. Her engines, which constituted her sole motive power, were the largest which had yet been applied to working twin screws and were each of 800 h.p. nominal, and gave her a speed of twelve and a half knots.

H.M.S. “DEVASTATION.”