Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

The central armoured citadel protecting the machinery and boilers and the magazines, besides part of the machinery for working the turrets and the guns, was no less than 58 feet in breadth, and extended to within a fraction of 6 feet below the load water-line, and was 107 feet in length. Above the citadel was a second central armoured compartment protecting the turret bases and a part of the machinery for loading and working the guns; and above this compartment were the turrets themselves. The turrets of the Duilio were not placed amidships, but the experiment was tried for the first time on an Italian ship of setting them at opposite corners of the central citadel, so that one should command the stern and the other the bows, and that each should be able to fire ahead or astern, or on the broadside, without interfering in any way with the other. The decks before and abaft the citadel were 4 feet 9 inches below the water-level, and were protected by horizontal armour. Extensive experiments were conducted at Spezzia with a 100-ton gun, and guns of 10- and 11-inch calibre, on different types of targets. As first designed these ships were to carry two 60-ton guns in each turret, but when the British Admiralty announced that the Inflexible would have guns of 81 tons, the Italians equipped these two warships with 100-ton guns manufactured at the Elswick works. The armour at the water-line was 22 inches thick on the central portion, and that of the turrets was 18 inches, further strengthened by heavy teak backing. Each ship had a heavy projecting ram, and also had an apparatus for discharging Whitehead torpedoes. Although these ships were described as Italian-built and were certainly put together in Italy, it is interesting to note that the Duilio had trunk engines by Messrs. John Penn and Sons, that practically all the iron and steel put into the vessel’s frames, etc., were made in France, that the armour-plates came from Cammell’s establishment at Sheffield, and that the guns were made at Elswick. Only the heavy forgings for the ship were made in Italy. The Dandolo, although described as a sister ship, differed in many particulars from the Duilio. The Dandolo had engines of Maudslay’s inverted vertical compound type, a pair of which was given to each of her screw propellers, and she had eight boilers, heated with thirty-four furnaces, and working at a pressure of 60 lb. per square inch. These great ships were out of date soon after being completed, as the discovery of the means of making steel cheaply, and the much greater strength and lightness of the homogeneous metal, as it was called, rendered it possible for ships and guns to be built of much greater power than ever before. Indeed, so great was the progress in these two departments that in a very few years these vessels would no longer have been invulnerable, but would have been relegated, as being slow and unwieldy, to harbour or coast defence work, and thence to the scrap-heap.

One remarkable ship on the turret system was the Peter the Great, belonging to Russia, which was very like the British turret ship Devastation, and carried four 12-inch guns in her two turrets. She had no ram. Russia also possessed the Minin, which carried turrets on Captain Coles’s system and had a very low freeboard, but after the loss of the Captain, the Minin’s turrets were removed, and she was given a central battery, 98 feet in length and rising 10 feet above the water-line. The guns were mounted en barbette and were placed on turntables. Russia also had two three-turret ships carrying six 25-ton rifled guns, and two double-turret ships each carrying four 35-ton guns, besides a considerable number of single turret ships and some smaller two-turreted vessels. These were mostly monitors copied from Ericsson’s plan, and were similar to those which he designed for the war in America. Most of these turrets were on Captain Coles’s system.

The turret system was developed to such an extent by Admiral Popoff that he gave his name to the type of ships he designed. They were immense circular floating fortresses intended only to operate in shallow and comparatively smooth water. Their sea-going qualities were conspicuous by their absence, which is not to be wondered at when their shape is taken into consideration. Although described as circular it would be more correct to say that they were circular only at the water-line, for on one side to form a stern a projection was constructed to facilitate steering, and at the opposite side a bow was built on. These ships carried on the central part of the upper deck a circular breastwork 7 feet high, in which were two 12-inch 40-ton guns, two quick-firers on each side of the superstructure, and six smaller guns, mounted en barbette 13 feet 3 inches above the water-line, on fixed slides. When it was necessary to train or change the direction of the guns, the whole ship had to be turned. In the citadel was the accommodation for the officers and crew. The extreme diameter of the vessel was 121 feet, the length over all, including the stern and bow, was about 150 feet, and her total displacement was 3,553 tons. She drew only 13 feet. The ship was built of iron, and had a double bottom sheathed with wood and copper. She was, of course, flat-bottomed. A peculiar feature of her construction was that she had a dozen external box girders or keels, each about 12 inches square, carried parallel to the intended axis of the vessel. There were eight radial frames and two rings of web frames, the vessel being divided into twenty-four compartments. These two vessels, the Admiral Popoff and Novgorod, were alike in most particulars, except that the latter was the smaller of the two. The height of the armour on each vessel was 1 foot 6 inches above the water-line, while below the water-line it was 4 feet 6 inches; they each had six screw propellers driven by three sets of engines. Their average speed was about six and a half knots. Although Admiral Popoff is usually given the credit of the invention of this type of vessel, Mr. John Elder, the Glasgow shipbuilder, designed and patented a circular floating battery in 1867. He proposed that the circular ship should carry twenty-six guns in a lower battery and ten in a central one, and that the sharp edge of the circumference should be used as a ram. According to his design his vessel would have had a diameter of 144 feet, a freeboard of 6 feet, and a draught of 9 feet.

The great ironclads described and their armament represent what may be regarded as the apotheosis of the iron turret ship and the heavy iron gun. Before passing on to the great change introduced by the adoption of steel in shipbuilding and gun manufacture it may be as well to note something of what has been accomplished in the production of warships of other types and modifications of types, and how some of them acquitted themselves in actual conflict.

One drawback to all the heavy British ironclads of this period was that so much weight and space were taken up by the armour and its backing, that comparatively little space was left for bunker accommodation. Obviously the very heavily armoured ships could not travel for long at high speed under steam without exhausting their coal supply. In order to obtain speed and allow space for the engines of the necessary dimensions, together with adequate coal supplies, the amount of armour carried had to be reduced, and in July in the summer of 1869 the first of a new class of armoured frigates, the Inconstant, was launched for the Navy. She was constructed of iron sheathed with three thicknesses of wood and coppered. She was the first vessel which had a stern post and rudder frame made of brass. She carried sixteen guns, viz. ten 9-inch muzzle-loading guns on the main deck, and six 7-inch muzzle-loading rifles on the upper deck; her engines, of 1,000 h.p. nominal, gave her a speed of about sixteen knots, at which she was faster than any other warship in the world. She was unusually narrow for her length, in order to add to her speed, her length being 337 feet 4 inches, and her beam 50 feet 3½ inches. At one time on her trials she made nearly eighteen and a half knots.

A series of coast-defence monitors was decided upon in deference to public clamour, and the first of these, the Glatton, was begun in 1868, and finished in the latter part of 1870. She was intended to be for coast-defence purposes only, and not an ocean-going ship in any sense of the term. Consequently her coal capacity was small, and she was very heavily armoured. She had but one turret, and this was so disposed that as the vessel had no masts the turret could be turned to give the guns a range of fire all round except for a small section astern, only about 20 degrees being thus uncovered. Although her design was admittedly founded upon the American monitor type, several important improvements were introduced. The American monitors had shown on several occasions that a heavy shot striking near the base of the turret was liable to cause the turret to jam or become unworkable. To render this impossible in the case of the Glatton she was equipped with a heavy breastwork built outside the base of the turret, in such a position that the lower part of the turret was absolutely protected and consequently could not be disabled, while if a shot were to strike the upper part of the turret it would do little damage. The Glatton had a freeboard of only 3 feet; the hull was plated with iron 12 inches thick above the water-line, and 10 inches thick below it, and behind this was a teak backing 20 inches thick, and behind this again two thicknesses each of 1 inch of iron forming an inner skin, while the frames to which this was attached were no less than 10 inches deep, and were only 2 feet apart. Altogether the sides of this vessel were 3 feet 8 inches in thickness. The turret contained two 25-ton guns; its armour was 14 inches thick in the most exposed parts, and 12 inches thick elsewhere. And besides this it had a wood backing of 15 inches, and an iron inner skin ⅝-inch thick. It was 30 feet in diameter, and similar to the turrets of the Captain and Monarch. The breastwork rose 6½ feet on each side of the vessel from the upper deck, and was plated with 12 inches of iron, with a 15-inch backing of teak. The upper deck had a sheathing of 3 inches of iron. The total length of the vessel was 245 feet, its breadth 54 feet, and it drew 19 feet of water. It was of 2,700 tons burden, and the engines were of 500 h.p. nominal. Its bunkers were designed to carry 250 tons of coal, but its ballast tanks were so designed that if necessary they could take another 250 tons of coal. With such dimensions and such a weight of armour to carry, she was, of course, a slow vessel, but in regard to her fighting power it was estimated that she would give a good account of herself against even such a vessel as the Monarch.

Powerful though the Glatton’s turret appeared, the experimental turret on the same pattern fired upon at Portland by the 21-ton gun of the Hotspur suffered somewhat badly. The shot struck the turret at the horizontal joint of the upper and lower plates, forcing the upper plate and the lower plate apart and damaging the turret generally.

A series of breastwork monitors was added to the Navy in the late ’sixties. Besides the Magdala, Cerberus and Abyssinia for colonial coast and harbour defence, the Admiralty ordered four similar but larger vessels for home defence, much to the general surprise. For some unfathomable reason the Cerberus and Magdala were barque-rigged. False bows and sterns were added to them to enable them to make the voyages to their respective destinations. They carried two 18-ton guns in each of their turrets. On her outward voyage the Cerberus earned a reputation for rolling which she never lost. The first reports of her voyage as far as Gibraltar described it as being successful and prosperous, but when her commander’s report was received it showed that the voyage was successful in the sense that the ship succeeded in getting that far, but prosperous it never was. She had dirty weather in crossing the Bay of Biscay, and for twelve hours rolled so heavily that it was thought she would not get through it. It is said she rolled 40 degrees each way, which is far more than the Captain rolled, and she pitched so heavily that sometimes the whole fore part of the ship as far as the foremast would be lost sight of, and the decks be quite under water. She was very slow under steam, the utmost speed that could be got out of her being six knots. The crew detested her so thoroughly that they deserted whenever they found the opportunity, three of them had to be punished and sent to prison by way of example by the time Malta was reached, and six volunteered to go to prison rather than continue the voyage. However, she arrived at Melbourne at last, and lay year in and year out at her moorings in Hobson’s Bay except for such short intervals when she went down the bay for firing practice. One of the war scares which arise from time to time came near to conferring on the Cerberus a celebrity of a unique character. Irresponsible and irrepressible politicians of a sort find colonial life offers them more scope for the display of their exuberance, and as the scare revived the question whether the defences of Melbourne at Queenscliffe were sufficiently strong, a politician of this variety proposed that the Cerberus should be sent out to sea and then endeavour to steam back past the batteries, which should fire upon her, in order to test both her armour and the strength of the defences. Strange to say, this suggestion actually met with some support, notwithstanding the chorus of ridicule and protests with which it was received, but the common-sense of the community vetoed the proposition. At the time of their construction these three vessels were the most powerful warships of their size to be found anywhere, and were among the ugliest.

In the early ’seventies there were added to the British Navy, and less numerously to other navies, several vessels of composite construction. That is to say, that all her framing was of iron and the outside and deck planking was of wood. Most of these vessels were sloops or light cruisers, and though they were useless for defensive purposes against armoured ships, their offensive powers were very great for vessels of their size, as they were generally given four of the heaviest guns it was possible for them to carry. Under steam they were fast, but as their bunker capacity was not large they had to depend on their sails when possible. One of these vessels, which may be regarded as a specimen of her class, the Albatross, was 160 feet in length between perpendiculars, of 894 tons displacement, and carried two 4½-ton 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns, two 64-pounder guns, and the usual number of smaller weapons for boat and land service.

One small corvette, the Druid, had an innovation which must have brought tears to the eyes of sailors of the old school who loved the ship’s figure-head, and were never tired of keeping it clean and brightly painted. The necessity of end-on fire and bow chasers was admitted, and some unsentimental reformer actually had her figure-head constructed so as to open in two parts like a folding door to permit of the space being used as a porthole for a heavy bow gun.