Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

CHAPTER VIII

BATTLESHIPS AND CRUISERS

There was no sudden change from iron to steel in the building of warships. Steel at first was very expensive, and by no means the perfect article that we know at the present day, besides which the supply was very restricted, and the Admiralty by using it in conjunction with iron was able to ascertain the extent to which it might ultimately be adopted. Thus, in one ship, steel was tried for the keel, in another for the protective deck, in another for facing armour, in another for the frames, and so on. The two screw propeller shafts of the Inflexible, for instance, were made of Whitworth compressed steel. They were 288 feet in length and weighed 63 tons. Had they been of wrought iron they would have weighed 97 tons.

One of the earliest steel warships ever built, and certainly one of the smallest, was the Dutch gunboat Handig Vlug, launched on the Thames in 1864. Commenting on this little gunboat, the Times said: “The general term ‘gunboat’ conveys to our minds the image of a vessel built of ‘sappy timbers’ and rotten planking, carrying two heavy shell guns on their low unprotected upper deck, fitted with 60 h.p. (nominal) engines, and averaging no more than eight knots under the most favourable circumstances, a class of vessel that has figured for almost fabulous sums in our annual navy estimates for ‘repairs,’ etc., but, nevertheless, a class of craft that has left imperishable marks of its usefulness and power in many parts of the world, and more especially on the rivers and seaboard of India and China.”

A comparison between the gunboats of the British Navy, as revealed by the foregoing quotation, and the type introduced by the Handig Vlug is striking. She was stated to be the first vessel of any class, built on this side of the Atlantic, to carry her armour on the deflective principle instead of offering vertical resistance to the impact of shot. She was constructed entirely of steel, her plates below the water-line being only ¼ inch thick, but above the water-line they were ⅜ inch thick, and the dome or cupola in which her battery was placed was composed of plates of similar thickness. This cupola occupied 60 feet in the centre of the vessel with a grated top for ventilation, and above this was a small pilot-house, resembling the usual American design, about 5 feet high. The cupola had three gunports at either end, permitting the guns to be trained ahead and astern, and on the bows or quarters. It also had a number of holes for rifle fire, which could be covered with brass slides when not in use. She was intended to be sufficiently fast under steam to be able to outstrip a battery operating on land in a country with so many watercourses as Holland, or to be rifle-proof if sent to Javanese waters. She was to carry two 12-pounder rifle shell guns and fifty riflemen. The length of this “hornet,” as she was called, was 100 feet between perpendiculars, her beam was 17 feet, and her depth 6 feet 6 inches, and she drew only 3 feet of water; her tonnage was 138 tons. In rough weather this little low ship made a speed of ten knots on her trial trip, and being a twin-screw vessel—the engines and ship were built by the Dudgeons—she was put through some tests in the presence of Admiralty representatives, and made a complete circle in two minutes forty-seven seconds, and another in three minutes, while in going ahead at full speed the course of the vessel was reversed by the altered action of the screws in one minute. The tests were held to “prove the worth of the double or twin-screw principle for purposes of warfare, as it has been proved before for some time for purposes of commerce, for handiness of any vessel under steam power is equally valuable for both purposes, whether in avoiding the shoals of a tortuous shallow river or in flanking the shore battery of an enemy.”[53]

As steel is much stronger in proportion to its weight than iron, it followed that the adoption of steel for building warships meant a great saving in the weight of the hull. The weight thus gained could be utilised in three ways: by increasing the extent of the armour carried, by increasing the weight of the guns carried, or by a combination of the two. As steel was still further improved it became possible to increase the size of the vessels, the power and weight of the engines and boilers—in which the power increased to a far greater proportion than the weight—the speed of the ships, the strength and extent of the armour carried, and the effectiveness of the guns. It permitted also of a destructive secondary armament.

We have seen how from the old broadside ships of the Northumberland type came the central battery ships like the Hercules, the last of these being the Superb. Their armament also underwent a modernising process as time went on, and many of these old ships, from the Warrior onwards, were equipped with both quick-firing and anti-torpedo-boat guns, and were retained long after their fighting capacity had become a very doubtful quality, and their surrender to the tender mercies of the shipbreaker became imperative.

Meanwhile from the converted Royal Sovereign there descended a series of turret ships, some, like the Cerberus, Devastation and Dreadnought, having two turrets on the centre line of the ship; others, like the Rupert and Conqueror, having one turret only; others, like the Monarch, having two turrets in the centre, and yet others having their turrets en echelon or placed diagonally, as in the Inflexible. The Colossus was an improved Inflexible, but of steel, and practically marked the end of the heavily armoured vessels of this type. From the double turrets and the central battery ships we have the combination of the two in the Temeraire.

The Colossus and the Edinburgh, which were begun in 1882 and completed in 1886, may be said to have inaugurated a new era in the building of the world’s battleships. They were the first battleships to be built wholly of steel for the British Navy, and were asserted to be more powerful as fighting ships than any other ships in existence. This was due not only to the material of which they were constructed, but also to the fact that they were given breech-loading guns, Great Britain being the last of the great Powers to dispense with the old-fashioned muzzle-loader. These ships were of much the same type as the Ajax and Inflexible, but their citadels were of greater length; they were of fourteen knots speed.

The Nile, launched in 1888, had a complete belt, and was the last low freeboard turret ship. She was preceded by what were known as the soft-ended barbette ships, because their ends were comparatively unprotected, the weight being concentrated amidships in order, among other objects, to increase the sea-going qualities of the vessels; the first of these was the Collingwood, begun in 1882 and launched in 1886, the principal armament being carried in barbettes.