Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

The Americans claim that these types of vessels were introduced by the Wampanoag, which was designed at the time of the American Civil War to chase Confederate commerce destroyers. The extraordinary reports published in the sensation-loving American papers, and duly copied and accepted as true by the British papers, as to the speed and capabilities of this vessel and others of her class, in 1866, induced the British Government to decide on something similar, and, if possible, superior, and the Inconstant was the result. She was 333 feet in length by 50 feet beam, and had a displacement of 5,782 tons on a draught of 23 feet. She was built of iron sheathed with wood and coppered, this arrangement enabling a light hull to be constructed which should take the strain of the machinery without being subject to the same “working” as a wooden ship would have had to endure on account of the greater elasticity of the material. The wood sheathing protected the iron, and also enabled the bottom to be covered with copper, or “yellow metal” as the composition was called which was generally used for the purpose, in order to prevent barnacles, weeds, and other marine growths from accumulating upon the submerged portion of the hull and retarding the speed. Considering that barnacles and weeds will grow thus to a length of several inches, the extent to which the speed of a vessel will be hindered may be imagined. All unsheathed vessels, whether of wood or iron, were peculiarly liable to these growths, which are particularly luxuriant in tropical waters, and might have their speed reduced even as much as from ten knots to six knots. The difficulty was to enable an iron ship to carry a skin of copper or yellow metal, the latter being mostly used in the mercantile marine, and the former for ships of war, private owners with their own money to spend being usually more economical than governments with the taxpayers’ money behind them, and not hampered by the problems of making the ships pay commercially. The Inconstant was launched in November, 1868, and was followed in 1873 by the Shah, whose famous encounter with the Huascar was alluded to in the previous chapter.

In 1879 the Comus class, usually called the “C” class, as their names began with that letter, and the Leander class were introduced, constructed partly of steel and partly of iron, their hulls being given a sheathing of wood. Their engines and boilers were given a protective steel deck over them 1½ inches thick, but otherwise they had little enough in the way of protection. The most famous of the former class was the Calliope, which, in March, 1889, made such a magnificently successful struggle against a hurricane, and fought her way from Samoa Harbour in the teeth of one of the most severe storms experienced in the Pacific. The consummate seamanship and cool daring displayed by Captain Kane in that struggle, lasting for hours, when six American and German gunboats in the harbour were wrecked, have made his feat memorable in the annals not only of the British Navy, but in the heroic records of the seamanship of all ages. It is no detraction from the merits of Captain Kane’s exploit to say that credit is due also to the members of his crew, whatever their station—and not least to the unknown hero who was at the wheel in that battle between man’s science and Nature’s force. All shared in the glory of the feat; from Captain Kane and his officers to the engineering staff who kept a set of unreliable engines going at a pressure they were never built to withstand, and to the half-naked coal-trimmers in the bunkers and firemen in the stokehold, who stuck to their work in the semi-darkness, knowing full well that in the case of failure on anyone else’s part, or breakdown in the engines, they were doomed to die like rats in a trap.

The incident directed attention to the splendid sea-going capacities of these vessels, and for many years afterwards the “lines” of the smaller cruisers bore a strong resemblance to those of the Calliope and her sisters.

It was not, however, until 1883 that the first protected cruiser appeared. This was not built for the British Navy, but for a South American State, and under the name of the Esmeralda came from the slips at Elswick. She had a complete protective deck, and not simply a protecting deck over her vital parts, engines capable of giving her a high speed, and a powerful armament. She was the pioneer vessel of her class. The British naval authorities, however, preferred the armoured cruisers, and led the way in 1881 with the Imperieuse and Warspite, but soon abandoned this type and adopted the protected cruiser. These two vessels were each of 8,000 tons displacement, 315 feet in length, and had a partial belt of 10-inch armour along 140 feet on each side, transverse bulkheads 9 inches thick at each end of the belt, and a protective deck 1½ inches thick. They carried four 9.2-inch guns in separate barbettes, one forward, one aft, and one on either side, besides ten 6-inch guns, twenty-six smaller and machine guns, and six torpedo tubes. Their hulls, which were of steel, were sheathed with wood and coppered.

RUSSIAN CRUISER “RURIK.”

By permission of Messrs. Vickers, Ltd.

RUSSIAN CRUISER “ROSSIA.”

Photograph by Stephen Cribb, Southsea.