The Warrior, as we saw, and the sister ship Black Prince, had a central armored battery only; the same is true of those reduced Warriors, the Defence and the Resistance. But the next succeeding ships of the Warrior’s size, the Minotaur and Agincourt, were fully armored from end to end; and the somewhat smaller ship the Achilles was furnished with a complete belt at the water-line. The Hector and Valiant (improved Defences) had complete armor above the water, but, oddly enough, had part of the water-line at each end left unarmored. A third ship of the Minotaur class, the Northumberland, was modified by the present writer at the bow and stern on his entering the Admiralty, the armor above water being there reduced, and an armored bow breastwork constructed. Within this armored breastwork were placed two heavy guns firing right ahead. With this exception, all these early ships, nine in number, were without any other protected guns than those of the broadside.
These ships were followed by a series of rigged ships of the writer’s design, viz., the Bellerophon, Hercules, Sultan, Penelope, Invincible, Iron Duke, Vanguard, Swiftsure, and Triumph, all with hulls of iron, or of iron and steel combined, together with a series of rigged ships constructed of wood, converted from unarmored hulls or frames, viz., Enterprise, Research, Favorite, Pallas, Lord Warden, Lord Clyde, and Repulse. Every one of these ships was protected by armor throughout the entire length of the vessel in the region of the water-line, and in some cases the armor rose up to the upper deck. Most of them, however, had the armor above the belt limited to a central battery. The chief interest in these vessels now lies in the illustrations they furnish of the evolution, so to speak, of bow and stern fire. In several of them a fire approximately ahead and astern (reaching to those directions within about twenty degrees) was obtained by means of ports cut near to the ship’s side, through the transverse armored bulkheads. In others these bulkheads were turned inward towards the battery near the sides of the ship in order to facilitate the working of the guns when firing as nearly ahead and astern as was practicable. In the Sultan an upper-deck armored battery was adopted for the double purpose of forming a redoubt from which the ship could be manœuvred and fought in action, and of providing a direct stern fire from protected guns. In the five ships of the Invincible class a direct head and stern fire was obtained from a somewhat similar upper-deck battery, which projected a few feet beyond the side of the ship.
THE “SULTAN.”
The rigged ships of later design than the writer’s present a still greater variety in the disposition of their armor and armaments. This variety may be in part illustrated by four examples, which for convenience are principally taken from Lord Brassey’s book.[3] The scales of these small drawings, as given there, are not all the same. These examples are the Alexandra, the Téméraire, the Nelson, and the Shannon. The Alexandra (of which a separate view, in sea-going condition, is given), which is probably the best of the rigged iron-clads of the British navy, may be regarded as a natural, but not the less meritorious, development of the combined broadside and bow and stern fire of the central-battery ships which preceded her. In her were provided a broadside battery on the main-deck, a direct bow fire, also on that deck, and both a direct bow and a direct stern fire on the upper deck from within armor, as in the Invincible class. The guns employed for bow and stern fire were all available for broadside fire. The upper-deck battery did not project beyond the main-deck as in the Invincible class, the forward and after parts of the ship above the main-deck being greatly contracted in breadth in order to allow the guns to fire clear both forward and aft. The Téméraire is a smaller ship than the Alexandra, and has a battery similar to hers on the main-deck, but with one gun less on each side, the danger of a raking fire entering through the foremost battery port being met by a transverse armored bulkhead, as shown in the plan of the ship. She is provided with an additional bow gun and a stern-chaser, carried high up in barbette towers, but worked on Colonel Moncrieff’s disappearing principle.
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “ALEXANDRA.”
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “TÉMÉRAIRE.”
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “NELSON.”
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE “SHANNON.”