On the other hand, where ships are formed with fine water-lines, and the two opposite sides are consequently very near to each other for many feet, it is quite unnecessary to cover them with armor. The buoyancy comprised between the two sides aft such parts is very small, and consequently penetration can let but little water into the ship, and do but little harm. It is a matter for the exercise of professional judgment where to draw the line between the armored and the unarmored parts. In the new British ships Nile and Trafalgar, which have excited great admiration in England, there are about sixty feet of length at each end left without armor, and as the ships have fine lines, but are nevertheless of considerable breadth at sixty feet from the ends, it seems probable that good judgment has been shown by their designers in this matter.
I have discussed this question at some length because it is one of primary consideration in the design of important armored ships, and because the abandonment of a long belt of armor is also one of the few features of construction respecting which the designers of the Continent have steadfastly refrained from following the example set by the Admiralty Office at Whitehall from the years 1870 to 1885. It will complete the consideration of this branch of the subject to say that there are numerous ships of the iron-clad type in foreign navies in which the armor (justifiably, as has just been shown) stops somewhat short of the ends, but very few indeed in which the length of the unarmored parts exceeds that of the armored. Among the last named may be mentioned a very questionable class of vessels (Sachsen type) in the German navy, and a much smaller sea-going vessel belonging to the Argentine Republic, named the Almirante Brown, which is a well-designed vessel in other respects, but which, on account of her long defenceless bow and stern, would do better to avoid than to fight an enemy.[23]
Having now dealt with the primary question of the defence of ships by means of armor-belts, we come to the greater or less defence bestowed upon them above water. The course taken by the French designers, when the increased thickness of armor made it impossible to repeat the complete protection adopted in La Gloire and her compeers, was in some few cases that of belting the ship with armor, and giving great “tumble home” to the sides above water, excepting at the central armored battery, thus allowing that battery to project, and its guns to fire directly ahead and astern, past the inwardly inclined sides. This system has been strikingly carried out in the two sister ships Courbet and Dévastation, the former of which is shown, stem on, in the cut on [page 75], which is engraved from a photograph taken after her launch, and before she began to receive her armor-plating. A representation of the sister vessel, Dévastation (forming one of the series of engravings given in this chapter from drawings specially executed for the purpose by Chevalier De Martino), forms our illustration on [page 73].
But generally in the French navy, and in nearly all but its earliest ships, direct head and stern fire has been obtained by means of elevated and projecting towers, armor-plated to a sufficient height to protect the gun machinery, but with the guns themselves unprotected, and firing en barbette. In the case of the two ships Dévastation and Courbet the main-deck projecting battery carries four guns, each commanding a full quadrant of a circle. The barbette batteries, standing up above the upper deck, carry a powerful gun on each side of the ship, with great range of fire.
THE “DEVASTATION:” FRENCH ARMORED SHIP OF THE FIRST CLASS.
Having given these general indications of the system of attack and defence adopted in the French navy—by far the most important of all the Continental navies—it now becomes desirable to go more into particulars. It is not necessary to dwell upon the early iron-clads of France. The Gloire and a dozen others of like character were all built of wood, without water-tight bulkheads, without rams or spurs, with armor-plates from four to six inches thick only, and with guns of small calibre and power. They may be left out of consideration in dealing with the present French navy. They were followed by six other vessels, also built of wood, but with upper works of iron, viz., the Océan, Marengo, Suffren, Richelieu, Colbert, Trident. They were armored with plates of a maximum thickness of 8½ inches, and carried four guns of 10¾ inches calibre, weighing 23 tons each, with four 16-ton guns, and half a dozen light ones. They varied in some particulars, ranging in tonnage from 7000 to 8000 tons, in horse-power from 3600 to 4600, and in speed from 13 to 14½ knots. The Friedland is another vessel which is frequently classed with the previous six ships, the largest of which she generally resembles, but she is built of iron, and carries eight 23-ton guns, and none of the 16-ton. A committee which sat in 1879, and which had for its president and vice-presidents men no less eminent than the late M. Gambetta and MM. Albert Grévy and Jules Ferry, pronounced these seven ships to be the strongest armored ships of the French navy then in service. Such great advances have since been made, however, that it is only necessary to add respecting these vessels that they were nearly all single-screw ships, and that they carried their principal armament at broadside ports on the main-deck, and in raised barbette towers placed at the four corners of the central battery. The Richelieu was the largest of these vessels.
