Modern ships of war

by Sir Edward J. Reed; Edward Simpson

Lord Brassey (in this respect somewhat erroneously following Mr. King, of the United States navy, in his able work upon “The War-ships and Navies of the World”), says, “The faculty of firing parallel to the line of keel is secured in the French ship by the tumble home of the ship’s sides, and not by the projection of the battery beyond them, as in the English vessel (the Audacious).” It is difficult to understand what this means, because it is obviously only by the projection of the battery beyond the sides of the ship which are before and after it that fore and aft fire can be obtained from the battery in either case. But it is not true that the battery of the Audacious, any more than the battery of the Redoutable, projects beyond the breadth of the ship at the water-line, which would seem to be what is intended, and Lord Brassey may assure himself of the fact by looking at Plate III. of his own work on “The British Navy,” from which the above words are quoted. The Redoutable is a full-rigged ship, and nevertheless steams 14¼ knots per hour. There is one particular in which the Dévastation and the Foudroyant, like her as they are in general design, differ materially from the Redoutable. I refer to the armament. The former two ships each carry four 34-centimetre 48-ton guns in the main-deck battery, in lieu of the four 25-ton guns of the Redoutable.

The Amiral Duperré (designed by M. Sabattier, the able French chief constructor) claims a few words, as she differs materially in type from the three ships just discussed. She has a complete belt of very thick armor from stem to stern—greatest thickness 22 inches, tapering to 10 inches at the extremities, with a thick deck (2 inches) at the top of the belt in the usual manner. But above this belt there is no armored main-deck battery, as in the other ships, the chief armament, of four 48-ton guns, being carried in four elevated barbette towers, two of which are well forward, and project considerably to enable their guns to act efficiently as bow-chasers, and at the same time to command all round the broadside and right astern. To facilitate this the sides of the ship have great tumble home. The other two towers are situated at the middle line of the ship, one near the stern, and the other farther forward, between the main and the mizzen masts. The main-deck, although without armor defence, is not without armament, as it carries fourteen 5½-inch 60-pounder rifled breech-loaders. Other particulars of the Amiral Duperré are given in the table, and on [page 81] is a view of her, engraved from a photograph with which I have been favored by a French officer.

It will be observed from her description that the most characteristic feature of this great ship of more than 10,000 tons is the absence of any guns protected by armor. The barbette towers, it is true, are armored with 12-inch plates, and the main-deck guns are under the protection of the thin plating of the ship’s side, which latter is of little or no avail, however, against the armament of other first-class ships. Practically the whole of the Duperré’s guns are unprotected. It may be added that during the discussions in London upon the “ships armored in places” an attempt was made to show that the Duperré, owing to her alleged small initial stability, was as devoid of stability when injured above the belt as certain vessels of the British Admiral class when injured before and abaft the belt—a statement which I distrust, as I regard it as a mere inference from an experiment which I believe to be delusive. At the same time, the Duperré would have been the better for more initial stability.

THE “AMIRAL DUPERRÉ:” FRENCH ARMORED SHIP OF THE FIRST CLASS.

But it is obvious that all belted or partially belted vessels, in which the belt is carried but a small height above the water for the size of the ship, must run the risk of losing both buoyancy and stability very soon if even moderately inclined in or after battle, seeing that, with a moderate inclination only, the entire armor-belt on the depressed side of the ship must disappear beneath the sea’s surface. The strenuous assertion of this source of danger, although it could not lead to much increase in the stability of the existing armored ships, has produced as one effect the busy and earnest efforts which both English and French constructors have been recently making to subdivide their ships above the armor into as many water-tight compartments as possible, and to stuff these compartments as full as possible of buoyant (or at least of water-excluding) materials. The necessity for resorting to this device, however, in first-class ships of nine, ten, or eleven thousand tons displacement, and of something approaching to five million dollars each in value, is not a thing for either French or English naval constructors to be proud of. But the assertion of the danger in question has had in England the further and very satisfactory result of bringing much more trustworthy ships, like the Nile and Trafalgar, into being, and of insuring the determined support of these ships in Parliament whenever those who foolishly confound mere cheapness with merit in such constructions seek to interfere with the progress of these magnificent vessels.

Two other powerful ships of the French navy, closely resembling the Amiral Duperré, are the Amiral Baudin and the Formidable. They are of 3¼ feet more beam than the Duperré (and therefore probably have much larger stability), and their displacement exceeds hers by 900 tons. Their armaments chiefly differ from hers in the employment of three guns of 75 tons each in their towers, in lieu of the four guns of 48 tons of the Duperré. The Neptune, Hoche, Magenta, and Marceau are four other powerful ships, as will have been seen from Table A, the principal armament of each consisting of four guns of 52 tons, carried in towers, with the exception of the Hoche, which has two of her four principal guns of 28 tons each only.

Incidental mention has already been made on [page 76] of two ships, the Caïman and Indomptable, which, although of only 7200 tons, carry very thick armor (19½ inches), and as a matter of fact carry also guns of the heaviest type (75-ton). There are two other vessels of the same description, the Terrible and Requin. Careful note should be taken of these four steel-built vessels, which add greatly to the power of France. Each carries two of the very powerful guns just mentioned, and steams at a speed of 14½ knots. In the same category of thickly armored ships the French have yet one other ship, the Furieux, of 5560 tons. Her armor is 17½ inches thick in places, and she is armed with two 48-ton guns. Her speed is 12 knots. The Tonnant has the same armor and armament, but she is of nearly 1000 tons less displacement, drawing much less water, and steaming only at 10 knots per hour.

We may sum up the facts relating to the larger class of French iron-clads which still rank among the efficient ships of 7000 tons and upward by saying that, in addition to the sixteen ships of which the particulars are given in Table A, there are on the efficient list the Colbert, Friedland, arengo, Océan, Richelieu, Suffren, Trident, Savoie, Revanche, Surveillante, and Héroïne, most of which have been previously described in general terms, and the remainder of which are of less than 6000 tons, and were built chiefly of wood many years ago.