It must be stated, however, that, so far torpedo-boats are not as successful in practice as Admiral Aube would have had the naval world believe.
“Swayed by the concurrent testimony of different officers who conducted or took part in the naval manœuvres of 1886, professional opinion appears to agree that torpedo-boats are very delicate instruments at best, and that a greater tonnage is imperative where service at sea is anticipated. A day or two in even moderate weather is sufficient to exhaust the stanchest crew on account of the excessive balloting about, and a prolonged voyage has been found to be fatally injurious to the adjustments of the Whitehead for horizontal accuracy. Furthermore, in such small, low craft a correct estimate of the distance, speed, or course of the enemy is most difficult, especially if the officer be in the conning-tower, looking through the narrow sight-slits; in anything of a sea-way, also, accurate pointing is out of the question.... In the course of the past year Schichau has yielded to Thornycroft the honor of producing the fastest vessel in the world, the owner now being the Spanish Admiralty in place of the Russian. This boat is the Ariete, with a speed of 26.18 knots.
“It has become a question in the minds of some eminent designers and observers, notably M. Normand, whether or not the extreme speeds sought and obtained in some recent boats are not excessive. Damage to the motive machinery is more to be apprehended than any injury to the hull or casualty among the crew. When it is considered that under ordinary conditions of weather and service the speed of the fastest will be little greater than that of an ordinary twenty-knot boat, the propriety at once suggests itself of devoting to steel plate the extra weight of boiler, water, and engine necessary to produce that practically superfluous horse-power.”[30]
The trials of this year have not confirmed the great promises made for the type by its most able and influential advocates. Many of the English boats broke down, and in few cases were the high speeds realized in actual sea duty. The truth is, torpedo-boats have been brought down to such a condition of refinement to meet the special circumstances of their work that it appears probable they have become too delicate for rough handling. Out of twenty-seven boats that were required to steam a distance of one hundred miles, seven failed to run the course at all, having been, from one cause or another, practically disabled. Such a heavy percentage of failures—one resulted in a loss of life—under a trial test to which the boats might at any time be subjected, arouses a natural doubt as to a policy which is sacrificing for certain impracticable results considerations that are of vital importance.
So far as the French naval manœuvres proved this year, the torpedo-boats were not equal to the task assigned them. During these experiments a squadron of eight armored battle-ships, three cruisers, and two sea torpedo-boats, under command of Vice-admiral Peyron, was supposed to represent a convoy of troop-ships and guard-vessels which was to be intercepted on a voyage from Toulon to Algiers by a torpedo division of four cruisers, one store-ship, and sixteen boats, with the Gabriel Charmes, gun-boat, all lying off Ajaccio, under command of Rear-admiral Brown de Coulston.
Vice-admiral Peyron and his heavy squadron left port on the day appointed with a strong northerly gale and a high sea, and shortly after clearing the land the Indomptable, an armored battle-ship, sustained some damage and had to anchor under the Hyères Islands. The mistral sent the other vessels rapidly on their way to the African coast without slackening speed, all keeping well together, with the two torpedo-boats steaming along under the higher sides of their consorts. On the other hand, the torpedo division of Rear-admiral Brown, which had left Toulon two days before the fictitious convoy, was concentrated at Ajaccio. They ran seaward on Saturday night to find the Peyron ships, but the latter had cleverly given them the go-by in the darkness and bad weather, and the mosquito flotilla was forced to return to Corsica for shelter. Ajaccio was reached by Rear-admiral Brown on Sunday afternoon, and it was not until four-and-twenty hours afterwards that the weather moderated sufficiently to enable him to put to sea again, but by that time the Algiers convoy had already been at anchor in their port of destination since the morning. The preliminary operations were therefore a pronounced failure.
The Gabriel Charmes illustrates a design which is similar to that of a torpedo-boat, except that in place of a torpedo tube one 5.5-inch gun is carried forward. The deck is strengthened to bear this weight, and immediately abaft the piece is an armored conning-tower, within which the commanding officer is enabled by an ingenious mechanism to direct the movements of the vessel. The dimensions are as follows: length 132.6 feet, beam 12.6 feet, draught 6.7 feet, and displacement 74 tons. The engines are two-cylindered compound, and developed 560 indicated horse-power and 19 knots. The boats are said to be very cranky even in smooth water, but so highly is their fighting power rated that fifty more have been ordered. In the Mediterranean manœuvres of May the Gabriel Charmes proved to be the swiftest vessel of the torpedo squadron, as on the run from Toulon to Ajaccio she led the others by three hours, and was always in the advance while scouting. One paddle-wheel armored despatch-vessel and seven composite armored transports complete the record of additions made to the French fleet last year.
THE ITALIAN, RUSSIAN, GERMAN, AUSTRIAN, AND TURKISH NAVIES.
The Continental navy next in present interest to that of France is the Italian, owing to the fact that the Italian government, although largely abstaining from the use of armor, has applied itself urgently to developments of gun-power and speed in large war-ships. The Duilio and Dandolo (illustrated on [page 105]) were considered in the chapter on the French navy, and their resemblance to the Inflexible type pointed out. They are nearly as large as the Inflexible, although differing greatly in proportions and form from her. They appear to me to be more objectionable, from the want of armored stability, if one may so speak, than even the Ajax and Agamemnon, which are themselves, as we know, more objectionable than the Inflexible. The cause of this is to be found in the fact that in designing the British ships, whatever else they may have lost sight of, the Admiralty constructors saw that the more you contracted the length of the armored citadel, the more necessity there was for giving the ship great breadth. The reason of this can be made clear. The fractional expression which represents the statical stability of a ship has in its numerator the quantity y3x, in which y represents the half-breadth of the ship at the water-line, and x the length of the ship. If we regard the stability of the armored citadel only, and neglect the unarmored ends, x represents the length of that citadel, and y its half-breadth. Now if we take two rectangular citadels, one, say, 100 feet long and 60 feet broad, the other the same length, but only 50 feet broad, then the value of x will be the same for both, but the values of y3 will be 216,000 and 125,000 respectively, the ship 60 feet broad having, cæteris paribus, nearly double the citadel stability of the 50-feet broad ship. On the other hand, if you wish to give the narrower ship the same citadel stability as the broader one, it will be necessary to make her citadel no less than 172 8/10 feet long. Now the citadel of the Duilio is 107 feet in length,[31] and the breadth is 64 feet 9 inches—say 65 feet. The citadel of the Inflexible is 110 feet long, and its breadth 75 feet, the figures for the Ajax being 140 feet and 66 feet. Now presuming the citadels to be rectangular in each case, we shall have,