Modern ships of war

by Sir Edward J. Reed; Edward Simpson

Inflexible y³x = 618,750 Ajax y³x = 453,024 Duilio y³x = 452,075

From which it would appear that the Duilio of 11,000 tons derives from this element of stability only about as much as the Ajax of 8500 tons derives from it, and only about three-fourths of that which the Inflexible of 11,400 had allowed to her. There are other circumstances, of course, which enter into the stability of these ships, but nothing which I know of or can imagine to enable the Duilio to compare much more favorably in this respect with the other vessels, deficient as they themselves are. All this applies, of course, solely to the ability of these ships to depend upon their armored citadels for safety in war: in peace they are all safe enough as regards stability, because they have their unarmored ends to add largely to it, although I should doubt if the Duilio is greatly over-endowed with stability even with her long unarmored ends intact.

THE “DUILIO.”

I now come to a series of ships in which the question of the amount of their armored stability does not arise, because they have no armored stability at all. For some reason or other Lloyds, in their Universal Register, following bad examples, have arrayed the Italia and her successors under the heading of “Sea-going Armor-clads.” These ships are nothing of the kind, in any reasonable sense of the word, but are, as ships, wholly unarmored, although carrying elevated armored towers, and some armor in other places. Mr. King (in his work previously referred to) puts the facts correctly when he says:

“The armor is only used” (in the form of a curved deck, be it understood) “to keep out shot and shell from the engines and boilers, the magazines, shell-room spaces, and the channels leading therefrom to the upper deck, and to protect the guns in the casemate when not elevated above the battery, and the gunners employed in firing them. But all other parts of the ship above the armored deck” (which is below water, be it said), “all the guns not in the casemate, and all persons out of the casemate, and not below the armored deck, will be exposed to the enemy’s projectiles.”

Mr. King takes note of this total abandonment of side armor as a means of preserving stability when a ship is pierced at the water-line, and regards this abandonment as a bold defiance of the principles which I have laid down for some years past. I cannot say that I take this view of the matter. I have always discussed this matter from the British navy point of view, and had these ships of the Italia type been built for the British navy in substitution of real iron-clads, while France, Russia, and other European countries were still building such iron-clads, I should have certainly condemned them. The primary requirement of British first-class ships is that they shall be able to close with and fight any enemy of the period whatever, and any defect which unfits them for this work, or makes it extremely dangerous to perform it, is a disgrace to England. Even if armor were given up by other powers, it would be a matter for careful consideration in England whether enough of it for the protection of their existence against contemporary guns should not be retained in her principal ships. England’s ability to live as a nation and as the head of an empire is dependent upon her naval superiority, and no price to purchase that can be too great for her to pay. But with Italy the case was and is wholly different. She could not compete with England in naval power, and would not wish to if she could, for she is without an ocean empire to preserve. But Italy has European neighbors, and when she began to build these Italias and Lepantos she had for neighbor one power, France, which had unwisely persisted for years in building wooden armor-clads, neither strongly protected nor swift, nor very powerfully armed; and I am not at all sure that, to such a navy as France then had, a few extremely fast and very powerfully armed ships such as Italy built were not excellent answers. The Italia would have been available also against a very large proportion of the British iron-clad fleet, and of the fleets of Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The idea of the Italian ministers clearly was to give weaker ships no time for long engagements with them, but to pounce upon them by means of enormous speed, and to destroy them at a blow by means of their all-powerful ordnance. They might well expect to have with such ships so great a command over the conditions under which they would give battle as to be well able to repair in time, and at least temporarily, such dangerous wounds as they might receive. But more than this cannot be said for such ships: they are not fit to engage in prolonged contests, or to fight such actions as by their assaults on superior numbers and their endurance of close conflict have won that “old and just renown” of which England is so deservedly proud. It seems to me as obvious as anything can possibly be that such ships as the Italia, if once adopted as models for other great powers, would admit of easy and cheap answers. Ships of equal speed, merely belted with very thick armor, and armed with an abundance of comparatively light shell-guns, would effectually defy them. There would be no need of enormous and costly armaments, or of ponderous armored towers, or of huge revolving turrets, for giving battle to ships which any shells would be able to open up to the inroads of the sea, and which, being opened up, would lose their stability, and insist upon turning bottom upward. But for the purposes of the Italian government, as I conjecture them, the Italia class of ships, large as they are, have probably been excellent investments, and may continue to be, so long as the priceless value of impregnable belts and interior torpedo defence is understood by so very few.

The Italian government, having completed the Italia, is now pressing forward with four other equally large ships (of over 13,000 tons each) of similar type, and with three others of 11,000 tons. Curiously enough, it keeps with these among the “war vessels of the first class” not only the Palestro and Principe Amedeo, of about 6000 tons, launched in 1871-72, but also the Roma, a wooden vessel of 5370 tons, launched twenty years ago, and some four or five iron ships, of 4000 tons and of 12 knots speed, launched more than twenty years ago. I will not occupy time and space by regarding the particulars of these old vessels (having omitted similar ones from my French tables), but will here give the particulars of the modern vessels of the Italian first class, which alone deserve notice:

MODERN ITALIAN WAR-SHIPS OF THE FIRST CLASS.