Warships and their story

IRON SHIPS OF WAR—continued

The Admiralties, naval architects, and a great many other people throughout the world were troubled for several years through trying to reconcile all the divergent and often contradictory claims put forward as to what should constitute a fighting ship. Those who troubled most were those who knew least of the subject. The naval architects, having to make the necessary calculations, were not without some knowledge of the limitations of the materials at their disposal; and the Admiralties left matters to the experts, whether employed by Governments or in private shipbuilding establishments, confident that those who were best acquainted with such a technical subject would be most likely to set forth something possible of attainment and destined to show certain definite results. And this has been the attitude of all Governments towards all inventors, whether their inventions were of practical utility or were merely the outcome of seeing visions and dreaming dreams. This does not imply, however, acceptance of the official theory that Government experts know everything.

Many people, after the American war, went turret-mad, and became possessed of the idea that this country should own a numerous fleet of monitors, so numerous, indeed, that every port all round the British coasts should have two or three of such vessels in order that an enemy’s fleet, usually conjectured by the turret enthusiasts to consist of large two or three-decked battleships, should be met by a succession of monitors each manned by a fresh crew and full of ammunition, and reduced to submission if possible, or sunk, or scattered as was the Spanish Armada, an historical allusion which these good people found very useful as adding a picturesque touch. Nor were the enthusiasts of other countries behind those of Great Britain in their advocacy of their pet theories. Naval economists, who yet wished to swim with the current of naval enthusiasm, did not hesitate to point out the economy of construction to be effected by a fleet of monitors or of small vessels carrying turrets. Some contended that no guns were too heavy to be sent afloat, so that they should smash any armour by the weight of their projectiles; and ingenious were the calculations to demonstrate how easy it would be for a heavy gun, such as was used for land fortifications, to be sent to demolish a hostile vessel whatever her dimensions and armament. Others clamoured for the heaviest possible armour, even if only moderately powerful artillery should be installed, coupled with great ramming power. That every part of the ship should be so heavily armoured as to be invulnerable was another contention which found much favour, its adherents forgetting that too much armour would sink the vessel; but its opponents rejected it in favour of the concentration of the armour over the vital parts of the ships, and leaving the ends unprotected or nearly so. Other claims were for high speed, great coal capacity, large sail power, lofty freeboards, seaworthiness, steadiness of gun platform, small size, shallow draught, and comparative invisibility to an enemy’s gunners.[41]

As it was manifestly impossible to build ships which should meet the requirements of all the nation’s advisers and be suitable to be sent to perform all kinds of duties anywhere, armoured ships began to be constructed of special types according to the work expected of them. The first division was into battleships, armoured cruisers, and coast defence ships.

As the result of Captain Coles’s advocacy of the turret system, which he began in 1861, the Admiralty, when converting a number of old and new wooden ships into ironclads, had one of them, the Royal Sovereign, cut down, covered with armour, and given four armoured revolving turrets placed on the upper deck in the middle line of the ship. She marked the conversion of the Admiralty to the new order of things which steam power and iron armour in combination had rendered possible. One step in the process of conversion was that sail power was no longer considered necessary in fighting vessels, another was that the combatant part of every ship intended for heavy fighting should be afforded as much protection as possible, and a third step was that the guns should be few in number, of considerable power, and so disposed as to have the widest possible range. This ship could fire all her guns on either broadside, and also had a direct fire ahead and astern. She started her career as a 131-gun line-of-battle ship, but after her alterations she carried five 12-ton muzzle-loading guns, of which two were in the foremost turret and one each in the others. She was also the first of the converted vessels to be given a steel protective deck, in her case two inches thick, but it was not curved so as to place the edges below the water-line, and it consequently would not have afforded any protection to the vessel had a shot penetrated the armour at the water-line. Her low freeboard would have rendered her difficult to hit, and she would have been able to approach an enemy and deliver a telling fire at comparatively short range without running undue risk of receiving much damage in return.

The dimensions of the first British turret ship compare curiously with those turret ships which followed her in rapid succession, both in the British and other navies. She was 240 feet 7 inches in length, with an extreme beam of 62 feet and a draught aft of 24 feet 11 inches.

Even after the launch of the Warrior the Admiralty ordered a few wooden ships, but in 1866 decided upon the adoption of iron warships. One of the last and certainly one of the best to look at of the wooden armour-plated ships was the steam frigate Lord Clyde, but as a sailer she had many defects, of which slowness was not the least. In her case the armour extended to the ends of the ship, and nowhere was it less than 4½ inches in thickness, while at the water-line the armour plates were 5½ inches thick. The sides of the entire battery deck from stem to stern, and from 3 feet below to 3 feet above the ports, were plated with 6-inch armour, of which one thickness of 1½ inches was bolted to the ship’s frame, and the other, of 4½ inches, was placed upon the outside of the planking. The armour went 6 feet below the water-line amidships, and for the sake of lightness was only 4½ feet deep at the ends. The gun ports were 8 feet 9 inches above the water-line, or 2 feet 6 inches higher than those of La Gloire. She was the first vessel in the British Navy to carry an armour-plated bow battery on the main deck. This armour plating also was carried upwards to protect an upper-deck bow battery mounted under the ship’s forecastle. This arrangement enabled her to fire four guns ahead, while exposing to the enemy’s fire only the curved surface of her bow armour. She also had a distance of 15 feet between each gun port on her main deck. Her engines of 1,000 h.p. nominal, and 6,000 indicated, drove a two-bladed Griffith’s adjustable propeller 28 feet in diameter.

From 1860 to 1866 ten broadside ironclads were added to the navy, the last and the largest being the Northumberland of 10,780 tons. All these vessels, except the Hector and Minotaur, carried muzzle-loaders, but these two had breechloaders of the early Armstrong screw type, which were soon superseded by more powerful weapons. The Minotaur carried fifty guns, the Northumberland twenty-six.

Then followed the abandonment of the broadside and the confinement of the heavy armament of an ironclad to a central battery protected by thick iron side armour and armoured bulkheads, the only other portion of the ship to be thus protected being that near the water-line. The first of these in the British Navy was the Bellerophon, launched in 1865; she was of 7,550 tons displacement, and her engines, of 6,520 h.p. indicated, drove one screw and gave her a speed of fourteen knots. Her thickest armour was 6 inches, and her heaviest gun a 12-ton muzzle-loader. Altogether she carried fourteen guns, including one in a small armoured citadel in the bows.

Great though the advantages were of the screw propeller, it was admitted that it was not without many drawbacks. The single screw took up a lot of room, weakened to some extent the structure of the stern, and if anything happened to the engines or propeller the ship was helpless and had to depend entirely upon whatever sail power she might possess. To overcome this difficulty Messrs. J. and W. Dudgeon were the first to build, from the designs of Mr. John Dudgeon, a twin-screw ocean-going steamship. Twin and triple screws had been used before, but were driven by the one engine.

Before this, however, Messrs. Dudgeon experimented with a small iron vessel, of 400 tons, called the Flora, which was given two independent engines and screws. The propellers were placed under the counter, and proved the advantage of this position over that of the practice, where two screws were used, of placing one before, and the other behind the rudder. The advantage of placing the screw either in a space cut in the deadwood, or, in the case of twin propellers, under the counter, was much greater than the method at one time adopted of placing the screw behind the rudder. Under the newer method the steering power of the rudder was not impaired; but under the older method, when the screw shaft was carried beyond the rudder, a slit known as a “shark’s mouth” had to be made in the rudder so that the upper and lower portions would be able to pass the screw shaft. The practice of equipping the vessels with wells or recesses into which the screw could be lifted was found to possess but slight advantages for warships, and was ere long abandoned. The best that could be said for it was that when a ship was travelling under sail only, the screw could be lifted from the water and the strain upon the wooden stern caused by dragging the screw, whether of the fixed or folded patterns, through the water, or running loose, was avoided altogether.

The Hebe was the third vessel on this principle built and engined by Messrs. Dudgeon, and the advantages of the twin-screw system over the single screw were again strikingly manifested during a series of manœuvres. The Hebe was an iron vessel of 470 tons, and 165 feet long. The screws were three-bladed, 7 feet 6 inches in diameter, and had a pitch of 15 feet, and were worked by two separate and independent engines each having two cylinders 26 inches in diameter, with a 21-inch stroke of piston, and being collectively of 120 nominal h.p. The tests showed that the vessel with both screws working ahead could made a complete circle in four minutes or less, and in still shorter time with only one screw working and the helm thrown over, or with the two screws working in opposite directions.

The tests were severe, but they proved more effectively than any tests before had done the great superiority of the independent acting twin screw over the single screw; and the results in far greater manœuvring power, speed, and reliability were so satisfactory that the Admiralty was most favourably impressed. The Messrs. Dudgeon, in 1863, built the steamship Far East, and her launch and trial trip took place in the presence of the representatives of the Admiralty. She was fitted with twin screws which had a diameter of 8 feet 2 inches, and a pitch of 16 feet. The shafts of the screws were carried through a wrought-iron tube bolted to a false iron bulkhead clear of the ship’s frame. The Admiralty not long afterwards adopted twin-screw propellers. The advantages of the twin screw were that were one to be disabled, the other could propel the ship without trouble, and that as an aid to steering, one screw could be sent astern and the other worked ahead, so as to turn the vessel in little more than her own length.

The Penelope, launched in 1867, was the first twin-screw ocean-going ironclad belonging to the Navy, and she was, moreover, the first government owned warship in which each screw had its own engine, as compared to the two screws geared to one engine in the floating batteries of the Crimean days. She was of 4,470 tons displacement, and her engines of 4,700 indicated h.p. gave her a speed of between twelve and thirteen knots. Each of her twin screws was fitted to a distinct stern with separate deadwood and rudder, an arrangement which neither added to the steering capabilities of the ship nor increased its structural strength at the stern. The Penelope had recessed ports to allow of increased training of the guns.

Captain Coles, to whom, notwithstanding the sad fate which overtook the Captain, this country is somewhat indebted for his consistent advocacy of the adoption of the turret on sea-going ships, urged upon the Admiralty the superiority of the turret over the broadside system. His contrivance differed from that of Ericsson in the important particular that Ericsson’s turret was supported on a pivot which rested upon bearings at the bottom of the ship, whereas Captain Coles’s turret rested upon bearings supported in a specially constructed room resting upon the beams of the deck, which, in turn, were strongly supported from below. In regard to the thickness of armour there was little to choose between the two. Captain Coles brought his design before the notice of the United Service Institution in 1860, and although it attracted a great deal of attention among naval constructors and manufacturers of naval artillery, only one nation was then of sufficient courage to order an experimental ship. That nation was Denmark, and it is to that country that the honour must be given of having the first ship in which the broadside system of gun-fire was entirely abandoned and the turret system installed instead. This vessel was the Rolf Krake, an iron double-turreted monitor with lowering bulwarks. She was engaged in the war against Prussia, in 1864, when she took part in a fierce duel with the Prussian batteries at Eckernsünde. The batteries fired 24-pounder rifled Krupp guns, and though the ironclad was struck about one hundred and fifty times, her armour was sufficient to withstand the shot, and she certainly inflicted a great deal more damage than she received.

Numerous experiments were made in France and in this country with the object of determining the special characteristics of a vessel which should meet the rapidly altering condition of affairs caused by the increase of the power of the guns and the development of the torpedo from the stationary mine, which was so terrifying in the American War, to the torpedo which could attack a vessel at anchor, or even be directed at one moving slowly. The requirements were a moderate displacement, increased protection, and ability to carry heavier guns capable of fore and aft fire as well as over the broadside. The problem was not an easy one by any means. The cellular double bottom system was extended as a precaution against torpedoes; the number of guns and the extent of the armour were lessened, but the thickness of the armour was increased in order to protect the vital parts and the guns from the fire of the newer and more powerful ordnance, while to compensate for the increased weight in the middle third of the ship, the beam was made greater in proportion to the length.

Matters were in this experimental stage when the first engagement was fought between European fleets, each of which included sea-going ironclads. The battle of Lissa, in 1866, was no less remarkable for the crushing defeat which the Austrians inflicted on the Italians than for the fact that that defeat was against all that the naval experts had considered to be the natural order of things. The Italian fleet was more numerous than the Austrian; it had more ironclads, its armament was greater, it had a greater number of wooden warships of various sorts and sizes; but as a powerful offset to all these advantages it had an amount of muddle and disorganisation truly appalling. The Italian fondness for big ships and big guns was as much in evidence in the fleet of 1866 as in the immense armoured ships Duilio and Dandolo, which that country built a few years later, and to which a more extended reference is made on another page. Its principal ships in the attack on Lissa and the subsequent engagement with the Austrian fleet were the Re d’Italia and the Re di Portogallo—two American-built vessels of 5,700 tons, old measurement. They were plated with armour 7 inches thick. They were designed to carry, the former two 150-pounders, and thirty 6-inch guns and four smooth-bore guns; and the latter two 300-pounders, and twenty-six 6-inch guns. These ships were poorly constructed, and the design was so faulty that the rudders were left without protection and open to destruction by ramming or gun-fire—a weakness of which the Austrians took full advantage. There was also a turret ram called the Affondatore, 4,070 tons, built at Millwall, and armed with two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in two turrets, which was supposed to epitomise all the lessons of the American War. Her ram projected 26 feet, and what with this and her big guns and her thick armour, the Italians expected her to do wonders. As sea-boats the three were about equally bad. There were also two French-built small rams, Terribile and Formidabile, of 2,700 tons. The French at that time favoured comparatively small ships with large rams for coast and harbour defence, giving them iron plating 4½ inches thick, and 6-inch rifled guns as their principal weapons. Of the broadside ironclads there were four, of about 4,700 tons each, and belted from stem to stern at the water-line. There were, besides, two armoured gunboats which carried two 150-pounder Armstrongs and some smaller guns. The Italian fleet also had a number of steam-engined wooden vessels. The Austrian fleet had six very indifferent ironclads, slow, none too well armed, smooth-bores of no great size predominating, and a few other vessels, mostly of wood, of little fighting value, but capable of holding in check the Italian wooden ships for a time at all events. The Austrian ships were the Drache, Kaiser Maximilian, Prinz Eugen, and Salamander, whose tonnage ranged from 3,400 to 3,800, each carrying 4½-inch armour of home manufacture; the steam line-of-battle ship Kaiser, four steam frigates, and some smaller boats. These were practically ready for sea when hostilities were commenced. The two unfinished ironclads Habsburg and Ferdinand Maximilian were got ready in an improvised fashion and given smooth-bore guns; and the Don Juan, another vessel in a state of even greater unpreparedness, had the deficiencies in her armour made good with heavy wooden beams. The Italians had two hundred and seventy-six rifled cannon to one hundred and twenty-one on the Austrian ships.

The Austrian Admiral, Tegethoff, was a man who left nothing to chance. He knew what he had to do, and he had that genius for command which enables a man to do his best with the materials at his disposal. Great though he knew the discrepancy to be between his own fleet and that of the Italians, it is a remarkable testimony to his organising power that he was able at the first glimpse he had of the Italian fleet to understand the extraordinary lack of cohesion that characterised it from first to last, and to prepare to meet it with every expectation of victory. He placed his fleet in wedge formation with the intention of breaking the enemy’s line of ironclads with his own ironclads, so as to avoid subjecting his weaker vessels to the fire of the heavier Italian vessels, as might have been done had he attacked the Italian line near or beyond its centre. He also intended to ram the Italian ships whenever he had a chance, but though the chances later were numerous, the ram proved a less effective weapon than had been expected. The duty of the Austrian smaller vessels was to rake with their guns the Italian ships after the heavier Austrian ships should have thrown them into confusion, for owing to the longer range of the Italian guns and the heavier weight of their projectiles, the Italians had a superiority at long-range fighting which the Austrian commander was by no means disposed to allow them to turn to their advantage.

The ships on both sides were slow, those of the Austrians being worse even than those of the Italians. This may to some extent explain the comparative ineffectiveness of the ram, the blow being of not sufficient force to inflict much harm. The Austrian ships were to “ram everything grey,” the Italian fleet having been painted a conspicuous light grey which made them easily distinguishable; whereas the Austrian ships were black, but their funnels were differently painted, so that any one of them could be identified in a moment. The shock when the Ferdinand Maximilian rammed the Re d’Italia was not very violent, but, possibly on account of the weakness of construction of the hull, the ram did its work. A gaping wound was formed in its side through which the water rushed, and the great ship, after giving a couple of rolls, like some ocean leviathan in agony, heeled heavily over and went down, the first sea-going ironclad to be lost in this manner. The Austrians were appalled for the moment at the result of the experiment, for such, indeed, it was. Disablement had been expected, but that such a powerful ship should be sent under the waves in a few moments by a single blow was a result that had not been anticipated. The Austrian ship rammed three Italian vessels, but this was the only one of her victims to succumb. The Re di Portogallo received a similar attention from the Kaiser, but the blow, though delivered with all the force of which the ship was capable, did herself as much harm as the other, for she lost her bowsprit and foremast, and left her figurehead in the gap formed in the side where it was wrenched off by the blow. The Kaiser had previously passed three of the Italian ships, but thanks to her armour the few shots which struck her caused no damage. The Re di Portogallo was little the worse for the ramming, and when it had the Austrian ship at its mercy a moment later, lost, by delay and incompetence, the opportunity to pour in a broadside.

The Kaiser was not built to be used to ram heavy vessels, or else her designers had underestimated the resistance she would have to encounter in striking another ship, the iron plates forming her bows being carried rather forward so that she had really a blunt projecting nose under water. Curiously enough, the only damage she sustained was a few plates started from the bows under the water-line.

As to the results of the fighting, the armour fully justified its use. The Austrian ships were struck several times by the heavy Italian shot and shells, but not once did the Italian projectiles penetrate both the armour and the backing, while for the most part the injuries caused by them were insignificant. The Italians lost two ironclads, and a third, the Affondatore, went down a few days afterwards as the result of the knocking about the Austrians gave her. But the injuries which caused the loss of these three Italian vessels were received below the water-line. Their armour was badly battered, but the ships themselves were little the worse. The 4-inch armour of one of the Italian ships was penetrated, but the backing prevented the shot going farther. The Austrians did not lose one ship, and on their armoured ships they had only three men killed, while on the wooden ships they lost thirty-eight killed and one hundred and thirty-eight wounded. The Italian losses are unknown, as a number of men were drowned when the two ironclads went under.

Even after the Italians were defeated they were still as strong as their opponents, but dared not attack them; while the Austrian commander deemed discretion the better part of rashness, and, contenting himself with having compelled the Italians to retire from Lissa, was confident that they would not attempt to attack him after the losses they had sustained, which had rendered them even more hopelessly disorganised than before the battle, if that were possible. The Italians, in spite of the vainglorious boasting in which they were pleased to indulge, were in no mood for another sea-fight. They were short now of ammunition, and their sailors were completely disheartened. Some of the commanders and all the crews showed extraordinary bravery in maintaining the fight when the circumstances, though not the odds, were against them, but the other commanders were remarkable for incompetence and some of them for cowardice, for they had no plan of action, one at least fled as soon as the shooting began, and one or two others were careful to keep out of harm’s way. The main lessons drawn from this engagement were that armour was indispensable in protecting a ship from the effects of hostile shot, and that the gun must remain the chief weapon of naval warfare. The advantage given to a numerically weaker side by superiority in organisation and efficiency had been too often demonstrated in previous engagements in the world’s history to render attractive a repetition of the lesson, but it is to be feared that the need of such lessons at frequent intervals has not yet passed. It also showed that big ships and gigantic guns are not of much account if the men who are to use them are untrained, and that no matter how heavy the guns and far-reaching their range they are of little use if the gunners miss nearly every time. The Austrian concentration of fire upon a given spot, even though the firing were only maintained by comparatively small guns, told its own tale. Ramming only sent one ship down as the immediate result of the blow, but the moral effect of the fear of being rammed was very great, as no crew, seeing an enemy making straight for their ship, could foresee the result. In any case, the damage was sure to be considerable. Yet the Italian Admiral, when he had two splendid opportunities of ramming his opponents with his most powerful vessel, the Affondatore, deliberately turned his ship aside and shrank from delivering the blows. The battle was noteworthy for its demonstration of the importance of accurate gunnery; nearly all the Italian projectiles passed over the Austrian ships, and the Italian gunners were heedless whether they fired when their vessels were on the upward or the downward roll. The trained Austrian gunners fired to hit.

Such lessons as the battle of Lissa was regarded as having presented were accepted, more or less, in the ironclads constructed in the five years immediately subsequent to that engagement.

The Hercules, begun in 1866, launched in 1868, and completed in 1869, was intended to combine the best features of the Black Prince and Minotaur. She was built entirely of iron, was 325 feet long between perpendiculars, 55 feet beam, and drew 34 feet 6 inches. The ram, a solid forging, weighed 5 tons, the armour plate was 8 to 9 inches thick, and weighed 1,145 tons; the weight of the bolts, nuts, and washers used in securing the armour plates was 73 tons, and there were also 91 tons of armour plates for the bulkheads, and 4 tons of bolts to secure them. The bulwarks were of wood, but below them were two iron strakes 6 inches thick, next a strake of 8-inch armour covering the lower portion of the main deck or central box battery, then two strakes of 6-inch plates, and then a belt of armour with a maximum thickness of 9 inches extending the length of the ship and amply protecting her some distance above and below the water-line; under this was another strake of 6-inch plates resting on the double skin of the hull itself. The 9-inch plates were backed by 10 inches of teak, inside which was an iron skin 1½ inches thick supported by vertical frames 10 inches deep and 2 feet apart, further stiffened by other beams. From the lower deck downwards the wing passages were strengthened with 18 to 20 inches of teak, and backed by a ¾-inch iron skin, which was also most substantially supported. The rest of the armour was backed by 10 or 12 inches of teak fastened to an iron skin 1½ inches thick, with a similar strengthening of vertical and longitudinal frames. She carried eight 10-inch 18-ton guns, four on either broadside, the two foremost and the two hindmost training through embrasures at the ends of the thwartship bulkheads and through recesses in the iron-clad sides. These four guns were established on what was known as Captain Scott’s turn-table and racers. Two 12½-ton guns were in protected batteries on the same deck, one at the bow and the other at the stern; three portholes were provided for each of these guns, so that it could be fired either in line of keel or on either side as necessary. Their weight made her pitch deeply and recover slowly, thereby impeding her speed and lessening the value of her gun-fire. She also carried some 6½-ton guns on her upper deck. Special attention was paid to the protection of the rudder head and steering apparatus, events at the battle of Lissa having showed the imperative necessity of doing so. It was contended on behalf of the Hercules that her armour could not be penetrated by the guns of any ship afloat. The 18-ton guns were the heaviest ever worked in an ocean-going vessel up to that time, and were only 1½ tons lighter than the famous 15-inch Rodman guns, which were the heaviest that the American monitors had managed to work with success. Although the immense guns of the Hercules were muzzle-loaders, and discharged 400 lb. shots, it was found possible to fire the gun a second time in 1 minute 15 seconds after it had been fired once, but naturally this rate of firing could not be kept up for long owing to the overheating of the gun.

In the same year the Monarch, a full-rigged, double-turreted, ocean-going ship, was launched, with a displacement of 8,320 tons. Her turrets had 10-inch armour, while that of her belt and bulkheads was 7 inches. Her engines were of 7,840 indicated h.p., and she had a speed of about fourteen knots. The Monarch was intended to have all the advantages of a turreted vessel combined with the freeboard of a sea-going ship. Her armament included four 25-ton 10-inch muzzle-loading guns, and some lighter weapons under her raised poop and forecastle, she being the first of the turreted vessels to have a secondary armament. The raised poop and forecastle were added to increase her seaworthiness, but though they accomplished this they only did so at the expense of her direct fire ahead and astern from her turret guns.

The adherents of the low freeboard sea-going turreted ship, as advocated by Captain Coles, pinned their faith to the Captain, which was launched at Birkenhead in 1869, and was of 6,950 tons register. Probably no warship’s designs were ever more bitterly criticised and condemned by one party and upheld by another than those of the Captain. This ship had several features to recommend her, and several others which more than counterbalanced the conditions she was supposed to embody. The believers in the Captain argued that she represented what a sea-going turret ship should be, being powerfully armed, of good speed, well armoured, powerfully engined, and able to use extensive sail power if necessary. That she possessed all these qualities is unquestionable. Her engines of 900 h.p. nominal gave her a speed of thirteen knots. Her heaviest gun was the 25-ton 12-inch muzzle-loader. Her freeboard as designed was 8 feet 6 inches, but when she was in sea-going trim it was found that her actual freeboard was 6 feet 8 inches, through some error in the calculations, and this, added to the fact that she carried a large spread of canvas, caused many misgivings as to her stability. In two cruises in the Channel she gave every satisfaction, and it was contended that she really had solved the problem of a low freeboard ship carrying canvas and turrets, and able to go to sea. Her third cruise, in company with the Channel fleet, marked the end of her career and of all the theories she was supposed to represent with such conspicuous success, for during a squall at night she rolled over and went to the bottom, taking nearly all on board with her, among the lost being Captain Coles. The exact circumstances of the disaster were never established; all that is known is that with her low freeboard and small margin of stability she rolled beyond the point at which recovery was possible.

As a reply to the Monarch the Captain was a failure, and the high freeboard turret ship was a success. Whether the Captain would have done better under steam alone it is impossible to say; perhaps she would, though she was under shortened sail at the time of the disaster. Some professed to believe that the hull would have been stable had it carried only one mast for signalling purposes, and suggested that another vessel should be constructed to take her place, but the experiment was never made. The Captain was too heavy for her size, and therefore lacked buoyancy; her weight was too much distributed, and she had not the power to throw off quickly the water she took on board, but “lay down under it,” to use a seaman’s expression.

Some six months before the Captain was lost a ship was launched which introduced another and most successful type, yet she was rather an improvement on certain earlier vessels than an entirely modern conception. This was the Devastation, and she was at once recognised as the most powerful ship of war in the world. The Glatton, a single turret ship, launched in 1869, may in some respects be regarded as the forerunner of the Devastation. The Glatton was a low freeboard coast-defence monitor, modified to suit the conditions prevailing on the English side of the Channel; but the Devastation, while still being of comparatively low freeboard, was a sea-going ship, mastless, so far as sails were concerned, and double turreted.

The Devastation was the historical reply of the British naval constructors to the much-vaunted American monitors, and also the Admiralty’s reply to the Captain. She was so unlike anything else afloat, that the writers of those days had difficulty in finding anything to which they could compare her. One describes her as like an “impregnable piece of Vauban fortification with bastions mounted upon a fighting coal mine.” As a mastless turret ship or fighting machine, she possessed powers of offence, defence, and manœuvring greater than those of any other ship in the world. This ship, which was built at Portsmouth, and the Thunderer, built at Pembroke, were the pioneers of this class of vessel, and were the first to embody in their construction the most perfect examples of the turret principle as at that time understood, applied to a sea-going ship.[42] They were superior to any others built or building as fighting machines, and in their coal-carrying capacity. They were of 4,406 tons burden under the old system of measurement. They were given 12 inches of rolled armour plating on a teak backing built into an immensely strong framing, 18 inches in thickness, which was further backed with an iron skin 1½ inches thick. There was not only the increased thickness of the armour, but also its quality to be taken into consideration in comparing these vessels with the Warrior and Minotaur, for the resistance offered by the rolled armour of the new ships increased very nearly as the square of the thickness, so that the sides of the Devastation and the Thunderer were, all things considered, about seven times as strong as those of the Warrior. The thickest armour carried in the French navy was that of the peculiar rams of the “Taureau” or “Bélier” type, mentioned on another page, viz. 8¼ inches, while that of the American monitors was 6 inches of plating on a system of armour stringers. The two English ships by reason of their higher freeboard were better sea-boats than any monitors built on the American principle could ever hope to be. The American turrets leaked badly whenever it was necessary to place their weight on the spindles to enable them to revolve, and their low sides allowed almost every other wave to wash over their decks. The turrets of the Devastation and Thunderer were worked on Captain Coles’s system of rollers fixed at the circumference of the base of the turret and centring at the central cylindrical spindle, but their base rested upon the upper deck within the breastwork.

In measurements these vessels were considerably smaller than the Warrior or Minotaur classes. The Warrior’s 4½-inch hammered plates would have offered little more resistance than so much glass to the heavy blows which the Devastation’s guns could inflict, nor would the Minotaur’s rolled plates have had much more defensive effect. Even when the Devastation was built, it was contended that the Hercules armour was practically impenetrable to the heaviest of British guns afloat yet, and that of the Devastation was three inches thicker still. One reason why this vessel was so strongly constructed was that she was built on an improvement of the bracketed frame system first introduced by the Admiralty in the Bellerophon. These improvements enabled a lighter framework to be constructed without reducing the strength, and the weight thus saved was put into the defensive armour. The Devastation’s upper deck when the ship was in sea-going order was about 4½ feet above water, except at the bows, where a sunk forecastle raised the height to 9 feet, and increased her capacities for going head to sea. The turret ports were 13 feet above the water, so that the guns were carried higher than those of any broadside-armed ironclad afloat. Those of the Hercules, for instance, were 11 feet above the water.

As at first designed, the Devastation would have had a less freeboard than the Captain, but after that disaster the plans of the Devastation were altered considerably, and the Admiralty committee decided that it would be safer and wiser to increase the freeboard amidships. This was done with iron plates raised to a level with the walls of the armoured breastwork, the freeboard for about half the ship’s length being as much as 12 feet.

The turrets were placed one at each end of this breastwork, with the funnels, ventilators, and so on, between them. The breastwork deck, as it was called, was strongly plated as compared with the main-deck plating of all existing ironclads, and the protective plating of the upper deck was from two to three inches thick. Above the turrets was the usual hurricane deck. She carried two 30-ton guns in each turret, the guns being of an Armstrong type improved upon at Woolwich, and throwing projectiles weighing 600 lb., and of the Palliser pointed type. Her two turrets gave her an absolutely all-round fire, a consummation which was impossible with any vessel depending at all upon sails. Her engines, which constituted her sole motive power, were the largest which had yet been applied to working twin screws and were each of 800 h.p. nominal, and gave her a speed of twelve and a half knots.

She was 285 feet in length between perpendiculars, with an inside beam amidships of 58 feet, and an extreme beam of 62 feet 3 inches, with an average draught of 26 feet. The depth from the midship portion of the covering-in deck to the top of the keel was 18 feet. The double bottom contained the water-tanks, and above these were a series of watertight compartments containing the engines and so on, and above these again were another series of watertight compartments used as coal bunkers and lockers, and another series, formed of watertight bulkheads, enclosed the officers’ accommodation. They were said to be as strongly constructed as the strong room of a bank.

The Devastation was probably the first ship in which a built-up keel of steel was introduced. The plates of steel were ⅝-inch in thickness, and the depth of the keel was 4 feet 6 inches, and it was strengthened by an angle-iron 1 inch thick. The stem was a solid forging, the upper deck part being 9 inches thick, and the lower part which formed the ram was 36 inches thick. This immense prow was strengthened by longitudinal iron frames. The stern-post was also forged solid, and was 26 feet in length and weighed 15 tons, and measured 12 inches deep by 8 inches thick. Steel plates riveted vertically over the transverse frames and running longitudinally and crossed by vertical fixed iron plating formed the double bottom. The interior of the hull was divided both longitudinally and transversely into a great number of watertight compartments. The two magazines, one near each end of the ship, were protected from a dropping fire by a bulkhead covered with 5-inch armour plating, and above the magazines again was a strongly constructed deck 4 feet 6 inches below the load water-line. The armoured belt was 9 feet 6 inches broad amidships, but tapered off gradually towards the ends. The armour-plating was 18 inches thick amidships, and gradually reduced to 9 inches towards the extremities. The breastworks or armoured walls built up from the upper deck near the forecastle, and extending to a wall behind the after turret, were 7 feet high, 74 feet long, and had an interior breadth of 50 feet. Their armour-plating varied from 10 to 12 inches, with the usual backing of wood and iron frames, and an inner iron skin. The deck was 2 inches of iron covered with 4 inches of oak. The turrets, which stood at either end of the breastwork, were 31 feet 3 inches in exterior diameter, and 24 feet 1 inch interior diameter; they were built up as follows: Outside, 9 inches of iron plating, then 9 inches of Italian oak set in iron frames, then 6 inches of iron plating, then 6 inches of Italian oak set in iron frames, then two thicknesses of iron plating each ¾-inch thick, to form the inner skin, then iron frames 10 inches in depth, and finally a series of rope mantlets, or nets, to protect the men working the guns from injury through fragments of rivets or bolts being driven in by a shot striking the outside of the turret in battle.

The military mast was introduced in the sea-going turret ships like the Devastation, and a few years later all such masts were given fighting-tops or platforms upon which machine guns or small quick-firing guns were mounted, or were equipped with search-lights. These masts were of steel and hollow, and in some ships the tops could be reached by ratlines and shrouds in the old-fashioned way, and in others by means of internal or external ladders affixed to the masts themselves. Conning-towers were introduced later, but to meet the wishes of naval officers alternative places of control are also provided in all large ships, for use in case the conning-tower should be made the target for the concentration of the fire of a hostile ship.

The experiments with the Glatton’s turret proved the unsuitability of turret armour being made with horizontal joints, as there is always the chance that a projectile may strike the actual line of joining, where the resistance would be less than at any other part. The plates for the Devastation turrets were, therefore, rolled sufficiently broad to cover the faces of the turrets from the breastwork deck to the upper edge, and only vertical joints were exposed to fire. The forward end of the ship was raised to form what was called a sunk forecastle. This considerably added to the freeboard forward and to the buoyancy at that end of the ship, and this was further augmented by the armour belt being reduced as much as possible so as to avoid unnecessary weight. Some critics of this design maintained that the end was too weak, and that the advantage it was sought to gain in sea-going qualities would not materialise; but when the vessel afterwards went to sea and was tested in all sorts of weather, and against heavy seas, in broadside seas, and in following seas, and in seas running a few points off the bow, or on the quarter, she proved herself an admirable sea-boat. An account of the sea trials in which she was accompanied by the Agincourt and Sultan includes a description written by a “scientific observer,” who was on board the Devastation. Her sea trials took place during the summer of 1873. The Sultan was one of the more modern ironclads carrying a two-deck battery on a protected water-line, and the Agincourt was a five-masted ship reminiscent of the steam frigate days.

The scientific observer states:—