The Thunderer, a sister ship in some respects to the Devastation, and the Fury, afterwards called the Dreadnought, followed, but each one included improvements and modifications suggested by the experience gained with the Devastation. Hydraulic machinery was installed for working the 38-ton guns of the Woolwich rifle pattern, but in the Thunderer the two 35-tons were worked by hand. Their guns were by no means generally approved, many artillerists being of opinion that Whitworth hexagonal guns would have been better.

The important feature in the Thunderer, and one which contributed very materially to her safety, was the introduction of a longitudinal watertight bulkhead between the two sets of engines and boilers, so that if one set should be disabled from any cause, the vessel would still have the other set to depend upon. The Dreadnought was engined on the compound system, which gave her a better speed on a proportionately less coal consumption.

It is an old saying that the speed of a fleet is that of its slowest ship. When the situation was further complicated by the varying sailing powers of the ships the difficulty of the admiral in command to keep his fleet together must sometimes have been very great. Admiral Yelverton, for instance, when in command of a Channel squadron, in 1866, consisting of the Caledonian, Lord Clyde, Bellerophon, Achilles, Hector, Pallas, Ocean, Wyvern, Research, and Helicon, reported that he “took every opportunity of trying them to their utmost, always placing them in positions as to wind and sea most likely to test their capabilities as sea-boats, without much regard to the safety of their spars or the risk of shipping far more water than under ordinary circumstances ships of war would be exposed to....

“The Pallas and Research were the only two ships that could not keep company with the squadron. The Pallas appeared to plunge heavily, and carried away her jib-boom, but took her place in the squadron on the following morning. The Research, from her very small steam power, was out of sight at sunset, and put into Plymouth to fill up with coal. On the 23rd we reached the prescribed rendezvous ... when steaming ceased for a while, and the trials of sailing began.” The ships varied as much under sail as they did under steam.

The Wyvern, which was not a good sea-boat, and her sister ship, the Scorpion, were built for the Confederate States, in 1864, at Birkenhead, and were bought by the British Admiralty. They were 220 feet by 42 feet, and of 1,827 tons, and had engines of 350 nominal h.p. Each had two turrets containing two 300-pounders. They had ram bows, and, except on the poop and forecastle, the bulwarks could be let down when the ships were cleared for action.

The Pallas, an armour-plated six-gun ship, and the Research were given recessed ports, in order to increase their firing range, but the ports were constructed angularly and did not allow the guns to be sufficiently depressed to hit a small boat close at hand; thus the weapons would have been no defence against a torpedo-boat attack, if the latter got to close quarters. This fault was remedied in the Venezuelan transport and cruiser Bolivar, in which the recessed ports were fitted under the personal superintendence of their inventor, Captain Symonds, and were slanted outside the gun ports so that they would allow of a gun being depressed to strike a small boat lying nearly alongside, while their wall was curved instead of flat as in the British ships mentioned. Her sister ship, so far as dimensions were concerned, the Mary, was devoted to the more peaceful requirements of the cattle-trade between London and Gothenburg. The Bolivar was a twin-screw vessel, and it is curious to note that even then, when this method of propulsion had proved its superiority, it was gravely stated concerning her trials that “To keep time in all weathers and in all seasons nothing is superior to the paddle, but in long voyages, especially where sails are occasionally used, the screw may be employed with advantage.”[44]

Several vessels followed in rapid succession after the turret ships, and an upper deck battery was added in the Sultan, a vessel which otherwise much resembled the Hercules, and then followed a class to which the Iron Duke and Vanguard belonged. The conditions imposed in the construction of this class were that they should draw 22 feet 6 inches of water, that they should carry armour not less than 8 inches thick at the water-line and 6 inches elsewhere except at the bow and stern, that they should have a speed of thirteen and a half knots, and that their guns should be capable of firing in any direction. This class was named after the Audacious, and proved fairly successful. The principal event which distinguished the class was the accidental ramming of the Vanguard by the Iron Duke, in September, 1875, off the coast of Ireland. They were all broadside ships, and the type was brought much nearer to perfection in the Alexandra, which was then the largest masted ironclad that had ever been designed; and though she was a central battery ship, four of her twelve guns could fire right ahead, and two right astern, and four to six guns could fire one either broadside. She carried two Woolwich rifled muzzle-loading guns of 25 tons each, and ten 18-ton guns. The two big guns were placed in the upper deck battery forward. As a further protection, besides her armour, the main deck battery between decks was divided in two by an armoured bulkhead. She was the first cruising armoured broadside ship in the British Navy to have engines on the compound system, and her twin screws were each driven by an independent set of engines with an aggregate indicated h.p. of 8,000. Her speed at her official trials was about fifteen knots.

Yet another type of turret ship was the Temeraire, launched in 1876, which marked a noteworthy combination of the central battery and barbettes or turrets. Her upper-deck armament was in two fixed turrets open at the top and pear-shaped instead of circular, and placed, one near the stern and the other near the bow. These stood about 6 feet above the deck, and measured about 33 feet by 21½ feet. They were placed with their length in the direction of the ship, and the rounded end of each pear, if it may so be called, was towards the nearer extremity of the vessel. Inside each of these batteries was a turn-table, hydraulically worked, on which was mounted a 25-ton gun borne on a carriage after the Moncrieff principle. This permitted of the gun being loaded in the turret and raised above it to be fired. The recoil caused it to sink into the turret to be reloaded. An armoured tube or hoist communicated with the ammunition chambers below, and the gun always had to be brought back into the same position for reloading. It will thus be seen that the guns were fired as barbette guns and loaded as turret guns, and many were the discussions as to the category in which they ought to be placed. The armour of the fore turret was 10 inches thick, and that of the rear turret 8 inches. On the main deck was a divided battery. The front portion had two 25-ton guns firing through ports at the corners, which were provided with oblique armoured bulkheads, and the guns were pivoted at the muzzle to allow of a fire from right ahead to abeam. The other portion of the battery was given four 18-ton guns to be fired on the broadside. She was preferred as a fighting ship by many to the Alexandra, which preceded her, in which the main armament was carried in a central battery. The Temeraire was heavily armoured down to below the ram, to protect her from an attempt to rake her bows when pitching, for it will be evident to anyone that when the fore part of a vessel is on the crest of a wave the bows are greatly exposed, sometimes nearly to the foot of the stem, and would be peculiarly vulnerable to hostile shot. The last central battery ship for the British Navy was the Superb. She was built to the order of the Turkish Government, but was acquired by this country. She carried sixteen 10-inch muzzle-loading rifle guns and six 4-inch breechloaders. She was a sister ship to the Turkish armour-clad Mesoudiye.

Though not launched until 1876 and completed in 1881, the Inflexible was described by her designer, in 1874, at a meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects as follows:—

Seeing that the Inflexible had armour two feet thick, the belief of her designer that the limit had been reached was justifiable. She was the only one of her class built for this country, though Italy, as will be seen, tried to copy and even to improve upon her. Her displacement was 11,800 tons, and her engines of 6,500 indicated h.p. were designed to give her a speed of twelve and a half knots, though on occasion she attained nearly fifteen knots. Her length was 320 feet, beam 75 feet, and draught 26 feet 4 inches. Her armament consisted of four 16-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns in her turrets and eight 4-inch breechloaders, besides twenty-one anti-torpedo boat guns and four torpedo tubes. The weight of a single discharge was 6,800 lb., which was not exceeded until 1906, though the energy in foot tons in that interval was increased several times over. She was, moreover, the first vessel in which the turrets were placed en echelon, i.e. diagonally, instead of one behind the other on the centre line.

The affection of the Italians for immense ships and guns to match was demonstrated even more remarkably by those which were built after the battle of Lissa than by those which took part in that memorable and disastrous engagement. Probably the two finest specimens were of the mastless turret type, the sister ships Duilio and Dandolo, which were designed to surpass any other fighting ship in existence, no matter what her nationality, and especially to show that Italian naval architects and constructors could surpass the Inflexible, on which Britain so justly prided herself. The Duilio was built at Castellamare, and the Dandolo at Spezzia. Their turrets were on much the same plan as those of the Inflexible, and quite a dispute arose between Italian and British naval architects as to whom the credit should be given of having first designed this type of ship.

The Duilio was of 10,650 tons displacement; her length between perpendiculars was 339 feet 7 inches, her extreme breadth 64 feet 7 inches, and her mean draught was 25 feet 11 inches. The height of her main deck above water was 11 feet, and that of her battery 15 feet 9 inches. The hulls of both these ships were built of iron and steel. Each had a double bottom extending for 230 feet of her length, and the numerous watertight compartments into which the double bottoms were subdivided were so arranged that any one or more of them could be filled with water or emptied as might be found necessary.

The central armoured citadel protecting the machinery and boilers and the magazines, besides part of the machinery for working the turrets and the guns, was no less than 58 feet in breadth, and extended to within a fraction of 6 feet below the load water-line, and was 107 feet in length. Above the citadel was a second central armoured compartment protecting the turret bases and a part of the machinery for loading and working the guns; and above this compartment were the turrets themselves. The turrets of the Duilio were not placed amidships, but the experiment was tried for the first time on an Italian ship of setting them at opposite corners of the central citadel, so that one should command the stern and the other the bows, and that each should be able to fire ahead or astern, or on the broadside, without interfering in any way with the other. The decks before and abaft the citadel were 4 feet 9 inches below the water-level, and were protected by horizontal armour. Extensive experiments were conducted at Spezzia with a 100-ton gun, and guns of 10- and 11-inch calibre, on different types of targets. As first designed these ships were to carry two 60-ton guns in each turret, but when the British Admiralty announced that the Inflexible would have guns of 81 tons, the Italians equipped these two warships with 100-ton guns manufactured at the Elswick works. The armour at the water-line was 22 inches thick on the central portion, and that of the turrets was 18 inches, further strengthened by heavy teak backing. Each ship had a heavy projecting ram, and also had an apparatus for discharging Whitehead torpedoes. Although these ships were described as Italian-built and were certainly put together in Italy, it is interesting to note that the Duilio had trunk engines by Messrs. John Penn and Sons, that practically all the iron and steel put into the vessel’s frames, etc., were made in France, that the armour-plates came from Cammell’s establishment at Sheffield, and that the guns were made at Elswick. Only the heavy forgings for the ship were made in Italy. The Dandolo, although described as a sister ship, differed in many particulars from the Duilio. The Dandolo had engines of Maudslay’s inverted vertical compound type, a pair of which was given to each of her screw propellers, and she had eight boilers, heated with thirty-four furnaces, and working at a pressure of 60 lb. per square inch. These great ships were out of date soon after being completed, as the discovery of the means of making steel cheaply, and the much greater strength and lightness of the homogeneous metal, as it was called, rendered it possible for ships and guns to be built of much greater power than ever before. Indeed, so great was the progress in these two departments that in a very few years these vessels would no longer have been invulnerable, but would have been relegated, as being slow and unwieldy, to harbour or coast defence work, and thence to the scrap-heap.

One remarkable ship on the turret system was the Peter the Great, belonging to Russia, which was very like the British turret ship Devastation, and carried four 12-inch guns in her two turrets. She had no ram. Russia also possessed the Minin, which carried turrets on Captain Coles’s system and had a very low freeboard, but after the loss of the Captain, the Minin’s turrets were removed, and she was given a central battery, 98 feet in length and rising 10 feet above the water-line. The guns were mounted en barbette and were placed on turntables. Russia also had two three-turret ships carrying six 25-ton rifled guns, and two double-turret ships each carrying four 35-ton guns, besides a considerable number of single turret ships and some smaller two-turreted vessels. These were mostly monitors copied from Ericsson’s plan, and were similar to those which he designed for the war in America. Most of these turrets were on Captain Coles’s system.

The turret system was developed to such an extent by Admiral Popoff that he gave his name to the type of ships he designed. They were immense circular floating fortresses intended only to operate in shallow and comparatively smooth water. Their sea-going qualities were conspicuous by their absence, which is not to be wondered at when their shape is taken into consideration. Although described as circular it would be more correct to say that they were circular only at the water-line, for on one side to form a stern a projection was constructed to facilitate steering, and at the opposite side a bow was built on. These ships carried on the central part of the upper deck a circular breastwork 7 feet high, in which were two 12-inch 40-ton guns, two quick-firers on each side of the superstructure, and six smaller guns, mounted en barbette 13 feet 3 inches above the water-line, on fixed slides. When it was necessary to train or change the direction of the guns, the whole ship had to be turned. In the citadel was the accommodation for the officers and crew. The extreme diameter of the vessel was 121 feet, the length over all, including the stern and bow, was about 150 feet, and her total displacement was 3,553 tons. She drew only 13 feet. The ship was built of iron, and had a double bottom sheathed with wood and copper. She was, of course, flat-bottomed. A peculiar feature of her construction was that she had a dozen external box girders or keels, each about 12 inches square, carried parallel to the intended axis of the vessel. There were eight radial frames and two rings of web frames, the vessel being divided into twenty-four compartments. These two vessels, the Admiral Popoff and Novgorod, were alike in most particulars, except that the latter was the smaller of the two. The height of the armour on each vessel was 1 foot 6 inches above the water-line, while below the water-line it was 4 feet 6 inches; they each had six screw propellers driven by three sets of engines. Their average speed was about six and a half knots. Although Admiral Popoff is usually given the credit of the invention of this type of vessel, Mr. John Elder, the Glasgow shipbuilder, designed and patented a circular floating battery in 1867. He proposed that the circular ship should carry twenty-six guns in a lower battery and ten in a central one, and that the sharp edge of the circumference should be used as a ram. According to his design his vessel would have had a diameter of 144 feet, a freeboard of 6 feet, and a draught of 9 feet.

The great ironclads described and their armament represent what may be regarded as the apotheosis of the iron turret ship and the heavy iron gun. Before passing on to the great change introduced by the adoption of steel in shipbuilding and gun manufacture it may be as well to note something of what has been accomplished in the production of warships of other types and modifications of types, and how some of them acquitted themselves in actual conflict.

One drawback to all the heavy British ironclads of this period was that so much weight and space were taken up by the armour and its backing, that comparatively little space was left for bunker accommodation. Obviously the very heavily armoured ships could not travel for long at high speed under steam without exhausting their coal supply. In order to obtain speed and allow space for the engines of the necessary dimensions, together with adequate coal supplies, the amount of armour carried had to be reduced, and in July in the summer of 1869 the first of a new class of armoured frigates, the Inconstant, was launched for the Navy. She was constructed of iron sheathed with three thicknesses of wood and coppered. She was the first vessel which had a stern post and rudder frame made of brass. She carried sixteen guns, viz. ten 9-inch muzzle-loading guns on the main deck, and six 7-inch muzzle-loading rifles on the upper deck; her engines, of 1,000 h.p. nominal, gave her a speed of about sixteen knots, at which she was faster than any other warship in the world. She was unusually narrow for her length, in order to add to her speed, her length being 337 feet 4 inches, and her beam 50 feet 3½ inches. At one time on her trials she made nearly eighteen and a half knots.

A series of coast-defence monitors was decided upon in deference to public clamour, and the first of these, the Glatton, was begun in 1868, and finished in the latter part of 1870. She was intended to be for coast-defence purposes only, and not an ocean-going ship in any sense of the term. Consequently her coal capacity was small, and she was very heavily armoured. She had but one turret, and this was so disposed that as the vessel had no masts the turret could be turned to give the guns a range of fire all round except for a small section astern, only about 20 degrees being thus uncovered. Although her design was admittedly founded upon the American monitor type, several important improvements were introduced. The American monitors had shown on several occasions that a heavy shot striking near the base of the turret was liable to cause the turret to jam or become unworkable. To render this impossible in the case of the Glatton she was equipped with a heavy breastwork built outside the base of the turret, in such a position that the lower part of the turret was absolutely protected and consequently could not be disabled, while if a shot were to strike the upper part of the turret it would do little damage. The Glatton had a freeboard of only 3 feet; the hull was plated with iron 12 inches thick above the water-line, and 10 inches thick below it, and behind this was a teak backing 20 inches thick, and behind this again two thicknesses each of 1 inch of iron forming an inner skin, while the frames to which this was attached were no less than 10 inches deep, and were only 2 feet apart. Altogether the sides of this vessel were 3 feet 8 inches in thickness. The turret contained two 25-ton guns; its armour was 14 inches thick in the most exposed parts, and 12 inches thick elsewhere. And besides this it had a wood backing of 15 inches, and an iron inner skin ⅝-inch thick. It was 30 feet in diameter, and similar to the turrets of the Captain and Monarch. The breastwork rose 6½ feet on each side of the vessel from the upper deck, and was plated with 12 inches of iron, with a 15-inch backing of teak. The upper deck had a sheathing of 3 inches of iron. The total length of the vessel was 245 feet, its breadth 54 feet, and it drew 19 feet of water. It was of 2,700 tons burden, and the engines were of 500 h.p. nominal. Its bunkers were designed to carry 250 tons of coal, but its ballast tanks were so designed that if necessary they could take another 250 tons of coal. With such dimensions and such a weight of armour to carry, she was, of course, a slow vessel, but in regard to her fighting power it was estimated that she would give a good account of herself against even such a vessel as the Monarch.

Powerful though the Glatton’s turret appeared, the experimental turret on the same pattern fired upon at Portland by the 21-ton gun of the Hotspur suffered somewhat badly. The shot struck the turret at the horizontal joint of the upper and lower plates, forcing the upper plate and the lower plate apart and damaging the turret generally.

A series of breastwork monitors was added to the Navy in the late ’sixties. Besides the Magdala, Cerberus and Abyssinia for colonial coast and harbour defence, the Admiralty ordered four similar but larger vessels for home defence, much to the general surprise. For some unfathomable reason the Cerberus and Magdala were barque-rigged. False bows and sterns were added to them to enable them to make the voyages to their respective destinations. They carried two 18-ton guns in each of their turrets. On her outward voyage the Cerberus earned a reputation for rolling which she never lost. The first reports of her voyage as far as Gibraltar described it as being successful and prosperous, but when her commander’s report was received it showed that the voyage was successful in the sense that the ship succeeded in getting that far, but prosperous it never was. She had dirty weather in crossing the Bay of Biscay, and for twelve hours rolled so heavily that it was thought she would not get through it. It is said she rolled 40 degrees each way, which is far more than the Captain rolled, and she pitched so heavily that sometimes the whole fore part of the ship as far as the foremast would be lost sight of, and the decks be quite under water. She was very slow under steam, the utmost speed that could be got out of her being six knots. The crew detested her so thoroughly that they deserted whenever they found the opportunity, three of them had to be punished and sent to prison by way of example by the time Malta was reached, and six volunteered to go to prison rather than continue the voyage. However, she arrived at Melbourne at last, and lay year in and year out at her moorings in Hobson’s Bay except for such short intervals when she went down the bay for firing practice. One of the war scares which arise from time to time came near to conferring on the Cerberus a celebrity of a unique character. Irresponsible and irrepressible politicians of a sort find colonial life offers them more scope for the display of their exuberance, and as the scare revived the question whether the defences of Melbourne at Queenscliffe were sufficiently strong, a politician of this variety proposed that the Cerberus should be sent out to sea and then endeavour to steam back past the batteries, which should fire upon her, in order to test both her armour and the strength of the defences. Strange to say, this suggestion actually met with some support, notwithstanding the chorus of ridicule and protests with which it was received, but the common-sense of the community vetoed the proposition. At the time of their construction these three vessels were the most powerful warships of their size to be found anywhere, and were among the ugliest.

In the early ’seventies there were added to the British Navy, and less numerously to other navies, several vessels of composite construction. That is to say, that all her framing was of iron and the outside and deck planking was of wood. Most of these vessels were sloops or light cruisers, and though they were useless for defensive purposes against armoured ships, their offensive powers were very great for vessels of their size, as they were generally given four of the heaviest guns it was possible for them to carry. Under steam they were fast, but as their bunker capacity was not large they had to depend on their sails when possible. One of these vessels, which may be regarded as a specimen of her class, the Albatross, was 160 feet in length between perpendiculars, of 894 tons displacement, and carried two 4½-ton 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns, two 64-pounder guns, and the usual number of smaller weapons for boat and land service.

One small corvette, the Druid, had an innovation which must have brought tears to the eyes of sailors of the old school who loved the ship’s figure-head, and were never tired of keeping it clean and brightly painted. The necessity of end-on fire and bow chasers was admitted, and some unsentimental reformer actually had her figure-head constructed so as to open in two parts like a folding door to permit of the space being used as a porthole for a heavy bow gun.

The steam engine as a means of propulsion was not to be allowed to remain unchallenged, but the only attempt at rivalry to merit serious consideration was that associated with the Waterwitch, in 1866, and Mr. Ruthven’s system of hydraulic propulsion. Although the first patent was taken out in 1839 and another followed in 1849, and a small boat fitted with the Ruthven machinery was placed on the Thames and a working model was shown at the Exhibition of 1851, engineers did not take kindly to it. The objections, apparently insuperable, were that the water had to overcome the resistance of a very large rubbing surface, and that the perforated bottom of the ship was liable to be choked in shallow water, and it was also contended that the cost of increasing the power beyond a certain rate was prohibitive. The advantages of the system, and they were undeniable, were that the ship could be propelled either end foremost, or turned, or brought to a stop and restarted without stopping or reversing the engines. A vessel was built, partly at the expense of the Prussian Government, and fitted with engines of this type, and was said some years afterwards to be still running on the Oder. In 1863, Mr. Murray, Chief Engineer of Portsmouth Dockyard, reported, on the application by Mr. Ruthven, of Greenock, for an extension of his father’s patent, that he saw no reason why the speed attained with the Ruthven propeller should not equal that obtained with the paddle or screw, and that he had been on official duty for the Admiralty to Belgium to inspect and report upon a vessel built by the Cockerill firm and called the Seraing, which was equipped with the Ruthven propeller. He recommended the Admiralty to give the principle serious attention.

In consequence of this report the Admiralty ordered the Waterwitch to be built for the trial of the Ruthven propeller. In order to check the vessel by a comparison with one fitted with the ordinary screw, the trials of the armour-plated twin-screw gun-vessel Viper were selected. The Waterwitch was of iron, 778 tons measurement, 162 feet in length by 32 feet beam, and 13 feet 9 inches depth; she was rather broad in proportion to her length, and had a rudder at both ends. Her armour plating was of the usual 4½ inches in thickness at the water-line and on her broadside, and she had athwartship armoured bulkheads across her upper deck with gunports in them, through which it was proposed to fight guns on the line of keel. The main interest of the vessel centred in her machinery. Her first trials on the Thames were so satisfactory that a more extended series at Stokes Bay was determined upon, the two sets of trials lasting about a year. A portion of her bottom was made flat and without external keel. From what may be regarded as a semi-official and certainly expert report of the ship and the Stokes Bay trials, the following description of the vessel may be quoted:—

There was little to choose between the performances of the Waterwitch and her screw rivals, the Vixen and Viper, tried at the same time, and it was admitted that with certain modifications in the existing machinery of the first-named and the ejection nozzles, a much greater speed would no doubt be possible. It was also stated that with a suitably designed screw propeller a greater speed could have been obtained with the same power. Be that as it may, the experiment does not seem to have been repeated on so large a scale, and the improvements made in the steam engine soon outclassed completely the hydraulic propeller.

In Europe there was a disposition to disregard the power of the American ships, but when public opinion in this country and in Europe turned in their favour it went to the other extreme, and turreted ships with low freeboards were advocated irrespective of the totally different conditions prevailing on this side of the Atlantic. It was claimed that no turreted ship with a low freeboard could possibly be a good sea-boat, or undertake an ocean voyage. The double-turreted monitor Miantonomoh, built at New York, in 1865, proved the contrary in the latter detail, when in 1866 she crossed the Atlantic under her own steam, in company with two other monitors, and visited some English and European ports. She was never tried in any engagement, but was considered by her designers to be superior to any vessel of the kind constructed for war both as a sea-going ship and for fighting purposes. Her armament made up in weight what it lacked in number. Each of her turrets contained two Dahlgren guns throwing projectiles weighing 480 lb., and she also had a 12 lb. howitzer. The turrets were 18 feet in diameter, and were protected by armour 11 inches thick. She did not, however, prove a good sea-boat, which is not to be wondered at when her low freeboard is remembered, and though she made the voyage in the summer months when the Atlantic is usually fairly calm, she proved very wet. However, her advent was quite sufficient to demonstrate to the European powers that she could make the voyage, and her novel appearance gave the impression that her fighting value was tremendous. When the American War was over the United States Government had no further need of a number of its vessels, and disposed of some of them, France buying two of the most powerful, and one or two other European powers were also purchasers.

Among the vessels France acquired was the Dunderberg, which was renamed Rochambeau by her new owners. It consisted of a long iron fortress mounted with guns to fire on the broadside and also ahead and astern. The hull, also of iron, was but little above the water, and the decks were iron-plated. The central portion had armour 7 inches thick with a heavy wooden backing, and the decks fore and aft of the fortress were plated 8½ inches thick. Her two engines, developing 5,000 h.p., gave her at a pinch a speed of between eleven and twelve knots, but when she crossed the ocean she made the voyage under her own steam at between eight and nine knots. The after part, containing the screw propeller and steering gear, was also shot-proof. She had an immense beak or ram. Her total length was 378 feet, her breadth 73 feet, and her depth 81 feet, and she drew 22 feet of water.

As purchased by the French she had an armament of five 15-inch Rodman guns, and twelve 11-inch Dahlgrens. Another vessel, the Onondaga, was also purchased from America by the French, and both were altered at Cherbourg to meet French views.

When the French decided to adopt ironclad ships carrying a very few guns of great power, they did not hesitate to make some extraordinary experiments. One of their vessels, built in 1866, was the Taureau. It was like nothing that had been afloat before or has been launched since. Viewed from the stern, it resembled a sphere with a deck-house, a couple of masts, and a chimney. Much the same aspect was presented by a front view, except that before the deck-house was a small turret in which was one large gun. The turret was carried very far forward and could be revolved so that the gun had almost an all-round fire, the only limitation being the funnel and deck erections. The bow was extended enormously from the deck level to some distance below the water, and projected no less than 40 feet under the surface. The turret was not built on the deck, but descended to the bottom of the hold, and was protected by nearly 5 inches of armour, and a similar thickness was placed over the bows. The sides were plated 3 feet above the water-line, this belt extending to the stern. The engines were of 250 h.p. The Taureau was about 48 feet maximum width, and 197 feet in length without the ram. The idea underlying the construction of this unwieldy ship was that she should be able to deliver a heavy shot at close range to an enemy’s ship, and follow this up by ramming it, thereby completing its destruction; while her convex bows and circular turret would present no plane surface to the enemy, so that any shot which might strike it could only give a glancing blow and bound away harmlessly.

In 1862 another remarkable vessel called the Magenta was added to the French fleet. She was iron-plated and carried eighty guns on two decks, and in addition had a raised forecastle with ports on either bow, through which guns could be fired. She also had an immense blunt ram which projected like a cone upon the bows of the vessel and extended from the forecastle almost to the fore-foot. She presented an attempt to combine some of the features of the Monitor with the broadside ironclad, one American invention copied being the provision of a shot-proof tower just abaft the funnel for the accommodation and shelter of the officers during an engagement. She was barquentine rigged, and under sail and steam could get up a speed of about eight or nine knots.

The Marengo, another wooden ship which was plated with 8-inch iron armour, was designed to carry twelve guns. She had a central battery extending to the upper deck, and above this at each corner of the battery was an open armour-plated turret. The turrets each carried a large pivot gun, mounted en barbette, this being one of the first vessels France possessed in which it was sought to combine the advantages of the turret system with those of the barbette. These guns could fire in line of keel, and there were also four heavy guns on each broadside. She was 280 feet long by 57 feet 6 inches beam, and 28 feet draught, and was intended to have a speed of twelve knots. Her rudder was on the balanced principle. The rigging was brought down inside the bulwarks, something after the fashion of some modern sailing ships, so as to present a clean side outside. All the French ships were broad for their length.

The first large armour-plated ship to enter the Pacific was the Spanish screw steam frigate Numancia, constructed at La Seyne by the Société des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée. She was 317 feet in length by 57 feet 2 inches beam, and depth 37 feet, and her draught of water was 27 feet 6 inches, with a displacement of 7,303 tons, according to English measurement. She was built of iron throughout, and had 5 inches of armour-plate backed with 16 inches of teak from end to end of the ship, and from no less than 7 feet 9 inches below the water-line up to the level of the upper deck. Her armament was forty 68-pounders. She was built in less than two years, a piece of unusually quick work for a French yard, and was launched in 1864.

In 1868 the Dutch Government received from English builders two single turret ironclad monitors, intended for harbour defence, which were stated to be the first of the low freeboard type completed in this country, and carrying turrets on Captain Coles’s system. These vessels, the Krokodil and Heiligerlee, were about 180 feet in length, with a beam of 44 feet, and a depth of 11 feet 6 inches. From the gunwale to 8 feet below the water-line they had iron armour-plates of a total thickness of 5½ inches, tapering off to 4½ inches at the extreme ends. This armour rested against a teak backing 10 inches in thickness, behind which was an inner skin of 1-inch iron, and inside this again was a series of longitudinal iron girders. For their size they were exceedingly strongly constructed, but as they were designed to be able to meet any hostile vessel which might approach any of the harbours of the shallow Dutch coast where they might be stationed, the reason for such substantial construction is apparent. The turret armour was 11 inches thick at the gunports, and 8 inches thick elsewhere. The armament consisted of two 12½-ton rifled guns firing a 300 lb. projectile, which could be discharged from within four degrees of aft on either side to direct ahead. The turrets could be revolved by steam or hand power as desired. The twin-screw engines were of 140 h.p. nominal.

Another vessel of considerable interest, designed and built for the Dutch Government by Napier, was the turret gunboat De Tygre, which inaugurated a type which found much favour in Holland. This vessel, of 187 feet in length, 44 feet breadth, and moulded depth 11 feet 6 inches, and of 1,613 tons, builder’s measurement, was built in compartments and with watertight doors, and was like most of the turret ships of the monitor variety, as she had a double bottom which could be filled with water to sink her to her fighting level. Thus only about 2 feet of her topsides would be exposed to the enemy. As an improvement upon her came another vessel from the same builders, which was described as “of a build which has long seemed to us as one of those most likely to become employed for the ‘ship of the future,’ not because she is a ram, but because she is essentially a sea-going turret ship.” She was “the De Tygre over again, with the following exceptions: She has about 3 feet less beam, a rather greater draught of water, and light topsides are raised over the armour-plating and the deck, with which it terminates to the level of another deck; the vessel is thus in appearance an ordinary sea-going ship of war, for she is pierced for a few light guns on the lower deck; but her fighting strength consists in her turret, which is similar to that of the De Tygre, except that the ports are at a higher elevation. This vessel is, therefore, a cruiser, unarmoured, higher than a level of 2 feet from the water; but practically for a fight at close quarters she is a monitor exposing only a turret and a low topside as parts vulnerable to shot.”[45]

The Greek armour-clad King George, of 1,774 tons, built at Blackwall by the Thames Ironworks, was remarkable for the smallness of her dimensions in proportion to the strength and extent of her armour-plating. This was 6 inches thick, and had a 10-inch backing, and extended from the gunwale to 8 feet below the water-line, and from end to end of the vessel. She was 200 feet in length, and with engines of 2,105 h.p. indicated attained a speed of nearly fourteen knots on her trials. She was also notable for the peculiar arrangement of a central hexagonal box-battery on the Mackrow system for two 21-centimètre breech-loading Krupp guns (300-pounders), with the portholes so designed that the guns could be fired on both sides forward in line of keel, and nearly so aft; on the actual broadside the guns could be fired direct and parallel at the same time, or made to converge their fire at 70 yards distance from the ship’s side, the racers being so placed that the guns pivoted from the muzzle and could each be trained over on the broadside, through an angle of 93 degrees, the front gun in this way pointing three degrees abaft.

In 1864 Germany made a start with its modern navy by ordering from Messrs. Samuda the cupola ship Arminius. One or two others were added, and then, in 1867, the powerful armour-cased screw frigate Kron Prinz was launched from the same yards. She was of 286 feet in length, and of 3,404 tons, builder’s measurement, with engines of 1,800 nominal h.p. Her armour-plating extended entirely round the vessel from 6 feet below the water-line up to the main deck. The armour was 5 inches thick except near the ends where it was reduced to 4½ inches, and arrangements were made for the protection of the rudder and steering apparatus, as well as of the whole of the lower deck. The armour extended 14 feet upwards about 120 feet along each side, so as to protect the amidship battery, which was also protected by cross bulkheads. She was fitted with a considerable number of watertight compartments, a double bottom, and steel plating over the deck beams. She carried fourteen steel breech-loading guns of 7 tons each in her battery, a pivot gun on the deck at the bow protected by an armour-plated shield, and a pivot gun aft. Her iron lower masts served to ventilate the interior, and her lower yards were of steel; her speed was estimated at thirteen knots.

Apparently so well satisfied were the Prussians with this product of a British yard, that when the opportunity offered two years later to acquire one of the most powerful warships yet designed, they took advantage of it. There had been laid down at Blackwall for the Ottoman Government, a vessel designed by Mr. Reed, Chief Constructor to the British Navy, but Turkey, either seeing a profit in the transaction or being short of cash—deficiencies not being unknown in the history of Ottoman finance—permitted her, when about half finished, to be acquired by the Prussian Government. She was 365 feet in length, or 30 feet longer than the Hercules, with a beam of 60 feet, and a mean draught of 26 feet of water, with a burden of 6,000 tons. Her engines, by Maudslay, were of 1,150 h.p. nominal, and 7,000 effective. She was constructed on the longitudinal system, and within both frames and ribs was another iron skin an inch thick, making her a double ship, the inner one being 4½ feet from the other. The armour was 8 inches thick amidships, and tapering downwards to a thickness of 7 inches to 7 feet below the water-line. It also tapered towards the bow and stern, diminishing from 8 inches to 6 inches. Under the counter or bows, where it was considered almost impossible a shot could strike, the armour was only 4 inches thick. But elsewhere there was never less than 6 inches of armour, besides the 10-inch teak backing and double iron skin. Aft of the bowsprit and forward of the stern were two heavy bulkheads, each of 6 inches of armour and 18 inches of teak, which were continued from the lower deck, through the main deck, and up to 7 feet above the spar deck, where they were curved to form shields, each pierced with four portholes for cannon and loop-holed for musketry. Within these shields were four Krupp’s steel breech-loading 400-pounders, which could be fired forward or aft, or as broadside guns; and there were also twenty-three similar guns between decks. She was at that time the heaviest vessel which had been docked in the Thames.

Her new possessors evidently thought very highly of her, or they desired to pay her builders a compliment, for the German Government selected her to represent the German Navy at the Jubilee Review in 1887.