Part 14

The importance of deciding whether warships should be built of iron or wood was accentuated by the necessity of replacing those heavy warships which had been converted to auxiliary steam vessels. All such proved to be cramped in stowage and bad sea boats.

So long ago as 1822 shell-guns had been adopted. Consequently, in the experiments as regards iron, shell-fire had to be taken into consideration.

In 1842, experiments were made with iron plates three-eighths of an inch thick, rivetted together to make a total thickness of six inches. It was, however, reported that at 400 yards these were not proof against eight-inch guns or heavy thirty-two pounders. These matters were taken into consideration by Captain Chads, whose official report was as follows:--

“The shot going through the exposed or near side generally makes a clean smooth hole of its own size, which might be readily stopped; and even where it strikes a rib it has much the same effect; but on the opposite side all the mischief occurs; the shot meets with so little resistance that it must inevitably go through the vessel, and should it strike on a rib on the opposite side the effect is terrific, tearing off the iron sheets to a very considerable extent; and even those shot that go clean through the fracture being on the off side, the rough edges are outside the vessel, precluding the possibility almost of stopping them.

“As it is most probable that steam vessels will engage directly end-on I have thought it desirable to try to-day what the effect of shot would be on this vessel[83] so placed, and it has been such as might be expected, each shot cutting aways the ribs, and tearing the iron plates away sufficient to sink the vessel in an instant.”

In 1849 an official report stated that:--

“Shot of every description in passing through iron makes such large holes that the material is improper for the bottom of ships.

“Iron and oak of equal weight offering equal resistance to shot, iron for the topsides affords better protection for the men than oak, as the splinters from it are not so destructive.

“Iron offering no lodgment for shells in passing through the side, if made with single plates it will be free from the destructive effects that would occur by a shell exploding in a side of timber.”

Certain modifications were then introduced and tried in the year 1850, and Captain Chad’s report was that:--

“With high charges the splinters from the shot were as numerous and as severe as before, with the addition in this, and in the former case, of the evils that other vessels are subject to, that of the splinters from the timber.

“From these circumstances I am confirmed in the opinion that iron cannot be beneficially employed as a material for the construction of vessels of war.”

As a result of this report, seventeen iron ships which were building, the largest being the _Simoon_, of nearly 2,000 tons, were condemned; and it was definitely decided that ships must be built of wood, and that iron in any form was disadvantageous.

The advantages of the shell were fully understood, and at least half of the guns of the ships of the line of the period were sixty-five cwt. shell guns. Experiments had fully taught what shell-fire might be expected to accomplish. General Paixham, the inventor of the shell gun, had long ago stated that armour was the only antidote to shell, and the fact that armour up to six inches had been experimented with indicates that this also was understood. Between the appreciation of the fact and acting upon it, there was, however, a decided gulf. In the British Navy, as in others also, the natural conservatism of the sea held its usual sway.

Matters were at about this stage when, in the year 1853, the Russian Admiral Nachimoff, with a fleet consisting of six ships of the line, entered the harbour of Sinope, on the 30th November, 1853, and absolutely annihilated, by shell fire, a Turkish squadron of seven frigates which were lying there. The damage wrought by this shell-fire was terrific. “For God’s sake keep out the shells!” is generally believed to have been the cry of most naval officers about that period, though there is some lack of evidence as to whether this demand was ever actually made, except by the Press. The terrible effect of shell-fire was, however, obvious enough; but as stated above it was really well-known before the war test that so impressed the world.

When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, the British _personnel_ stood at 45,500, and the Estimates were £7,197,804. On the 28th March, war was formally declared. Naval operations in the Crimean war were almost entirely of secondary note. Some frigates bombarded Odessa, in April, and a certain amount of damage was done along the Caucasian coast.

In September, the British fleet, consisting of ten ships of the line, two frigates and thirteen armed steamers, convoyed an enormous fleet of Turkish and French warships crammed with troops for an attack on Sebastopol. The Russian fleet lay inside that harbour and made no attempt whatever to destroy the invading flotilla, though it might easily have done considerable mischief, if not more. Instead of that, the ships were sunk at the entrance of the harbour, and the siege of Sebastopol presently commenced. On October 17th, the Allied fleet attempted to bombard Fort Constantine, but the ships were soon defeated by the shore defences and many of them badly injured.

The French, who had formed somewhat more favourable opinions of iron armour than we had, had, after Sinope, already commenced the construction of five floating batteries which were to carry armour. They were wooden ships of 1,400 tons displacement, with four-inch armour over their hulls. They carried eighteen fifty-pounder guns and a crew of 320. As originally designed they were intended to sail, although they were fitted with slight auxiliary steam power. When completed they were found unable to sail, so pole masts were fitted to them. Artificial ventilation was also supplied and their funnels were made telescopic. The designs of these vessels were sent to the British Admiralty, who, after considerable delay, built four copies, the _Glatton_, _Meteor_, _Thunder_, and _Trusty_. These, however, were not completed in time to take any part in the war.

So soon as the French armoured batteries were ready they were sent out to the Crimea, where they joined a large fleet which had been prepared to attack Kinburn, which was bombarded in October, 1855. In a very short while the forts were totally destroyed, and with very small loss to the armoured batteries. The effect created by this was so great that four more armoured batteries were ordered in England, the _Etna_, _Erebus_, _Terror_, and _Thunderbolt_.

In the Baltic, to which a British fleet, under Admiral Napier, had been sent, the Russians kept behind the fortifications at Kronstadt, and nothing was accomplished beyond the bombardment of Sveaborg, and the destruction of the town and dockyard. Some small bombardments also took place in the White Sea and on the Siberian coast, where Petropavlovsk was attacked and the attack was defeated, and such other actions as took place were generally unsuccessful. It had become abundantly clear that against fortifications wooden ships had very small chance of success.

Incidental items of naval interest are that in this particular war Captain Cowper Coles mounted a sixty-eight-pounder gun upon a raft named the _Lady Nancy_. This attracted so much attention from the small target, light draft and steady platform, that Coles was sent home to develop his ideas. In this war, also, mines appeared, the Russians dropping a good many off Kronstadt. Those used by the Russians were filled with seventy pounds of powder, and exploded on contact by the familiar means of a glass tube of sulphuric acid being broken and the acid falling into chlorate of potash.

No material damage was done to ships by this means, but a considerable number of those who had picked them up and investigated them were injured.

The ingenuity and new means of offence were, however, by no means confined to the Russians, for a Mr. Macintosh, after the failure of the first bombardment of Sebastopol, evolved a system of attacking fortifications with a long hose supported by floats, through which naptha was to be pumped. Being set alight with some potassium, the fort attacked would be immediately smoked out.

Experiments at Portsmouth having proved that this system was “simple, certain and cheap,” Mr. Macintosh proceeded to the Crimea with his invention at his own expense. He was eventually given £1000 towards his expenses, but no attempt was made to employ the system. It is by no means clear how the necessary potassium was to be got into the water at the requisite spot.

The same war also produced the fire-shell of the British Captain Norton. This appears to have been a resurrection of the old idea of Greek fire. It could be used from a rifle or from a shell-gun, and like the previous invention “rendered war impossible,” and again like the previous invention does not appear to have ever materialised into practice.

On the practical side more results were achieved. The Lancaster gun which fired an oval shot was actually used with success in the war. From it the rifled gun presently emerged. There also emerged the then amateur invention of one Warry, who invented a new type of gun capable of firing sixteen to eighteen rounds per minute. The idea of wire wound guns was also apparent, and Mr. Armstrong[84] (as he then was), suggested the idea of percussion shell. It is interesting to note that these last were received with extreme dissatisfaction in the Navy on the grounds that they might go off at the wrong time.

Of the Crimean War, however, it may be said that though it was not noted for naval actions, it was probably the most important war in its indirect results on the Navy that ever took place. It brought in the armoured ship, the rifled gun, and what was ultimately to develop into the torpedo. It saw the crude birth of “blockade mines” and rapid fire guns; everyone of them inventions that, judging by the slow progress of steam, would--failing war to necessitate swift development--have been still in the experimental stage even to-day.

In our own times war having ever been a nearer possibility than in the 1850 era, peace progress has always been more rapid, and no invention of practical value ever failed to secure full tests. Yet there were not wanting those who prophesied that the Dreadnoughts of to-day merely reproduced in another form the 120 screw ships of the line of sixty years ago; and that the next great naval war might well bring about changes every whit as drastic as any that the Crimean War caused to come into being.

The torpedo had become fully as great a menace to the modern ship of the line as the shell gun was to the big ship of 1853. The submarine was an infinitely greater menace to it than the crude Russian mines of the Crimean War ever were. Endless potentialities resided in aircraft.

Wherefrom it was well argued that out of the next great naval war (despite whatever lesser wars in between may have taught), the battleship was likely to be profoundly modified.

That it will be swept out of existence was improbable. The whole lesson of history is that the “capital ship” will ever adjust itself to the needs of the hour. It has always been the essential rallying point of lesser craft--the mobile base to meet the mobile base of the enemy.

Meanwhile, it is beyond question that at the time of the Crimean War the British Navy from one cause and another was little better than a paper force. It is plain enough that little remained of the fleet of the Nelson era. The fleet “worried through,” but very clearly it had reached the end of its tether.

The reason why will be found in the next chapter.

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The above paragraphs were originally written in 1912. Since then much has happened. In this edition they have only been revised to the extent of substituting the past for the present tense. Nothing has occurred to alter what then was the obvious.

X.

THE COMING OF THE IRONCLAD.

The period immediately following the Crimean War saw a gradual change in the relations between England and France. In 1858 a panic similar to those with which later years have familiarised us began to arise, and in December, 1858, and January, 1859, a committee sat under the Administration of Lord Derby “to consider the very serious increase which had taken place of late years in the Navy Estimates, while it represented that the naval force of the country was far inferior to what it ought to be with reference to that of other Powers, and especially France, and that increased efforts and increased expenditure were imperatively called for to place it on a proper footing.”

This committee found that whereas in 1850 there were eighty-six British ships of the line to forty-five French ones, this ratio had altogether ceased to exist; and that both Powers had now twenty-nine screw ships of the line. Any other large ships had ceased to count.

In 1859 there also appeared the famous “Leipsic Article,” commenting on the decline of the British Fleet and the rise of the French. Certain extracts from this, though dealing with the past for the most part, are here given _en bloc_, for they indicate very clearly the circumstances in which, _under pressure from German influences, the modern British Navy came to be founded_. It is, to say the least of it, questionable whether but for this Teutonic agitation public opinion in England would ever have been aroused from its lethargy in time. This epoch-making article appeared in the _Conversations Lexicon_, of Leipsic.

After some prelude the article referred to the appearance of the French Fleet in the Crimean War:--

“The late war in the East (Crimean) first opened the eyes of Englishmen to the true position of affairs, and it was not without some sensation of alarm that they gazed at this vision of the unveiled reality. Here and there, indeed, an allusion, having some foundation in fact, had been heard, during the Presidency of Louis Napoleon, and had drawn attention to the menaced possibility of an invasion of the British Isles; but such notions were soon overwhelmed by the derision with which they were jeeringly greeted by the national pride.

“Those expressions of contempt were, however, not doomed to be silenced in their turn by the sudden apparition in the autumn of 1854 of thirty-eight French ships of the line and sixty-six frigates and corvettes, fully manned and ready for immediate action. During the three preceding years Louis Napoleon had built twenty-four line-of-battle ships, and in the course of the year 1854 alone thirteen men-of-war were launched, nine of which were ships of the line. In addition to these, the keels of fifty-two more, comprising three ships of the line and six frigates, were immediately laid down. The English had thus the mortification to be obliged not only to cede to their allies the principal position in the camp, but also reluctantly to acknowledge their equality on that element whereon they had hoped to reign supreme....

* * * * *

“If we carried our investigation no further than this we should naturally conclude that, with such a numerical superiority, sufficient in itself to form a very respectable armament for a second-rate power, England has very little to fear from the marine of France. We must not forget, however, that quality as well as numbers must be considered in estimating the strength of a Fleet. When we take this element into our calculations, we shall find the balance very soon turned in favour of France. We perceive, then, that while the English list comprises every individual sail the country possesses, whether fit for commission or altogether antiquated and past service (and some, like the _Victory_, built towards the close of the last or the beginning of this century), the French Navy, as we have observed, scarcely contains a single ship built prior to the year 1840; so that nearly all are less than twenty years old. This is a fact of the greatest importance, and indicates an immense preponderance in favour of France. Though many of England’s oldest craft figure in the ‘Navy List’ as seaworthy and fit for active service, we have no less an authority than that of Sir Charles Napier (in his Letter to the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1849) that some are mere lumber, and many others cannot be reckoned upon to add any appreciable strength to a Fleet in case of need. Independently, too, of the introduction of the screw, such fundamental changes have been introduced, within the last fifty years, both into the principles of naval architecture and of gunnery, that a modern 120-gun ship, built with due regard to recent improvements, and carrying guns of the calibre now in ordinary use, would in a very short space of time put _ten_ ships like the _Victory_ _hors de combat_, with, at the same time, little chance of injury to herself.

“It is time, however, to turn our attention to another important part of the _material_, namely, artillery. Under this head we purpose designating, not only to the number of guns and their calibre, but also the mode in which they are served, for in actual warfare this, of course, is a primary consideration. If we take the received history of naval warfare for the basis of our investigation, we cannot fail to remark one notable circumstance in favour of the English, which can only be ascribed to their superiority in the use of this arm. That circumstance is the important and uniform advantage they have had in the fewer number of casualties they have sustained as compared with other nations with whom they may have chanced to have been engaged. To prove that our assertions are not made at random, we subjoin some statistics in support of this position. In April, 1798, then, the English ship _Mars_ took the French _L’Hercule_; the former had ninety killed and wounded, the latter 290. In the preceding February there had been an engagement between the English _Sybil_ and French _La Forte_, in which the killed and wounded of the former numbered twenty-one, and those of the latter 143. In March, 1806, the English ship _London_ took the French _Marengo_; the English with a loss of thirty-two, the latter of 145 men. On the 4th November, 1805, two English ships of the line engaged four French vessels, and the respective losses were, again, 135 and 730. On the 14th February, 1797, in an action between the Fleets of England and Spain, the English lost 300 and the Spaniards 800. On the 11th of October of the same year, in the engagement off Camperdown between the English and Dutch, the respective losses were 825 and 1,160. On the 5th July, 1808, the English frigate _Seahorse_ took the Turkish frigate _Badere Zuffer_, and of the Turks there fell 370 against fifteen English. Finally, in the same year the Russian ship of the line _Wsewolod_ was taken by two English ships of the line, with a loss to the latter of 303, and to the former of only sixty-two.

“This contrast, so favourable to England, has been constantly maintained, and can only be attributable to her superior artillery. Her seamen not only aimed with greater precision, and fired more steadily than those of the French and of other nations, but they had the reputation of loading with far greater rapidity. It was remarked, in 1805, that the English could fire a round with ball every minute, whereas it took the French gunners three minutes to perform the same operation. Then, again, the English tactics were superior. It was the universal practice of the French to seek to dismast an adversary; they consequently aimed high, while the English invariably concentrated their fire upon the hulls of their adversaries; and clearly the broadside of a vessel presents a much better mark to aim at than the mere masts and rigging. British guns were also usually of higher calibre, for though they bore the same denomination, they were in reality much heavier. Thus, the English _Lavinia_, though nominally a frigate of forty guns, actually carried fifty; and thirty-six and 38-gun frigates nearly always carried forty-four and forty-six. The English ship _Belleisle_, at Trafalgar, though said to be a seventy-four, carried ninety pieces of ordnance, while the Spanish ship she engaged, though called eighty-four had, in fact, only seventy-eight guns. From this disparity in the number and calibre of their guns, as well as in the mode in which they were served, it resulted that France and her allies lost eighty-five ships of the line and 180 frigates, while her antagonist only suffered to the extent of thirteen ships of the line and eighty-three frigates.

“It was not until the close of the war that France became fully aware to what an extent her inferiority in the above respects had contributed to her reverses; otherwise the unfortunate Admiral Villeneuve would not invariably have ascribed his mishaps to the inexperience of his officers and men, and to the incomplete and inferior equipment of his vessels. The truth was, that not only was the artillery, as we have shown, inferior, but the whole system in vogue at that period on board French ships was antiquated, having continued without reform or improvement for two hundred years; it was deficient, too, in enforcing subordination, that most essential condition of the power and efficiency of a ship of war.”

The French _inscription maritime_ is then dealt with at great length, after which occur the following passages, even more interesting perhaps to-day than when they were written:--