Part 28
This latter celebrated and favorite class of ship stood next in order of power above the corvette, with which it might also be said to have blended; for although in the frigate class there were two, or at the most three, rates that predominated vastly in numbers over all the rest, yet the name covered many differing degrees of force. The distinguishing feature of the frigate was that it carried one complete row of guns upon a covered deck—upon a deck, that is, which had another deck over it. On this upper or spar deck there were also guns—more or fewer—but lighter in weight than those on the covered deck, usually styled the main deck. The two principal classes of frigates at the beginning of this century were the thirty-two-gun and the thirty-eight-gun. That is, they carried nominally sixteen or nineteen guns on each side; but the enumeration is misleading, except as a matter of comparison, for guns of some classes were not counted. Ships generally had a few more cannon than their rate implied. The United States thirty-two-gun frigate _Essex_, for example, carried at first twenty-six long twelves on the main deck, with sixteen carronades and two chase guns on the spar deck. Above these two classes came the forty-four-gun frigate, a very powerful rate, which was favored by the United States navy and received a development of strength then unprecedented.
Being such as here described, the frigate was essentially, though not exclusively, the appendage of a fleet of line-of-battle ships. Wars are decided not by commerce destroying nor by raids, however vexatious, but by fleets and armies, by great organized masses—that is, by crushing, not by harassment. But ships of the line, to perform their function, must keep together, both when cruising and when on the field of battle, in order to put forth their strength in combination. The innumerable detached services that must be discharged for every great organized force need for a fleet to be done by vessels of inferior strength, yet so strong that they cannot be intercepted or driven off lightly by every whipper-snapper of an armed ship that comes along. Moreover, a fact not always realized, speed—speed to hasten on a mission, to overtake a foe, or to escape pursuit—depends upon size, masts that can carry sail and hold way amid heavy seas. Hence the frigate, not the lighter sloop, was indicated for the momentous duties upon which depended the intelligence and the communications of the fleet. Such leading considerations are needed to be stated and to be kept in mind, for they affected the warfare of the last decade of the century quite as really as they did that of the first, and a paper would indeed be incomplete which confined itself to indicating points of difference of progress, so-called, and failed to recognize those essential and permanent conditions which time will never remove. Frigates and sloops have disappeared in name and form, in motive power and in armament. Their essential functions remain, and will remain while war lasts.
DUTIES OF THE FRIGATE
The truth of this statement will be evident from a brief mention of the duties frigates actually used to perform. While attending the fleet, not merely a part of it, the frigates were thrown out far in advance and on each side, as cavalry on land scours the country towards or through which the army advances. The distance to which they would be thus detached would sometimes amount to one hundred or two hundred miles, and the absence to days, rejoining being assured by the assignment of a rendezvous, or by an adequate knowledge of the admiral’s intended movements. It will be recognized that when thus alone frigates might meet equal or superior forces, to resist or to escape from which both strength and speed were needed. An extreme and particular case of such service was the watching of an enemy’s port by one or more frigates, when they had to keep close to the entrance, although a fleet might be within. Again, frigates were placed in certain central positions, rendezvous known only to the superior officers, where they cruised steadily, having information as to the whereabouts of the fleet, or instructions for expected vessels. They were there centres of intelligence, round which the movements of the whole body revolved.
When the fleet was actually in touch with a hostile fleet, in pursuit, or when expecting battle, the frigates were placed between their own force and the enemy; nearer, however, to the latter, as the essential point was to keep knowledge of his whereabouts and probable intentions. Such a position was at times extremely exposed. The frigates had to avoid equally capture and being driven and shaken off; they must keep close, yet not be caught. When engagement ensued they passed through to the off side of their own fleet, where they were dispersed at intervals abreast the main line, like the file closers of a military line ashore. Here they fulfilled one special purpose, besides others. As the fleet fought with broadsides only, its ships were ranged one ahead of the other. Consequently signals made on the masts of the admiral could not be seen always by those ahead or astern of him; but the frigates in the other line made the same signals, “repeated,” as it was said, where they could be read more certainly. But frigates did also more hazardous work. They went to crippled ships of the line and towed them into other positions, into or out of fire, and at times the admiral summoned a frigate alongside to carry a message to some part of the battle. “I noticed,” says Marryatt, in one of his novels, “the look of pride on the faces of our officers when it appeared that the loss on board our frigate was greater than that of some of the ships in the line.”
For such offices it is evident there were wanted a strength and a weight which the corvette did not have. A corvette would make poor work of towing a heavy ship, and could not carry as surely the sail needed to maintain a position. At the same time it should be observed that excess of size above the requirements stated should be exceptional. In the opinion of the writer the forty-four-gun frigate in her day possessed a fighting force and a weight of body in excess of that required by the ordinary functions of her nominal class. For exceptional reasons, a few of the type were permissible in a large navy. On the other hand, it may be inferred from the long experience of the British navy, and the resultant practice, that ships of twenty-eight, twenty-four, and twenty guns, though often styled frigates, were not found satisfactory as such. In the distribution of tonnage between size and numbers, a mean must be found; and it must be added that a just mean is a very different thing from a compromise. These considerations also apply to present-day problems.
EARLY SHIPS OF THE LINE
In the fleet-ship, likewise the ship of the line, as the opening century styled the class of vessel known in the closing days as the battle-ship, our predecessors had reached a mean conclusion. The line-of-battle ship, or the ship of the line, as more usually called, differed from the frigate generically, in that it had two or more covered decks. There were one or two cases of ships with four decks, but, as a rule, three were the extreme; and ships of the line were roughly classed as two or three deckers. Under these heads two-deckers carried in their two centuries of history from fifty to eighty-four guns; three-deckers from ninety to one hundred and twenty. The increase in number of guns, resulting, as it did, from increase of size, was not the sole gain of ships of the line. The bigger ships got, the heavier were their timbers, the thicker their planking, the more impenetrable, therefore, their sides. There was a gain, in short, of defensive as well as offensive strength, analogous to the protection given by armor. “As the enemy’s ships were big,” wrote a renowned British admiral, “they took a great deal of drubbing.”
Between the great extremes of strength indicated by fifty and one hundred and twenty guns—whose existence at one and the same time was the evidence of blind historical development, rather than of intelligent relative processes—the navy of a century ago had settled upon a mean, to appreciate which the main idea and purport of the ship of the line must be grasped. The essential function of the ship “of the line” was, as the name implies, to act in combination with other ships in a line of battle. To do this was needed not only fighting power, but manœuvring ability—speed and handiness—and in order that these qualities might approach homogeneousness throughout the fleet, and so promote action in concert, the acceptance of a mean type was essential. To carry three decks of guns, a ship had to expose above water a side disproportionately high relatively to her length, her depth, and her hold upon the water. She consequently drifted rapidly when her side was turned to the wind; while, if her length was increased, and so her hold on the water, she needed more time and room to tack and to wear—that is, to turn around. Ships of this class also were generally—though not necessarily—slow.
ADVANTAGES OF THE SEVENTY-FOURS
The two-decked ship was superior in speed and in handiness, and for that reason, even when acting singly, she could put forth such power as she possessed more quickly and more certainly. But these qualities were most conspicuously valuable when ship had to act with ship. The great secret of military success, concerted action in masses, was in the hands of the two-decked ship, because in her were united to the highest point individual power and facility for combined action. And this was true not only of two-deckers in general, but of the particular species known as the seventy-four-gun ship. Ships below that rate lacked individual fighting power. Ships above it, the eighty and eighty-four, lost manœuvring power because of their greater length and weight. Under the conditions of sail a fleet of seventy-fours could get out the whole power of the force more surely and more rapidly than the equivalent number of guns in ships of any other kind. Thus offensive power dictated its survival. To our own day it reads the lesson that offensive power, the _sine quâ non_ of a military organization, lies not merely in the greatest strength of the single ships, but in the uniformity of their action and rapidity of their movements, as conducive to the quick putting forth of the strength of the whole body at once and in mutual support.
It may be asked naturally, why, then, were there any ships bigger or smaller than this favored type? For smaller, the answer is that short ships of lighter draught are best suited for shoal or intricate navigation. The shoals of Holland forbade heavy ships to the Dutch navy, materially reducing its fighting strength. Before France entered our Revolutionary struggle the British sent only sixty-fours to operate upon our comparatively shallow coasts and bars. As regards bigger ships, they were useful exceptionally, as were forty-four-gun frigates, and for the following reason: Every line of battle has three particularly dangerous points—the centre, because there the line, if pierced, divides into the two smaller fragments; and the flanks, or ends, because the extremities are supported less easily by the rest of the force than the centre is, one extremity being farther from the other than the centre is from either. Such local weakness could not be remedied by the use of two ships, for, if the line were properly closed, one of them could fire at the enemy only through or over the other. The sole way of giving the strength there required was by concentrating it into individual ships, either by putting on the additional battery, which gives a three-decker, or by making the seventy-four heavier, resulting in an eighty-gun ship on two decks. These stronger vessels were, therefore, stationed in the centre or on the flanks of a line of battle. The particular functions, the _raison d’être_, of the three leading classes of ships of war—the sloop, the frigate, and the ship of the line—have now been stated. It remains to give an account of the chief features of the armament carried on their broadsides, as described.
BATTERIES SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
When the nineteenth century began, batteries of ships were composed of two principal classes of guns: the long gun and the short gun, or carronade. The difference between these lay in the way the weight of metal allowed for each was utilized. The long gun, as its name implies, was comparatively long and thick, and threw a small ball with a heavy charge of powder. The ball, therefore, flew swiftly, and had a long range. A carronade of the same weight was short and comparatively thin, could use only a small charge of powder, lest it burst, and threw a large ball. Its shot, therefore, moved slowly and had short range. Fired at a target—a ship’s side—within range of both guns, the shot from the long gun penetrated quickly, the wood had not time to splinter badly, and a clean hole was the result. The carronade’s shot, on the contrary, being both larger and slower, penetrated with difficulty, all the surrounding wood felt the strain and broke up into splinters, leaving a large jagged hole, if the shot got through. These effects were called respectively piercing and smashing, and are reproduced, in measure, upon targets representing the side of a modern ironclad. They have been likened familiarly to the effect of a pistol-ball and of a stone upon a window pane: the one goes through clean, the other crashes.
The smashing of the carronades, when fully realized, was worse than penetration, and was greatly dreaded; but, on the other hand, a ship which feared them in an opponent might keep out of their range. This expedient was so effective that carronades, which did great damage until their tactics were understood, gradually fell into disfavor. Nevertheless, they remained in use till after the peace of 1815. In 1814 the battery of the U. S. S. _Essex_ was chiefly carronades, and their inadequate range was a large factor in her defeat.
At the period in question guns of all sorts fired only non-explosive projectiles, solid or hollow shot. The destructive shell of the present day was used only by pieces called mortars, in vertical firing, which will be spoken of farther on. Such were not mounted on the ships of the fleet generally, nor used against shipping, except when packed in a small harbor. They did not enter into naval warfare proper. The ram and the torpedo of present warfare were unknown. On the other hand, there was practised a form of fighting which is thought now to have disappeared forever, namely, boarding and fighting hand-to-hand on the deck. Even then, however, boarding did not decide the main issue of a sea-fight, except occasionally in very small vessels. The deck of a large and fresh ship was not to be reached easily. Boarding was like the cavalry charge that routs a wavering line; the ship had been beaten at the guns before it occurred.
The real fighting was done by the long guns and carronades disposed in the broadsides. Besides rapidity and precision of fire, always invaluable, the two opponents sought advantage of position by manœuvring. They closed, or they kept apart, according to their understanding of the other’s weight and kind of battery. Each tried, when possible, to lie across the bow or the stern of the enemy, for then his guns ranged from end to end of the hostile ship, while the latter’s broadside could not reply. Failing this extreme advantage of position, the effort was made so to place one’s self that the opponent’s guns could not bear—for they swept only a few degrees before and abaft the broadside—while your own could. If this also was impossible, the contestants lay side to side at a greater or less distance, and the affair became an artillery duel.
BRITISH AND FRENCH STYLES OF FIGHTING
Besides these recognized advantages of position, there was also a question upon what part of the enemy the fire should be directed. In this there were two principal schools of tactics, one of which aimed at the hull, to break down the fire of the hostile ship and destroy her fighting men, while the other sought, by pointing higher, to cut away the sails, rigging, and masts, rendering the foe helpless. The latter, in general, was the policy of the French; the former, and, it may be affirmed, the more surely successful, was the practice of the British. The two schools find their counterpart in the tactical considerations which now affect the question of rapid-fire and of heavy guns, each of which has its appropriate target, covering in the latter case the motive power, in the former the personnel.
These three leading classes of vessels, with their functions, armaments, and tactics of the single ship, as described, performed in their day and during the great maritime contests of two centuries all the duties that at any time can be required of a maritime fighting organization. By them the control of the sea in the largest sense was disputed and was determined; by them commerce was attacked, and by them it was protected. They themselves have passed away, but the military factors remain the same. The mastery of the sea and the control of its commerce—of which blockade is but a special case—are now and must remain always the chief ends of maritime war. The ends continuing the same, the grand disposition of navies—their strategy—reposes upon the same principles that it ever did. Similarly, while the changes in the characteristics of ships will cause the individual vessel to be fought in manners different from its predecessors, the handling of masses of ships in battle—fleet tactics—must proceed on the same general principles as of old. The centre and the two extremities of all orders are always the points of danger; concentration upon one or two of the three, however effected, must be always the principle of action. These things, which cannot vary, form, therefore, no part of a paper which deals with changes.
THEY HAD THEIR BREAK-DOWNS THEN, TOO
There should be added for the general public the caution that the difficulties, the imperfections, and the frequent halting state of ships-of-war in commission for sea service at the present day are no new things. To the naval historian familiar with the correspondence of the past they are the inevitable attendants of all government action, wherein the most economical methods are always dominated, historically, by considerations of expediency which are political in character. The necessity of keeping the public in good-humor, and of not laying open points upon which opposition can enlarge, induces apparent economies, which sacrifice not only economy, but the best results. This is a great evil, as yet apparently inseparable from public enterprises as distinguished from private ones. If any one supposes that the ships with which Great Britain overthrew Napoleon, and with which Nelson and his contemporaries won their as yet unparalleled victories, were always or generally in good material condition, he is greatly mistaken. What is different in our day, apparently, is a tendency in ships to rely for their repairs and material efficiency more upon dock-yards and workshops than upon their own resources, a disposition also to be unduly discouraged by imperfections in the motive enginery. War will correct this or war will fail. In maintaining efficiency while keeping the sea, quite as much as in fighting skill, lay the supreme excellence of officers like Nelson and Jervis. Men now ought to appreciate better than they do what difficulties of this sort seamen underwent a hundred years ago and how they refused to yield to them. “The difference between myself and the French marshals,” the Duke of Wellington is reported to have said, “was as when a man starts on a journey with a new harness. What if something gives way, as in war something is sure to go wrong? Shall you stop or go back for a workman? Not so; hitch up the break with a bit of rope, or whatever comes handy, and go on. That is what I did.”
The succession of cause and effect which has produced the present ship-of-war will be traced in rapid outline, in order to leave as much room as may be for the description of the essential feature of the ship herself as she now exists.
Two chief factors concur to a ship-of-war—motive power and fighting power. The displacement of sails by engines, and the progressive development of the latter, are features of the general progress of the century. The engines of a ship-of-war are differentiated from those of merchant ships chiefly by the necessity of protection. This affects their design, which must be subordinated to the requirement of being as far as possible below the water-line. The further great protection now afforded is incident rather to the use and development of armor as a part of the fighting power.
Fighting power divides into offensive and defensive. Armor now represents the latter. The fighting ship in every age is the product of the race between the two, and in the nineteenth century this was unprecedented in the ground covered and in the rapidity of the pace, due to the increased power of dealing with materials, already alluded to.
CONTEST OF ARMOR AND PROJECTILE
The modern contest began with the introduction of horizontal shell fire in the third decade of the century. This term must be explained. It has been said that all ships’ guns up to 1815 threw non-explosive projectiles. In practice this is true; although Nelson alludes to certain shell supplied to him for trial, which he was unwilling to use because he wished not to burn his prizes, but to take them alive. A shell is a hollow projectile filled with powder, the idea of which is that upon reaching the enemy it will burst into several pieces, each capable of killing a man, and the flame not impossibly setting woodwork on fire. It was necessary that the powder within should not explode from the combustion of the cartridge of the gun, for if it did its force, combined with the latter, might burst the gun; yet the process that should result in bursting must begin at that moment or else it would not take place at all. This difficulty was met by a short column of hard, compressed powder called the fuse, which extended from the outside to the inside of the shell. The outer end was inflamed by the charge of the gun, but from its density it burned slowly, so that the charge of the shell was not enkindled for five, ten, or more seconds. This expedient was in use over a century ago; but owing to imperfections of manufacture, no certainty was attained that the fuse might not be driven in or broken by the force of the discharge, or the shell itself be cracked and so explode prematurely. Shell, therefore, were fired with very light charges; and, to obtain sufficient range—go far enough—they were used in very short, very thick guns, called bombs or mortars, to which great elevation was given. Such firing, because the shell flew high in the air, was called vertical firing, in contradistinction to the fire of the long gun or carronade, called horizontal fire because their projectiles rose little above the level.