The British Navy Book Part 11

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAVAL GUNNERY IN THE OLD DAYS

An 18-ton gun in action at the bombardment of Alexandria. The gun has just recoiled after firing. No. 1 is "serving the vent". The sponge end is being pa.s.sed to be thrust out of the small scuttle in the middle of the port (which is closed as soon as the gun is fired), so that the big wet end can be placed in the gun.]

The consequence was that while the Germans went in for the Krupp breech-loading system, in which the breech is closed by a sliding block across it, and the French for the interrupted-screw breech-closing plug, the prototype of our present system, we gave up breech-loaders and went in for built-up, muzzle-loading guns. Their advocates claimed for them simplicity, comparative cheapness, and other virtues, but, as a matter of fact, we were entirely on "the wrong tack" and were gradually being left behind in gun-construction by other nations. These big muzzle-loaders were formed by shrinking successive jackets over a steel tube which formed the bore. They were rifled with a few wide, shallow grooves, their projectiles being fitted with gun-metal studs intended to travel along the rifling and so give them the spinning movement requisite for accuracy. The biggest guns of this cla.s.s constructed in this country were the 80-ton guns carried by the _Inflexible_ at the bombardment of Alexandria, though the Italians, who followed us in sticking to muzzle-loaders for a time, had guns of 100 tons. Of course the biggest guns had special hydraulic mountings, but the broadside guns of 7-, 8-, 9-, or 10-inch bore were mounted on carriages invented by a Captain Scott. These consisted of a pair of iron brackets, or sides, supporting the gun, which ran in and out on slides made of iron girders that could be trained to the right or left by means of tackles, or in most cases by cog wheels working on curved and cogged racers. The carriage on which the gun was mounted had rollers beneath it with eccentric axles, so that, unless these were raised by levers supplied for the purpose, the carriage itself rested on the slide. This helped to check the recoil, further restrained by a system of interlocking plates on the carriage and slide which could be compressed together by a hand-wheel and screw.

After the gun had recoiled inboard and had been reloaded, the compressors were slackened and the gun-carriage put on its rollers, so that it ran down the slightly-sloping slide to its firing-position. But for all its simplicity there were very many disadvantages attendant on the muzzle-loader. One very important one was the impossibility of preventing the gases caused by the explosion of the powder from escaping past the projectile, so that part of the force of the explosion was wasted. In breech-loading guns the projectile fits the rifling closely--it could not be forced through the gun by the rammer from the rear--being provided with a copper driving-band of slightly bigger circ.u.mference than the bore. When the gun is fired, this is driven into the grooves of the rifling, rotates the shot, and at the same time stops any escape of gas and consequently of energy. Thus, size for size, a breech-loading gun must have greater range and penetration than a muzzle-loader. A breech-loader can be made much longer than a muzzle-loader into the bargain, as it is not necessary to get to the muzzle to load it. This also makes for accuracy and penetration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo. Cribb, Southsea_

13.5-INCH GUNS ON H.M.S. _CONQUEROR_

The muzzles of the monster cannon are closed by plugs or "tompions" with handsome designs in burnished gun-metal. Above the higher turret is seen a "Barr & Stroud" range-finder in a canvas case.]

It was a considerable time before those in this country who had stuck to the muzzle-loading system through thick and thin could be brought to see the error of their ways, but after 1880 breech-loaders much of the French type were introduced into the navy, till we reached the monster 110-ton guns carried in the _Benbow_, _Sanspareil_, and the ill-fated _Victoria_. As I have already mentioned, the French guns were closed at the breech by an "interrupted screw". What this is may be shortly explained. Imagine a screw plug about one and a half times as long as its diameter, with a close thread to it. Now, to screw this in and out of the breech of the gun would be a matter taking an appreciable time.

Suppose, now, that we take this screw plug and divide the outside of it--the screw part--perpendicularly into six equal parts. Then, if we cut away the thread of the screw on every other sixth, we shall have three-sixths smooth and the other three-sixths with the screw-thread still standing out upon them. If now we treat the corresponding screw-thread in the breech of the gun itself in a similar manner, and then insert the plug with the three threaded portions in line with the three smooth portions cut in the gun, we can push it directly in to its full length, after which a sixth of a turn will lock the threaded parts together and securely close the breech. This has proved amply strong enough to resist the immense strain imposed by the explosion of the charge; but while the principle has been retained in all our cannon--except the small 3- and 6-pounder Hotchkiss guns, which have a sliding block--it has been so improved that the locking of the breech is still stronger, and in all but our very big guns it can be opened and closed with just about as much ease as a cupboard door. Of course, in monsters like the 12-, 135-, and 15-inch guns, hydraulic machinery is brought into play, by means of which their immense breech-blocks are manipulated with the greatest ease by the movement of various levers.

Machine-guns at one period were introduced into the naval service for the special purpose of defence against torpedo-boats, but smaller rifle-calibre weapons were also supplied for use in the tops, boats, and in landing operations. The first-mentioned were "Nordenfeldt" guns, firing steel projectiles of 1 inch diameter in volleys of two or five.

These proved too small to deal with the torpedo-boat, which grew bigger and bigger and was superseded by the destroyer; and were replaced successively by 3-, 6-, and 12-pounder rapid-fire guns. But at the present time a 4- or 6-inch sh.e.l.l is required to be really effective against the big destroyers which are now in commission. The rifle-calibre guns were at first Gatlings with revolving barrels, then Gardner and Nordenfeldt volley-firing guns, and lastly the well-known Maxim. Some of these are still carried on board ship but are not now of use in a naval action, though they are most valuable when bluejackets and marines are landed for sh.o.r.e service, and, upon occasion, in the boats.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] In the Civil War, according to Warburton's _Memoirs of Prince Rupert_, apothecaries' mortars were sometimes used in emergencies.

[36] In Henry V's expedition to Harfleur he took with him, among others, two big guns known as the "London" and "the King's Daughter".

[37] Sometimes called Hugget.

[38] Compiled from five authorities, who differ slightly.

[39] Lat., _coluber_, a serpent.

[40] In 1586 "gunners were provided with milk and vinegar to cool their pieces".

[41] There may have been some 68-pounder _carronades_ in action.

CHAPTER XI

Evolution of the Ironclad Battleship

"Our ironclads and torpedo-boats Have never met the foe, But times of peace don't alter us, Our hearts are right, you know; As right and tight as in the days When glorious fights were won, And if duty call, we'll on them fall With torpedo, ram, and gun, my boys, With torpedo, ram, and gun.

They may blow us up, They may blow us down, They may blow us every way; But we'll sink or win, And ne'er give in, Though they blow us right away, my boys, Though they blow us right away!"

"Sink or Win" (Joe the Marine). From "Per Mare", Jane's _Naval Annual_, 1895.

WE are accustomed to think of the armour-clad war-ship as entirely a thing of to-day, or at any rate of the last fifty or sixty years. This is, however, not altogether correct. Armour is not necessarily steel or iron--witness the derivation of "cuira.s.s" from the French _cuir_, i.e.

"leather". A French battleship is called _cuira.s.se_.

Protective devices of various kinds and materials have been used for hundreds, nay thousands, of years for the defence of ships specially designed for fighting purposes, though never, it must be admitted, so generally and extensively as at the present day. Raw hides were constantly used in ancient and mediaeval times to protect ships and the wooden towers used in sieges on sh.o.r.e. Thick felt was also utilized for this purpose. The Normans hung their galleys with this material in a battle with the Saracens off Palermo in 1071, and it played not only a defensive but a decorative part in the equipment of the big "dromons" of the Saracens and Byzantines, which were covered with thick woollen cloth soaked in vinegar to render it fire-proof, and hung with mantlets of red and yellow felt--a rather gaudier war-jacket than the slate-grey of our "Dreadnoughts".

Whatever the advantages of felt, there were naval constructors who stood fast by the old "adage", "There's nothing like leather". Thus, at the siege of Tyre in 1171 and the forcing of the entrance of the Nile in 1218, an extensive use was made of a species of small craft known as "barbots" or "duck-backs", whose crews were protected by a strong domed deck or roof covered with leather. Again, in 1276, Pedro III of Aragon _cuira.s.sed_ two of his biggest ships with leather--probably raw hides--before sending them to engage the fleet of Charles of Anjou. Lead was also used for ship armour in mediaeval times. It is said that the great dromon captured by Richard I off Beyrout had some kind of leaden plating. Later on, this heavy metal preceded copper as a sheathing for the under-water portions of ships: the _Grande Francoise_, launched in 1527, was lead-sheathed from her keel to the first wale above her water-line. Three years later than this date a regular "lead-clad" was launched at Nice, where she had been built to the order of the Knights of Malta, who had not very long before been driven out of Rhodes by the Turks.

This big vessel, the _Santa Anna_, was a regular "Dreadnought" in her day. While as fast as other unprotected vessels of her time, she was heavily plated with lead, fastened to her sides with brazen bolts, from her upper deck down to her keel; and this armour was so strengthened by the thick backing of her timbers that, "having been many times engaged, and received much cannonading, she was never pierced below the bulwarks". She carried fifty heavy guns, besides numerous smaller pieces, of which not a few were carried aloft in her many fighting-tops.

It is interesting to note that she had a large armoury, a chapel, forges, a bakery, and a band. "She had various lodges and galleries round the p.o.o.p, and chests and boxes full of earth, wherein were planted cypresses and divers other trees and flowering shrubs, after the fashion of a garden, small but beautiful." This is about the only garden I have ever heard of afloat, except the mythical "garden in the main-top", where are said to be grown any vegetables, "tin-bag" or other, which arouse the inquisitiveness of ship-visitors. But the main-top has now gone, and I suppose the "garden" with it.

It has been stated, but without any authority being quoted for the statement, that "chain-netting of iron was suspended to the sides of men-of-war, which were also strengthened by plates in the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth". I should say this is very doubtful, since Sir William Monson, in his _Naval Tracts_, published at that period, does not mention this practice, although he refers to a number of other protective devices. But, as we have already seen, iron was used as a protection--probably against ramming--by the Viking ships of many centuries before this time.

The first regular ironclad ship armed with cannon appears to be that quaint craft christened the _Finis Belli_, which was constructed by the burghers of Antwerp what time they were closely besieged by the redoubtable Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, in the year 1585. With this floating battery, for it was little else, the besieged hoped to be able to break the Spanish blockade. There are various accounts of her.

One states that she was protected by iron plates, another that her sides were from 5 to 10 feet thick, "filled with rotten nets, well rammed in, which made them firm and almost impenetrable". Probably the hull proper, which was very low in the water, was protected in this way, and the built-up battery or casemate, which she had amidships, was covered more or less with iron. She mounted twenty heavy guns, besides lighter pieces, and carried a large number of musketeers, some in her fighting-tops, some behind a loopholed bulwark over her battery, and others, "which could not be hurt, being lodged lower than the cannon could batter".

[Ill.u.s.tration: The _Finis Belli_, the first regular Ironclad Ship armed with Cannon

The funnel on the p.o.o.p is presumably the galley funnel, though placed in an unusual position.]

Unfortunately for _les braves Belges_ the _Finis Belli_ was a total failure. In spite of her three rudders she was "very troublesome to govern", and eventually ran aground and had to be abandoned. The Spanish besiegers laughed prodigiously at this effort, and nicknamed the abandoned ironclad the _Caramanjula_ or "Bogey-bogey". As for her designers, they re-named her _Perditae Expensae_, or "Money thrown away".

[Ill.u.s.tration: j.a.panese Ironclad of about 1600 A.D.

(_From a drawing by a j.a.panese Naval Officer_)

With hull covered with plates of copper and iron, two rudders, one at the bow and one at the stern; and a paddle-wheel as her propelling machinery, fitted inside.]

The Dutch patriots struggling for freedom from Spanish tyranny had tried their hands at a somewhat similar contrivance about ten years earlier, which was known as _The Ark of Delft_. This seems to have been a double-hulled arrangement, with three hand-turned paddle-wheels placed between the two hulls. The _Ark_ only rose 5 feet above the water-line, was 110 feet long and 46 feet broad. She mounted twenty guns, and "a large gallery was suspended from her three military masts"--whatever that may mean. It is a curious but generally accepted fact that a great many more or less modern "inventions" have been forestalled in the Far East. Gunpowder was first made in China; water-tight compartments were commonly used in the ships of that country hundreds of years before they found a place in our men-of-war. It is not altogether strange, therefore, that the j.a.panese should have been in possession of what may well have been a pretty formidable armour-clad so far back as the year 1600--a remarkable-looking craft, more like a big turtle than anything else. She was cased with hexagonal plates of iron and copper, fitted closely together. She had a rudder at both bow and stern, and was propelled by a paddle-wheel amidships, something like the _Ark of Delft_. A Captain Saris, who made a voyage to j.a.pan in 1613, mentions that he there saw a junk of from 800 to 1000 tons, sheathed all over with iron. This was probably the one just described, which, by the way, is stated to have carried a battery of cannon.

It is hardly necessary to point out that impenetrability does not necessarily imply armoured protection. An earthen rampart may well be impenetrable, as may a thick-sided wooden ship, as was the _Great Michael_ to the artillery of her day; yet, while affording protection to those behind it, neither the one nor the other is armoured. Between 1600 and 1800 there were many attempts at special forms of protection, from the floating batteries employed by the English in the mismanaged expedition to La Roch.e.l.le to the famous Spanish floating batteries destroyed at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1781; but iron ship-armour does not appear again till the year of Trafalgar.

In the _Naval Chronicle_ for that year we have an account of a vessel designed by a son of the General Congreve who is famous as being the inventor of the "Congreve rocket", once a somewhat highly esteemed missile. The ship--it does not appear whether it was actually built or not--was intended for the attack of the French invasion flotillas which were blockaded inside their ports by our fleets. It was to have sloping sides covered with iron plates and bars, proof against any gun of the period, and was to be armed with four big mortars and the same number of 42-pound carronades. Her rudder, anchors, and cables were to be entirely under water, and so not exposed to hostile artillery, while she was to be rigged in such a way that masts, yards, and sails could be lowered or erected in a quarter of an hour. When these were "struck" and housed under the armour she could be moved--probably at a very slow pace--by oars pulled by forty men, worked entirely under cover.

Fulton, the famous American inventor, who built a submarine boat, and invented mines and torpedoes and other weapons of war, turned his attention to the protection of war-vessels. He was probably responsible for a little paddle-wheel-propelled vessel for towing torpedoes, which is described as being covered with 1/2-inch iron plates, "not to be injured by shot". Later on he built a steam frigate, which he called the _Demologos_, or "Voice of the People". This relied on 13-feet-thick sides to protect her crew, but was not armour-plated. She was blown up by accident in 1829, and replaced by the _Fulton the Second_, which seems to have been to some extent protected by iron armour.

But it was not till towards the end of the Crimean War that real steam-propelled armour-clad ships appeared, in the shape of a series of slow and unwieldy floating batteries, specially designed for the attack of the ma.s.sive Russian fortifications. If anyone would like to see what these were like--that is, as regards their hulls, for the masts have long since disappeared--he has only to travel as far as Chatham Dockyard and ask the policeman on duty at the main gate to direct him to the _Thunderbolt_ pier.

The _Thunderbolt_ is one of these old ironclads which has come down to the useful but inglorious duty of acting as a landing-stage in the River Medway. Neither she nor any of her English sisters was ever in action; they were too late in the field--or rather the water. But several of the French floating batteries, almost precisely similar vessels, took a prominent part in the bombardment of the Russian fortress of Kinburn, where their fire proved most effective. As for the shot and sh.e.l.l from the Russian forts, they rebounded from their sloping iron sides like so many tennis-b.a.l.l.s. These armoured batteries were, however, slow, clumsy, flat-bottomed affairs, with no speed under steam or sail and but moderately seaworthy. It remained for the French--whose models in the "days of wood and hemp" were generally better than our own--to go another step forward and produce a regular sea-going ironclad.

This was the famous _La Gloire_. She was no beauty. She had an extremely ugly bow and was very short in proportion to her beam. She was not a new ship, but the old two-decker _Napoleon_ cut down, lengthened, and covered along her whole side with iron plating 5 inches in thickness.

She took two years to finish, and was not ready till the end of 1859.

She naturally created a good deal of excitement, and it was at once seen that we must follow suit.

But our naval men did not see why they need be content with so unsightly a war-ship. They had been much impressed, a year or two before, by the _Niagara_, a fine United States frigate which had visited the Thames, and which had what was then regarded as the immense length of 337 feet.

Our constructors, therefore, were rather inclined to follow her lines than those of _La Gloire_, and turned out the _Warrior_, a magnificent-looking vessel, not improvised out of an old wooden ship, but entirely built of iron. Her armour-plating, however, did not extend from bow to stern, but only covered her battery amidships, which occupied somewhere about two-thirds of her total length. The _Warrior_ was 382 feet long, and fitted with a not very obtrusive ram. As a matter of fact, it was not perceptible at all, since the stem was finished off with a very graceful swan bow adorned with one of the finest figure-heads ever executed. She was fully rigged, did 14-1/2 knots under steam at her trials, and carried an armament of thirty-eight 68-pounders, then the heaviest guns afloat. In short, the _Warrior_ was a triumph of British shipbuilding, and a worthy ancestor of the magnificent armour-clad fleet which has played such an important part in the history of the nation. She had one sister, the _Black Prince_, after which a few smaller ironclads were built, the _Defence_, _Resistance_, _Hector_, and _Valiant_. Next came four bigger ships, the _Achilles_, _Minotaur_, _Northumberland_, and _Agincourt_. These were all improved _Warriors_, armoured along their whole length, with ram bows, a heavier armament, and no less than five masts. They were imposing-looking ships, though, of course, to-day about as obsolete as the _Henri Grace a Dieu_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: H.M.S. _WARRIOR_, OUR FIRST SEA-GOING IRONCLAD BATTLESHIP

She was a very efficient reply to the French _La Gloire_, which was a wooden ship converted into an ironclad. Observe the Red-and-blue Ensign.

The White Ensign with St. George's Cross did not become universal in the Royal Navy till 1864.]