Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/297

Rh NAVY 285 Rame. Tor pedoes. system of subdivision has been largely developed within the last few years by the use of double bottoms and of longitudinal as well as transverse bulkheads, and has added much to the security of ships against perils of the sea or acts of the queen s enemies.) By the use of iron the country was, moreover, relieved from all anxiety on the score of the supply of timber of suitable dimensions and quality. The Admiralty therefore determined to build their first sea-going ironclad ship, the &quot; Warrior,&quot; of iron, and the decision has been amply justified by the event. Her displacement was 9200 tons, and the indicated horse-power 5470. The central part of the ship was protected by 4^-iuch armour from the upper deck to 5 feet below the water-line, the main deck battery being enclosed at its foremost and after ends by armoured transverse bulkheads. She cost, including engines, 357,000, and was able to withstand the fire, at 200 yards, of the heaviest gun of the day, the 68- pounder of 95 cwts. Her own armament consisted of thirty-six of these guns. She was similar in appearance to the frigates of her day, on a large scale. She was launched in December 1860. Much discussion ensued as to the relative merits of the rival ships &quot; La Gloire &quot; and &quot;Warrior.&quot; The latter was the faster ship, but her great length (380 feet between perpendiculars) had made it desirable to leave 85 feet at each end entirely unprotected, and, as she had only a single propeller, the steering gear was necessarily by this arrangement exposed to shot. Her length also limited her power of manoeuvring. In the meantime the &quot; Black Prince,&quot; a sister ship, had been built; the &quot;Defence&quot; and &quot;Resistance&quot; soon followed on a smaller scale. In 1861 eleven ironclads were ordered ; five of them were converted from wooden ships on the stocks, and these no longer appear in the Navy List. The &quot;Hector &quot;and &quot;Valiant&quot; followed the &quot; Warrior,&quot; but the armour on the main deck extended further. In the &quot;Achilles&quot; the battery remained as in the &quot; Warrior,&quot; but the armour was extended as a belt, at the sugges tion of Mr Reed, all round the water-line. The &quot;Minotaur,&quot; &quot;Agincourt,&quot; and &quot;Northumberland&quot; were armoured from end to end, the thickness being increased to 5J inches. This additional armour, with the desired fineness of form, involved a length of 400 feet, and a displacement of 10,690 tons. They had five masts. Like the &quot;Warrior&quot; they were unhandy, and were thought liable to fall a prey to smaller and nimbler antagonists. The belt type of the &quot;Achilles&quot; has survived except where it has been replaced by submerged armoured decks, as in the &quot;Shannon,&quot; &quot;Nelson,&quot; &quot; Inflexible,&quot; and following ships. During this time the comparative impotence of artillery had suggested recourse to a weapon of the galleys of the Middle Ages. The ram was revived, the French again setting the example. England followed, without however at first making it so prominent a feature as the French. The weapon has since become general, or at least the bows are strengthened to stand the shock of ramming. After the Russian war torpedoes and submarine mines and counter-mines, mechanical and electrical, attracted much attention. Schools were established for the instruction of officers and men in their use. For the British navy, the &quot; Vernon&quot; was set apart for this purpose. In 1871 the secret of the celebrated Whitehead fish torpedo was purchased by the Admiralty. It has since been acquired by nearly all foreign nations. It was designed to attack ships below water, since their batteries were deemed practically invulnerable. At first it was only arranged to project the tor pedoes from a submerged tube in the line of keel ahead, but it was found that they could be effectively projected from the broadside above water, and this plan has been extensively adopted. The Whitehead torpedo is projected by means of an impulse of com pressed air or steam, and is propelled through the water by means of a screw and pair of engines actuated by compressed air, carried Avithin it. The head carries the explosive, which is fired on con tact, and a secret chamber contains the mechanism regulating the depth below the surface at which it is to travel. It now forms part of the armament of most war-ships. A torpedo invented by Captain Harvey, R.N., was in use for some years till superseded by the Whitehead. It was towed on the broad side or quarter. Fast screw torpedo boats to use the Whitehead or the spar torpedo were introduced by Mr Thornycroft of Chiswick, and they were at once acquired or copied by all foreign powers. The superiority of the defence due to armour was short-lived. Apart from the introduction of new weapons for attack, the artillery continued to advance in power and weight. With the rivalry between guns and armour sprang up designs for the best mode of defence combined with the most powerful means of attack. Captain Coles advocated for masted ships the turret system, and Mr Reed (now Sir Edward Reed) the broadside system, each striving to give the utmost protection armour^could afford to the battery and other vital parts, whilst enabling the largest guns to be worked safely under these defences. The broad side system armoured the battery and the water-line, whilst the sides and upper portions of the ships remained much as in the older frigates. The turret aimed at lower sides as offering less target to the enemy, whilst a deadly fighting power had all-round sway from behind armoured cover. In 1862 the &quot;Enterprise,&quot; &quot;Favourite,&quot; and &quot;Research&quot; were adapted to Mr Reed s prin ciple, the belt and battery, upon which also, with the addition of indented ports at the corners of the battery to give a wider range of fire, were built the &quot;Pallas,&quot; &quot;Penelope,&quot; &quot; Bellerophon,&quot; and &quot;Hercules.&quot; In the &quot; Sultan &quot; an upper deck battery was added with four guns. On the &quot;Sultan &quot; pattern the &quot;Audacious&quot; and several other vessels were built. As the guns increased in size, the batteries decreased and the guns became fewer, but the belt remained. In 1862 also the first turret ship was produced in the shape of Turret the &quot;Royal Sovereign,&quot; a three-decker cut down and converted ; ships, the &quot;Prince Albert,&quot; built of iron, followed. Both these ships were without sail-power, and calculated for coast defence only. The &quot;Monarch,&quot; ordered in 1865, was designed as a sea-going rigged turret ship, having 7-inch armour, a free-board of 14 feet, and an armament of four 25-ton guns in two turrets plated with 10- and 8-inch armour. Then came the &quot; Captain &quot;a ship de signed by Captain Coles and Messrs Laird in rivalry of the &quot;Monarch,&quot; and built by Messrs Laird at Birkenhead in 1869. She was intended to combine the low freeboard of the &quot; Royal Sovereign &quot; with the qualities of a sailing frigate ; and for a tune she was thought to give promise of such a combination. The calamity of her capsizing, on the night of the 6th of September 1870, with 500 men, of whom only 18 were saved, will not be for gotten while the annals of the navy are preserved. At this date (1870) a sea-going mastless turret ship type had been devised under the administration of Mr Childers, and there were three such ships building, the &quot;Devastation,&quot; &quot; Thunderer,&quot; and &quot;Fury,&quot; designed by Mr Reed for service as battle ships at sea. They were, after the loss of the &quot;Captain,&quot; strongly condemned by anticipation by most eminent naval men. But their design has since been fully approved by experience. The important questions arising out of these changes in types Com- of ships, and especially as to the &quot;Devastation&quot; class, were dis- mittee cussed in 1871 by a very distinguished committee, known as the on Committee on Designs. They said in their report : Designs. &quot; A perfect ship of war is a desideratum which has never yet been attained, and is now further than ever removed from our reach. Any near approach to perfection in one direction inevitably brings with it disadvantages in another. From the time when ships of war first carried artillery, and weie thus converted from mere vehicles for the transport of armed men into engines of war, naval architects have been compelled, in designing them, to conUnt themselves with a more or less satisfactory compromise. The difficulty, always great, of bringing into harmony the conflicting features which are desirable in a ship of war was much increased by the adoption of steam-power throughout the navy ; the form of hull which was thought to be requisite for obtaining the best results under steam alone being very different from that most suitable for sailing. When to this was added the still more serious embarrassment arising from the intro duction of armour-plating, the problem presented to naval architects became one of extreme difficulty and complexity. &quot; For some time, indeed, after the necessity of using armour-plating had been recognized, but before the penetrative power of artillery had reached its present stage of development, the question how to unite in one ship the power of sailing, steaming, and carrying both heavy guns and armour, although difficult, did not appear to be insoluble, and was met with remarkable ability, and a very large measure of success, by the constructive department of the navy. In the mean time, however, a rapid progressive increase in the power of artillery led to a corresponding augmentation in the thickness and weight of the armour borne by ships, until the point had been reached at which it became impossible to com bine in one vessel all the qualities which it is desirable a ship of war should possess, consistently with the attainment of a very high degree of efficiency in any of the more important of them. &quot;The necessity, in some cases at least, of altogether sacrificing some one desirable feature, in order that another may be secured in a higher degree than would otherwise be possible, was recognized by their lordships when they adopted the design of the Devastation class, in which the power of sailing was entirely given up in favour of that of carrying thick armour and very powerful guns, of moving under steam at a fair although not very high speed, and, finally, of carrying a sufficient quantity of coal to admit of voyages across the Atlantic being made without the aid of sails. In the Inconstant class a compromise of a similar character, but in a different direction, had previously been sanctioned, the protection of armour being altogether abandoned in order to secure very high speed under steam, combined with as efficient sail-power as could be attained without interference with the essential feature of great speed under steam alone. Each of these types possesses valuable features which are totally wanting in the other. Each in our opinion meets a part of the requirements of modern warfare, and must (subject to modification and improvement) continue to be represented in the British navy.&quot; .... &quot;After making every allowance for the disadvantages that attend the use of an enormous dead weight of very costly armour, which after all is not absolutely impenetrable to certain special guns, we cannot lose sight of the indisputable fact that in an action between an armour-clad and an unarmoured ship (assum ing that they carry guns of equal power) the former has, and must have, an immense advantage in being able to penetrate the sides of her adversary at a distance at which she is herself impenetrable, and, further, in being able to use with effect those most destructive projectiles common shells, which would fall harmless from her own armoured sides. Even assuming that absolute impene trability to shot proves to be unattainable, it is still our opinion that the time has not come to throw off armour altogether, but that it is necessary that the first ranks of our ships of war should continue to carry armour of as great re sisting power as possible. &quot; Before quitting this part of our subject, we desire to remark that, although, as before pointed out, there are serious difficulties in the way of increasing to any very material extent the thickness of armour applied in the usual manner to sea-going ships, viz., in the form of a complete belt round the ship, from stem to stern, at the water-line, besides local protection for guns, men, fcc.. it is not