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Title: The Evolution of Naval Armament
Author: Robertson, Frederick Leslie
Language: English
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THE EVOLUTION OF
NAVAL ARMAMENT
[Illustration: A SIXTY-GUN SHIP OF LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
From John Smith’s _Sea-Man’s Grammar_ (1694 edition)
_Frontispiece_
]
THE EVOLUTION OF
NAVAL ARMAMENT
BY
FREDERICK LESLIE ROBERTSON
ENGINEER COMMANDER, ROYAL NAVY
WITH EIGHT HALF-TONE PLATES AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
10 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE WC
1921
PREFACE
The notes on which these essays are based were collected in the course
of two commissions spent under the lee of the Admiralty library, close
to the Royal United Service Institution, and in touch with the Reading
Room of the British Museum and other public sources of information.
The lack of a book describing in popular language the materialistic
side of naval history is, I think, generally admitted. Historians
as a rule have devoted small space to consideration of material; in
particular, the story of the revolutionary changes in naval material
which took place during the nineteenth century has never been placed
before the public in convenient form. In the attempt to supply such a
description I have taken the liberty, as an engineer, of treating of
naval material as a whole; tracing, as well as my technical knowledge
permits, the progress of all the three principal elements--ship, gun,
engine--and their interdependence. The result, faulty and incomplete
as it is, may nevertheless be of considerable service, it is hoped,
in clarifying the work of the historians and bridging the gap which
divides the classic histories from our modern text-books.
I have considered our modern navy to begin with the “Admiral” class of
battleship, about the year 1880.
My respectful thanks are due to the heads of three Admiralty
departments: Captain R. H. Crooke, C.B., lately Director of Naval
Ordnance; Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir George Goodwin, K.C.B., LL.D.,
Engineer-in-Chief of the Fleet; and Sir Eustace T. D’Eyncourt, K.C.B.,
Director of Naval Construction; for their unofficial approval. I wish
to acknowledge my indebtedness to the officials of the Admiralty
and the R.U.S.I. libraries, for their invariable kindness; to the
Directors of the British and S. Kensington Museums, for permission to
reproduce pictures in their possession; to Mr. A. W. Johns, C.B.E.,
Assistant Director of Naval Construction, Engineer Commander E. C.
Smith, O.B.E., R.N., Mr. H. W. Dickinson, of the S. Kensington Museum,
Mr. Edward Fraser, and Sir George Hadcock, F.R.S., R.A., of Elswick,
for various help and criticism; and especially to Mr. L. G. Carr
Laughton, of the Admiralty library, of whose advice and knowledge I
have often availed myself, and to whose encouragement the completion of
the work has been largely due.
It only remains to state that the whole of the book is written and
published on my own responsibility, and that it is in no manner or
degree an official publication.
F. L. R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SAILING SHIP 1
II. THE SMOOTH-BORE GUN 61
III. THE STEAM ENGINE 93
IV. “NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY” 112
V. THE CARRONADE 125
VI. THE TRUCK CARRIAGE 140
VII. THE SHELL GUN 160
VIII. THE RIFLED GUN 181
IX. PROPELLING MACHINERY 210
X. THE IRONCLAD 246
INDEX 303
PLATES
A Sixty-gun Ship of late Seventeenth Century _Frontispiece_
_To face page_
A Tudor Ship of Period 1540-50 60
Tudor Ships under Sail 124
The _Speaker_, a Second-rate of the Commonwealth 180
The _Comet_ of 1812 224
_Rattler_ versus _Alecto_ 240
The _Warrior_ 260
The _Monarch_ 280
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
_Page_
Diagram illustrating Distortion of Frames under Load 52
Diagram representing a Ship with Trussed Frames 53
Typical Sections of “Symondite” and contemporary Ships 59
Turkish Bronze Cannon 68
French Twenty-four Pounder, with Spherical Chamber 84
Savery’s Engine 101
Newcomen’s Engine 104
Connecting-rod 111
A Carronade 133
A Truck Gun 147
Method of Gun-Exercise in H.M.S. _Shannon_ 155
A Paixhans Gun 173
Bullet Mould 187
Rifleman Presenting 189
“Carabine à Tige” 195
Minié Bullet 195
Whitworth Rifle Bullet 198
Ship and Galley 211
The _Charlotte Dundas_ 219
Pettit Smith’s Propeller 235
THE EVOLUTION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT
CHAPTER I
THE SAILING SHIP
To attempt to trace in any detail the evolution of the sailing warship
is a task, it must be at once admitted, far beyond the scope and
intention of the present essay.
The history of naval architecture is, of course, a vast and many-sided
subject. Few are the writers who have dealt with it, and, for
reasons which will appear, few of those have written in the English
language. Such books as treat of it are too cumbrous and technical
for easy reading; they are not written in the modern style; by the
frequent digressions of their authors on matters of general history,
high politics, battles, economics, commerce, and even sport, they
bear witness to the difficulties of the task and the complexity of
the subject. The history of naval architecture still remains to be
written. In the meantime the student will find the monumental _Marine
Architecture_, of Charnock, and the smaller _Naval Architecture_, of
Fincham, invaluable fields of inquiry; among the historians the works
of Nicolas, Laughton, Corbett and Oppenheim, will furnish him with the
materials for the complete story of the evolution up to the end of the
eighteenth century.
The following pages give a sketch, drawn chiefly from these authors,
of the progress of the timber-built sailing ship and of the principal
influences which guided the evolution. Lessons may still be drawn from
this history, it is suggested, which even in the altered circumstances
of to-day may be of value in some other application. One lesson,
long unlearnt, the great blunder of two centuries, lies clearly on
the surface. The evidence will show how, by our long neglect of the
science of naval architecture, the British navy fought frequently at
an unnecessary disadvantage; but it will also show how, masters of the
art of shipbuilding, we gave our fleets such a superiority in strength
and seaworthiness as almost to neutralize the defects inherent in their
general design.
§
Before the fourteenth century the sailing ship, i.e. the ship in which
sails were used as the chief motive power, could not compete in battle
on equal terms with the oar-driven vessel; both in the Mediterranean
and in Northern waters the oar-driven galley possessed advantages of
speed and handiness which relegated the heavy, high-built and capacious
sailing ship to the position of a mere transport or victualler. The
fighting ships were the galleys: long speedy vessels with fine lines
and low freeboard, propelled by rowers and fought by soldiers clad in
mail and armed with swords and lances. Sails were carried, but only as
secondary power, for use when the galleys ran before the wind.
Sea tactics consisted in ramming and boarding; the vessels were
designed accordingly. The royal galleys of King Henry III, which formed
the fighting fleet of Hubert de Burgh, are described as having each
two tiers of oars, with platforms along each side over the heads of
the rowers, on which the soldiers stood. Hung on the bulwarks in front
of them were their shields. From the gaudily painted mast pennons and
banners floated on the wind; a large square cotton sail, embroidered
with the royal arms, was triced to the yard. The masthead was crowned
with a circular “top,” a repository for bricks and iron bars wherewith
to bilge an enemy vessel. At both ends of the galley were raised
platforms or “castles” filled with picked soldiery, who during the
approach to action would pour brass-winged arrows into the enemy and
who, when the enemy had been grappled, leaped aboard. From mechanical
engines low down in the waist large stones would be projected, and, if
on the windy side, quicklime would be thrown, and other “instruments
of annoyance.” The galleys were lightly built, and carried no pumps.
It was no uncommon sight, we are told, to see half the knights baling,
while the others fought hand-to-hand with the enemy.
By the year 1300 the size and utility of ships had made considerable
advance. Two masts were given them, each supported by a few shrouds
and carrying a single large square sail; neither masts nor sails were
yet subdivided, but the sails could be enlarged by having one or more
“bonnets” laced to their lower part. Of the two masts the taller, the
foremast, raked considerably over the bows, and both were surmounted by
tops, with flagstaff and streamers. A central rudder appeared in this
century, in place of the paddle fixed to the quarter, and a rudimentary
bowsprit. The largest _cogs_, as they were now called, were of 250 tons
burthen. When hired of merchants for war service, they were converted
by the addition of fore-, aft-, and top-castles, built high so as to
overtop, if possible, the enemy. The war vessels were at this time
lavishly decorated; the sails were silk, dyed red or embroidered with
armorial designs, the tops and stages were aflame with banners and
pennons, the masts and yards were gilt. Large sums of money were spent
by the knights in beautifying their ships.
But in this century two great inventions brought to a close an epoch
in warship construction. Gunpowder and the mariner’s compass were
discovered. Cannon were adapted to ships in place of the mechanical
engines which had formerly been carried, and by aid of the compass,
housed in its wood-pegged bittacle in the steerage, vessels began
to venture out of touch with land and sail with a new security the
uncharted ocean.
The effect of each of these two discoveries was the same: a growth in
the size, strength, and capacity of ships, a decline in the use of
oars and a greater reliance on sails. High sides were required against
the waves, stouter timbers to support the weight of ordnance, more
capacious holds for the stowage of the ballast, food, and cordage which
would be needed for a long sea voyage. The galley, with its low flush
deck and outward-sloping sides was ill adapted for the new conditions;
a new construction was seen to be needed. Two new types were evolved,
one in the Mediterranean and one, more gradually, in Atlantic waters.
Even before the Christian era there had been a distinct differentiation
between the ships of the Mediterranean and those of the Atlantic
seaboard. The latter, as shown by Nicolas’ quotation from Cæsar, were
more strongly built than the Roman galleys, with flatter bottoms, to
“adapt them to the shallows and to sustain without danger the ebbing
of the tide,” and with prows and sterns “very high and erect, to
bear the hugeness of the waves”: properties which, even before the
advent of fire artillery, conferred on them important advantages.[1]
Nevertheless, complete differentiation did not obtain until after the
discovery of gunpowder and the mariner’s needle. Before that time the
vessels used by the Northern nations in war were of the galley type,
built by themselves or, after the Crusades had revealed the superiority
of the Mediterranean powers in warship design, hired not infrequently
from Venetians or from Genoese. The Genoese were the chief naval
mercenaries of Europe at this age: “Genoese were vice-admirals to the
English king, and Genoese galleys fought for the French at Sluys.”
The new type evolved in the Mediterranean was the _galleasse_. For
centuries, as we have seen, large sailing ships had been used for
commerce, both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. With the
inevitable increase in size brought about by the adoption of cannon,
and by the desire for greater sea-keeping qualities, resort was now
had by the Genoese and Venetians to sails in war vessels as a means
of propulsion of equal importance with oars. Thus an uncomfortable
compromise was effected between oars and sails; both were provided. The
galleasse was originally a large decked galley, with three pole masts
for its lateen sails, and with cannon spaced at intervals along its
sides above the rowers. In form it differed little from the galley,
but in the disposition of its armament it was entirely different; it
represented the first stage in the evolution of the broadside fighting
ship.
But the galleasse, though it might meet the requirements of
Mediterranean warfare, was almost as unsuited as the galley to
Atlantic conditions. Accordingly the warship underwent a separate and
independent development at the hands of the Atlantic nations. Forsaking
the galley, they took the lofty, strong and capacious sailing merchant
ship as the basis of a new type, and from the lumbering carrack and
caravel and dromon they evolved the vessel which eventually became
known as the _galleon_. A distinctive naval architecture, Gothic rather
than Byzantine in character, was thus founded on the Atlantic seaboard.
The oar was entirely superseded by the sail. The ships were high, and
their sides, instead of falling out like those of galleys, were curved
inwards so as to “tumble home” above the water-line: an arrangement
which protected the ordnance, added to the strength of the vessels,
and tended to render them steadier gun-platforms. The top-castles were
retained on the masts, but the end-castles disappeared, or rather,
were incorporated into the structure of the lofty bow and stern, to
provide accommodation for officers, and cover for the crew. The _voile
latine_ gave way to the _voile quarrée_. In place of the large lateen
sails carried by galley and galleasse, were smaller sails and courses,
square, more easily manipulated and allowing of greater variation in
disposition and effective area, to suit the conditions of weather and
the trim of the ship.
Throughout the fifteenth century the sailing ship developed. “While
in the first quarter,” writes Mr. Oppenheim of English shipping, “we
find that men-of-war possess, at the most, two masts and two sails,
carry three or four guns, and one or two rudimentary bowsprits, at
the close of the same century they are three- or four-masters, with
topmasts and topsails, bowsprit and spritsail, and conforming to the
characteristics of the type which remained generally constant for more
than two centuries.” The English mariner had by this time acquired his
honourable reputation. In merchant ships he carried Bordeaux wine,
the casks of which became the unit for measurement of their tunnage;
even in winter months, we are told, he braved the Bay with pilgrims on
tour to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. Large royal ships of
over 1000 tons burthen were built, in the early part of the century,
in English yards. As builders the Normans seem at this time to have
excelled.[2] But the most wonderful development of the science of
seamanship in all its branches took place in the Peninsula. Largely
through the inspiration of one man the greatest efforts of Spain and
Portugal were directed to the cult of navigation and geography, the
improvement of shipbuilding, and the discovery of new and distant
lands and oceans. A brilliant impetus was given to the study of ship
construction by the voyages of Columbus, the Cabots, Vasco di Gama, and
other intrepid spirits who, by aid of the compass, braved the moral and
physical terrors of far-distant voyages--“fighting immensity with a
needle.”
§
With the development of artillery the value of the sailing ship for
sea warfare came gradually to view. Naval tactics suffered a complete
change.
Until the early days of the sixteenth century sea-fights had been
land-fights in character; ships came as quickly as possible to close
quarters, grappled or charged one another, cut rigging, and essayed to
board. The sailor was subservient to the soldier. The gun, represented
in the main by serpentines, periers, murderers, and other quick-firing
pieces, was primarily a defensive armament, for the defence, firstly,
of the entire ship, or, in the event of the waist being captured, of
the fortified end citadels or castles. “These castles, which in vessels
especially constructed for war came to take the form of a forecastle
and a half-deck, were made musket-proof; and being closed athwartship
with similarly protected bulkheads, known as ‘cubbridge-heads,’ were
impenetrable to boarders; while at the same time, by means of loopholes
and quick-firing pieces in-board, they could enfilade the waist with
musketry and murdering shot. Thus a ship of the English pattern, at any
rate, could rarely be held even if boarders entered, until her ‘cage
works’ or protected castles were destroyed by gunfire.”[3] The ship
itself, being deep-waisted and built with an exaggerated sheer upwards
toward bow and stem, had no continuous deck: the decks were laid on
various levels, rising from the waist by steps to the two citadels,
an arrangement which did not contribute, as a flush-deck would have
done, to the longitudinal strength of the vessel, and which was found
inconvenient for the working and transport of ordnance of the heavier
sort.
King Henry VIII, in his efforts to possess fighting ships superior
to those of Spain, France and Scotland, raised not only artillery
but ships themselves to a different rôle. As he personally urged the
manufacture of ordnance in this country by the subsidizing of foreign
talent, so he sought to improve the design of his ships by inviting
Italian shipwrights to come to England and apply their knowledge to
the royal vessels. Dockyards were founded at Woolwich, Deptford, and
Portsmouth. Large ships were laid down, several were rebuilt, with many
improvements embodied in them: chief of these being a new artillery
armament. The king had seized the advantages of the sailing ship with
broadside fire. “The development of broadside fire,” says Sir Julian
Corbett, “was a question of gunnery, of naval architecture, and of
seamanship. With Henry’s introduction of heavy guns on board his larger
vessels, however, the true note had been struck, and by the end of his
reign the first two arts had made great strides. Guns of all patterns
and sizes were being cast in England, both in bronze and iron, which
were little inferior to those Nelson fought with.” The result of the
king’s efforts was seen in the ships laid down in the last years
of his reign. The frontispiece of Mr. Oppenheim’s _History of the
Administration of the Royal Navy_ is a picture of one of these, the
_Tiger_, a four-masted flush-decked vessel, with no sheer, little top
hamper, a long tier of ordnance on the gun deck, and with a beak-head
ending in a spur: one of a class “which shows a very great advance on
anything before afloat and indicates a steady progression towards the
modern type.”
In short, a reversion to a smaller and seaworthier type took place. The
large, unstable and unwieldy “great ship,” such as the _Henry Grace
á Dieu_, built on the Spanish model, with lofty ends overweighted
with small ordnance, was not effective. A new invention, attributed
to Descharges of Brest in 1501, viz. the adaptation of portholes to
ordnance along the sides of a ship, perhaps suggested a better form.
As the century advanced, as new and far-distant countries appeared on
the map, the arts of seamanship and gunnery continuously improved;
naval architecture made a corresponding progress. For sea fighting the
high-charged and imposing “great ship” gave place to a more perfected
type--the galleon. “It was the development of the galleon,” insists the
historian, “which changed the naval art from its medieval to its modern
state.” The galley, eminently suited to the Mediterranean, where winds
were light and slave labour abundant, was found to be increasingly
unsuitable for Atlantic warfare; the galley was in danger of being
rammed, in any wind, by a strong, quick-turning sailing ship, and
suffered from having nearly all its artillery in the bows; moreover,
“the galley service was always repugnant to our national temperament.”
The galleasse, the hybrid between the oar-driven galley and the sailing
ship, suffered from all the disadvantages of the compromise. The
great ship had now proved to be cumbrous and expensive, crank and
unseaworthy, leewardly and unmanageable in even a moderate breeze.
The galleon therefore became the type favoured by the English navy.
Whereas the merchant ship was short in proportion to its beam, the
galleon was built long, with a length equal to three times its breadth.
It had also a long flat floor like a galley, and was of lower freeboard
than a round-ship. “It was also like a galley flush-decked, and would
seem always to have had the half-deck carried across the waist so as to
make one flush-deck with the old forecastle. In the larger types the
quarter-deck was also carried flush from stem to stem, so that latterly
at any rate a true galleon had at least two decks and sometimes three.
On the upper deck in the earlier types were erected both fore and aft
high-castles as in a galleasse, but usually on curved lines, which
gave the hull of the old-fashioned galleons the appearance of a half
moon.”[4] The depth of hold at the waist was only about two-fifths the
beam. Its artillery was light but effective, being composed of light
muzzle loaders, a mean between the man-killers and the heavy bombards
of an earlier day. Its masts and spars were made heavy and large sail
area was given it, for speed and quick manœuvring were the essential
qualities which it was hoped to oppose to the lumbering, high-charged
ships of Spain. Victory was to be sought by a skilful combination of
seamanship and gunnery, rapid fire being poured into an enemy at a
convenient range and bearing. “Plenty of room and a stand-off fight”
sufficiently defines the sea tactics of the new era.
Throughout the reign of Elizabeth the galleon still remained the
favourite type, though opinion differed, and continued to differ
through the two following centuries, as to the degree to which it
was desirable to “build lofty.” The Hawkins family of Plymouth
shipowners carried a great influence in the councils of the navy.
Sir John Hawkins, whose experience of shipbuilding and seamanship
rendered him a man of importance, was the author of improvements in
this respect, as in so many others; “the first Elizabethan men-of-war,
the fastest sailers and best sea-boats then afloat, were built to his
plans; and from the time of his appointment as Treasurer of the Navy
dates the change to the relatively low and long type that made the
English ships so much more handy than their Spanish antagonists.”[5]
His kinsman, Sir Richard, on the other hand, preferred large and
high-charged ships, “not only for their moral effect on the enemy, but
for their superiority in boarding and the heavier ordnance and larger
crews they would carry. Two decks and a half he considers to be the
least a great ship should have, and was of opinion that the fashion
for galleasse-built ships--or, as he calls them, ‘race’ ships--in
preference to those ‘lofty-built’ had been pushed too far.”[6] Ships
with large cage-works had an advantage, he maintained, in affording
cover for the crew and positions for quick-firing batteries; his
opponents argued that the weight of top-hamper saved by their abolition
could be put with better advantage into a heavy artillery.
The advocates of the fast, low-lying ships carried the day. War came
with Spain, and there was soon work to show what the English ships
could do. The _Armada Papers_[7] light up for us, by the fitful glare
of the cressets of Hawkins and Co., the preparation of the fleet at
Plymouth, and show us what state of efficiency the royal ships were
in. “The _Hope_ and _Nonpariel_ are both graved, tallowed, and this
tide into the road again,” writes William Hawkins to his brother. “We
trim one side of every ship by night and the other side by day, so
that we end the three great-ships in three days this spring. The ships
sit aground so strongly, and are so staunch as if they were made of a
whole tree. The doing of it is very chargeable, for that it is done by
torchlight and cressets, and in an extreme gale of wind, which consumes
pitch, tallow, and firs abundantly.” Not only the few royal ships, but
the whole of the force which lies in the Sound is tuned for the fight.
“For Mr. Hawkins’ bargain,” writes the Commander-in-Chief to Lord
Burghley, “this much I will say: I have been aboard of every ship that
goeth out with me, and in every place where any may creep, and there is
never a one of them that knows what a leak means. I do thank God that
they be in the estate they be in.” The Spanish ships prove to be in a
very different condition. High-charged and leewardly, poorly rigged
and lightly gunned, they are so hammered and raked by Lord Howard’s
well-found fleet that, when bad weather ultimately comes, they are in
no condition to combat the elements. With masts and rigging shattered,
water-casks smashed, no anchors; short-handed and leaking like sieves,
they are hounded northwards to a disaster unparalleled in naval history.
And now, before tracing its evolution through the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, let us glance at the warship as it existed at the
end of the Elizabethan era, and note its chief constructive features.
§
Athwart a keel of large squared timbers, scarphed together and forming
with a massive inner keelson the principal member or backbone, were
laid the curved frames or ribs which, bolted to each other and to
the keel with iron bolts washered and clinched, gave to the hull its
transverse strength and form. These frames were held together, as they
curved upward from the ground or floor level, by thick longitudinal
wales, worked externally along the frames at convenient heights, and
curved so as to suit the degree of sheer desired.
At the fore end the wales and frames converged to the centre-line and
the keel was prolonged upward to meet them in a curve or compassing
timber, forming the bow or stem: to the beauty and shapeliness of
which, with its projecting beak-head, the builder devoted much of his
attention and skill. At the other end the frames and wales converged
to a square and lofty stern. The stern post was a massive timber
fastened to the keel and sloping somewhat aft from the vertical, and
from it rose two fashion-pieces “like a pair of great horns,” which
formed, with the horizontal arch and transom timbers, the framework of
the stern. When the frames had been built up to the requisite height
the upper ends of each opposite pair were joined across by horizontal
beams, which were secured to them by means of brackets or knees; such
beams were worked at the level of the main and other decks, and served
to support them when laid. Joined by its beams, each pair of frames
thus formed a closed structure: a combination of members which was to
resist crushing and deformation, the blows of the sea, the stresses
of gunfire, the forces due to the weight of the guns and the vessel
itself, and especially the forces thrown on it when the vessel was
aground or on a careen. The rigidity of this combination was enhanced
by the fitting of pillars which were placed vertically over the keelson
to support each beam at its middle. And sometimes the lower pillars
were supplemented by sloping struts, worked from the curve of the
frames up to the middle of each beam above.
The skeleton of a ship thus formed, built with well-seasoned timber,
was left standing on the stocks “in frame” for a considerable period,
sometimes for years, exposed to the open weather. On it eventually
a skin of planks was fastened, secured by wood trenails split and
expanded by soft-wood wedges, both internally and externally; and
inside the ship, to reinforce the frames and in line with them, timbers
known as “riders” were worked. On the beams the decks were laid: the
orlop below the water-line level, and above it, at a height suitable
for the ordnance, the main or gun deck; above that the upper deck,
on the ends of which were reared the poop (sometimes a half-deck,
extending from the stern to the mainmast, sometimes on that a
quarter-deck, over the steerage) and the forecastle.
Such, very briefly, was the mode of ship construction. The resulting
structure, when caulked and swelled by sea-water, presented a
water-tight and serviceable vessel. Timber provided, for ships up to a
certain size, a suitable material. It afforded strength and buoyancy,
and elasticity sufficient to obviate local strains and to spread the
stresses due to lading, grounding, careening, or the actions of the
wind and sea. The different parts of the ship’s frame gave mutual
support, and the pressure of the fluid on the exterior of the hull
tended, by constraining the component parts, to preserve the vessel.[8]
But the timber-built ship possessed an inherent weakness. Metal plates
or girders can be bolted or riveted together so efficiently as to
leave the joints between them almost as strong as the sections of the
plates or girders themselves. Not so wood beams. However skilfully
they might be joined, their joints were necessarily weaker than all
other sections: “it was then, and still is, impracticable to develop
the full strength in end connections between wooden members.”[9]
The softness of the wood was an additional source of weakness. Two
beams fastened together by iron bolts might form initially a close
and rigid joint; but if, under the action of alternating or racking
stresses, they became loosened even in a minute degree, the tendency
to become still looser increased: the wood gradually yielded under
the bolt washers, the bolts no longer held rigidly, “the very fact
that wood and iron were dissimilar materials tended to hasten the
disintegration of the structure.” With planking a similar effect
obtained. Trenails, expanded by wedges and planed off flush with the
planks which they held together, had only shearing strength; if once
they were loosened they had little power to prevent the planks from
opening further. These weaknesses were recognised. To minimize their
effects the butts of frames, decks, and side planking, were arranged
so that no two neighbouring butts lay in the same line. But in spite
of the most painstaking craftsmanship, the size of the wooden ship
was limited by its inability to withstand a high degree of stress.
As sizes increased extraordinary endeavours were made to meet the
hogging and sagging strains, to prevent cambering of the hull, and to
stiffen it longitudinally and circumferentially. Enormous masses of
timber were worked into the internal structure in the form of riders,
pillars, standards, and shores, “the whole of which had an appearance
of great strength, but which in fact, from its weight and injudicious
combinations, was useless, if not injurious.”[10] Which did, in fact,
clog the ship and usurp the space required for stowage.
As for the masts, experience fixed their number, size and position.
In the earlier ships, as we have seen, four and sometimes five masts
were fitted, after the Mediterranean style. But later this number was
reduced to three. Of these the foremast was the most important, and it
was stepped directly over the fore-foot of the vessel, the main and
mizzen being pitched to suit. Their height varied with the service and
type of ship. Taunt masts, like those carried by the Flemish ships,
were best for sailing on a wind, for with them narrow sails could be
used which could be set at a sharp angle with the keel; but short masts
and broad yards were favoured by English mariners, as bringing less
strain on a vessel’s sides and rigging and as being less likely to
produce a state of dangerous instability. The masts were short, very
thick, and heavily shrouded; the standing rigging was led to channels
and deadeyes on the outside of the bulwarks. The bowsprits were large
and “steved” upward at a large angle with the horizontal; spritsails
and spritsail topsails were set on them, of use mainly when sailing
before a wind, yet retaining their place in our navy till, half-way
through the eighteenth century, the introduction of the fore-and-aft
jib brought about an improvement and in so doing affected the whole
disposition of mastage.
One feature of the masting of the old ships is notable: the manner in
which the various masts were raked. In the _Sea-Man’s Dictionary_[11]
the _trim_ of a ship was defined as, “the condition, as to draught,
staying of masts, slackness of shrouds, etc., in which a ship goes
best.” For a given set of conditions there was a certain rake of
masts, a certain position of the centre of wind-pressure against the
sails, which, when discovered, gave to the vessel its finest sailing
qualities. The knowledge of this adjustment constituted no small part
of the great art of seamanship. In the king’s ships a high proficiency
was attained in it; merchantmen sailed under more diverse conditions
and showed, it appears, a lower level of scientific inquiry. “Next to
men of war (whose daily practice it is) the Scotch men are the best
in the world to find out the trym of a ship, for they will never be
quiet, but try her all ways, and if there be any goodness in her, they
can make her go.” Generally, the effect of raking the masts aft was to
make the vessel fly up into the wind, and vice versa; in ships with
high-built sterns, especially, it was necessary to have the head-sails
set well forward, to keep them out of the wind. To allow the masts to
be raked as desired their heels were pared away, and wedges of suitable
thickness were driven between them and the “partners.”
Many other factors contributed to affect, in a manner always subtle
and frequently inexplicable, the sailing qualities of a ship. The form
of the body, the position of masts and the setting up of the rigging,
the disposition of weights, the angle of the yards, the conditions of
stability, all had their effect on the vessel’s motion, and therefore
on her speed through the water. Free water in a ship’s bilge, for
example, had an effect on her degree of stiffness, and from this cause
her speed was not easily predictable. Charnock relates how, in the
colonial wars of the late eighteenth century, an American vessel, the
_Hancock_, was captured after an unprecedented chase, solely because
her commander, injudiciously supposing that by lightening his ship he
would enhance her swiftness, pumped water out of her. It was noticed,
again, that in certain circumstances the speed of a ship increased when
the crew turned into their hammocks.
The lines of the ship were drawn without reference to any science
of naval architecture, and merely by instinct and the accumulated
experience of the builder; the laws of stability and of fluid
resistance were at this time unknown. Experience indicated the
desirability of a short keel, to make the ship turn quickly; of an
ample rake forward from keel to beak-head--“more than a third the
length of the keel, commonly,” says Sir Henry Manwayring, for, “a great
rake forward gives a ship good way and makes her keep a good wind, but
if she have not a full bow it will make her pitch mightily into a head
sea.... The longer a ship’s rake is, the fuller must be the bow”; of
a fine run aft, so as to let the water flow strongly and swiftly to
the rudder and make the ship steer and sail well; of a narrow rudder,
so as not to hold much dead water when the helm was over,--yet, “if a
ship have a fat quarter, she will require a broad rudder.” The correct
formation of the bow was recognised as of the greatest importance,
and the most difficult compromise in the design of a ship. A bow too
bluff offered much resistance to motion through the water; on the other
hand, too sharp a bow lacked buoyancy, and, from the great weight of
mastage, headsails, anchors, etc., which it had to support, caused a
vessel to pitch badly in a head sea. “If the bow be too broad,” wrote
Captain John Smith, in his _Sea Man’s Grammar_, “she will seldom carry
a bone in her mouth, or cut a feather, that is, to make a foam before
her: where a well-bowed ship so swiftly presseth the water as that it
foameth, and in the dark night sparkleth like fire.”
Generally, a vessel built with fine lines lacked end support,
and tended to become arched or camber-keeled, while its stowage
capacity was inconveniently small. The ship’s sides were made with a
considerable degree of tumble-home above the water-line; though this,
again, was a point of compromise and much argument. For while a reduced
breadth of deck tended to give the hull more girder strength and to
diminish the racking effect on it of heavy ordnance, yet this feature
at the same time, by reducing the angle at which the shrouds could be
set, augmented the stresses which were thrown on shrouds and bulwarks.
§
With the seventeenth century a new age of scientific speculation
opened, and, under the personal encouragement of the Stuart kings, the
art and mystery of shipbuilding received an illumination which was of
great value to the royal armaments.
The early interest of James I in his navy is signalized by his grant
of a charter to the corporation of shipwrights: a corporation whose
short-lived story is told by the editor of _The Autobiography of
Phineas Pett_, recently published.[12] Before the sixteenth century, he
tells us, no special trade was recognized for the building of warships,
as distinct from traders. But in the early Tudor days, when, owing to
the introduction of the new artillery the war vessel began to diverge
in general design from the merchant ship, certain master shipwrights
had been subsidized by the king for the building and repair of the
royal vessels. The position of these officials was one of importance,
their duties and privileges were extensive. The office was often
hereditary. Thus, the royal patent granted to one James Baker in 1538
descended, with the accumulated lore and secrets of his profession, to
his son Mathew Baker in 1572. And that granted to Peter Pett in 1558
descended to Joseph Pett in 1590. But as shipping grew and shipbuilding
became more complex and widely distributed, the need for some central
authority, which could regulate practice and standardize procedure,
became increasingly felt. Accordingly a petition was presented. In 1605
the king granted a charter incorporating the master shipwrights of
England as one body corporate and politic, for the good regulation of
shipbuilding of all descriptions. In 1612 another charter was sealed,
giving increased power to the confraternity: with instruction that
it was to examine each new ship to see that it was properly built,
“with two orlops at convenient distances, strong to carry ordnance
aloft and alow, with her forecastle and half-deck close for fight.”
Shipwrights’ Hall, as the corporation was called, surveyed and reported
on tonnage and workmanship, and gave advice, when sought, to the
lord high admiral. In the course of time its prestige declined. With
the Commonwealth it grew into disuse, and by 1690 it was altogether
extinct. For nearly a century the guild had struggled in vain to fulfil
the intentions of its founders.
The most distinguished of the master shipwrights of this period was
Phineas Pett, sometime master of arts at Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
who in 1612 succeeded old Mathew Baker as Master of the guild.
Pett, who to a practical knowledge of design and construction added
considerable sea experience, rose far above his contemporaries, most
of whom were little more than mere carpenters, ignorant of many of
the principles which are now accepted as governing ship design, and
themselves governed almost entirely by tradition and blind precedent.
Science was still in its veriest infancy. The progress of ship design
was still by the tentative and costly method of full-scale experience;
not till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when new forces and
materials had been discovered which in the end spelt the decline and
supersession of the sailing ship, did science sufficiently direct the
lines on which large sailing ships should be built.
By his bold deviation from established usage, says Fincham, Mr. Pett
established his fame and advanced the interest and power of the British
navy. Before reviewing his handiwork, however, it will be convenient to
note the main directions in which improvement was at this period sought.
Sir Henry Manwayring, an acquaintance for whom Pett designed and
built a pinnace in the year 1616, wrote at this time _The Sea-Man’s
Dictionary_. In the early years of the century were also written two
treatises which, though not printed till a later date, had great
effect in creating an interest in naval matters: Sir Walter Raleigh’s
_Observations on the Navy_ and _Invention of Shipping_. In the former
paper Sir Walter laid down the six requisites of a good ship: viz.
that she should be strongly built, swift, stout-sided, carry out her
guns in all weathers, lie-to in a gale easily, and stay well. For the
attainment of these qualities he specified certain structural features:
a long run forward, to make her sail well; a long bearing floor and
a “tumble home” above water from the lower edge of the ports, for
stoutness and for stiffness sufficient to enable her to carry her lower
ordnance (which must lie four feet clear above water) in all weathers.
“It is a special observation,” he wrote, “that all ships sharp before,
that want a long floor, will fall roughly into the sea and take in
water over head and ears. So will all narrow quartered ships sink
after the tail. The high charging of ships it is that brings them all
ill qualities.” In the latter paper he recapitulated the various
improvements in material of which he had himself been witness; from
which for its interest we quote the following extract. “The striking
of the topmast (a wonderful great ease to great ships both at sea and
in harbour) hath been devised, together with the chain pump ... the
bonnet and the drabler. We have fallen into consideration of the length
of cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds that
can blow, witness our small Milbrook men of Cornwall, that ride it out
at anchor, half seas over between England and Ireland, all the winter
quarter.... For true it is, that the length of the cable is the life of
the ship in all extremities. We carry our ordnance better than we were
wont, because our nether overloops are raised commonly from the water,
to wit, between the lower part of the port and the sea. We have also
raised our second decks and given more vent thereby to our ordnance,
tying on our nether overloop. We have added cross pillars in our royal
ships to strengthen them, which be fastened from the kelson to the
beams of the second deck. We have given longer floors to our ships than
in elder times, and better bearing under water, whereby they never fall
into the sea after the head and shake the whole body, nor sink stern,
nor stoop upon a wind, by which the breaking loose of our ordnance or
the not use of them, with many other discommodities are avoided....
And to say the truth a miserable shame and dishonour it were for our
shipwrights, if they did not exceed all other in the setting up of our
royal ships, the errors of other nations being far more excusable than
ours.” Sir Walter was inaccurate in attributing all the improvements
enumerated to his own generation; bonnets, for instance, were in use
long before his day. Nevertheless his paper constitutes one of the most
important contributions to the history of naval architecture in this
country.
In the early years of the century, too, evidence as to the shortcomings
of contemporary naval construction was furnished by a fierce critic,
Captain Waymouth. He proclaimed that English shipwrights built only
by uncertain traditional precepts and observations; that none of them
could build two ships alike or predict with accuracy their draught
of water; that all their ships were crank, leewardly--“a great
disadvantage in a fight”--difficult to steer and sail, too deep in
the water, of less capacity than the Hollanders, and so badly built
and designed as frequently to require “furring,” or reinforcing by
extra planking. He advocated building ships longer, broader, with
longer floors so as to reduce their draught, and snugger in respect of
upper works. And though he failed on trial to translate his ideas into
successful performance, his criticisms are accepted by historians as
being probably well-founded.
The opinions expressed by the above writers[13] indicate for us
in general terms the chief particulars in which the ships of this
period fell short of naval requirements. They were designed without
knowledge of the laws governing the strength of materials, stability,
and the motion of bodies through water; they were built without
adequate supervision, frequently of green timber badly scarphed or cut
across the grain, and were overburdened with ordnance. Their holds
were cumbered with large quantities of shingle ballast which tended
to clog the limber-holes of the bilge and rot the frames and floor
timbers; while the stowage space amidships was further usurped by the
cook-rooms, which were placed on the shingle, and which, by the heat
radiated from their brick sides, did damage to the timbers and seams
in their vicinity. Vessels were rarely sheathed. Though John Hawkins
had devised a system of sheathing by a veneer of planking nailed over
a layer of hair and tar, it was only to ships going on special service
in seas where the worm was active that sheathing was applied. Sheathing
possessed, then, some significance. In 1620, for instance, the Venetian
ambassador reported to his government the discovery that some of our
ships were being sheathed, and from this fact deduced an impending
expedition to the Mediterranean.
With the navy in the depths of neglect and with shipbuilding in the
state described, Phineas Pett began to impose his permanent mark on
design and construction. The mechanism by which he secured his results,
the calculations and methods and rules used by him, were veiled in
profound secrecy, in accordance with the traditions of his profession.
He began by new-building old ships of the Elizabethan time, giving
them an improved form so far as practicable. His friend and patron
was the young Prince Henry, for whom in 1607 he made a model which
the king greatly admired. And shortly after this, in the face of much
jealousy on the part of his rivals, he laid down by command a new
great ship--the _Prince Royal_, of 1187 tons, with a breadth of 43 feet
and a keel length of 115 feet, double-built and sumptuously adorned, in
all respects the finest ship that had ever been built in England. She
carried no less than fifty-five guns, her general proportions were of a
unity, and her strength was of a superiority, far in advance of current
practice. In strength especially she marked an advance which yielded
benefit later, in the wars with Holland. She was double planked, “a
charge which was not formerly thought upon, and all the butt-heads were
double-bolted with iron bolts.”
But how difficult a matter it was for a builder to depart from
tradition, is shown from Pett’s account of the inquisition to which he
was subjected in connection with the building of this famous ship. His
rivals took advantage of the “Commission of Enquiry into the abuses of
the navy,” of 1608, to indict him for bad design, bad building, and
peculation. So much hard swearing took place on both sides that at last
King James himself decided to act as judge, and at Woolwich, with the
wretched Phineas on his knees before him, opened his court of inquiry.
“Much time,” says the diarist, “was spent in dispute of proportions,
comparing my present frame with former precedents and dimensions of the
best ships, for length, breadth, depth, floor, and other circumstances.
One point of proportion was mainly insisted upon and with much violence
and eagerness urged on both sides, which was the square of the ship’s
flat in the midships, they affirming constantly upon their oath it was
full thirteen feet, we as constantly insisting that it was but eleven
foot eight inches.” In the end the king called in a mathematician and
had the controversy settled by actual measurement. None of the charges
brought against him being sustained, Phineas was acquitted and restored
once more to royal favour, to his own delight and to that of his
youthful patron, Prince Henry.
The _Prince Royal_ marks a new epoch in ship design. She was such a
departure from all previous forms that she made the fame of Phineas
Pett secure. She became, indeed, the parent or type of all future
warships down to the beginning of the nineteenth century; for (says
Charnock), were the profuse ornaments removed, her contour, or general
appearance, would not so materially differ from that of the modern
vessel of the same size as to render her an uncommon sight, or a ship
in which mariners would hesitate to take the sea. In her a final
departure was made from the archaic form imposed on fighting ships by
tradition. The picture Charnock gives of her is of a highly ornamented
but low and flush-decked vessel armed to the ends with two tiers of
heavy guns. The projecting beak-head, a relic from the galley days
which had been so prominent a feature of Tudor construction, has
almost disappeared: the bow curves gracefully upward to a lion close
under the bowsprit. The wales have little sheer; the stern is compact
and well supported, with beautiful lines. The quarter galleries are
long, and are incorporated in the structure in a curious manner:
in the form of indented, tower-like projections, with ornamented
interspaces. The whole picture gives evidence of stout scantlings and
invaluable solidity. Although in many respects the _Prince Royal_
was a masterpiece she was primitive in the variety of her armament.
On the lower deck she carried two cannon-petro, six demi-cannon,
twelve culverins; on her upper deck eighteen demi-culverins; and
on quarter-deck and poop a number of sakers and port-pieces. Also,
unfortunately, she was built of green timber, so her life was short.
In building a ship of unprecedented burthen Pett had the support of
a large public opinion. The advantages attaching to large size were
by this time generally appreciated: in the case of fighting ships, in
respect of strength, artillery force, and sea endurance, in the case
of merchant ships, in respect of carrying capacity and economy of
crew. The growth in the size of merchant shipping during the reign was
indeed remarkable. Trade followed the flag, and the Jacobean merchant
made haste to profit by the conquests of the Elizabethan adventurer.
For a short while after the war with Spain our mercantile marine was
stagnant; at the accession of James I only small vessels of less than
a hundred tons were being built, and English merchants were having
strange recourse to the hiring of foreigners. But this state of
things did not last for long. The story of the success of the Earl of
Cumberland and his 800-ton _Scourge of Malice_, and the sight of the
great Portuguese carrack captured in 1592, are said to have stimulated
the merchants of London to possess themselves of vessels fit for the
Eastern trade. It is said, again, that the appearance of two large
Dutch ships in the Thames supplied the sudden impulse to build big.
Be that as it may, “the idea spread like wild-fire.” Larger ships
were laid down, and by the end of the reign the country possessed a
considerable fleet of ships of 500 tons and above. In one instance,
at least, the pendulum swung too far, and experience soon exposed the
disadvantages of excessive dimensions: the reduction in strength, the
unhandiness in shallow waters, the almost impossibility of graving and
breaming, the risking in a single bottom of too great a venture. The
_Trades Increase_, built for the new East India Company in 1605 by
William Burrell and launched by the king at Deptford, was of no less
than 1,100 tons burthen. On her first voyage to Java she was lost by
fire, and no more ships of her size were ordered by the Company.
With the expansion of merchant shipping and with the recognition of
artillery as the main instrument of naval warfare fighting ships made
a corresponding advance in size. The Commission of Reform of 1618,
on whose report the subsequent reorganization of the Navy was based,
held that the primacy of the big gun had at last been established.
“Experience teacheth,” the Commissioners recorded, “how sea-fights
in these days come seldom to boarding, or to great execution of
bows, arrows, small shot and the sword, but are chiefly performed
by the great artillery breaking down masts, yards, tearing, raking,
and bilging the ships, wherein the great advantage of His Majesty’s
navy must carefully be maintained by appointing such a proportion of
ordnance to each ship as the vessel will bear.” They recognized the
extravagance of small ships, and advised that in future the royal
navy should consist of a nucleus of about thirty large ships, which
with the merchant fleet should form one complete service; royal ships
of over 800 tons; great ships of over 600 tons; middling ships of
about 450 tons. They also formulated the chief requirements of naval
construction in considerable detail. This pontifical pronouncement
on ship dimensions was doubtless of value in connection with the
contemporary project to which their work had reference; nevertheless it
formed a dangerous precedent for future administrations. It shackled
the genius of the shipbuilder. It degraded design. The ship, especially
the timber-built sailing warship, was essentially a compromise between
a number of conflicting elements. To obtain full value from his skill
the designer required as free as possible a choice of means to his end;
and any over-drawing of the specification, or surplusage of data beyond
the barest requirements, tended to tie his hands and render impossible
a satisfactory design. It was this over-specifying of dimensions in
the interests of standardization which, as we shall presently see,
stultified shipbuilding in England not only in the seventeenth but
throughout the whole of the eighteenth century.
But the report of 1618 was doubtless of great value as a guidance for
the building of the new Stuart navy. “The manner of building, which
in ships of war is of greatest importance, because therein consists
both their sailing and force. The ships that can sail best can take or
leave (as they say), and use all advantages the winds and seas afford;
and their mould, in the judgment of men of best skill, both dead and
alive, should have the length treble the breadth, and the breadth in
like proportion to the depth, but not to draw above 16 foot of water
because deeper ships are seldom good sailers.... They must be somewhat
snug built, without double galleries and too lofty upper works, which
overcharge many ships and make them loom fair, but not work well at
sea.” As for the strengthening of the royal ships the Commissioners
subscribed to the manner of building approved by “our late worthy
prince”: “first, in making three orlops, whereof the lowest being two
feet under water, both strengtheneth the ship, and though her sides be
shot through, keepeth it from bilging by shot and giveth easier means
to find and stop the leaks. Second, in carrying their orlops whole
floored throughout from end to end. Third, in laying the second orlop
at such convenient height that the ports may bear out the whole fire of
ordnance in all seas and weathers. Fourth, in placing the cook-rooms
in the forecastle, as other ships of war do, because being in the
midships, and in the hold, the smoke and heat so search every corner
and seam, that they make the oakum spew out, and the ships leaky,
and some decay; besides, the best room for stowage of victualling is
thereby so taken up, that transporters must be hired for every voyage
of any time; and, which is worst, when all the weight must be cast
before and abaft, and the ships are left empty and light in the midst,
it makes them apt to sway in the back, as the _Guardland_ and divers
others have done.”
The ships built under the regulations of the Commissioners were
certainly an improvement on earlier ships in many respects, but in
one element of power they proved to be deficient, namely, in speed.
The stoutly built, full-bodied, lumbering English two-deckers were
out-sailed and out-manœuvred, it was noticed, by the relatively light
and fine-lined Hollanders. Moreover our smaller ships were known to
be no match in speed for the Dunkirk privateers which at this time
infested the seas. A new type was seen to be necessary. The existing
differentiation of warships into rates or classes was insufficient. For
the line of battle there must be ships in which force of artillery was
the predominant quality; but for other duties there must also be ships
in which speed, and not force, was the distinguishing note. From this
necessity was evolved the _frigate_.
Soon after the accession of Charles I an attempt was made to establish
the new type by building small vessels on the model of the largest,
miniatures which it was hoped would prove good sailors and capable,
although square-sailed, of sailing near a wind. The Ten Whelps were
laid down: flush-decked three-masted vessels of 200 tons, 62 feet long
on the keel and 25 feet in breadth. They were not a success. It was
left for Dunkirk, “the smartest dockyard in Europe,” to found the new
model. In imitation of a captured Dunkirk privateer our first frigate
was built in 1646 by Peter, son of Phineas Pett, and her success was
such that he had the achievement recorded on his tomb. The _Constant
Warwick_ was 85 feet in keel-length, 26 feet 5 inches in breadth,
of 315 tons burden and 32 guns. She was “an incomparable sailer.”
Before the first Dutch war was over she had taken as much money from
privateers as would have completely laden her.
It seems probable that the prestige of his name was sufficient to give
Peter Pett a freedom from interference in his design which was not
accorded less distinguished shipbuilders. In ’45 Andrews Burrell, in
a remonstance addressed to Parliament, protested, “For the love of
heaven let not the shipwrights that are to build them [three frigates
for special service] be misled by those that would, but cannot, direct
them, which error hath been very hurtful to the navy heretofore.” By
the interference of Sir John Pennington, he asserted, the builders
of the Ten Whelps were so misled that they proved sluggish and
unserviceable. “Let no rules be given the shipwrights more than their
tonnage, with the number and weight of their ordnance, and that the
number and weight of their ordnance may be suitable to the burden of
each frigate.”
King Charles, whose personal interest in the royal navy equalled that
of his father, favoured the tendency to enlarge the tonnage and the
individual power of his fighting ships. The _Prince Royal_ displayed
the advantages of size. The Dutch people, jealous of the interference
with their eastern trade, were known to be building large ships. Across
the channel an ambitious and all-powerful minister was envisaging
the possession of a navy in which an inferiority in numbers might be
neutralized by the superiority of the unit. In France a vessel of 1400
tons had been laid down. Charles determined to take up the challenge,
obtaining the money by hook or by crook wherewith to build a greater.
In the year 1634 the decision was made. A model of a great three-decker
mounting a hundred and four guns was presented to him by Phineas Pett,
and shortly afterwards the master of the shipwrights received the royal
command to build a ship, and to proceed in person to the forests of
Durham to select the thickstuff, knee timber, and planking requisite
for the task.
Opposition to the building of such a prodigious vessel appeared from
different quarters. Great ships, in the opinion of Sir Walter Raleigh,
were “of marvellous charge and fearful cumber.” The cost of so large a
ship must needs be great, for not only the whole cost, but the cost per
ton, increased with the size of the vessel; so wasteful a process was
the building of a great ship, indeed, that it was not unusual to build
a small ship simultaneously, out of the timber discarded: a practice
known as “building a small ship out of a great one’s chips.” Ships
of the greatest size, again, were “of little service, less nimble,
less mainable, and very seldom employed.” Nor was it believed that so
large a vessel as that projected could be built. Trinity House, when
they heard of the design, uttered a formal protest. Such a ship, they
argued, would be too big for service, and unsafe from her enormous
size. To carry such a number of pieces she must be a three-decker, and
to build a serviceable three-decker was beyond the art or wit of man;
if the lower tier were too low they would be useless in a sea, if at 5
or 5½ feet above the water-line then the third tier would be so high
as to endanger the ship. In spite of this protest the new ship was
laid down, and nearly two years later, in the autumn of ’37, she was
launched at Woolwich, “the pride and glory of the Caroline navy.”
The _Sovereign of the Seas_, the _Sovereign_, or the _Royal Sovereign_,
as she was called by successive governments, was another great advance
in size and solidity on all preceding construction, and was the
masterpiece of Phineas Pett. Her length by the keel was 128 feet,
her main breadth 48 feet, her overall length 232 feet. She had three
flush decks and a forecastle, a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a
roundhouse. Her armament showed an approach to symmetry; the lower
tier consisted of cannon and demi-cannon, the middle tier of culverins
and demi-culverins. In one respect she was less advanced than Pett’s
earlier effort, the _Prince Royal_, in that she had an old-fashioned
beakhead, low hawses and a low and exposed forecastle. In general
form she was extolled by all, and bore witness to the genius of her
designer. No better form, said a later critic and constructor[14] after
making an analysis of her lines--no better form could have been devised
for a ship built (according to the prevailing customs of the times)
so high out of water and so overloaded with ornaments. The king took
a personal pride in her, and during her construction visited Woolwich
and “seriously perused all the ship within board.” For him an elaborate
description was written which, quoted at length by various writers,
serves to show the extent to which mere decoration contributed to the
cost of a royal ship. Two pictures of the vessel are reproduced by
Charnock, of such obvious disparity that they serve to show (as the
author observes) to what a degree artists may differ in the presentment
of the same vessel. They confirm, besides, the profuseness of the
ornamentation which was massed on her--the trophies, angels, emblems,
mouldings--which made her the occasion of loud complaints against
ship-money, and “a miracle of black and gold.”
The _Sovereign of the Seas_ had a distinguished career. When cut down
a deck she proved to be an exceptionally serviceable unit, taking part
in all the great actions of the Dutch wars and crowning her work at La
Hogue, where she engaged, crippled, and forced to fly for shallow water
the great _Soleil Royal_, 104, the French flagship. At length, when
laid up at Chatham in 1696 in order to be rebuilt, she was set on fire
by negligence and destroyed.
§
By the outbreak of the first Dutch war the modern ideas introduced
by Phineas Pett had received a general embodiment in the navy. Blake
found to his hand ships well suited to the intended warfare, nor was
he much concerned to add either to their number or their magnitude.
Only in one feature did the new vessels built show any difference from
older construction: their depth in hold was reduced, probably to render
them more suitable for work among the shallow waters of the coast of
Holland.[15] In other important respects improvement had preceded the
opening of hostilities.
The lofty stern with which it had been the custom to endow the sailing
ship was a feature which had survived from ancient times. In the
galley, whose armament was concentrated in the bows, the after part
was not devoted to military fittings, but was appropriated chiefly to
the accommodation of the officers. So it was in the galleon or sailing
ship. With the desire and need for increased accommodation the extra
space was obtained by prolonging aft the broad horizontal lines of the
vessel and terminating them in a square frame. To give more space,
quarter galleries were then added, outside the vessel. Then extra tiers
of cabins were added, also with quarter galleries, each storey, as in
the case of domestic architecture, projecting over that beneath it,
and the whole forming, with its surmounting taffrails, lanterns and
ornaments, an excessively weighty and top-heavy structure. Similarly,
at the fore end of the ship there remained the survival of the ancient
forecastle.
With the acceptance of artillery as the medium for battle, with the
decay of boarding tactics and the decline in value of small man-killing
firearms, close-fights and end-castles, the lofty forecastles and
sterns ceased to possess much of their special value. The arguments
of Sir Richard Hawkins’ day in favour of large cage-works no longer
held; nor could the preference of some shipbuilders for high sterns, as
allowing a quick sheer and thereby contributing to the girder strength
of the hull, be considered sufficient to justify their retention. The
stern galleries held a great deal of wind and tended to rot the decks
in their vicinity; their weight put a strain upon the supporting keel;
but, chiefly, the danger of their taking fire in action induced the
authorities to cut them down. For similar reasons the forecastles were
attacked. But there was strong opposition to their elimination, because
of the cover which they afforded in a fight. In 1652 the _Phœnix_,
one of the finest frigates in the service, was taken by a Dutch ship,
“having no forecastle for her men to retire to.” In the second Dutch
war experience confirmed their usefulness. “All the world,” wrote Mr.
Secretary Pepys in his diary for the 4th July, 1666, “now sees the use
of forecastles for the shelter of men.”
No general increase in the size of our ships took place till toward the
end of the third Dutch war. Until that time the navy of France was a
negligible quantity; in 1664, it is said, the only war-vessel at Brest
was one old fireship. The Dutch, our only strong opponents, fought in
ships not unlike our own, stout, buoyant vessels mounting from 24 to
60 guns, and of from 300 to 1200 tons burden. Geography had a curious
influence on their construction. Owing to the shallowness of their
coasts the Hollanders built their ships with less draught and flatter
floors than those of other countries; from which policy they derived
advantages of a greater carrying capacity and, in pursuit, an ability
to retreat among the shallows; but on account of which they suffered a
serious handicap in the hour of action, when, faced by English ships
built of superior material and with finer bottoms which enabled them to
hold a better wind, they were weathered and out-fought.[16]
There was no apparent advantage, therefore, in augmenting the size of
our ships. Improvement was sought, rather, from a further unification
of the calibres of the guns, and from an increase in the number
carried. Their characteristics of shortness and large bore were such as
to make them well-suited to the form of battle now favoured by English
leaders--the close-quarter action.
In solidity of construction the English ships compared favourably with
those of the Dutch. The thick scantlings introduced by Phineas Pett
now proved of great value; the wood itself, tough English oak, was
unequalled by any other timber. English oak was the best, as Fuller
noted. Even the Dutch had built some of their ships of it; while other
countries frequently built of inferior fir, the splinters of which
killed more than were hit by hostile cannon balls. To what was the
superiority of the English timber due? To the soil and climate of
this favoured country. Under the influence of successions of warmth
and cold, of rain and sunshine, frost and wind, all in a degree most
favourable for alternate growth and consolidation, the English oak
attained an unrivalled strength and durability. Trees planted in
forests, where mutual protection was afforded from wind and cold,
grew rapidly, but were inferior in quality to trees planted in small
parcels or along the hedgerows; these latter, slow-growing and tough,
felled “at the wane of the moon and in the deep of winter,” supplied
the thickstuff, knees, and planking for generations of our royal ships.
Their endurance was frequently remarkable. The bottom timbers would
last for fifty or sixty years, but the upper works, which were subject
to alternations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, decayed in a
much shorter space of time. The _Royal William_ is quoted by Charnock
as a case in point. This first rate ship was launched in the year
1719, and never received any material repair until 1757. A few years
later she was cut down to a third rate of 80 guns. Participating in
all the sea wars of the time, she was surveyed in 1785 and converted
into a guardship, which post she filled till early in the nineteenth
century.[17]
Much attention, as we have noted, was given in this scientifically
minded Stuart age to the form of body best suited to motion through
water, but the efforts to improve design were largely misdirected.
Many of our ships were unsatisfactory, not only from their slowness
but because they were crank or tender-sided, and unable to bear out
their lower guns or even to carry a stout sail. They were so clogged
with timbers internally that they could not carry the victuals and
stores necessary for long voyages; and vessels built by contract were
often found to be carelessly put together, of green, unseasoned, and
unsuitable timber.
After the Restoration the mantle of the Petts descended on a master
shipwright of Portsmouth, who became an authoritative exponent of ship
design, and to whose ability several improvements were due. “Another
great step and improvement to our navy,” recorded Mr. Pepys in 1665,
“put in practice by Sir Anthony Deane, was effected in the _Warspight_
and _Defiance_, which were to carry six months’ provisions, and their
guns four and a half feet from the water.” In the same diary for 19th
May of the following year occurs the following characteristic note:
“Mr. Deane did discourse about his ship the _Rupert_, which succeeds
so well, as he has got great honour by it; and I some, by recommending
him. The king, duke, and every body, say it is the best ship that was
ever built. And then he fell to explain to me the manner of casting
the draught of water which a ship will draw, beforehand, which is a
secret the king and all admire in him; and he is the first that hath
come to any certainty beforehand of foretelling the draught of water
of a ship, before she is launched.” The calculations used by Sir
Anthony Deane to forecast the draught of a projected ship might win him
applause among the philosophers; but the scoffer at theory was able to
point to considerable achievements wrought by men who made no pretence
of any knowledge of science. In 1668 the _Royal Charles_, 110, was
launched at Deptford. “She was built,” wrote Evelyn, “by old Shish, a
plain, honest carpenter, master builder of this dock, but one who can
give little account of his art by discourse, and is hardly capable of
reading.”
The interest of Charles II in naval architecture may be gathered from
a letter written by him in 1673: “I am very glad that the _Charles_
does so well; a girdling this winter, when she comes in, will make her
the best ship in England: the next summer, if you try the two sloops
that were built at Woolwich that have my invention in them, they will
outsail any of the French sloops. Sir Samuel Morland has now another
fancy about weighing anchors; and the resident of Venice has made a
model also to the same purpose.”
To girdle a ship, was to fasten planks along her sides some two or
three strakes above and below the water-line; this had the effect
of adding to her beam and thereby rendering her stiffer under sail.
Incessant girdling seems to have been necessary at this period,
to counter the defective conditions in which English ships were
designed, built, and sent to sea. Ships were consistently restricted
in beam, in compliance with the faulty “establishments,” and under a
mistaken notion that narrowness, in itself, directly contributed to
speed. “Length,” says Charnock, “was the only dimension regarded as
indispensably necessary, by the ancients for their galleys and by the
moderns for galleons. Breadth was not considered, or if considered was
accepted as a necessary evil.” Pepys remarked, “that the builders of
England, before 1673, had not well considered that breadth only will
make a stiff ship.” It was an inquiry ordered by Sir Richard Haddock
in 1684 which brought to light the fulness of the fallacy; ships were
subsequently made broader, and experience showed that a good breadth
was beneficial, not only for stability but for speed and sea-keeping
qualities.
But even if a ship were built initially broad enough, the continual
addition of armament and top-hamper to which she was often subjected
had the effect eventually of impairing her stability. In such a case
there were two remedies: to ballast or to girdle. The former expedient
was objectionable, as it involved an increase both of displacement and
of draught. Girdling was therefore generally practised. By this means
the vessel was made stiffer, her buoyancy was improved, and her sides
were also rendered less penetrable between wind and water. Even if,
when thus girdled, she proved to be less stiff than the enemy this was
not altogether a disadvantage: she formed a steadier gun-platform, her
sides were less strained by the sea and, because her rolling was less
violent, her topmasts were less liable to be sprung. But sufficient
stiffness was necessary to allow of her lowest and heaviest tier of
guns being fought in moderate weather; and for this reason alone,
girdling was preferable to ballasting, in that the former tended to
keep the guns high out of water while the latter brought them nearer
the water-line.
Although rigidly restricted in dimensions, ships put to sea in these
days under such varying conditions that it was difficult indeed to
foretell whether a vessel were seaworthy or not. A commissioner of
James the Second’s reign complained bitterly of the injudicious
management whereby “many a fast sailing ship have come to lose that
property, by being over-masted, over-rigged, over-gunned (as the
_Constant Warwick_, from 26 guns and an incomparable sailer, to 46
guns and a slug), over-manned (_vide_ all the old ships built in
the parliament time now left), over-built (_vide_ the _Ruby_ and
_Assurance_), and having great taffrails and galleries, etc., to the
making many formerly a stiff, now a tender-sided ship, bringing thereby
their head and tuck to lie too low in the water.”
In spite of these strictures it must be remembered that our ships
had qualities which, brought into action by brave crews and resolute
leaders, served the nation well in the day of battle. In no naval
war, perhaps, did superiority of material exert such a consistent and
preponderating effect as in the seventeenth century wars between this
country and Holland.
The tactics of the English leaders involved close-quarter fighting. The
material, both guns and ships, certainly favoured these tactics; though
to what extent tactics dictated the form of the material, or material
reacted on tactics, it may be difficult to decide. In one respect
tactics undoubtedly directed the evolution of the material: while
the Dutch employed a “gregarious system” of mutual support of their
vessels by others of various force, fighting in groups and throwing in
fireships as opportunity offered, the English always sought to match
individual ships.[18] Forming in line ahead--a formation, said to
have been first used by Tromp, which enabled our vessels to avoid the
fireships--they came to close quarters in a series of duels in which
the strength and prowess of each individual ship was its only means of
victory. The success of this plan caused the Dutch to imitate it. The
size of their ships rapidly grew; their weakest units were discarded.
Three-deckers were laid down, at first carrying only 76 guns, but
later, after the peace of 1674, as large as the British first rates.
But by that time the critical battles had been lost and won. And the
success of the British is ascribed, in Derrick’s memoirs, chiefly to
the superior size of our ships, “an advantage which all the skill of
the Dutch could not compensate.”
With the institution of the line of battle a need arose for a symmetry
between ships which had never before existed. From this arose, not only
that more complete differentiation of force[19] which lasted through
the following century, but a still more stringent ruling of dimensions
according to “establishments,” which ruling, injudiciously applied,
was henceforth to exercise so harmful an effect on English naval
construction.
After the peace of 1674 the navy sank into inefficiency. The French
navy, on the other hand, ascended in power with an extraordinary
rapidity. By 1681 it had expanded so much under the fostering care of
M. Colbert that it comprised no fewer than one hundred and fifteen
ships of the line. In design, as apart from construction, French ships
were superior to ours. In size especially they had an advantage, being
universally larger than British ships of the same artillery force: an
advantage based on the law, known to our own shipbuilders but never
applied, that _the greater the dimensions of a ship, relatively to
the weight she has to carry, the better she will sail_. So superior
were some French ships which visited Spithead seen to be, that in
imitation of them Sir Anthony Deane was ordered to design and build the
_Harwich_; and from the plans of this ship nine others were ordered
by parliament, the class constituting the greatest advance in naval
architecture of that time. But this departure from precedent had
little effect. In dimensions as compared with tonnage we continued
parsimonious. In the face of French experience we cramped our ships to
the requirements of the faulty “establishments”; and until the end of
the century no increase in size took place except in the case of some
ships laid down in the year 1682, when the threat of a war with Louis
XIV not improbably caused them to be constructed on a more extensive
scale than had ever before been in practice.
In another respect our ships were inferior in design to those of our
chief rivals: in the extreme degree of “tumble home” given to their
sides. Adhering to ancient practice in this particular, in order to
obtain advantages which have already been mentioned, we suffered
increasingly serious disadvantages. The sides of our ships were so
convex that, when sailing on a wind, every wave was guided upward to
the upper deck, thereby keeping the crew continually wet. The deck
space required for the efficient working of the sails was contracted.
Moreover, ships having this high degree of convexity were more easily
overset than were wall-sided ships. This exaggerated convexity had a
striking effect on one feature of our construction, viz. the manner in
which we affixed the chain-plates, to which the shrouds were secured,
in a low position on the curve of the hull; while Holland and France
raised them to a more convenient height--over the upper tier of guns,
in their two-decked ships.
On the other hand the horizontal lines of our ships were (in the
absence of science) cleverly moulded. The after lines in particular
were well suited for supporting the stern and at the same time allowing
a free run of water to the rudder; other nations, overlooking the
importance of this part of the vessel, adhered to the old-fashioned
square tuck and stern which was a chief but unappreciated factor of the
resistance to the passage of the vessel through water.
When war actually broke out in 1689 the balance of material between
English and French was much the same in character as it had been
between English and Dutch. Our fleet was once more in a seaworthy and
efficient condition. Our guns were generally shorter and of larger bore
than those of the French; our ships were narrower and less able to bear
out their ordnance, but their sides were thicker, and better able to
withstand the racket of gun fire. Once more, at La Hogue, the British
squadrons showed that they possessed the offensive and defensive
qualities which favoured victory in close-quarter fighting; and the end
of the century found the prestige of the navy at a level as high as
that to which Cromwell and Blake had brought it.
In the decade which ended in 1689 the navy had passed, on its
administrative side, “from the lowest state of impotence to the most
advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity.” In Pepys’ rare
little _Memoirs_ the story of this dramatic change is told. We read
how, after five years’ governance by the commission charged by the
king with the whole office of the Lord High Admiral, the navy found
itself rotten to the core; how in ’85 the king resolved to take up its
management again, helped by his royal brother; how he sent for Mr.
Pepys; how at his instigation new, honest, and energetic Commissioners
were appointed, including among them the reluctant Sir Anthony Deane;
how Mr. Pepys himself strove to reorganize, how new regulations were
introduced, sea stores established, finances checked, malpractices
exposed, the navy restored both in spirit and material.
Mr. Pepys claimed to prove that integrity and general knowledge were
insufficient, if unaccompanied by vigour, assiduity, affection,
strictness of discipline and method, for the successful conduct of a
navy; and that by the strenuous conjunction of zeal, honesty, good
husbandry and method, and not least by the employment of technical
knowledge, the Royal Navy had been rendered efficient once again.
The following extract from an Essay on the Navy, printed in 1702, is
here quoted for its general significance:
“The cannon (nearly 10,000 brass and iron) are for nature and
make according to the former disposition and manner of our
mariners’ fighting (whose custom was to fight board and board,
yard-arm and yard-arm, through and through, as they termed it,
and not at a distance in the line, and a like, which practice
till of late our seniors say they were strangers to), they are
therefore much shorter and of larger bore than the French,
with whom to fight at a distance is very disadvantageous, as
has been observed in several fights of late, their balls or
bullets flying over our ships before ours could reach them by a
mile....” etc., etc.
§
In Laputa, early in the eighteenth century, the people were so
engrossed in the mathematics that the constant study of abstruse
problems had a strange and distorting effect on the whole life of the
island. Their houses were built according to such refined instructions
as caused their workmen to make perpetual mistakes; their clothes were
cut (and often incorrectly) by mathematical calculation; the very
viands on their tables were carved into rhomboids, cycloids, cones,
parallelograms, and other mathematical figures!
To most Englishmen of that time any attempt to apply science to
shipbuilding must have appeared as far-fetched and grotesque as these
practices of the Laputans. Ship design was still an art, veiled in
mystery, its votaries guided only by blind lore and groping along
an increasingly difficult path by processes of trial and error. The
methods of applied science were as yet unknown. The builder was often a
mere carpenter, ignorant of mathematics and even of the use of simple
plans; the savant in his quiet study and the seaman on the perilous
seas lived in worlds apart from each other and from him, and could not
collaborate. Such speculative principles as the shipbuilder possessed
were almost wholly erroneous; no single curve or dimension of a ship,
it is said, was founded on a rational principle. Everything was by
tradition or authority. Knowledge had not yet coalesced in books.
Men kept such secrets as they had in manuscript, and their want of
knowledge was covered by silence and mystery. Preposterous theories
were maintained by the most able men and facts were denied or perverted
so as to square with them. “Forgetful of the road pointed out by Lord
Bacon, who opposed a legitimate induction from well-established facts
to hypothesis founded on specious conjectures, and too hastily giving
up as hopeless the attainment of a theory combining experiment with
established scientific principles, they have contented themselves with
ingeniously inventing _mechanical methods_ of forming the designs
of ships’ bodies of arcs of circles, others of ellipses, parabolas,
catenaries--which they thought to possess some peculiar virtue and
which they investigated with the minutest mathematical accuracy. So
they became possessed of a System. And, armed with this, they despised
all rivals without one; and, trusting to it, rejected all the benefits
of experiment and of sea experience.”[20]
The intervention of the philosophers had not had any appreciable
effect. Sir William Petty had indeed projected a great work on the
theory of shipbuilding; he had carried out model experiments in tanks,
and had invented a double-keeled vessel which, by its performances on
passage between Holyhead and Dublin, had drawn public attention to his
theories.[21] In his discourse before the Royal Society on Duplicate
Proportions, he had opened out new and complex considerations for the
shipbuilder; inviting him to forsake his golden rule, or Rule of Three,
and apply the law _x varies as y²_ to numerous problems in connection
with his craft. But it could soon be shown, by a reference to current
practice, that this new law could not be rigidly applied. And the
shipbuilder, realizing his own limitations and jealous of sharing
his professional mysteries with mathematicians and philosophers, was
willing to laugh the new theories out of court.
Again, of what practical use had been the discovery of the “solid
of least resistance” or of that “cono-cuneus” which Dr. Wallis had
investigated with a view to its application to the bows of a ship? A
final blow to the scientists was given when the _Royal Katherine_,
a three-decker of 80 guns, designed by the council of the Royal
Society, was found so deficient in stability that it was deemed
necessary to girdle her. Old Shish had beaten Sir Isaac Newton and
all the professors! The impossibility of applying abstract scientific
principles to so complex a machine as a sailing ship, moving in
elements so variable as air and water, was patent to everyone. The
attitude of the professional may be judged from the resigned language
of William Sutherland, a shipwright of Portsmouth and Deptford Yards,
who in 1711 published his _Ship-builder’s Assistant_:
“Though some of our preceding Master Builders have proposed length as
expedient to increase motion, yet it has seldom answered; much extra
timber is required to make them equally strong. Besides, if the solid
of least resistance be a blunt-headed solid, extreme length will be
useless to make cutting bodies.”
Again, in connection with the dimensions of masts:
“Though several writers say, that the velocities are the square roots
of the power that drives or draws the body; from which it should be a
quadruple sail to cause double swiftness. Hence, unless the fashion is
adapted to the magnitude of the ship, all our Art can only be allowed
notional, and the safest way of building and equipping will be to go
to precedent, if there be any to be found. But this is a superfluous
caution, since ’tis very customary, that let a ship be fitted never so
well by one hand, it will not suit the temper of another. Besides, the
proper business of a shipwright is counted an very vulgar imploy, and
which a man of very indifferent qualifications may be master of.”
Science was, in short, discredited. The corporation of shipwrights had
disappeared, not long surviving the fall of the house of Stuart. No
master-builder had succeeded the Petts and the Deanes having sufficient
influence and erudition to expose the faulty system under which
warships were now built, English shipbuilding had once more become a
craft governed entirely by precedent and the regulations. The professor
was routed, and the practical man said in his heart, There is no
knowing what salt water likes.
Yet the science of naval architecture was at the dawn. Not in this
country, but in France, in the early part of the eighteenth century,
research and inquiry received such encouragement from the State that it
conferred on their fleets a superiority of design which they retained
for long: a superiority which enabled them, in the _guerre de course_
which was developed after La Hogue under the intrepid leadership of men
like Jean Bart, Forbin, and Duguay-Trouin, to strike us some shrewd
blows.
We propose to summarize as briefly as possible the principal events
which mark the evolution of the scientific side of naval architecture.
A mere enumeration of the names and works of the men who chiefly
contributed to the discovery of the true natural principles underlying
the performance of sailing ships would suffice to show the debt owed
by the world to French effort, and the tardiness with which this
country faced the intellectual problems involved. In the year 1681 a
series of conferences was held at Paris on the question of placing the
operations of naval architecture on a stable scientific basis; but
before that date, in 1673, Father Pardies, a Jesuit, had published the
results of his attempts to calculate the resistance of bodies moving
in fluids with varying velocities. In ’93 the Chevalier Renaud and
Christian Huyghens were engaged in public controversy on the merits
and deficiencies of Pardies’ laws. In ’96 James Bernouilli entered
the lists on Huyghen’s side, and in the following year a remarkable
work appeared from the pen of another Jesuit, Paul Hoste, professor of
mathematics at Toulon. Father Hoste, having noticed the frequency with
which vessels of that time required girdling, had put the question,
why they should not be built initially with the form which they had
when ultimately girdled. The replies given him being unsatisfactory,
the professor investigated a whole series of problems: the relation
between speed and resistance, the effect of form on resistance,
stability, stowage, the properties affecting pitching, and the best
form of bow. Though incorrect in much of his theory, he had admittedly
a great influence on later research. He was followed, in 1714, by
John Bernouilli, professor at Basle, whose investigations were purely
theoretical. And then, a few years later, M. Bouguer made his great
discovery of the _metacentre_, that all-important point in space whose
position in a ship, relatively to its centre of gravity, marks with
precision the nature of the vessel’s stability.
A treatise by Euler, entitled _Scientia Navalis_, was published
in 1749, and a little later, stimulated by prizes offered by the
Société Royale des Sciences, Don G. Juan in Spain, Euler in Russia,
and Daniel Bernouilli in Germany, all published the results of their
investigations into the forces acting on a rolling ship. Euler’s
contribution was especially valuable. Treating the ship as a pendulum
he laid down two definite rules for the guidance of shipbuilders, (1),
not to remove the parts of a ship too far from the longitudinal axis,
(2), to make the most distant parts as light as possible.
Up to this time the discoveries of the mathematicians had had little
practical effect on shipping. The abstruse form in which new truths
were published, and the lack of education of the shipbuilders,
prevented that mutual collaboration which was necessary if the art of
shipbuilding was to benefit by the advances of science. Soon after
1750, however, a succession of able men, possessed of imagination and
initiative, led inquiry into practical channels, and by actual trial
proved, incidentally, that much of the accepted theory was faulty. The
Chevalier de Borda, a naval captain and a member of the Academy of
Sciences, investigated with models the resistance of fluids to motion
through them, and enunciated laws which shook confidence in current
beliefs. The result was a commission from the government to three
eminent men, M. D’Alembert, the Marquis Condorcet and the Abbé Bossut,
to report on and continue de Borda’s investigations. The report, read
by the Abbé before the Academy in 1776, confirmed generally de Borda’s
theories, and revealed new problems--in particular, the alteration in
shape of the free water surface and the effect of wave resistance,
the latter of which was ultimately to be solved in this country by
Mr. W. Froude--that required investigation. The circumstances of this
commission illustrate the enlightened interest of the State in the
advancement of knowledge, significant testimony to which was paid
by Abbé Bossut. “M. Turgot,” he said of the Comptroller-General of
Finances, who took responsibility for it, “who is not only an admirer
of the sciences, but has pursued the study of them himself amidst his
numerous important official functions, approved of our intentions, and
granted every requisite for prosecuting them.”
In the same year curious and important discoveries were made by M.
Romme, professor of navigation at La Rochelle. In an endeavour to find
the form of ship body which would give good stability in conjunction
with small resistance, he ascertained the importance of the “run” or
after part. Hitherto the form of bow had absorbed attention to the
almost entire exclusion of the form of run, except in so far as it
had been shaped to allow water to flow freely to the rudder. M. Romme
called in aid methods which are now approved as scientific, but which
were then conspicuously novel: he experimented by comparative trials
between models in which all variable features except one had been
carefully eliminated. He was rewarded by some new discoveries. By
fixing the length and successively varying the curvature of different
parts of his models he laid bare an important paradox. While at
low speeds the resistance was least when a sharp end was in front
and a blunt end in rear, at higher speeds the opposite obtained.
This accounted for a great deal of the contradictions of previous
investigators. M. Romme went further: the curves by which the bow
of a ship was connected with her middle body, hitherto looked on as
all-important, were shown to be relatively immaterial. He astonished
the world of science by proving that, given certain conditions, the
resistance upon an arc of a curve is the same as that upon the chord of
this arc. His deductions were proved by commissions to be well founded.
Experience confirmed that the form of the bow curve did not much
influence the resistance experienced in passing through water; on the
other hand the form of the run was shown to have a far greater effect
than had hitherto been suspected.
In the year before M. Romme published the results of his experiments a
treatise appeared, full of empirical rules and shrewd reasoning, by one
of the greatest naval architects, Henry de Chapman, chief constructor
of the Swedish navy, an Anglo-Swede who came of an old shipbuilding
family of Deptford. Chapman was a most gifted shipbuilder. Though his
formulæ were empirical, they were founded on careful observation and
induction, and his name ranks with those of Phineas Pett and Anthony
Deane in the history of naval architecture.
Nothing, so far, had come from English writers. “The only English
treatise on shipbuilding that can lay any claim to a scientific
character was published by Mungo Murray in 1754; and he, though his
conduct was irreproachable, lived and died a working shipwright in
Deptford dockyard.”[22] But indifference was at last giving place to
interest. Inspired by the formation of the Society of Arts in 1753
(which Society was itself inspired by the recognition, on the part of
the founder, of the value of prizes and rewards in improving our breed
of racehorses) a London bookseller named Sewell succeeded in 1791 in
forming a Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. “Impressed
with the many grave complaints which reached him as to the inferiority
of our warships as compared with those of France and Spain,” he gained
the interest of Lord Barham and other influential men. A meeting was
held at which it was decided, as something of a novelty, that the
theory and art of shipbuilding were subjects of national importance;
that a radical deficiency in knowledge of the same existed; and that
the most effective remedy was a focussing of the wisdom of the country
on this matter by the institution of the above Society.[23]
For a time the society flourished. A learned paper by Atwood before the
Royal Society, on the stability of a rolling ship, proved that this
country was not wholly destitute of mathematical talent. An interesting
series of experiments was carried out for it by Colonel Beaufoy, a
devoted student who had made his first experiments on water resistance
before he was fifteen years old. It appears that his attention was
first drawn to the subject by hearing an eminent mathematician state
one evening that a cone drawn through water base foremost experienced
less resistance than with its apex foremost; and it was said that
sailors always took a mast in tow by the heel. The paradox excited
young Beaufoy’s curiosity. Before bedtime, with the assistance of a
neighbouring turner, he was making experiments in one of the coolers in
his father’s brew-house, a large bunch of counting-house keys being put
into requisition as a motive power. Though the society was dissolved in
1799 Beaufoy continued to pursue this subject with unabated zeal until
his death. In one direction, especially, he did good work. Attracted by
the frequency with which North Sea fishing vessels, fitted with wells
for carrying the fish, foundered at sea, he showed experimentally the
loss of stability involved in carrying open tanks of water. He also
demonstrated to English builders by means of models that Bouguer’s
diagram of metacentric stability was of great practical value, even for
large angles of heel. “His experiments,” says Mr. Johns, “should take
an important place in the history of stability of ships.”
§
We now revert to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the
desultory warfare which was carried on during the reign of Queen
Anne events occurred to demonstrate the superiority in design of the
French warship over its English opponent of the same nominal force.
One in particular, an expedition under Count Forbin which was intended
to cover a descent on the Scotch coast in favour of the Pretender,
“showed, even in failure, that in material France held a lead on us.”
Chased back to its ports from the latitude of Edinburgh by larger
English forces, Forbin’s squadron proved a superiority over all our
ships, both in speed and seaworthiness. In weather which disabled many
of our vessels the French squadron arrived home with the loss of only
three--and these all English built.
At about the same time the capture by us of a 60-gun ship, the _Maure_,
of extraordinarily large dimensions for her rate, showed the direction
in which French design differed from our own. The recapture, not long
afterwards, of the _Pembroke_, which was now found to carry only fifty,
instead of her original number of sixty-four guns, corroborated (says
Charnock) the direction in which improvement was sought and found.
But for some time the lesson remained unlearnt. For a number of years
the inferiority of our design was an accepted fact; “every action won
by British valour was a stigma to British science.” Throughout the
whole of this century we set no value on scientific principles as
applied to naval architecture, and were content to remain copyists.
Although before the advent of the Napoleonic wars we had thus
endeavoured to reduce their balance of advantage, yet even so the
French still maintained an absolute superiority in design. In the
first half of the century this superiority was especially conspicuous;
and, in conjunction with an inferiority of seamanship and workmanship
which in the end more than neutralized all its advantages, it was the
cause of the disreputable incongruities which Charnock has depicted
in his well-known epigram: _Very few ships captured by the enemy from
the British have ever continued long the property of their possessors.
If it has so happened, that one of them, being in company with others
of French construction, has ever fallen in with any English squadron,
that ship, almost without exception, has been among those captured,
and most frequently the first which has fallen. On the other hand, the
recapture of any ship from the British, which was originally French, is
a circumstance extremely uncommon. Captured French ships were sought
for as the best commands, which not infrequently were the means of
recapturing captured English vessels._
Very seldom was our failure to overhaul the speedy Frenchman attributed
to inferiority of design; nearly always to the fortuitous circumstance
that we were foul-bottomed and the enemy clean; which may have been
sometimes true, but which was evidently a partial and inaccurate
explanation.
We have already made mention of the periodic “establishments” of
dimensions to which ships built for the royal navy were made to
conform. The first of these, after the rules laid down by the
commissioners of James I, was decreed in 1655, when Blake was
organizing a new standard navy. In 1677 dimensions were established for
ships of 100, 90, and 70 guns, but were exceeded in the case of those
ships which were actually built; and in ’91 a revised establishment for
all classes, very similar to those which previously governed practice,
appeared. In 1706 a new establishment was decreed, a compromise between
the ideas of the Surveyor and the master shipwrights, in which the
dimensions of each class were slightly increased. The dimensions still
remained small compared with those of all foreign ships, however, and
still “all superior faculties of sailing were attributed to the mere
length of the vessel itself, without any but trivial regard to shape or
form of bottom.” Assuming that the ships built under this establishment
derived some slight advantage over earlier construction on account of
their augmented tonnage, yet this was nullified when, in 1716, the
force of their armament was raised. As the work of a committee presided
over by Admiral Byng, a new establishment of guns was ordered, a change
being made in calibres but not in numbers:--
First and second rates, instead of carrying 32-pounders on the lower,
18-pounders on the main, and 9-pounders on the upper deck, were ordered
to carry, 42-pounders (or 32-pounders) on the lower, 24-pounders
on the main, and 12-pounders on the upper deck. Eighty-gun ships,
instead of carrying 24-pounders on the lower, 12-pounders on the main,
and 6-pounders on the upper deck, were ordered to carry 32-pounders
on the lower, 12-pounders on the main, and 6-pounders on the upper
deck. Seventy-gun ships, which in the previous century had carried
18-pounders on their main, and 9-pounders on their upper deck, and
which during the reign of Queen Anne had carried 24-pounders and
9-pounders, were now ordered to carry 24-pounders and 12-pounders. And
so on with the smaller rates.
In 1719 a new establishment for ships was decreed, the dimensions
slightly exceeding those of 1706, but being totally insufficient
for satisfactory construction. In ’32 and ’41 attempts were made to
formulate new rules; but the master shipwrights seem to have been loth
to accept the lesson which the French enemy was teaching them, and
hesitated to recommend any radical departure from traditional practice.
At length, in 1745, general complaint of the inferiority of our
ships in size and scantlings forced improvement on the authorities.
Spain, who had joined France in war against us, possessed ships which
exceeded in size even French ships of the same rate. The capture in
1740 of a Spanish 70-gun ship, the _Princessa_, by three of our ships,
nominally of equal force with herself but of far inferior dimensions
and scantlings, is said to have been the chief cause of the new reform.
Their lordships of the Admiralty, surveying naval construction in
this country, noted that our royal ships were weak and crank, while
those of other nations went upright. There was no uniform standard
of size, ships of the same class were of different dimensions, the
existing establishment was not adhered to. They therefore decided on a
new establishment, based on the latest armament of guns; which should
result in ships which would carry their lower tier six feet above the
water, and four months’ provisions.
The new standard was of little avail, for the same error made some
thirty years previously was now repeated: with the augmentation of the
ship dimensions the armament was also raised in calibre. The first
rates were ordered to carry the 42-pounder (which had before been
optional) on their lower deck; the 90-gun ships, 12-pounders on their
upper decks; the eighties, 18-pounders and 9-pounders instead of 12’s
and 6’s; the seventies, which were only two hundred tons in excess of
the former establishment, 32-pounders and 18-pounders, instead of 24’s
and 12’s. “The ships, therefore, built by this establishment proved, in
general, very crank and bad sea-boats.”[24]
This establishment was, in point of fact, little adhered to. The war
with France during the years 1744-8 repeatedly revealed the defective
nature of our ship design. Experience pointed to the necessity either
of reduced gun-weights or of larger ships. Able administrators were
now willing, under the inspiration of such names as Hawke and Anson,
to initiate improvements. Our naval architecture at last took benefit,
though still by slow and cautious degrees, from foreign experience.
Some time was necessary for results to show themselves; not only were
new decisions slowly formed, but the rate of building was deliberately
slow. The _Royal George_, for instance, described as “the first
attempt towards emancipation from the former servitude,” was ten years
building. But, when war broke out again in 1756, the improvements
already embodied in the newest construction proved of considerable
benefit. The establishment of ’45 was given the credit. “The ships
built by the establishment of 1745,” says Derrick in his Memoirs, “were
found to carry their guns well, and were stiff ships, but they were
formed too full in their after part; and in the war which took place
in 1756, or a little before, some further improvements in the draughts
were therefore adopted, and the dimensions of the ships were also
further increased.”
To meet the advances in French construction a new classification
of rates took place, with French captured ships as models. The
capture of the _Foudroyant_, for instance, in 1758, provided us with
the form and dimensions of a splendid two-decked 84-gun ship. Our
80-gun three-deckers were thereupon abolished, and no three-decker
was thenceforth built with fewer than 90 guns. The capture of the
_Invincible_, in 1757, gave us a valuable model for a 74-gun ship, a
rate highly esteemed, which bore the brunt of most of this century’s
warfare.[25] From her was copied the _Triumph_, and other experimental
74’s, with dimensions varying from those of the _Invincible_, were
at this time laid down. All 50-gun ships had already dropped out of
the line of battle; they were now followed by the 60’s. No more 60
or 70-gun ships were built; their places were taken by 64’s and 74’s
respectively, of relatively large size and displacement.
Nor was improvement confined to form and dimensions. Attention was now
paid to material. New rules were made for the cutting and seasoning
of timber, and for its economical use. Sheathing was tried; in 1761
the frigate _Alarm_ was sheathed in copper for service in the West
Indies, where the worm was active. The copper was found to keep clean
the hull, but at the expense of the iron fastenings; so when, in ’83,
copper sheathing became general, an order was issued for all new royal
ships to be copper fastened up to the water-line: an order beneficial
on another count, since even without the presence of copper sheathing,
iron bolts had always been liable to corrosion from the acids contained
in the oak timbers. Ventilation was also studied, more for its effects
on the hull timbers than on the health of the crews. The scantlings
of all ships were strengthened. Taffrails and quarter-pieces were
reduced in size, and the weight thus saved was devoted to strengthening
the sterns and reinforcing the deck supports; additional knees and
fastenings were provided throughout the structure. Moreover, towards
the middle of the century the formation of the sails was gradually
altered, first in the smaller rates and afterwards in the larger ships.
The old-fashioned spritsail, which had been of greatest effect when
going free, but which had also been used with the wind abeam by the
awkward expedient of topping up its yard, gave place in our navy to the
fore and aft jib, which could be used with the wind before the beam.
Later the lateen sail on the mizzen gave place to a spanker hung from a
gaff or half-yard. These alterations had a general effect on the size
and position of masts and sails.
The order of 1745 was virtually the last of those rule-of-thumb
establishments which had imposed rigorous maximum limits of length,
beam and draught in conjunction with an equally rigorous minimum of
armament weight, and which had been a glaring example of the evil
effects of standardization when unscientifically and unsuitably
applied. The East India service, the contract-built ships of which
were designed by architects untrammelled by the rules which cramped
and distorted the official architecture, provided the clearest proof
that the King’s ships were, as a whole, of poor design. Naval opinion
confirmed it.[26]
For further evidence that it was the system and not the men at fault,
we may note Charnock’s statement that, given a free hand, Englishmen
proved themselves better shipbuilders than foreigners. “It stamps
no inconsiderable degree of splendour on the opinion which even the
arrogance of Spain felt itself compelled to hold in regard to the
superior practical knowledge possessed by the British shipwrights in
the construction and art of putting a vessel together, when brought in
comparison with that of their own people. The builders in all the royal
dockyards and arsenals, the Havanna excepted, were Britons.”
How many, we may wonder, of the ships shattered by Lord Nelson at
Trafalgar were constructed by our countrymen? The _Victory_, which was
to bear his flag, was laid down (we may note in passing) in the year
1759: she was 186 feet in length on the gun-deck, 52 feet broad, and of
2,162 tons burthen.
In 1774 the American war broke out. The colonists, who possessed a
small but efficient frigate navy, were joined soon afterwards by
France, and then by Spain, and Holland. Lord Rodney acknowledged the
superiority of the French in speed, who, though his ships were equally
clean with theirs, yet had the power daily to bring on an action. The
war proved a rough test for our honest but unscientific construction.
“In 1778, assailed by numerous enemies, England put forth all her
naval strength. Powerful fleets had to be found simultaneously for the
Channel, the North Sea, the East Indies, America, and the West Indies.
Five years of such warfare proved exhausting, the ships on paying off
in 1783 were in a terrible state of decay. Several foundered returning
home, owing to their ill-construction and rickety condition; their
iron bolts broke with the working, and the ships were mere bundles of
boards. All this was owing to want of a better system of building, such
as has since been brought to such perfection by Sir R. Seppings.”[27]
After the peace the size of the French ships continued to increase, and
every effort was made to improve their design; but they were weak both
in construction and material. Large three-deckers were once more built;
the _Commerce de Marseille_, 120, was of such extraordinary dimensions
that English critics thought that “size had now reached its ultimatum.”
In 1786 the French abolished the use of shingle as ballast; it created
a damp vapour between decks and gave a high centre of gravity. Iron
ballast had been tried in the frigate _Iphigène_ with great success.
“She was very easy in a sea when under her courses; her extremities
were not overloaded with cannon; she mounted only 13 guns a side,
whereas she had room for 15. She was the best sea boat, and fastest
sailing ship, perhaps, ever built. Her length was more than four times
her breadth.”[28]
In England, as witnessed by the formation of the Society for the
Improvement of Naval Architecture, feeling was widespread at this time
that something was lacking in our methods of ship construction. The
navy was in process of reorganization by a great administrator. In
1784 Sir Charles Middleton created an establishment of naval stores.
He took under consideration shortly afterwards the growing scarcity of
timber and its more economical use. And in the course of his inquiry
views were expressed on naval shipbuilding which had an influence on
subsequent practice.
The conditions under which ships were built for the East India Company
were far more scientific than those obtaining in the royal dockyards.
The timber was more carefully picked, and better seasoned. The hulls
were laid up under cover and well aired; they stood in frame for six
months, and then, when the planks had been tacked on, they stood again,
and no tree-nails were driven till all moisture had been dried out of
the timber. In design they were in many ways superior; in fact, they
were reputed the best and safest vessels in Europe.
Mr. Gabriel Snodgrass, the Company’s surveyor, under whose supervision,
it was claimed, 989 ships had been built and repaired between the
years 1757 and 1794, only one of which had been lost at sea, gave
illuminating evidence. “I am of opinion,” he said, “that all the ships
of the navy are too short, from ten to thirty feet according to their
rates, And if ships in future were to be built so much larger as to
admit of an additional timber between every port, and also if the
foremost and aftermost gun-ports were placed a greater distance from
the extremities, they would be stronger and safer, have more room for
fighting their guns, and, I am persuaded, would be found to answer
every other purpose much better than the present ships. The foremasts
of all ships are placed too far forward; the ships are too lofty abaft,
and too low in midships; they would be much better and safer, if their
forecastles and quarter-decks were joined together; for if they carry
two, three, or four tiers of guns, forward and abaft, they certainly
ought to carry the same in midships, as it is an absurdity to load the
extremities with more weight of metal than the midships. No ships,
however small, that have forecastles and quarter-decks, should go to
sea with deep waists: they certainly ought to have flush upper decks.”
Ships of the navy, he considered, were too weak; they had plenty of
timber, but were deficient in iron fastenings, brackets, and standards.
Knees should be of iron, which was lighter, cheaper, and stronger
than wood. The bottoms of all navy ships were too thin; the wales and
inside stuff too thick. He particularly recommended diagonal braces
from keelson to gun-deck clamps: six or eight pairs of these, secured
with iron knees or straps, should prevent ships from straining as
they did. He would reduce the tumble-home given to the topsides, and
thus add to the strength both of hulls and masts; he would abolish
quarter-galleries and give less rake to the sterns. Finally, he would
design ships so as to require a minimum of compass timber; make no
use of oak where he could substitute fir or elm with propriety; and
have all timbers cut as nearly to the square as possible, to conserve
strength.
His evidence, ending in a recommendation to the government to improve
the status of the naval shipwrights, has been handed down as a
remarkable exposition of sound knowledge and good sense. The proposals
were beneficial, so far as they went, but they did not go far enough:
the whole system on which the hull timbers were disposed was wrong. The
continuous increase in the size of ships was gradually exposing their
weakness. And though in the next century a more scientific disposition
was to be adopted, for some years yet construction continued on the
ancient lines.[29]
The great wars with France, which broke out in the year 1792, found
us adding both to the length and to the scantlings of our new ships.
Three years before, the Admiralty had ordered two 110-gun ships to
be built, of 2332 tons burthen. One of them, the _Hibernia_, not
finished till the year 1805, was made more than eleven feet longer
than originally intended. Both of these ships were established with
32-pounder guns for their main deck.[30] The unwieldy 42-pounder, used
on the lower decks of first and second-rate ships, was now displaced,
in most ships, by the more rapidly worked 32-pounder. Lord Keppel
had tried, also, to substitute 32-pounders for 24-pounders on the
main deck of the _Victory_ and other ships in commission, so as to
establish them generally; but they were found too heavy on trial. He
replaced 6-pounders by 12-pounders, however, on the quarter-decks and
forecastles. Carronades were now making their appearance. In excellence
of material and honesty of workmanship our fleets were pre-eminent.
The value of large dimensions was by this time discerned; where
possible extra length was given to ships building and those under
repair. Size still increased. The great _Commerce de Marseille_,
brought home a prize by Lord Hood in ’94, was forthwith matched by the
_Caledonia_, which, ordered in this year but not completed until 1810,
was the greatest ship which had ever been built in this country. Still,
side by side with news of world-shaking victories, came evidence of
our ships’ inferiority in design. Not only the French, but the Spanish
dockyards, produced vessels which could often outsail ours. Four large
prizes taken at the battle off Cape St. Vincent surprised their new
owners: “under their jury-masts, and poorly manned as they necessarily
were, they beat all the English ships working into the Tagus.”[31]
As the great wars went on, Britain deployed a constantly increasing
naval force. Prizes went to swell the number of ships put in
commission. “Mr. Pitt was foremost in getting every possible ship
to sea; and under this pressure rotten old ships were doubled and
cross-braced and otherwise strengthened and rendered fully adequate to
temporary service. Trafalgar followed, and the efforts of the civil
departments were rewarded.”[32]
We have made little mention, in the foregoing pages, of the actual
tonnage or dimensions of ships, for the reason that the figures
would be for the most part unreliable or misleading in import.
The basis on which tonnage was measured was constantly changing.
It was difficult to obtain accurate measurements of the principal
dimensions; length, especially, was an indeterminate dimension, and,
in the days when a large fore and aft rake was given, the length
of keel gave no indication of the over-all length. Even if the
over-all dimensions could be accurately measured, they gave small
information as to the form of the hull: the fullness or fineness of
the lines, the form of the bow-curves and tuck, the position of the
section of maximum breadth, both longitudinally and relatively to
the water-line--proportions on which the sailing qualities of a ship
largely depended. In the seventeenth century the tonnage figures
were generally untrustworthy; the _Sovereign_ was quoted by three
different authorities as being of 1141, 1637, and 1556 tons burthen.
In the eighteenth century tonnage and dimensions possessed greater
comparative value. We confine ourselves to quoting the following
table of typical dimensions, taken from Charnock, showing the gradual
expansion which took place in the hundred years which have just been
reviewed.
---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
Establishment | Length | Keel |Breadth| Depth|Tonnage
|(gun-deck)| | | |
---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
1706 } | 171′ 9″ |139′ 7″| 49′ 3″|19′ 6″| 1809
1719 } 100-gun ships | 175′ 0″ |140′ 7″| 50′ 3″|20′ 1″| 1883
1745 } | 178′ 0″ |145′ 2″| 52′ 0″|21′ 6″| 2091
_Commerce de | | | | |
Marseille_ (120) | 208′ 4″ |172′ 0″| 54′ 9″|25′ ½″| 2747
_Caledonia_ (120) | 205′ 0″ |170′ 9″| 53′ 8″|23′ 2″| 2616
---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
§
The slow progress of naval architecture up to the end of the eighteenth
century, an advance the rate of which may be gauged from the fact that,
except for sheathing and pumps, no important improvement was patented
between the years 1618 and 1800, has been characterized as consisting
mainly of approximations to the successive forms and arrangements
of Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French ships, all of which had
been in their turn superior to ours. Until the end of the eighteenth
century the “bigotry of old practice” had effectually opposed any
radical improvement, even though such improvement had been operating
for years in foreign navies and were brought continually before the
eyes of our professionals, embodied in captured prizes. In his _Naval
Development of the Century_ Sir Nathaniel Barnaby has drawn attention
to the remarkable similarity which existed between the _Caledonia_
of the early nineteenth, and the old _Sovereign_ of the seventeenth
century: “Almost the only things of note were the reduction in height
above water, forward and aft, and a slight increase in dimensions. The
proportion between length and breadth had undergone but little change.
There was almost the same arrangement of decks and ports; the same
thin boarding in front of the forecastle; the same mode of framing
the stern, the same disposition of the outside planking in lines
crossing the sheer of the ports; nearly the same rig; the same external
rudder-head, with a hole in the stern to admit the tiller; and probably
the same mode of framing the hull. For the ships of 1810 had no
diagonal framing of wood or iron, but the old massive vertical riders;
no shelf or waterway to connect the beams with the sides; no fillings
above the floor-head; and no dowels in the frames. Ships were still
moored by hempen cables, and still carried immense stores of water in
wooden casks.”
To Sir Robert Seppings was due the series of innovations in
constructional method which placed shipbuilding on a relatively
scientific basis and thereby rendered it capable of meeting the
increasing demands involved in the growing size and force of warships.
His scheme, some elements of which had already been tested in H.M.
ships, was described in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1814.
In the briefest language we will attempt to explain it.
In the theory of structures, a jointed figure formed of four straight
sides is known as a _deficient_ frame, since it has not a sufficient
number of members to keep it in stable equilibrium under any system of
loading. A triangle, on the other hand, is a _perfect_ frame, since it
has enough, and not more than enough, members to keep it in equilibrium
however it may be loaded.
The hull of a timber-built ship consisted of a number of rigidly
jointed frames or cells, some lying in horizontal, some in vertical,
and some in intermediate planes: the unit cell being a quadrilateral,
whose sides were formed by the frames and vertical riders and by the
planks, wales, and horizontal riders. Practically all the materials
composing the fabric of a ship were disposed either in planes parallel
to the plane of the keel or in planes at right angles to it. And up
to the end of the Napoleonic wars our ships, without appreciable
exception, were built on this primitive quadrilateral system. The
system was essentially weak. All warships showed a tendency to
arch or hog--to become convex upwards, in the direction of their
length--owing to the fact that the support which they derived from
the water was relatively greater amidships than in the neighbourhood
of their extremities. In the old days when ships were short in length
this tendency was small, or, if appreciable, a remedy was found in
working into the structures additional longitudinal and transverse
riders, until the holds were not infrequently clogged with timber.
But as ships increased in length, the forces tending to “break the
sheer” of a ship and arch its keel increased in greater ratio than
the ship’s power of resistance to the distortion; and by the end of
the eighteenth century, in spite of the aid of iron knees, stronger
fastenings, and improved material generally, the essential weakness
of our mode of construction had been gradually exposed. The _Victory_
herself suffered from arching. The extremities of a 74-gun ship dropped
six inches, sometimes, when she entered the water from the stocks. A
similar tendency to hog took place also across the breadth of a ship,
occasioned by the dead weight of her guns. When rolling in heavy
weather the momentum of her top weights caused large racking stresses
to be thrown on the joints between the frames and the deck-beams. The
biographer of Admiral Symonds quotes Captain Brenton as follows: “I
remember very well, when I was a midshipman in a 64-gun ship coming
home from India, cracking nuts by the working of the ship. We put them
in under the knees, as she rolled one way, and snatched them out as she
rolled back again.”
[Illustration: DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING DISTORTION OF FRAMES UNDER LOAD]
From these remarks it will be clear that a new method of construction
which, by substituting the triangle for the rectangle, prevented the
distortion of a ship’s hull under the stresses of hogging and sagging,
would constitute an important innovation: even more important if, in
addition, the new method resulted in a large economy of material. Such
a system Sir Robert Seppings introduced. Treating the hull as a girder
liable to bend, he disposed the timbers to the best advantage to resist
deformation. The rectangular system, wherein frames and riders formed
rectangular cells with no other power of resisting distortion into
rhomboids than that derived from the rigidity of the joints, had been
proved inefficient; just as a common field gate would be inefficient,
and would easily distort, if built up solely of vertical and horizontal
timbers without any diagonal brace to make it a rigid figure. He solved
the problem with the triangle. By bracing each quadrilateral cell with
a diagonal timber he thereby divided it into two rigid and immovable
triangles, and thus made the whole ship rigid. The quadrilateral, when
braced, was known as a _trussed frame_. All the chief frames in the
ships he trussed; and since all bending took place from the centre of
the ship downwards to its ends, he made the trussed frames symmetrical
about the centre: the diagonals sloped forward in the after body, and
aft in the fore body, so as to resist the arching by extension. The
truss frame was embodied, not only in the lower part of the vessel
(where its effect in resisting longitudinal bending was comparatively
small), but in the more nearly vertical planes, and even in the
topsides between the gun-ports (where it was most effective). Its use
was estimated to result in the saving of nearly two hundred oak trees
in the building of a 74-gun ship.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM REPRESENTING A SHIP WITH TRUSSED FRAMES]
This was one element of Seppings’ system. The others were: the
filling in of the spaces between the ground frames of the ship, so
as to oppose with a continuous mass of timber the tendency of the
lower parts to compress longitudinally, and to form a thick and solid
bottom; the omission of the interior planking below the orlop clamps;
the connection of the beams with the frames by means of shelf-pieces,
waterways, and side binding-strakes to the deck; and the laying of the
decks diagonally.
In two other important respects Seppings improved on previous
construction.
At Trafalgar the _Victory_, during her end-on approach to the enemy
line, was raked, and her old-fashioned forecastle, with its thin
flat-fronted bulkhead rising above the low head, was riddled and
splintered. This and similar experiences led to the introduction by the
Surveyor of an improved bow, formed by prolonging the topsides to meet
in a high curved stem, which not only deflected raking shot, but also
consolidated the bow into a strong wedge-shaped structure supporting a
lofty bowsprit, and capable of being armed to give ahead fire from a
number of guns.
Similarly the weakness of ships’ sterns was remedied. The broad flat
overhanging stern which had been given to our ships throughout the
eighteenth century was not only structurally, but defensively weak.
In many actions, but notably in Admiral Cornwallis’ fighting retreat
from the French in 1795, the weakness of our stern fire had been
severely felt; and, especially in view of the possible adaptation of
steam to ship propulsion, at this time foreshadowed, the desirability
of an improvement was evident. Seppings abolished the flat stern in
all new two- and three-deckers, substituting sterns circular (as seen
from above), more compactly embodied, and having ports and embrasures
in them for guns capable of fire along divergent radii. The circular
stern gave place, after a few years, to an elliptical stern, which
presented a more graceful appearance and afforded increased protection
to the rudder-head. “The principal curves visible in it,” it was said,
“harmonize so well with the sheer lines of the ship, that she appears
to float lightly and easily upon the water.”
[Illustration]
In the opening years of the new century important advances were made,
too, in the organization of the royal dockyards. The interests of naval
architecture were served notably by Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of the
famous jurist and an ex-shipwright, who acquired honours in Russia and
returned to England to be Civil Architect and Engineer to the navy.
Bentham became a courageous Commissioner, and did much to stamp out
abuses and to encourage efficiency; he was instrumental in checking
the sale of stores, in abolishing “chips,” in introducing steam pumps,
block machinery, and dry dock caissons, in improving the methods of
building ships and of mounting carronades.
[Illustration]
But still naval architecture, considered either as an art or as a
science, was stagnant. As a class the Surveyors were men of very
restricted education--“there is scarcely a name on the list of any
eminence as a designer or a writer.” Those who ordered ships at
the Board were “busy politicians, or amateurs without a knowledge
of science, or sailors too impatient of innovation to regard
improvements.” In no other profession, perhaps, were theory and
practice so out of sympathy with each other. The native art of the
builder was numbed and shackled, by the restrictions imposed upon him
as to tonnage and dimensions; the study of ship form, with a view to
analysing the forces under which sailing ships moved by wind through
water and to discovering the laws which those forces obeyed, was
still mainly an academic pastime of the Society for Improving Naval
Architecture, and outside the province of the naval authorities. Our
ships were still formed on no rational principle. Captured French ships
served as models to be copied. Often our builders would make fanciful
variations from the originals--a little more sheer, a little more
beam, etc. etc.--and as often they spoiled their copies. Whenever they
followed closely the forms and features of the originals they succeeded
in producing vessels which were pronounced to be among the best ships
in the navy.
With this state of affairs, it is no matter for surprise that much of
the new construction of the period was of small value. “Sir Joseph
Yorke produced a set of corvettes, longer and narrower than brigs, none
of which answered; and they were sold out of the service. Then came the
‘Forty Thieves,’ a small class of 74’s; but in justice to the designer,
Sir H. Peake (who copied them from a French ship), it must be added
that his lines were altered by the Navy Board, and the vessels were
contract-built. Lord Melville built half a dozen ‘fir frigates,’ which
neither sailed nor stood under canvas. The 22-gun and 28-gun donkey
frigates ‘could neither fight nor run away’; it was dangerous to be on
board them; and the bad sailing of such vessels was the chief cause of
our ill success in the American War. The old 10-gun brigs, or ‘floating
coffins,’ as they were significantly styled, were equally dangerous and
unsightly. They had no room to fight their guns; no air between decks,
which were only five feet high; extra provisions and stores were piled
above hatches; and the fastest of them sailed no more than eight or
nine knots.”[33]
The merchant service was in even worse plight. The tonnage rules had
had a deplorable effect upon merchant shipping. The ancient method
of assessing a ship’s burthen was by measuring the product of its
length and breadth and depth, and dividing this by a constant number,
which varied, at different periods, from 100 to 94. Early in the
eighteenth century, however, a simplification was innocently made:
the depth of the average ship being half the beam, a new formula was
approved--length multiplied by half the square of the beam, divided by
94.[34] The result might have been anticipated. Dues being paid only on
the length and breadth, vessels were given great depth of hold, full
lines, and narrow beam. Absolved by the convoy system from trusting to
their own speed for self-protection, English merchantmen became slugs:
flat-bottomed, wall-sided boxes, monstrosities of marine architecture
of which it was said that they were ‘built by the mile and served out
by the yard.’
To raise the skill and status of our builders, the Committee of Naval
Revision of 1806 presided over by Lord Barham advised the establishment
of an official school, in which the more highly gifted apprentices
might study the science involved in naval architecture. In 1811 the
school was opened at Portsmouth, with Dr. Inman, a senior wrangler, as
president. Ships were designed by Dr. Inman and his pupils excellent in
many respects, and generally on an equality with those of the Surveyor
and the master shipwrights. Yet still they were very imperfect. The
official designs were hampered, not only by the hereditary prejudices
and dogmas and by the cautious timidity of the builders themselves, but
by the restrictions still imposed by the Navy Board, who insisted on
a certain specified armament in combination with a totally inadequate
specified tonnage: who laid down incompatible conditions, in short,
under which genius itself must fail of producing a satisfactory result.
The chains were broken in 1832.
In that year, when the whole administration of the navy was in process
of reorganization, the office of Surveyor was offered to and accepted
by a naval officer, Captain W. Symonds, R.N.: accepted by him on the
condition that he should be given a free hand in design and allowed to
decide himself of what tonnage and dimensions every ship should be. Sir
Robert Seppings was superannuated. The school of naval architecture
was abolished. The sensation produced was powerful. “Except on matters
of religion,” said Sir James Graham, when the appointment was being
debated in the House of Commons some years afterwards, “I do not
know any difference of opinion which has been attended with so much
bitterness--so much anger--so much resentment, as the merits of Sir W.
Symonds and the virtues of his ships.”
These violent differences and resentments have long since been
composed, and Sir William Symonds has been accorded the position due
to him in the history of naval architecture. His opponents, those who
had resented his appointment as against the best interests of the
service, rejoiced that he had freed ship design from the traditional
restrictions under which it had stagnated; his chief admirers were
led in the course of time to agree in the desirability of having
as Surveyor a man thoroughly grounded in the scientific principles
underlying the motion of bodies through water, their stability in
water, and all the forces acting on a ship at sea.
In the year 1821 Lieutenant Symonds, while holding an appointment at
Malta, had designed and built for himself a yacht which he called
_Nancy Dawson_. Yachting had at this date become a national sport, and
the interest of influential patrons in sailing matches was already
acting as a stimulus to the study of ship form. The chief cause of
the beneficial reaction from the indifference of former generations,
says his biographer, was the establishment of the Yacht Club, after
the peace of 1815, and the interest which men of rank and fortune
henceforth took in shipbuilding, and in procuring the best native
models.[35] So great was the success of the _Nancy Dawson_, that (in
his own words) he was led to believe that he had hit upon a secret in
naval architecture; while experiments on other sailing boats seemed to
confirm him in his principles. Great breadth of beam and extraordinary
sharpness--in fact, what was described as “a peg-top section”--were
the characteristic features of his system, with a careful attention to
stowage, the stand of the masts, and the cut and setting of the sails.
“Upon this most slender basis was the whole fabric of Sir William’s
subsequent career built. The yacht gained him the notice of noblemen
and others, then followed a pamphlet on naval architecture (in which
the defects of existing ships were pointed out, and great breadth of
beam and rise of floor advocated); then came a promise from the First
Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville, that he should build a sloop of
war on his plans, which he did, the vessel being called the _Columbine_
(promotion intervening); then further patronage from the Duke of
Portland and the Duke of Clarence, the latter of whom, when he became
Lord High Admiral, ordered him to lay down a 40-gun frigate (promotion
again intervening); then the building of the _Pantaloon_, 10-gun brig,
for the Duke of Portland, from whom the Admiralty purchased her; then
the patronage of that most mischievous civilian First Lord, Sir J.
Graham; then the order for the _Vernon_, 50-gun frigate; and then, in
’32, the Surveyorship of the Navy.”[36]
To Sir Edward Reed and other shipbuilding officers the appointment of
this brilliant amateur to the supreme control of the department seemed
an act of war, not only on professional architects, but upon naval
architecture itself. They admitted the success of the Symondite ships
in speed and certain sailing qualities, but denied the correctness
of his principles and strenuously resisted his innovations. A great
breadth of beam was particularly objectionable to the scientific
builder; not only did it imply a large resistance to the passage of
the ship through water, but it contributed to an excess in metacentric
height, abnormal stiffness, and an uneasy motion. “For a time his
opinions triumphed; but after a while the principles expounded by his
subordinates (Creuze, Chatfield, and Read) were accepted as correct,
while not a single feature of Sir William’s system of construction
is retained, except certain practical improvements which he
introduced.”[37]
[Illustration:
‘Victoria’
Breadth = 59′ 2″
Length = 204′
‘Caledonia’
Breadth = 53′ 6″
Length = 205′
Fig: 1.
‘Vernon’
Breadth = 52′
Length = 176′
‘Barham’
Breadth = 47′ 10″
Length = 173′ 8″
Fig: 2.
TYPICAL SECTIONS OF “SYMONDITE” AND CONTEMPORARY SHIPS]
Nevertheless his opponents, as before remarked, freely acknowledged
the value of his services to the country, especially in breaking down
the restrictions which had hitherto been imposed on constructors in
respect of dimensions. His biographer pays tribute to the intuitive
genius which enabled him to tell at a glance the trim required for
a sailing ship, and to sketch out, as a brilliant impromptu, the
best form of hull. But were these efforts entirely spontaneous? Were
they not the reward of hidden and persistent work, observation, and
calculation, carried out for years by the young officer who never
let a sailing ship come near him without contriving to board her and
ascertain her principal properties and dimensions? Here, surely, is
the undramatic but praiseworthy method by which he attained success: a
method, essentially scientific, which enabled its user, even without
knowledge of other important principles governing ship design, to
perform a national service in revolutionizing our methods of naval
architecture.
Under the control of Sir William Symonds the improvement in the form
and qualities of our ships, begun under the surveyorship of Sir
Robert Seppings, continued to progress. Ship dimensions increased,
and now bore a more correct relation to the dead-weight of armament,
stores, and crew, which they had to carry. All classes from cutters
to first-rates carried a more generous beam, and gained by the
novel feature. Sounder rules were devised, partly as the result of
a succession of sailing trials, for the pitching of masts and the
methods of stowing. In short, naval architecture entered upon a new and
promising era. Foreign observers recorded the progress made. Instead of
being servile imitations of the products of French and Spanish models
the vessels which flew the English flag became objects of admiration to
all the world.
[Illustration: A TUDOR SHIP OF PERIOD 1540-50
From a Cottonian MS. in the British Museum]
CHAPTER II
THE SMOOTH-BORE GUN
On the question of the date at which the discovery of gunpowder took
place writers have held the most divergent views. The opinion of the
majority has been that its properties were known in the remote ages
of antiquity, and this opinion has been formed and confirmed by the
accounts given of its origin by most of the medieval writers. The
Chinese claim to have known it long before the Christian era. And from
hints in classical literature, and on the broad ground of probability,
it has been inferred by some authorities that the explosive properties
of gunpowder were known to the ancients. The wonderful property of
saltpetre, they argue, must certainly have been known to the wise
men of old: its extraordinary combustive power when mixed with other
substances. Melted alone over a hot fire saltpetre does not burn; but
if a pinch of some other substance is added, a violent flame results.
In many fortuitous circumstances, they say, saltpetre must have been
found in contact with that other essential ingredient of gunpowder,
charcoal. And such a circumstance has been pictured by one writer as
occurring when camp fires, lit upon soil impregnated with nitre (like
that in parts of India), were rekindled; the charred wood converted
into charcoal forming with the nitre a slightly explosive mixture.
Other investigators maintain that gunpowder, which claims a spurious
antiquity, is really an invention of the Middle Ages. Incendiary
compositions--Greek fire, and other substances based on the properties
of quicklime, naphtha, phosphorus, etc.--were undoubtedly known to
the ancient world. But explosive compositions, based on saltpetre
as the principal ingredient, were certainly not known in all their
fearful power. The silence of history on the subject of the projection
of missiles by explosive material, says a recent authority,[38] is
eloquent; the absence of its terminology from such languages as Chinese
and Arabic, conclusive.
Whichever of the two views may be correct it is certain that a
knowledge of gunpowder was possessed by the great alchemist, Roger
Bacon, who in A.D. 1249 committed to paper an account of its
properties.[39] To Berthold the Black Friar is given the credit for
its application to military ends; whom legend, in an impish mood, has
hoisted with his own discovery.
In a learned work on the early days of artillery an English writer has
described the difficulties encountered in tracing the first stages
of the evolution of guns and gunpowder. Confusion was caused by the
fact that, after gunpowder had been introduced, military engines were
still known by the same generic names as those borne in pre-gunpowder
days. No contemporary pictures of guns could be discovered. The loose
statements of historians, the license of poets, and the anachronisms
of the illuminators of the medieval MSS., all tended to lead the
investigator astray and to make his task more difficult. The statements
of the historians are indeed whole hemispheres and centuries apart;
as for poets, our own Milton assigned the invention of artillery to
the devil himself; and “from the illuminators we should gain such
information as, that Gideon used field pieces on wheeled carriages
with shafts, when he fought against the Midianites, as in a MS. in the
British Museum.”[40]
Of all the clues which throw light on the origin of artillery the most
important yet discovered lies in some MSS. belonging to the city of
Ghent. After a list of municipal officers for the year 1313 occurs the
entry: “Item, in this year the use of bussen was first discovered in
Germany by a monk.” And there is evidence that in the following year
“guns” were manufactured in Ghent and exported to England.[41] The same
century was to witness a wonderful development of the new-found power.
It was but natural that the first application of gunpowder to warlike
purposes should have been, not only to strike terror by violent
explosion and thus obtain an important moral effect, but to project
the missiles already in military use: arrows and ponderous stones. Two
distinct types of artillery were thus foreshadowed. The first took the
form of a dart-throwing pot or vase, a narrow-necked vessel from which,
in imitation of the cross-bow, stout metal-winged arrows were fired;
while, for projecting stones of great size and weight in imitation of
the ancient siege-machines, large clumsy pieces made of several strips
of iron fitted together lengthways and then hooped with iron rings were
eventually developed.
In the first half of the fourteenth century the guns manufactured were
of the former type. In _The Origin of Artillery_ a reproduction is
given of an illuminated MS. belonging to Christ Church, Oxford, dated
1326, showing an arrow-throwing vase: the earliest picture of a gun
which is known. And, from a French document quoted by Brackenbury, it
appears that in 1338 there was in the marine arsenal at Rouen an iron
fire-arm--_pot de fer_--which was provided with bolts (“carreaux,” or
quarrels) made of iron and feathered.
But the unsuitability of the arrow for use in conjunction with
gunpowder as a propellant was, even at this date, realized. There was
obvious difficulty in preventing the powder gases from escaping through
the windage space between the arrow-shafts and the neck of the vase,
even with the aid of leather collars. So the arrow almost immediately
evolved into a stone or metal sphere; the narrow neck of the vase
increased to the full diameter of the vessel. And as early as 1326,
the date of the picture of the arrow-throwing vase, cannon of brass,
with iron balls, were being made at Florence for the defence of the
commune. The use of the new weapons quickly spread. By 1344 the cannon
is mentioned by Petrach as “an infernal instrument of wood, which
some think invented by Archimedes,” yet “only lately so rare as to be
looked on as a great miracle; now, ... it has become as common as any
other kind of weapon.” By 1412, according to unquestionable testimony
supplied by public documents, cannon were employed in English ships:
breech-loading guns with removable chambers.[42]
In 1346 Edward III fought Cressy. Whether or no cannon were used in
this decisive battle has been a matter of considerable controversy.
According to Villani, an old Florentine chronicler who gave an account
of the campaign, they were; but no mention of them was made by
Froissart, who wrote some years later. The silence of Froissart has
been attributed, however, to a desire to avoid offending our court by
implying that the victory was due to other than the prowess of the
Prince of Wales; or tainting our success with any mention of “devilish
machines which were universally regarded as destructive to valour
and honour and the whole institution of chivalry.” Though English
chronicles contain no mention of gunpowder till some years after
Cressy, yet evidence exists that artillery--“gunnis cum sagittis et
pellotis”--was extensively used in this campaign. “But the powder was
of so feeble a nature and the cannon so small, that the effect of a few
of them, fired only a few times, could not have been very noticeable
compared with the flights of arrows.”[43]
Cannon in the first half of the fourteenth century were indeed feeble
weapons compared with the huge mechanical engines of the period;
yet their moral effect was very great and their physical effect by
no means negligible. They were destructive of chivalry, in a quite
literal sense. The value of cavalry as an arm was greatly reduced by
their adoption in the field. They took from the horseman cased in
complete armour all the advantage he possessed over other troops.
Instead of forming the nucleus of the fighting strength of an army,
the armour-clad nobles and their mounted retinues became somewhat of
an encumbrance, and a change in the composition and strength of armies
from this time ensued. Tournaments went out of fashion, chivalry
declined.
Against material, cannon proved even more effective. As the
arrow-throwing gun gradually disappeared, giving place to small
cylindrical cannon firing lead and iron balls, other ordnance, designed
for projecting large stones against the gates and walls of forts and
castles, grew rapidly to an enormous size. Made usually of forged
iron bars welded and strengthened circumferentially by coils of iron
ribbon or rope, and using a weak gunpowder, these giant “bombards”
began to play an important part in land warfare, especially in those
internecine wars which were constantly being waged in Flanders and
in Northern Italy. Two peoples were conspicuous at this period for
their wealth, culture, and energy: the Lombards and the Flemings. The
former, by their contact with the East, had drawn into their hands
most of the commerce of Europe; the latter, welded together in the
Hanseatic League, were in the van of northern civilization. It was in
Italy, probably, that cannon were first employed, and in Italy where
they developed most rapidly. Their use had an immediate effect on land
warfare; the defensive value of masonry was suddenly depreciated, and
town-gate, fort, and campanile, which had for centuries defied the old
mechanical engines, could no longer be considered impregnable.[44]
In the following century the development of the bombard continued. The
Lombards cast them in bronze, adorned them with elaborate mouldings
and furnished their ends with swellings like capstan-heads, of equal
diameter, to facilitate rolling and parbuckling. In the hands of the
Flemish artisans this type reached a remarkable degree of perfection in
a famous bombard called “Dulle Griete,” which was made at Ghent about
A.D. 1430. The bombard of Ghent consists of two parts, a larger part to
form the barrel for the stone sphere of 25 inches diameter, a smaller
part, of much thicker metal, to form the chamber in which the powder
charge is placed. These two parts are screwed together, screw threads
being formed on a boss on the front end of the chamber and in a hole in
the rear end of the barrel. This is thought to be the piece described
by Froissart as “une bombarde merveilleusement grande, laquelle avoit
cinquante trois pouces de bec, et jetoit carreaux merveilleusement
grands et gros et pesants; et quand cette bombarde descliquoit, on
l’ouoit par jour bien de cinq lieues loin, et par nuit de dix; et
menoit si grand’ noise au descliquer, que il sembloit que tous les
diables d’enfer fussent au chemin.”
A fine example of the built-up bombard is “Mons Meg,” the piece which
now lies at Edinburgh Castle, and which was made at Mons about A.D.
1460: formed of longitudinal wrought-iron bars welded and hooped
circumferentially, of 20 inches in the bore, and designed to fire a
stone ball of over three hundred pounds’ weight.
It was in the hands of the Turks, then at the zenith of their power,
that medieval ordnance achieved its greatest development, and it is
thought probable that Flemish pieces served as the model on which the
Ottoman artillery was based. The siege of Constantinople, in the year
1453, was notable for “the reunion which it presented of ancient and
modern artillery--catapults, cannon, bullets, battering rams, gunpowder
and Greek fire.” And it was especially notable from the power of the
modern artillery there assembled, an artillery which represented
a climax of size and military value. Gibbon has given us a vivid
description of the Ottoman ordnance and its capabilities. “Mahomet
studied with peculiar care the recent and tremendous discovery of the
Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the
world. A founder of cannon, a Hungarian, a deserter from the Greek
service, was liberally entertained by the Sultan. On his assurance a
foundry was established at Adrianople; the metal was prepared; and at
the end of three months Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of
stupendous and almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms
is assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighs above six hundred
pounds. A trial was held, a proclamation having warned the populace.
The explosion was enormous and was heard one hundred furlongs off, and
the ball, by the force of the gunpowder, was hurled above a mile.”
“A stranger as I am to the art of destruction,” continues the
historian--who, we may note in passing, had been through his courses
at Hilsea and was a major in the Hants Militia--“I can discern that
the modern improvements of artillery prefer the number of pieces to
the weight of metal; the quickness of fire to the sound, or even
the consequence, of a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the
positive and unanimous evidence of contemporary writers; nor can it
seem improbable that the first artists, in their rude and ambitious
efforts, should have transgressed the standard of moderation.... The
great cannon, flanked by two fellows of almost equal size, was set up.
Fourteen batteries thundered at once against the walls, one of which
contained 130 guns! Under a master who counted the minutes, firing
could take place seven times in a day.”
Interesting corroboration of Gibbon’s account has since been
discovered in a MS. by a contemporary Greek writer, found at
Constantinople in the year 1870.[45] According to this chronicler the
cannon are actually cast on the field of action. Mahomet summons the
gunmakers and discourses with them on the kind of ordnance required
to beat down the walls of the city. They reply that larger cannon are
necessary than any they possess; and they suggest melting down the
pieces available to form others of sufficient size and power. The
Sultan commands the thing to be done. Quantities of plastic clay are
kneaded, linen and hemp and threads being mixed with it to stiffen it
for forming gigantic moulds. Furnaces are erected, and charged with
copper and tin. Bellows are worked for three days and three nights, and
then, the metal being ready, the molten mass is poured. Within sight
of the beleaguered city huge cannon are cast which, placed on wooden
sleepers on the ground with their butts supported to prevent recoil
discharge stones weighing nearly 700 pounds against the walls.
But there is no need of documentary evidence to attest the power of
the Ottoman artillery of this period; cannon built on the above model
have guarded the Dardanelles for centuries, and, what is more, have
proved sufficiently effective in modern engagements. In 1807 Sir John
Duckworth’s squadron was struck repeatedly by stones of enormous
weight, discharged from these cannon in an attempt to prevent its
passage. And it is known that some of them were made shortly after
the taking of Constantinople. These cannon, says General Lefroy, were
cast on their faces, “the dead-head being left at the breech-end and
hewn off with axes, probably while the metal was hot.” In one of them
brought home to England “the axe marks are plain; similar marks may be
observed on other early guns which have the breech cut off square.” The
similarity of design between this Turkish gun and the Flemish bombards
is too close to be accidental; their construction is of peculiar
interest and has the main features in common. “The external form of the
gun is a cylinder, the muzzle being as large as the breech; but either
half is relieved by a boldly projecting moulding at each end, which
is divided transversely by sixteen cross-bars into as many recesses:
thus serving to give a purchase to the levers used in screwing the two
parts together.” How the screw threads were cut is not known, but “we
can suppose that moulding pieces were first cut in wood and nicely
fitted and then applied to the clay moulds.” The charge of powder used
with this type of piece was as much as a hundredweight. In spite of the
weakness of the squib-like powder its physical and moral effect was
undoubtedly important. “Thus inconceivable and incredible,” writes the
chronicler of 1467, “is the nature of this machine. The ancient princes
and generals did not possess and had no knowledge of such a thing....
It is a new invention of the Germans or of the Kelts made about one
hundred and fifty years ago, or a little more. It is an ingenious and
happy discovery, especially the powder, which is a composition made
of saltpetre, of sulphur, of charcoals, and of herbs, from the which
composition is generated a dry hot gas....”
[Illustration: TURKISH BRONZE CANNON
From Lloyd and Hadcock’s _Artillery_]
The founding of these enormous cannon on the field of action is in
itself a tribute to the energy and resourcefulness of the nation who
have been described as being, at that time, the finest engineers in the
world. Of the effectiveness of the Ottoman artillery there is evidence
in the results achieved. Constantinople fell to the giant bombards. And
in the early part of the following century Rhodes, the last outpost
of the Knights, fell to the same great power. The invention of the
Christians[46] was, in fact, the weapon which gave supremacy to the
Infidel in the eastern part of Europe.
In the meantime the evolution of artillery was taking a new direction.
The large and relatively feeble ordnance of the Turks was, in the
circumstances, not entirely unsuitable for the purpose for which it
was intended: the smashing of masonry and the breaching of gates and
walls. The maximum of effect was obtained from a missile of enormous
mass projected with a low velocity. Nevertheless its disadvantages were
obvious. Large cannon cast in bronze were necessarily of great expense
and weight, their discharges were few and far between, they wore
rapidly and were thus short-lived, and they possessed the dangerous
property of becoming brittle when heated. An increase in power and a
reduction in weight were required for the achievement of a portable
artillery, and the progress of mechanical science pointed to wrought
iron as the material of which such an artillery might be made.
The extraction of iron in small quantities from ferruginous ore was
a comparatively simple operation, even in primitive times. With the
aid of bellows and a plentiful supply of wood charcoal the smith was
able to make his furnace yield small masses of metallic iron of the
purest quality. This iron, wrought on an anvil, could be drawn out
into plate or bar as desired, the resulting metal being, by reason of
the purity of the charcoal used in its extraction, of great toughness,
homogeneity, and strength. In Spain and Italy were mines which had
long been famed for their iron. In England the Roman had made good use
of the metal found in the Sussex mines, and all through the middle
ages the wealds of Kent and Sussex were the centres of the English
iron trade. In the fourteenth century improved methods came into use;
the adoption of water-power for driving the bellows, for crushing the
charcoal, and for operating the tilt-hammers, had its effect on the
development of the iron-smelting industry; higher temperatures obtained
and larger masses of ore could now be treated; the iron, produced in
larger quantities by improved methods, was perhaps purer and stronger
than before.
In wrought iron, then, a material was available which almost alone
was suitable for the manufacture of the more portable sorts of gun.
By its use guns could be made strong enough, without being of an
excessive weight, to withstand the increasing stresses thrown on them,
first, by the use of iron bullets instead of stone, and secondly, by
the discovery of an improved gunpowder. Artillery underwent a dual
development. On the one hand, for use with the weak cannon powder,
was the large stone-throwing ordnance, made of cast bronze or of
hooped bars of iron; on the other, for use with iron shot and a
stronger propellant, were various denominations of small portable and
semi-portable wrought-iron guns. These two distinct types developed
side by side until the middle of the sixteenth century.
The use of iron and lead balls, the superiority of which over balls of
stone had doubtless been manifested in former centuries in connection
with the projection of Greek fire, was practised by the Florentines
soon after the invention of guns themselves. The discovery of “corned”
gunpowder took place a century later.
In its original form gunpowder possessed many disadvantages as a
propellant. Ground into a fine powder, and composed in the first
instance of almost equal proportions of saltpetre, sulphur, and
charcoal, it was peculiarly liable to accidental explosion, so that
frequently the charcoal was kept separate from the other ingredients
and mixed just prior to use. If kept mixed it easily disintegrated,
in the shaking of transport, into three strata, the charcoal coming
to the top and the sulphur sinking to the bottom. It was intensely
hygroscopic, and quickly fouled the barrels of the pieces in which it
was used. But, most important of all, the efficiency of its combustion
depended to an inconvenient degree upon the density with which, after
being ladled into the gun, it was rammed home. The greatest care had
to be exercised in ramming. If pressed into too dense a mass the
powder largely lost its explosive character; the flame which ignited
the portion nearest the vent could not spread through the mass with
sufficient speed; it quietly petered out. If rammed too loosely, on the
other hand, the explosive effect was also lost. A great gain ensued
therefore when, in place of the fine or “serpentine” powder, corned
powder came to be used, about the middle of the fifteenth century. In
this form the powder was damped and worked into grains, crushed to the
requisite size and sieved for uniformity. These grains were finally
glazed to prevent deterioration from the effects of damp; and the
resulting powder proved stronger and more efficient in every way than
the same mixture in its more primitive form.
Some time was to elapse before guns could be cast of sufficient
strength to withstand the force of corned powder. “Chemistry had outrun
metallurgy.” The larger species of ordnance were restricted to the
use of serpentine powder until the middle of the sixteenth century.
Nevertheless, cast ordnance as well as the lighter forged iron guns
were developed continuously for service in the field. Named after
birds and reptiles and clumsily cast of such shapes and weights as
pleased the founders’ fancy, they were of use chiefly in demolishing
by attrition the gates and walls of forts and cities. From the battle
of Cressy onward, first in huge carts and then on their own wheeled
carriages, they rumble across the pages of European history.
§
At sea the evolution of ordnance had to conform, of course, to the
progress of naval architecture and the changing nature of the warfare.
In the Mediterranean, where the oar-propelled galley remained for
centuries the typical fighting ship, the bombard was planted in the
bows, shackled to a deck-carriage upon the centre line, to give ahead
fire and to supplement the effects of a powerful ram. As the galley
developed, the main central gun became flanked by other bow-chasers;
while on the beams and poop light wrought-iron breech-loading swivel
guns formed a secondary armament whose double function was to repel
boarders and to overawe its own slave-crew. In the Atlantic, where
the typical fighting vessel was the lofty sailing ship, the same
two different types of armament had vogue. But in this case their
distribution was different; the sailing ship, with no recourse to oars
for manœuvring, could not always ensure an end-on attack or defence,
and had to arm herself against an enemy from any quarter. Her freedom
from oars, her height, and the invention of the porthole, enabled
the early “great ship” to mount a sufficiently distributed all-round
armament. While her sides were pierced for ponderous bombards, her
poop and forecastle bristled with the same light secondary armament
as figured in the Mediterranean galley. This artillery was almost
entirely for defence. Before Elizabethan days (as we have already
noted) sea battles were nothing more than hand-to-hand fights; the
attacking vessel was laid alongside its enemy, sails were furled, and
boarding took place. If, after being swept by spherical shot from
the bombards and showers of stones and dice from the mortars and
periers, the boarders could carry the waist of the defending ship,
they still had to capture the barricaded forecastle and poop, from
whose rails a multitude of the smaller ordnance--port-pieces, fowlers,
serpentines--were trained upon them and behind whose bulkheads crossbow
and harquebuss were plied against them in concealment.
The sixteenth century witnessed the greatest strides in the evolution
of sea ordnance. In the Mediterranean the decisive effect of gunfire,
proved in the sea fight off Prevesa in the year 1538, was confirmed
by the victory of the Christians over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571.
In the Atlantic England began her long preparation for securing a sea
supremacy and, under the masterful eye of King Henry VIII, adapted
more and more powerful guns for service in the royal ships. Of the
professional interest which the King took in the development of
ordnance there is ample evidence. At the royal word French and Flemish
gunfounders were induced to come to England to teach the technique of
their craft, and to this puissant prince the Italian savant, Tartaglia,
dedicated his classic treatise on the Art of Shooting. England now
learnt to found, not only bronze, but _cast-iron_ cannon. “Although,”
says Grose, “artillery was used from the time of King Edward III and
purchased from abroad by all our successive Kings, it seems extremely
strange, that none of our workmen attempted to cast them, till the
reign of King Henry VIII, when in 1521, according to Stowe, or 1535
(Camden says), great brass ordnance, as canons and culverins, were
first cast in England by one John Owen, they formerly having been
made in other countries.” And from Stowe’s Chronicle he quotes the
following: “The King minding wars with France, made great preparations
and provision, as well of munitions and artillery as also of brass
ordnance; amongst which at that time one Peter Bawd, a Frenchman born,
a gun-founder or maker of great ordnance, and one other alien, called
Peter Van Collen, a gunsmith, both the King’s feedmen, conferred
together, devised and caused to be made, certain mortar pieces, being
at the mouth from 11 inches, unto 19 inches wide; for the use whereof,
the said Peter and Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of
cast yron, stuffed with fire-works, or wild-fire; whereof the bigger
sort for the same had screws of yron to receive a match to carry fire
kindled, that the fire-work might be set on fire to break in small
pieces the same hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting any
man, would kill or spoil him. And after the King’s return from Bullen,
the said Peter Bawd by himself in the first year of Edward VI did also
make certain ordnance of cast yron of diverse sorts and forms, as
fawconets, falcons, minions, sakers and other pieces.”[47] The casting
of iron guns in Germany has been traced back as far as the fourteenth
century.
According to another account the first English cast-iron guns were
made at Buxted, in Sussex, by one Ralph Hogge in 1543. Peter Bawd,
the French founder, was an assistant who had come to this country to
teach him the method. But it seems that his connection with Hogge was
not of long duration; for, “John Johnson, covenant servant to the said
P. Bawd, succeeded and exceeded his master in this his art of casting
ordnance, making them cleaner and to better proportion. And his son,
Thomas Johnson, a special workman, in and before the year 1595 made
42 cast pieces of great ordnance of iron, for the Earl of Cumberland,
weighing 6000 pounds, or three tons a-piece.”[48]
The advance made in the power of King Henry’s sea ordnance is
unmistakably shown from trustworthy documents. There is a continuous
progress during the reign, and ships which were rebuilt subsequently
carried an armament entirely different from that which they
originally had. The _Sovereign_, for instance, built about the
year 1488, originally carried one hundred and eighty guns, mostly
small serpentines. As rebuilt in A.D. 1509 she carried an armament
which included four curtalls, three demi-curtalls, three culverins,
two falcons, and eleven heavy iron guns. From an inventory of the
armament of the _Henry Grace à Dieu_, of 1514, it appears[49] that
that historic ship was then armed with a miscellaneous collection of
pieces, comprising 122 iron serpentines, 12 “grete yron gonnes of oone
makyng and bygnes,” 12 ditto “that come owt of fflaunders,” all with
separate chambers; 2 “grete Spanish peces of yron of oone sorte,”
with chambers; 18 “stone gonnes apon Trotill wheles,” with chambers;
“ffawcons of Brasse apon Trotill wheles”; one “grete bumberde of Brasse
apon iiij trotill wheles”; two “grete culverynes of Brasse apon unshodd
wheles”; as well as a “grete curtalle of Brasse upon iiij wheles,” a
sling, vice pieces, and serpentines of brass on wheels shod with iron.
Rebuilt at a later date the _Henry_ carried a different armament,
which included brass cannons, demi-cannons, culverins, demi-culverins,
sakers, and cannon-periers.
The transition of armament is plainly marked for us in the case of
the _Mary Rose_, rebuilt in 1536, which nine years later came to an
untimely end off Brading. At the time of her oversetting she carried,
in fact, both types of ordnance. In the Rotunda at Woolwich are to be
seen some of the guns recovered from her wreck: a built-up wrought-iron
breech-loading stone-throwing gun on its baulk-of-timber carriage,
identical in character with a serpentine illustrated in Napoleon III’s
_Études sur l’Artillerie_ as having been taken by the Swiss from
Charles the Bold in A.D. 1476; and a bronze cannon royal (with John
Owen’s name on it), demi-cannon, culverin, and culverin-bastard, all
of them finished specimens of the founder’s art, and of an offensive,
instead of a merely defensive, value. “The system,” says Mr. Oppenheim
of this growth of artillery armament, “was extended as the reign
progressed, and in 1546 we find comparatively small ships like the
_Grand Mistress_ carrying two demi-cannon and five culverins, the
_Swallow_ one demi-cannon and two demi-culverins, out of a total of
eight heavy guns; the _Anne Galant_ four culverins, one curtall, and
two demi-culverins,” etc. etc.
What were the dimensions of the various pieces? It is difficult to
give an exact answer. Owing to the continuous development of ordnance
throughout the century the pieces increased in size while they retained
their class-names, and there is a wide variation between the table of
ordnance of Tartaglia, for instance, compiled in 1537, and those drawn
up by English authors at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Briefly, we may note that pieces could be grouped in four classes:
viz. cannons, culverins, periers, and mortars. The cannons were large
in calibre and of medium length; the culverins were of great length,
to give them high ranging power; the periers, or stone-throwers,
were a sort of howitzer; and the mortars, named probably from the
apothecary’s utensil to which they bore a resemblance, were squat
pieces used for projecting stones or iron balls at a high elevation.
The old stone-throwing serpentine was a gun weighing about 260 pounds,
which fired a stone “as big as a swan’s egg.” The curtall, or curtlow
was (according to Mr. Oppenheim) a heavy gun of some 3000 pounds,
hitherto only used as a siege-piece on land; “courtaulx” are mentioned
by Napoleon III as having been, in A.D. 1498, fifty-pounders weighing
5500 livres. The slings were large breech-loaders, probably of the
perier class.
With the adoption of a more powerful armament not only did the old
pieces disappear, but a simplification of calibres ensued. France led
the way in the standardizing of calibres; about the year 1550 the
French king Henri II introduced his six “calibres of France.” In the
English navy at this period several types were discarded, and a limit
was set to the size of the largest ship gun. “The report drawn up
in 1559 tells us that there were 264 brass and 48 iron guns, all of
calibres down to falconets, on board the ships, and 48 brass and 8 iron
in store.... The heaviest piece used on shipboard was the culverin of
4500 lbs.; throwing a 17⅓ lb. ball with an extreme range of 2500 paces;
the next the demi-cannon weighing 4000 lbs. with a 30⅓ lb. ball and
range of 1700 paces; then the demi-culverin of 3400 lbs., a 9⅓ lb. ball
and 2500 paces; and the cannon petroe, or perier, of 3000 lbs., 24¼-lb.
ball and 1600 paces. There were also sakers, minions, and falconets,
but culverins and demi-culverins were the most useful and became the
favourite ship guns. A contemporary wrote, ‘the founders never cast
them so exactly but that they differ two or three cwt. in a piece,’ and
in a paper of 1564 the average weights of culverins, demi-culverins,
and cannon periers are respectively 3300 lbs., 2500 lbs., and 2000
lbs.”[50]
So far, cast iron had not come into general use. The large iron guns
were built up like the early Flemish bombards; the demi-cannons and
culverins were all of brass. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign
there seems to have been an attempt to replace the expensive brass by
the cheaper cast iron, but later there was a reversion to brass, and
it was not until the following century that cast iron was generally
recognized as a material for heavy ordnance, and then only for the
heaviest types. Some technical considerations may help to indicate the
chief factors which determined the material and the dimensions of the
Elizabethan ordnance.
Writing in 1628, Robert Norton, in his book _The Gunner_, refers as
follows to the early Tudor ordnance. “Gun-founders about 100 or 150
years past,” he says, “did use to cast ordnance more poor, weak, and
much slenderer fortified than now, both here and in foreign parts:
also the rather because saltpetre being either ill or not refined,
their sulphur unclarified, their coals not of good wood, or else ill
burnt, making therewith also their powder evilly receipted, slenderly
wrought, and altogether uncorned, made it prove to be but weak (in
respect of the corned powder used now-a-days), wherefore they also
made their ordnance then accordingly (that is much weaker than now).
For the powder now being double or treble more than it was in force of
rarification and quickness, requireth likewise to encrease the metal
twice or thrice more than before for each piece.” And, in fact, the
weight of cannon increased in the period mentioned from eighty to two
hundred times, the weight of culverins from a hundred to three hundred
times, the weight of their shot. The slender large-bore built-up guns
of the _Henry Grace à Dieu_ could only be used with a weak slow-burning
powder. At the same time this slow-burning powder required, for its
complete combustion, a great length of gun. These guns, such of them as
were breech-loaders, must have suffered from the leakage of gas at the
joints of their primitive chambers; in the case of the smaller pieces a
serious inefficiency was the excessive windage allowed between shot and
gun. Until the end of the sixteenth century the windage bore no direct
relation to the diameter of the shot or bore of the gun: it was a fixed
amount, one quarter of an inch. The effect, therefore, of the leakage
of powder gases past the shot, the loss in efficiency of discharge, was
greatest in the smallest guns.
The lines along which improvement lay were those which were taken.
First, an elimination of the smallest guns. Second, a return to muzzle
loading. Third, a strengthening of the powder by corning. Fourth, a
further fortifying and a general augmenting of the weight of the cast
pieces, which had the double effect of giving the necessary strength
to meet the stronger powders coming into use,[51] and of giving the
extra mass required to minimize the violence of their recoil. Cast
iron could not yet compete with well-found brass for the guns required.
Demi-cannon proved too unwieldy, and as Elizabeth’s reign progressed,
gave place more and more to the long-ranging culverins, demi-culverins,
and sakers, “which strained a ship less, were served more quickly
and by fewer men, and permitted a heavier broadside in the same deck
space.”[52] As powder grew stronger the conditions improved; smaller
charges were necessary, windage had less effect, and, owing to the
quicker combustion, it was possible to shorten the pieces without
detracting seriously from their ranging power; and this was done in
the Queen’s Navy, the guns being thereby made lighter and more easily
manipulated, while at the same time their projecting muzzles were less
liable to entangle and interfere with the tackles of the sails.[53]
The substitution of the powerful, safe, and easily manipulated
demi-cannon and the long-ranging culverin and demi-culverin in place
of the old chambered ordnance of the first half of the century made
possible a new form of naval warfare. The cannon at last became,
in the hands of the Elizabethan seaman, the chief instrument of
battle. Off-fighting was now feasible: a mode of action which largely
neutralized the effects of an enemy’s superiority in size of ship or
number of men, and which gave full scope and advantage to superior
seamanship. Though no high standard of gunnery efficiency was then
possible, yet it was the great superiority of the English gunfire,
principally from the demi-culverins, the sakers, and the minions,
over that of Spain, which conduced more than any other factor to the
dispersal and subsequent flight of the Invincible Armada. The gun was
the weapon on which the English seaman had learnt to rely. It was the
gun, plied with rapidity just out of pistol-shot of his lofty ships,
which in the year 1588 harassed and put to confusion the Spaniard, the
haughty fighter who still maintained a quixotic contempt for the use of
cannon and esteemed artillery “an ignoble arm.”[54] What a volume of
fire was poured against him may be seen from a letter written by the
admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham: “All the world,” he writes, “never
saw such a force as theirs was; and some Spaniards that we have taken,
that were in the fight at Lepanto, do say that the worst of our four
fights that we have had with them did exceed far the fight they had
there; and they say that at some of our fights we had twenty times as
much great shot plied as they had there.”
By this time the founding of guns in cast iron had made progress. Cast
iron was cheap, and of a greater hardness and endurance than bronze,
but more like to crack and fly and endanger the crew, and requiring an
enormous expenditure of wood-charcoal for its production. The use of
mineral coal for iron smelting was not discovered until the following
century, and even then, because of the opposition of the vested
interests, it was long before it displaced the use of timber. In the
Tudor times the iron and brass foundries were nearly all in the wooded
south of England. The rivers of Sussex and Kent had for centuries
been dammed to form hammer-ponds, and the sound of the tilt-hammers
was heard throughout these counties. To such an extent were the
forests depleted of wood to form fuel for the Wealden foundries, that
serious inroads were made on the available supplies of shipbuilding
timber; legislation was required in Elizabeth’s reign to prevent the
charcoal-burner from robbing the shipwright of his raw material.
Gun-founding, even in bronze, was still a somewhat primitive art.
But, once taught, the English founders soon excelled their teachers;
and Norton’s eulogy, and the records of foreign efforts to obtain
possession of English pieces, bear witness to the superiority of our
workmen. The products of the most famous founders of that time in
Europe were very imperfect. “Some of their pieces (and not a few)
are bored awry, their soul not lying in the midst of the body of
metal; some are crooked in their chase, others of unequal bores, some
too light towards the breech turn their mouths downwards in their
discharge, and so endanger their own vawmures and defences; others
are too heavy also in their breach, by placing the trunnions too much
afterwards, that coynes can hardly be drawn.... Some are come forth
of the furnace spongey, or full of honeycombs and flaws, by reason
that the metal runneth not fine, or that the moulds are not thoroughly
dryed, or well nealed.... Yet thus much I dare say to the due
commendations of our English gunfounders, that the ordnance which they
of late years have cast, as well for neatness, as also for reasonable
bestowing and disposing of the metal, they have far excelled all the
former and foreign aforementioned founders.” Norton, a land gunner, was
here referring to brass ordnance, alone used on shore.
Perhaps the most interesting witness to the success of the English
gunfounders is Sir Walter Raleigh, who in his _Discourses_ rebuked the
detestable covetousness of those licensed to sell ordnance abroad. So
great was the number of pieces exported, that all other nations were
equipped with good English artillery for ships and forts and coast
defence. “Without which,” he remarks, “the Spanish King durst not have
dismounted so many pieces of brass in Naples and elsewhere, therewith
to arm his great fleet in ’88. But it was directly proved in the lower
house of parliament of Queen Elizabeth, that there were landed in
Naples above 140 culverins English.... It is lamentable that so many
have been transported into Spain.”
In 1589 Lord Buckhurst wrote to the justices of Lewes Rape, complaining
of their neglect in permitting the surreptitious export of ordnance.
“Their lordships do see the little regard the owners of furnaces and
the makers of these pieces have of their bonds, and how it importeth
the state that the enemy of her Majesty should not be furnished out of
the land with ordnance to annoy us.”
It is not improbable, in short, that some of the Armada’s cannon had
been moulded and poured on English soil.
The imperfection of the sixteenth-century foundry products may
be gauged from Bourne’s evidence that the use of cartridges was
inconvenient because, on account of honeycombs and flaws, “you shall
scant get the cartridge home unto the bottom of the piece.” On the
other hand loading by ladle was still considered dangerous. In his
_Art of Gunnery_, of 1627, Thos. Smith, soldier, of Berwick-on-Tweed,
warns the gunner always to stand to one side of the mouth of the piece
when thrusting home the ladle; otherwise, the charge being ignited by
smouldering débris in the cavities of the metal, it takes fire and
kills the loader--“as happened in Anno 1573 at the siege of Edinborough
Castle, to two experienced gunners.”[55] At about the same date
as Smith’s book was written, Sir H. Manwayring, in _The Sea-Man’s
Dictionary_, described the “arming” of cross-bar shot: i.e. the binding
them with oakum, yarn, or cloth, to prevent their ends from catching
hold in any flaws during their passage through the gun, which might
break it.
§
Under the Stuart kings a continuous development of ship armament took
place.
This development was not always in the right direction. The Commission
of Reform of the year 1618 recorded, as we have already seen, the
importance of artillery in naval warfare, but owing to the absence
of all system it was long before the principle found effective
application. Owing to divided authority, or to a lack of unity in the
conception of the fighting ship, a tendency to excess in the number and
weight of guns continued to be noticeable, an excess which was to react
unfavourably on the performances of our ships both in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
Progress was made in the classification of pieces and in the reduction
of the number of different types carried; a change was also made in
the forms of the guns, in order to enhance the fighting value of the
gun armament in certain circumstances. The great guns were made still
shorter than before; the quicker-burning powders now in use allowed
this to be done. By which expedient the ratio between gun-weight
and weight-of-metal-thrown was reduced; more guns could be carried
for a given weight of metal; they could be more easily manipulated;
and if they were of small ranging power they yet possessed a power
of penetration sufficient for close-quarter fighting. Moreover, the
reduction in length enabled an increase in calibre to be made; and this
was one of the factors which led to the reintroduction of larger types
than had formerly been considered suitable: the cannon-serpentine, the
cannon, and even the cannon-royal, with its sixty-six pound shot and
its eight thousand pounds of metal.[56]
In the Dutch Wars the preponderance in the size and weight of the
unit shot lay with the English ships, and was in itself undoubtedly
a great advantage in their favour; though complaints were made of
the great weight and clumsiness of the pieces, “which caused much of
the straining and rolling at sea.” Writing of naval ordnance in the
year 1690, Sir Cloudesley Shovell recorded that, “our lower-deck guns
are too big and the tackles ill fitted with blocks, which makes them
work heavy; the Dutch who have light guns have lignum vitæ sheaves.
The Dutch guns are seldom larger than twenty-four pounders.” By this
time, it will be noted, the more scientific nomenclature had come into
vogue; the cannon-petro was now known as the 24-pounder, and the heavy
lower-deck guns referred to were the old bastard-cannons, known since
the reorganization of the Commonwealth navy as 42-pounders.
The founding of guns continued to be, throughout the seventeenth
century, an affair of private enterprise. Proof was carried out under
the supervision of the Board of Ordnance.
In 1619 a decree was issued that gun-founding was to be confined
to Kent and Sussex, that guns were to be landed at or shipped from
the Tower Wharf only, and that East Smithfield was to be the one
market-place for their sale or purchase. Guns could be proved only
in Ratcliff fields, and all pieces were to have on them at least two
letters of the founder’s name, with the year and the weight of the gun.
Exportation was illegal; nevertheless the illicit traffic went on just
as in Elizabeth’s time. The royal forts themselves were turned into
marts for these and other unlawful transactions, and Upnor Castle is
described as having been “a staple of stolen goods, a den of thieves, a
vent for the transport of ordnance.”[57]
In later years proof took place at other government grounds, all
within the London area. In Moorfields, according to Stowe, was the
Artillery Yard, “whereunto the gunners of the Tower do weekly repair;
and there, levelling certain brass pieces of great artillery against
a butt of earth made for that purpose, they discharge them for their
exercise.”[58] Spitalfields also had its artillery butts. “Where
Liverpool-street Station now stands the Tower gunners of Elizabeth’s
day had their yard, and there discharged great pieces of artillery for
exercise, while throughout the seventeenth century guns were both cast
and tested in the vicinity, as Gun-street, Fort-street, and Artillery
Lane hard by serve to remind us. Finsbury Field, levelled for an
archery ground in 1498, passed from the London archers to the London
gunners, and, as the Honourable Artillery Company’s Ground, survives to
carry on the long traditions of the spot.”[59]
Under the Commonwealth progress was made in the quality of gunpowder,
and improved methods were introduced of testing it for strength
and uniformity. This advance had its effect on the guns. Failures
were frequent, and, in spite of improved founding, pieces had to be
made heavier than before; cast iron in particular was found unequal
to withstanding the stresses caused by the improved powders, and
this metal came into such disfavour that a whole century elapsed
before it was again accepted as suitable by both naval and military
artillerists. Founding in bronze had undergone improvement. Malthus, an
Englishman who had risen in the French service to be Director of their
Artillery,[60] mentions in his _Pratique de la Guerre_, as evidence of
this improvement, the fact that in breaking up old pieces lumps of free
tin and copper were frequently discovered, whereas in the case of new
guns the metal was invariably found well-mixed.
Somewhere between the years 1665 and 1680--presumably later than
1667--the proof of ordnance was transferred from Moorfields to the
naval depôt at Woolwich, and the nerves of the metropolis were no
longer shaken by the roar of pieces loaded with powder charges equal,
for proof, to one-and-a-half times the weight of the shots themselves.
A proof-master and “his Majesty’s founder of brass and iron ordnance”
were instituted to supervise and advise the various contractors. The
State did not at first take over the work of casting its own guns. But
in 1716 an event occurred which brought about the formation of the
Royal Gun Factory, and the manufacture of both land and sea ordnance
by the state. A disastrous accident occurred in the City of London. It
happened that, after the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the guns captured by
Marlborough from the French had been exhibited outside the Moorfields
foundry. Three years later they were still there, and, the national
ordnance being much depleted by the late wars, it was resolved to
recast these pieces and so utilise their metal. On the appointed date a
large concourse of the public attended to witness the operation. Late
at night the metal was poured. A big explosion ensued, owing to the use
of damp moulds, and a number of people were killed and injured.
To avoid a recurrence of such an accident it was decided that the
government should possess a brass foundry of their own. The services of
an able foreigner, Andrew Schalk of Douai, were sought, and the Royal
Foundry at Woolwich was established with Schalk as master founder. The
change was a complete success, and Schalk held the position for the
next sixty years. Some of his guns, cast in the year 1742, were raised
from the “Royal George” in 1840.[61]
By the middle of the eighteenth century the processes of gunnery had
been placed for the first time on a scientific foundation; by whom, and
in what manner, we shall describe in a later chapter.
The design of guns had by this time become subject to more scientific
consideration than had hitherto been bestowed, and their manufacture
had been improved by the Swiss invention of the boring machine, which
enabled them to be cast solid instead of being cast hollow on a core.
Iron guns came more and more into favour as the century progressed,
especially for naval use. The cost of iron was only one-eighth that of
brass. The art of casting iron in homogeneous masses had by this time
made progress, and though hitherto it had been the custom to make iron
ordnance of great thickness and weight, repeated trial proved that they
could be made lighter, if required, without undue loss of strength, and
that in action they outlasted brass ordnance, which cracked, bent at
the muzzle, and wore out at the vent. A well-made iron gun was almost
indestructible. At the siege of Belleisle, in the Seven Years’ War, the
brass guns soon wore out, and had to be replaced by iron ship guns;
and it was long, indeed, before a suitable brass was discovered, which
would withstand the repeated fire of large charges without losing its
tin-element and degenerating into a spongy and craterous material.
Muller, in his _Treatise of Artillery_, of 1768, described how he had
seen cast iron at the Carron works so tough that “it would flatten
and tear like brass”; and advocated iron guns of a new and light
construction to replace Schalk’s brass guns forming the armament of the
_Royal George_, and give a saving in weight of over a hundred and sixty
tons.
[Illustration: FRENCH TWENTY-FOUR-POUNDER WITH SPHERICAL CHAMBER
From St. Remy’s _Mémoires_]
In respect of design, the newly acquired knowledge of the true
principles governing internal ballistics began gradually, in the
latter part of the century, to show its effect. Hitherto, ever since
gunpowder had been in military use, pieces had been cast in masses
of varying size and shape and ornamented to please the fancy of the
founder. Cannon had been made with double or triple reinforces of
metal, so that their exterior surface was stepped longitudinally from
muzzle to breech. Experience probably pointed out on many occasions
the bad design of a piece whose sections showed sudden alterations in
shape; but it was not till after the middle of the eighteenth century
that this consideration was discussed by a professional. “Since powder
acts uniformly and not by starts it is hard to judge from whence this
ridiculous custom has arisen.... There should be no breakings in the
metal.” The piece, continues Muller, should be of cylindrical bore, and
its outer contour should be a curve slightly concave, corresponding
presumably to the curve of the powder pressure. But as this curve would
be difficult to find, he recommends a sloping straight line from breech
to muzzle as sufficiently exact for practical purposes.
Innumerable experiments were made in the first half of this century
with a view to improving the efficiency of combustion in guns, and
much argument centred round such subjects as the shape of the chamber
and the position of the vent. In France pieces were adopted having
spherical chambers: it being proved that, with the charge concentrated
in a spherical cavity, as much power could be obtained as from a larger
and heavier flush-chambered gun. But such pieces were dangerous. Not
only was their recoil so violent as to break their carriages, but
many good gunners lost their arms while charging chambers in which
smouldering debris lay hidden. The spherical chamber was abandoned.[62]
It may be said that the design and manufacture of guns has now entered
the scientific stage. Art there still is, but it lies below the
surface. The old “vain ornaments” preserved by tradition are thrown
away: the scrolls, mouldings, and excrescences which broke the surface
of the metal; the ogees, fillets, and astragals which ran riot over the
products of some foundries; the muzzle swells which by their weight
caused the chase to droop; the grotesque cascabels. All mouldings, said
Muller, should be as plain and simple as possible; the trunnions should
be on the axis of the piece; the windage of all types of guns should be
smaller, and there should be more moderation in the charges used.
In time all these improvements came. The smooth-bore gun, strengthened
and simplified, preserved its establishment in the navy far into the
nineteenth century, as will later appear. For the present we must
confine ourselves to noting that, in the final stages of its evolution
it received improvement in form from two distinguished artillerists
whose influence was progressive in the whole realm of gunnery: Generals
Congreve[63] and Blomefield.[64] There is yet another eminent officer
of this period to whom the navy owes a debt incalculable: Who can
assess the value of the work done by General Sir Howard Douglas in his
classic treatise on Naval Gunnery?
To the foregoing survey of the evolution of heavy ordnance we now
append a few notes on the evolution of the material of purely land
artillery: from which it will be seen that, while the intensive
competition of great armies resulted in much of this latter evolution
originating among the continental powers, the share of this country in
initiating improvement was, in the latter years, by no means negligible.
§
It will be noted by the student of European history as significant,
that superiority of artillery material has almost invariably marched
with national power. Thus in the past the evolution of artillery has
been the monopoly of no one nation; it has been progressed by each in
turn; each in turn has attained superiority, and each has contributed
something of importance to it, in the day of its greatness.
Two ancient and preventable practices seem to have operated in chief
measure to retard the progressive development of a mobile land
artillery: first, the custom of setting the trunnions of a gun at
an appreciable distance below the horizontal plane of the gun-axis;
second, the custom of making small pieces relatively longer than those
of larger calibre.
[Illustration: From Binning’s _A Light to the Art of Gunnery_, A.D.
1689]
The first guns had no trunnions. To obtain the requisite angle of
elevation the piece was laid in a dug-out trunk or carriage and this
carriage was set on trestles; in which manner, it appears, the English
at the siege of Orleans in A.D. 1428 “threw into the town from their
bombards large numbers of stones which, flying over the walls, smashed
in the roofs of houses.”[65] During the fifteenth century trunnions
came into use, and the carriages were mounted on wheels. In his
_Introduction of Artillery into Switzerland_ a French writer, Colonel
Massé, has given an account of the early evolution of an artillery
of position, as used by the Swiss and their enemies in the fifteenth
century. The huge siege bombards, possessed by most of the great
cities at the end of the fourteenth century, were too cumbrous for
transport. Built up of welded and coiled iron, and therefore without
trunnions, they were replaced, toward A.D. 1443, by lighter pieces
on wheeled carriages. And before the Burgundian War “coulevrines de
campagne” were being cast in Switzerland, of bronze, with trunnions
to give each piece an elevation independently of its carriage. Relics
are still preserved which show the gun-trunnion in its early stages,
as embodied in the Burgundian artillery of Charles the Bold. The
first method of obtaining elevation for the gun was by hinges or
trunnions on the front of the carriage or trunk, in combination with
a curved rack erected on the trail for supporting the rear end. Then
the trunk disappeared; the trunnions were cast on the gun, whose
cascabel was supported by a cross-pin between the flanks of the trail;
and then the cross-pin was made removable, and a series of holes was
provided for its reception, to give the elevation desired. At first
these trunnions were cast level with the gun axis; in Napoleon III’s
treatise on artillery is a picture of a trunnion gun taken by the
Swiss from Charles the Bold in 1476, and another of a cannon of Louis
XI, cast in 1478, and in both cases the trunnions are level with the
gun axis. But pieces cast later almost invariably had their trunnions
set on a level with the bottom of the bore; partly, perhaps, for the
insignificant reason given by Norton--that “lying somewhat under the
concave cylinder of the bore they will the better support the great
weight”--but primarily to ensure a downward pressure on the quoin or
trail when discharge took place. The effect of this trivial alteration
was enormous. The impulse of the recoil was given a moment about the
trunnion axis which, as the force of powders increased, produced an
increasingly great downward pressure on the trail. Carriages, though
made of massive scantlings, frequently broke; nor was it till the
latter half of the eighteenth century that the cause was removed, the
trunnions being raised nearer the axes of the guns and the carriages
being thereby relieved of the excessive cross-strains which they had
borne for nearly three hundred years. Muller, in his Artillery, refers
to the “absurd method” of placing the trunnions so low and, in the year
1768, points out the advantages to be gained by raising them. “Writers
do not appear to have had any idea,” says Favé, “of the effect which
the position of the trunnions had on the stressing of the carriage.”
Scharnhorst the Prussian gives as an important advantage to be gained
by raising the trunnions, the larger wheels which could be employed
without adding to the height of the gun above the ground.
Progress was also checked by the great length given to the smaller
varieties of cannon. With the fine powder of the Middle Ages a great
length of barrel was necessary to ensure complete combustion, and such
primitive observations as were made all seemed to prove that, the
longer the barrel the greater the range. But with the introduction of
corned powder a reduction in length should have been possible. No such
change was made. Tradition had consecrated long guns, and official
standardization of types afterwards helped to oppose any innovation in
this respect until the eighteenth century, with few exceptions.
To Charles V of Spain belongs the credit for the first systematic
classification of guns. In his hands artillery had, for the first time,
become an efficient instrument of battle in land campaigns, and all
Europe saw that, in his batteries of bronze trunnion-guns, on wheeled
carriages, firing cast-iron balls against foe or crumbling masonry, a
new power had arisen.[66] The emperor, experiencing the inconvenience
of a multiplicity of types and calibres, sought to simplify his
material. Accordingly, in the year 1544 or shortly before, he approved
seven models to which all pieces in use throughout the vast possessions
of the Spanish monarchy were thenceforth to conform. These seven types
comprised a cannon (a 40-pounder), a cannon-moyen (24-pounder), two
12-pounder culverins, two 6-pounder culverins, and a 3-pounder falcon.
The French soon improved on Charles’ example. The oldest patterns
of their cannon, according to a table given by St. Remy in his
_Mémoires_, were of a uniform length of ten feet. In A.D. 1550 Henri II
issued an edict restricting the number of different calibres to six,
named as follows:--
Canon, a 33-pounder, 10½ feet long, weighing 5200 livres, drawn by
21 horses.
Grande coulevrine, a 15-pounder, 11 feet long, weighing 4000
livres, drawn by 17 horses.
Coulevrine bâtarde, a 7-pounder, 9 feet long, weighing 2500 livres,
drawn by 11 horses.
Coulevrine moyenne, a 2-pounder, 8½ feet long, weighing 1200
livres, drawn by 4 horses.
Faucon, a 1-pounder, 7½ feet long, weighing 700 livres, drawn by 3
horses.
Fauconneau, a ¾-pounder, 7 feet long, weighing 410 livres, drawn by
2 horses.
These dimensions are only a rough approximation. In the year 1584 two
other types, found useful by the Spaniards in the Low Countries, were
included--a 12- and a 24-pounder.
The relatively greater lengths of the small pieces will be noted. As
it was with the French, so it was with other nations, and the list of
Italian ordnance given in Tartaglia’s _Art of Shooting_ shows a general
resemblance to that of Henri II. The desire for a maximum of ranging
power, and the necessity of making the smaller pieces long enough to
enter the embrasures of fortifications, and strong enough to fire
many more rounds than those of the largest size, tended to cause an
augmentation in their size and weight; difficulties of transport had an
effect in imposing a limit of weight on the largest guns which in the
case of the smaller pieces did not operate to the same degree.
Nevertheless, the French possessed, from 1550 onwards, an organized
artillery suitable for transport on campaigns. The six calibres were
mounted on wheeled carriages, horse-drawn, from which they could be
fired; they were moved, muzzles foremost, with their ponderous trails
dragging on the ground in rear.
At that point French artillery remained, or with little advance beyond
it, until the middle of the eighteenth century. In the Germanic states,
on the other hand, important progress was made: by the end of the
sixteenth century shorter pieces, shell-fire from mortars, and the use
of elevated fire for varying ranges, had been adopted. But the chief
centre of artillery progress at the end of the sixteenth century was
the Low Countries, then in the thick of their warfare with Spain. “In
their glorious struggle for independence their artillery contrived to
avail itself of the latest and best theory and practice, to employ
cannons and carriages of simplicity and uniformity; and it has endowed
the art of war with two inventions of the first order--the hand-grenade
and the bomb.”[67]
In the first half of the seventeenth century the genius of Gustavus
Adolphus gave a new value to land ordnance. He made it mobile. He
divided his artillery into two categories, Siege and Field, and for the
latter devised the famous light “leather guns” which, operating in mass
on certain points, had an important effect on the issue of battles.
But after his death at Lützen in 1632 the effort to attain mobility
relaxed; an increase in the strength of powders at this time rendered
the possibility still more remote; and it was not until the following
century that the Prussians, under Frederick the Great, evolved a
satisfactory light artillery. Both in Prussia and in Austria great
efforts were made, in the middle of the eighteenth century, to evolve
a mobile and efficient ordnance. The Seven Years’ War found the former
state experimenting with pieces varying in weight between eighty and a
hundred and fifty times the weight of their ball; and in 1762 a certain
French observer, who was destined to become famous as one of the great
artillery reformers of all time, wrote letters from Vienna describing
the fine qualities of the Austrian service: with its pieces all sixteen
calibres in length, all 115 times their balls in weight, all bored to
their true nominal dimensions, and firing accurately spherical balls
of correct size, with a small windage and a powder-charge of less than
one-third the weight of the shot.
In the years immediately following the close of the Seven Years’
War the lessons learned at Vienna were translated into practice in
France. By 1765 Gribeauval had begun his reorganization of the French
material. In order to obtain mobility he made new models of 12, 8, and
4-pounders, very plain, unchambered pieces, each eighteen calibres
in length, 150 times its own shot in weight, and firing well-fitting
balls with unprecedented precision, with powder-charges of one-third
the weight of the balls. Limbers, in the form of small-trucked bogies,
had been in occasional use ever since the sixteenth century. Gribeauval
introduced large-wheeled limbers, and dragged his 12-pounders by six,
his 8- and 4-pounders by four horses. From the number of horses, as
compared with that of the edict of Henri II, one can measure the
progress made in two centuries. The whole of Gribeauval’s material
was designed to afford rapid transport and rapid and accurate fire;
interchangeability of wheels and other parts formed a novel and
important element of the standardization which he accomplished. Iron
axle-trees, cartridges (used with effect by Gustavus in the preceding
century), elevating screws, tangent scales, and other improvements were
adopted under his authority. But, “Gribeauval could not force on France
the two great inventions of the century--the limber-box and the Horse
Artillery.”[68]
The horse, or flying, artillery, designed to be attached to, and
supported by, cavalry, as field or foot artillery was attached to
infantry, was a Prussian invention. It was adopted by France after the
outbreak of the Revolution, and almost simultaneously it appeared in
the British army.[69]
By the end of the century all the great Powers had adopted Gribeauval’s
system in most of its important parts: notably in the grouping of
artillery into the three categories--siege, field, and coast defence.
Progress continued. In the opening years of the next century a
new competitor among the Powers began to attract attention by its
proficiency. “In the first campaigns of the Revolution the English
artillery showed itself less advanced than that of several other
powers. But so well did it succeed in ameliorating its condition that
when it reappeared on the Continent to take an active part in the
Peninsular War it was seen to be itself worthy in its turn to serve as
a model.”
This is the tribute paid by Colonel Favé.
It is evident from his further remarks that the English artillery
surprised its adversaries, not only by its superior mobility, but
by the effectiveness of its innovations, two of which, especially,
proved to be inventions of the first order--Shrapnel’s projectiles and
Congreve’s war-rockets. France recognized the high efficiency of its
opponent artillery, and some years later adopted a material embodying
some of its most important features. Experiments were made, and
comparative trials carried out, with modified English and modified
Gribeauval equipments. The former were preferred, and a new series of
designs was introduced and approved: this becoming known as “the system
of 1827.”
Three years later war experience led to investigations in France
which caused a revolution in artillery material. In a few years’ time
smooth-bore cannon were being converted to rifles, for use both on land
and sea.
CHAPTER III
THE STEAM ENGINE
The greatest of the world’s inventions appear to have had a very casual
birth. So much an affair of chance has been their first manifestation,
that science has not been called in aid; no law can be discerned which
might govern the time and sequence of their coming; they seem to have
been stumbled on, unpedigreed offspring of accident and time. A monk of
Metz discovers gunpowder. “Surely,” says Fuller, “ingenuity may seem
transposed, and to have crossed her hands, when about the same time
a soldier found out printing.” “It should seem,” writes Lord Bacon,
“that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat for surgery, or
to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for some part of physic, or
to the pot-lid that flew open for artillery, or generally to chance,
or anything else, than to logic for the invention of the Arts and
Sciences.” So it seemed. And in due time the legend of the pot-lid
was woven round the unfortunate Marquis of Worcester, who, tradition
had it, made the discovery of the steam engine by observation of the
stew-pot in which, when confined a prisoner in the Tower, he was
engaged in cooking his dinner. At a later date and in another form the
story was connected with James Watt.
In reality, the story of the discovery of the steam engine is far more
inspiring. The history of the application of steam to human use is
almost the history of science itself; the stages of its development are
clearly marked for us; and the large succession of these stages, and
the calibre of the minds which contributed to the achievement of the
perfected steam engine, are some measure of the essential complexity
of what is to-day regarded as a comparatively simple machine. For the
steam engine was not the gift of any particular genius or generation;
it did not leap from any one man’s brain. Some of the greatest names
in the history of human knowledge can claim a share in its discovery.
From philosopher to scientist, from scientist to engineer the grand
idea was carried on, gradually taking more and more concrete form,
until finally, in an age when by the diffusion of knowledge the labours
of all three were for the first time co-ordinated, it was brought
to maturity. A new force of nature was harnessed which wrought a
revolution in the civilized world.
An attempt is made in this chapter to chronicle the circumstances under
which the successive developments of the steam engine took place. The
progress of the scientific ideas which led up to the discovery of the
power of steam is traced. The claims of the various inventors chiefly
associated with the steam engine are set forth in some detail, not for
the difficult and invidious task of assessing their relative merits,
but because by the light of these claims and altercations it may be
possible to discern, in each case, where the merit lay and to what
stage each novelty of idea or detail properly belonged. From this point
of view, it is thought, the recital of circumstances which hitherto
have been thought so trivial as to be scarcely worthy of record, may be
of some suggestive value. The result of the investigation is to make
clear the scientific importance of the steam engine: the steam engine
regarded, not as the familiar drudge and commonplace servant of to-day,
but in all its dignity of a thermodynamic machine, that scientific
device which embodied so much of the natural philosophy of the age
which first unveiled it--the seventeenth century.
§
Before the Christian era steam had been used to do mechanical work.
In a treatise, _Pneumatica_, written by Hero of Alexandria about 130
B.C., mention is made of a primitive reaction turbine, which functioned
by the reactionary force of steam jets thrown off tangentially from
the periphery of a wheel. In the same work another form of heat-engine
is described: an apparatus in which, by the expansion from heating of
air contained in a spherical vessel, water was expelled from the same
vessel to a bucket, where by its weight it gave motion mysteriously
to the doors of temples. And evidence exists that in these two forms
heat engines were used in later centuries for such trivial purposes as
the blowing of organs and the turning of spits. But except in these
two primitive forms no progress is recorded for seventeen centuries
after the date of Hero’s book. The story of the evolution of steam as a
motive force really begins, with the story of modern science itself, at
the end of the Middle Ages.
With the great revival of learning which took place in Southern Europe
in the latter part of the fifteenth century new light came to be thrown
on the classical philosophies which still ruled men’s minds, and modern
science was born. New views on natural phenomena began to irradiate,
and, sweeping aside the myths and traditions which surrounded and
stifled them, the votaries of the “new science” began to formulate
opinions of the boldest and most unorthodox description.[70] The true
laws of the equilibrium of fluids, discovered originally by Archimedes,
were rediscovered by Stevinus. By the end of the sixteenth century the
nature of the physical universe was become a pursuit of the wisest men.
To Galileo himself was due, perhaps, the first distinct conception of
the power of steam or any other gas to do mechanical work; for “he,
the Archimedes of his age, first clearly grasped the idea of force as
a mechanical agent, and extended to the external world the conception
of the invariability of the relation between cause and effect.”[71]
To his brilliant pupil Torricelli the questioning world was indebted
for the experiments which showed the true nature of the atmosphere,
and for the theory he proclaimed that the atmosphere by its own weight
exerted its fluid pressure--a theory which Pascal soon confirmed by the
famous ascent of his barometer up the Puy-de-Dôme, which demonstrated
that the pressure supporting his column of mercury grew less as the
ascent proceeded. Giovanni della Porta, in a treatise on pneumatics
published in the year 1601, had already made two suggestions of the
first importance. Discussing Hero’s door-opening apparatus, della
Porta showed that steam might be substituted for air as the expanding
medium, and that, by condensing steam in a closed vessel, water might
be sucked up from a lower level by virtue of the vacuum so formed. And
a few years later, in 1615, Solomon de Caus, a French engineer, had
come to England with a scheme almost identical with della Porta’s, and
actually constructed a plant which forced up water to a height by means
of steam. Shortly afterwards the “new science” received an accession of
interest from the invention, by Otto von Guericke of Magdeburg, of a
suction pump by which the atmospheric air could be abstracted from a
closed vessel.
By the middle of this century the learned of all European countries had
been attracted by the knowledge gained of the material universe. In
England the secrets of science were attacked with enthusiasm under the
new strategy of Lord Bacon, enunciated in his _Novum Organum_. The new
philosophy was patronised by royalty itself, and studied by a company
of brilliant men of whom the leading physicist was Robert Boyle, soon
famous for his law connecting the volumes and the pressures of gases.
In France, too, a great enthusiasm for science took birth. A group of
men, of whom the most eminent was Christian Huyghens, banded themselves
together to further scientific inquiry into the phenomena of nature
and to demolish the reigning myths and fallacies: they also working
admittedly by the experimental method of Bacon.
The time was ripe, however, for wider recognition of these scientists
and the grand object of their labours. Within a short time the two
groups were both given the charter of their respective countries;
in France they were enrolled as the Royal Academy of Sciences; in
England, as the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge. In
other countries societies of a similar kind were formed, but their
influence was not comparable with that exerted by the societies of
London and Paris. Between these two a correspondence was started which
afterwards developed into one of the most famous of publications:
the _Philosophical Transactions_. In England, especially, the Royal
Society served from its inception as a focus for all the great minds
of the day, and in time brought together such men as Newton, Wren,
Hooke, Wallis, Boyle--not to mention his majesty King Charles himself;
who, with the best intentions, could not always take seriously the
speculations of the savants. “Gresham College he mightily laughed at,”
noted Mr. Pepys in his diary for the first of February, 1663, “for
spending time only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since
they sat.” A year later Pepys was himself admitted a member of the
distinguished company, and found it “a most acceptable thing to hear
their discourse, and see their experiments, which were this day on
fire, and how it goes out in a place where the air is not free, and
sooner out in a place where the ayre is exhausted, which they showed by
an engine on purpose.”
§
In the year 1663, just after the formation of the Royal Society, a
small book was published by the Marquis of Worcester, _A Century of the
Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as he had tried and perfected_.
Of these inventions one, the sixty-eighth, is thus described:
“An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by
drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the Philosopher
calleth it, _Intra sphæram activitatis_, which is but at such a
distance. But this way hath no bounder, if the vessels be strong
enough; for I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end
was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping and
screwing up the broken end, as also the touch-hole; and making a
constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a
great crack. So that having a way to make my vessels, so that they are
strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the
other; I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream forty
foot high; one vessel of water rarified by fire driveth up forty of
cold water. And a man that tends the work is but to turn two cocks,
that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and
refill with cold water, and so successfully, the fire being tended
and kept constant, which the selfsame person may likewise abundantly
perform in the interim between the necessity of turning the said cocks.”
On this evidence the claim is made that the marquis was the original
inventor of the steam engine. Is he at all entitled to the honour? The
whole affair is still surrounded with mystery. It is known that he was
an enthusiastic student of physical science, and that for years he had
working for him a Dutch mechanic, Caspar Kaltoff; it seems certain
that he actually made a water-pumping engine worked by steam, of whose
value he was so impressed that he promised to leave the drawings of
it to Gresham College and intended to have a model of it buried with
him.[72] But neither model nor drawings has ever yet been traced. And,
considering the social influence of the inventor and the importance
of the invention, the silence of his contemporaries on the discovery
is strange and inexplicable. He received a patent for some form of
water-pumping engine. Distinguished visitors came to Vauxhall to see
his engine at work. He numbered among his acquaintances Sir Jonas
Moore, Sir Samuel Morland, Flamstead and Evelyn: probably Mr. Pepys,
Sir W. Petty, and others of the group of eminent men of his time who
were interested in natural science. Yet no trace of his inventions has
come down to us. His _Century_ was admittedly compiled from memory--“my
former notes being lost”--and perhaps it was designedly obscure;
science was at that time a hobby of the cultured few, and scientific
men loved to mystify each other by the exhibition, without explanation,
of paradoxes and toys of their own construction. The marquis, it will
be agreed, left valuable hints to later investigators. Whether his
claim to have invented the steam engine is sufficiently substantiated,
we leave to the opinion of the interested reader, who will find most
of the evidence on this subject in Dirck’s _Life of the Marquis of
Worcester_.
The power of steam to drive water from a lower to a higher level had
been shown by Solomon de Caus,[73] who, in his work, _Les Raisons des
Forces Mouvantes_, published in A.D. 1615, had described a hot-water
fountain operated by heating water in a globe. In Van Etten’s
_Récreation Mathematique_ of 1629 was an experiment, described fifty
years later by Nathaniel Nye in his _Art of Gunnery_ as a “merry
conceit,” showing how the force of steam could be used to discharge a
cannon. As the century advanced the ornamental was gradually superseded
by the utilitarian; the usefulness of steam for draining fens, pumping
out mines, was realized; and applications for patents to cover the use
of new and carefully guarded inventions began to appear.
Gunpowder as a medium was a strong competitor of steam. In 1661 King
Charles granted to Sir Samuel Morland, his master of mechanics, “for
the space of fourteen years, to have the sole making and use of a new
invention of a certain engine lately found out and devised by him, for
the raising of water out of any mines, pits, or other places, to any
reasonable height, and by the force of air and powder conjointly.”
What form the engine took is not known; whether the gunpowder was
used to produce a gaseous pressure by which the work was done, or
whether its function was to displace air and thus cause a vacuum as
its gases cooled. In France, too, efforts were made at this time to
produce a gunpowder engine. In 1678 a Jean de Hautefeuille raised
water by gunpowder, but authorities differ as to whether he employed
a piston--which were then in use as applied to pumps--or whether he
burned the powder so that the gases came in actual contact with the
water. In the following year an important advance was made. Huyghens
constructed an engine having a piston and cylinder, in which gunpowder
was used to form a vacuum, the atmospheric pressure providing the
positive force to produce motion; and in 1680 he communicated to the
Academy of Sciences a paper entitled, “A new motive power by means of
gunpowder and air.”
But it was to his brilliant pupil, Denis Papin, that we are indebted
for a further step in the materialization of the steam engine. Papin
suggested the use of steam for gunpowder.
In 1680 Papin, who like Solomon de Caus had brought his scientific
conceptions to England in the hope of their furtherance, was admitted
on the recommendation of Boyle to a fellowship of the Royal Society.
After a short absence he returned to London in ’84 and filled for a
time the post of curator to the society, meeting, doubtless, in that
capacity the leading scientists of the day and coming in touch with all
the practical efforts of English inventors. During his stay here he
worked with enthusiasm at the production of a prime mover, and when he
left in ’87 for a mathematical professorship in Germany he continued
there his researches and experienced repeated failures. In a paper
published in ’88 he showed a clear conception of a reciprocating engine
actuated by atmospheric pressure, and in ’90 he suggested for the first
time the use of steam for forming the vacuum required. As water, he
wrote, has elasticity when fire has changed it into vapour, and as
cold will condense it again, it should be possible to make engines
in which, by the use of heat, water would provide the vacuum which
gunpowder had failed to give. This memorable announcement gave a clear
direction to the future development of the heat engine. Steam was the
medium best suited for utilizing the expansive power of heat generated
by the combustion of fuel; steam was the medium which, by its expansive
and contractile properties, could be made to impart a movement _de va
et vient_ to a piston. Though Papin did not succeed in putting his idea
into practical form his conception was of great value, and he must be
counted as one of the principal contributors to the early development
of the steam engine. His life was an accumulation of apparent failures
ending in abject poverty. To-day he is honoured by France as the
inventor of the steam engine, and at Blois a statue has been erected
and a street named to his memory.
Before the end of the century an effective engine had been produced, in
England.
In 1698 Thomas Savery, a Devonshire man, obtained a patent for “a new
invention for raising of water and occasioning motion to all sorts of
millwork by the impellent force of fire.” Before the king at Hampton
Court a model of this invention was displayed, and the importance of
the new discovery was soon realized by the landed classes; for in the
following year an act of parliament was passed for the encouragement
of the inventor and for his protection in the development of what, it
was recognized, was likely to prove of great use to the public. In the
same year Savery published a pamphlet called _The Miner’s Friend_, and
republished it, with additions, in 1702. This pamphlet contained a full
and clear description of his engine; but significance has been attached
to the omission from it of any claim that it embodied a new idea. The
omission may be accidental.
The steam engine, shown in the accompanying illustration, was simply
a pump, whose cycle of operations was as follows. Steam, admitted
into the top of a closed vessel containing water and acting directly
against the water, forced it through a pipe to a level higher than
the vessel itself. Then, the vessel being chilled and the steam in it
thereby condensed, more water was sucked into the vessel from a lower
level to fill the vacuum thus formed; this water was expelled by steam
in the same way as before, cocks being manipulated, and, eventually,
self-acting valves being placed, so as to prevent the water from
returning by the way it came. Two chambers were used, operating
alternately.
For this achievement Savery is by many regarded as the first and
true inventor. He certainly was the first to make the steam engine a
commercial success, and up and down the country it was extensively used
for pumping water and for draining mines. By others Savery was regarded
as a copyist; and indeed it is difficult to say how far originality
should be assigned him. The marquis too had claimed to raise water; his
engine had evidently acted with a pair of displacement-chambers, from
each of which alternately water was forced by steam while the other
vessel was filling. And if he did not specify or appreciate the effect
of the contractile force of the steam when condensed, yet in this
respect both inventors had been anticipated by Giovanni della Porta.
[Illustration: Steam from Boiler.
SAVERY’S ENGINE]
The marquis had a violent champion in Dr. Desaguliers, who in his
_Experimental Philosophy_, published in 1743, imputed disreputable
conduct to the later inventor. “Captain Savery,” said the doctor,
“having read the Marquis of Worcester’s book, was the first who put
into practice the raising of water by fire. His engine will easily
appear to have been taken from the Marquis of Worcester; though Captain
Savery denied it, and the better to conceal the matter, bought all the
Marquis of Worcester’s books that he could purchase in Pater-Noster
Row and elsewhere, and burned them in the presence of the gentleman
his friend, who told me this. He said that he found out the power of
steam by chance, and invented the following story to persuade people to
believe it, viz. that having drunk a flask of Florence at a tavern, and
thrown the empty flask upon the fire, he called for a bason of water to
wash his hands, and perceiving that the little wine left in the flask
had filled the flask with steam, he took the flask by the neck and
plunged the mouth of it under the surface of the water in the bason,
and the water in the bason was immediately driven up into the flask by
the pressure of the air. Now, he never made such an experiment then,
nor designedly afterwards, which I shall thus prove,” etc. etc.
Other writers saw no good reason for depriving the captain of the title
of inventor. With reference to the book-burning allegation, the only
evidence tending to substantiate it lay in the fact that the book “on
a sudden became very scarce, and but few copies of it were afterwards
seen, and then only in the libraries of the curious.”[74] It has been
remarked, also, that Desaguliers was himself to some extent a rival
claimant, several improvements, such as the substitution of jet for the
original surface condensation being due to him; and that this fact gave
a palpable bias to his testimony on the work of others.
In recent years the claims of Savery have been upheld, as against
those of the marquis, by a writer who argued, not only that the engine
of the marquis had never passed the experimental stage, but that no
counter-claim was made by his successors at the time Savery produced
his engine and obtained his patent. “Although a patent for ninety-nine
years (from 1663 to 1762) was granted the marquis, yet Captain Savery
and his successors under his patents which extended for thirty-five
years (from 1698 to 1733) compelled every user of Newcomen’s and other
steam engines to submit to the most grinding terms and no one attempted
to plead that Savery’s patents were invalidated by the Marquis of
Worcester’s prior patents.”[75]
By the admirers of Papin it has been claimed that it was from him that
Savery received his idea. “After having minutely compared Savery’s
machine,” says a biographer of Papin, “one arrives at the conviction
that _Savery discovered nothing_. He had borrowed from Solomon de Caus
the use of steam as a motive force, perfected by the addition of a
second chamber; from Papin, the condensation of the steam.... And as
for the piston, borrowed ten years later by Newcomen, that was wholly
Papin’s.”[76]
Suppose it true; even so, his countrymen would always think great
credit attaches to Savery for his achievement.
His engine, though used extensively for lifting water through small
distances, was exceedingly wasteful of fuel, nor could it be used
conveniently for pumping out mines or for other purposes in which a
large lift was required. The lift or “head” was directly proportional
to the steam pressure. Efforts to improve the lift by augmenting the
steam pressure resulted in endless accidents and discouragement; the
solder of the engine melted when steam of a higher pressure was used,
the joints blew open and the chambers burst.
Living at Dartmouth, within some fifteen miles of Savery’s home, were
two men, Newcomen, an ironmonger, and Cawley, a glazier. These two had,
doubtless, every opportunity of seeing Savery’s engine at work. They
appreciated its limitations and defects, and, undertaking the task of
improving it, they so transformed the steam engine that within a short
time their design had almost entirely superseded the more primitive
form. Here, too, it might be said that they invented nothing. The merit
of their new machine consisted in the achievement in practical form
of ideas which hitherto had had scarcely more than an academic value.
The labours of others gave them valuable aid. Newcomen, it is certain,
could claim considerable knowledge of science, and though little is
known of his personality there is evidence that he had pursued for
years the object which he now achieved. He knew of the previous forms
of piston engine which had been invented. He had probably read a
translation, published in the _Philosophical Transactions_, of Papin’s
proposal for an atmospheric engine with a vacuum produced by the
condensation of steam. He obtained from Savery the idea of a separate
boiler, and other details. And where Papin had failed, Newcomen and
his partner succeeded. Their Atmospheric Steam Engine, as it was
aptly called, was produced in the year 1705, and at once proved its
superiority over the old “Miner’s Friend.” It had assumed an entirely
new form. In a large-bore vertical cylinder a brass piston was fitted,
with a leather flap round its edge and a layer of water standing on
it to form a seal against the passage of steam or air. The top of the
cylinder was open to the atmosphere, the bottom was connected by a pipe
with a spherical boiler. The piston was suspended by a chain to one end
of an overhanging timber beam, which was mounted on a brick structure
so as to be capable of oscillating on a gudgeon or axis at its middle.
One end of this beam was vertically over the piston; at the other
end was the bucket of a water-pump, also attached to a crosspiece or
“horse-head,” by means of a chain or rod. The whole machine formed a
huge structure like a pair of scales, one of which (the water-pump) was
loaded with weights so as to be slightly heavier than the other (the
steam engine).
[Illustration: NEWCOMEN’S ENGINE]
To work it, steam was generated in the boiler at a pressure slightly
greater than atmospheric. By the opening of a cock steam was admitted
to the cylinder, below the piston, which was initially at rest in its
highest position. The steam having filled the cylinder and expelled
nearly all the air, the cock was shut and the cylinder was chilled by
an external spray of cold water. Whereupon, as soon as the steam in
the cylinder began to condense, the piston, forced down by the now
unbalanced atmospheric pressure above it, began to descend. As soon as
it had completed its downward stroke steam was again admitted beneath
the piston, and, the pressure on the two sides of the piston becoming
equal, the piston began to move up again to its original position. And
so on.
This was the original Newcomen engine. Even in this primitive form it
far surpassed Savery’s in economy of fuel and in safety. It had, too,
far greater flexibility in the manner in which its power could be
applied; it could be used not only to lift a certain volume of water
through a relatively small height, but a smaller volume through a
greater height: which was a desideratum in the case of deep mines like
those of Cornwall. In 1720 an engine was erected at Wheal Fortune mine
having a cylinder nearly four feet in diameter and drawing water, at
fifteen strokes a minute, from a depth of 180 feet.
Yet it was apparent that the engine was in many respects inefficient.
The cocks, for instance, which controlled the motion of the piston
had to be opened and shut by a man. Sometimes he let the piston rise
too far, in fact, right out of the cylinder; sometimes he let it down
too fast, so as to damage the engine. Again, the external spraying
of the cylinder at every stroke to induce condensation of the steam
within was an obviously clumsy and primitive operation. It was not long
before external spraying gave place to internal cooling of the steam
by the injection of water; this method being discovered, it is said,
as the result of a leaky piston allowing its sealing water to pass,
yet giving unaccountably good results. The difficulties with the cocks
were overcome by the laziness or initiative of a youth named Humphrey
Potter, who attached some strings and catches to the cocks of an engine
which he was employed to work at Wolverhampton.[77]
With these improvements the engine remained practically without
alteration for the next forty years. Its greatest sphere of usefulness
was in the northern coalfields, where cheap and abundant fuel was close
at hand. In Cornwall, until by special legislation the duty on seaborne
coal was remitted when used for Newcomen’s engine, the cost of fuel
proved a great obstacle to its use.
§
In 1764 James Watt, an instrument maker employed on work for Glasgow
College, was given the task of repairing a working model of a Newcomen
engine.
A man of serious and philosophical mind, an intimate friend of
Professor Robison, the physicist, and acquainted with the famous
Dr. Black of Edinburgh, then in the thick of his researches on
the phenomena of latent heat, Watt often discussed with these two
scientists the possibility of improving the steam engine; which
apparatus was still only employed for the purpose of pumping water,
and which was so clumsy and so wasteful of fuel as to be comparatively
little used. To this end he was induced to try some experiments on
the production and condensation of steam. The results of these, and
a knowledge of the newly discovered phenomenon of latent heat,[78]
convinced him that the existing cycle of operations in the engine was
fundamentally inefficient, and that improvement was to be sought in the
engine itself rather than in the boiler, which was the element which
was receiving most attention from contemporary investigators.
In particular, he clearly discerned the thermal inefficiency of the
Newcomen engine: the waste of heat involved in alternately heating
and cooling the large metal cylinder, which absorbed such immense
quantities of fuel. Watt’s first idea was, to lag the cylinder in wood
so as to prevent all outward radiation. But the result of a trial of
a lagged cylinder was disappointing. A gain was certainly obtained
in that the steam, when admitted to the cylinder, did not require to
raise by partial condensation the temperature of the walls; it exerted
its expansive force at once and the piston rose. But on the other hand
much greater difficulty was experienced in condensing it when a vacuum
was required, for the down stroke. Moreover it was observed that an
increase in the amount of injection water only made matters worse.
Watt was faced with a dilemma, and he overcame it by a series of
studies in the properties of steam which constitute, perhaps, the
highest achievement of this workman-philosopher.
Out of all his experiments two conclusions were drawn by him; first,
that the lower the temperature of condensation of steam the more
perfect the vacuum thereby formed; second, that the temperature of
the cylinder should be as nearly as possible equal to that of the
steam admitted to it. In Newcomen’s engine these two conditions
were obviously incompatible, and the problem was,--how could they
be reconciled? Early in 1765, while walking one Sunday afternoon in
Glasgow Green the idea flashed upon him of condensing the steam in a
separate vessel. The steam was generated in a separate vessel, why not
produce the vacuum separately? With a view to trying this effect he
placed a hollow air-tight chest beneath the steam cylinder, connected
with it by a pipe having a stop-cock in it. This new or lower vessel
was immersed in a cistern of cold water. Upon trial being made, it
was found that by this simple contrivance as perfect a vacuum as
desired was produced; the speed of the engine was greatly increased,
the expenditure of fuel radically reduced, the walls of the steam
cylinder were maintained at a high and constant temperature, and the
whole arrangement promised great success. The new vessel Watt called a
Condenser.
Fresh difficulties now arose. As the engine worked, the condenser
gradually filled with the condensed steam and had to be emptied
periodically. The water in which it was immersed became so hot, by
absorbing the heat of the steam, that it frequently required changing.
Watt promptly called in aid two new auxiliaries, two organs whose
motion was derived from the main beam of the engine: the Air Pump
and the Circulating Pump. By these expedients the action of the
condenser was rendered satisfactory, and an engine resulted which had a
fuel-consumption less than half that of Newcomen’s engine.
Much, he saw, yet remained to be done to obtain economical expenditure
of steam. In particular the open-topped cylinder, whose walls were
chilled at every descent of the piston by contact with atmospheric air,
was an obvious source of inefficiency. He therefore determined not
to expose the walls to the atmosphere at all, but to enclose all the
space above the piston; and, thinking thus, he conceived the idea of
replacing the air above the piston by steam, an equally powerful agent.
The cylinder he proposed to maintain at a constant high temperature by
means of a layer of hot steam with which he encased it, which he called
a steam jacket. And so the atmospheric engine as left by Newcomen
evolved into the _single-acting steam engine_ of Watt;--an engine in
which steam was still used below the piston, only to displace air
and provide a vacuized space for the downward motion of the piston;
but in which steam now acted positively above the piston, in lieu
of atmospheric air, to drive it down. It was still a sufficiently
primitive form of prime mover. The piston was still lifted by the
counterweight at the other end of the timber cross-beam; the engine had
not yet developed the organs necessary for producing a satisfactory
rotary motion. This step was shortly to follow.
In 1769 Watt obtained his patent for the “double impulse,” as it
was called; and by this step, by the transition from a single- to a
double-acting engine, the possibilities of such machines for every
variety of application first came into general view. This stage of
the development showed to the full the ingenuity of Watt’s mechanical
mind. By the invention of the slide-valve he distributed steam to
the top and to the bottom of the cylinder, and in appropriate phase
with these actions opened the two ends to the condenser; so that the
piston was actuated positively and by an equal force on both up and
down strokes. The chain by which the piston had been suspended was no
longer adequate; it was replaced by a rod. A straight-line motion was
required for the top end of the rod; so he formed a rack, to gear with
the circular end or horse-head of the beam. But this noisy mechanism
was soon superseded by another contrivance, the beautifully simple
“parallel motion,” in which two circular motions are combined to
produce one which is rectilinear. This was patented in ’84.
Four years before this, that ancient mechanism the crank and connecting
rod had been applied, together with a flywheel, to transform the
reciprocating motion of a steam engine into a rotary motion; and the
non-possession of this invention of James Pickard’s proved for a time a
stumbling-block to Watt in his further development of his engine. Watt
would have nothing to do with it. By now he had joined his fortunes
with those of Mr. Boulton, of Soho, Birmingham, a man of great business
ability, in conjunction with whom he was engaged in constructing
engines in large numbers to suit the varying conditions of the mines in
Cornwall and the North. Considerable ingenuity was expended by him in
trying to circumvent the troublesome crank of Pickard, and many devices
were produced, the most noteworthy being the “sun-and-planet wheels,”
which enabled him with some sacrifice of simplicity to obtain the
rotary motion desired.
Watt seemed to be borne along by the momentum of his own discoveries;
every inquiry yielded him valuable reward. For some time he had studied
the possibility of reducing the violence with which the piston, now
positively steam-driven on both sides, came to the end of its stroke.
This problem led him to the discovery of the advantage of using steam
expansively: of cutting off the inflow of steam before the piston had
travelled more than a fraction of its stroke, and letting its inherent
elastic force impel it through the remainder of its journey, the
steam meanwhile expanding and thus exerting a continuously decreasing
force. Later came the throttle valve, and the centrifugal governor for
controlling the speed of rotating engines; there was no end to his
ingenuity. And so complete was his inquiry into the possible sources
of improvement of the steam engine, that he even considered means of
regulating the force which the piston exerted on the crank throughout
its working stroke, a force which was compounded of the steam pressure
itself and of the mass-acceleration of the piston and other moving
parts.
Another cardinal invention followed: the Indicator. The principle of
the indicator is now applied to every form and kind of piston engine.
It is a reproduction on a small scale of the essential part of the
engine itself; a small piston, held by a spring and moving in a
cylinder connected by a pipe with the cylinder of the engine itself,
shows by the degree of compression imparted to the spring the gaseous
pressure actually present at any moment in the engine cylinder. By
recording the position of the indicator piston on a paper wrapped round
a rotating drum whose motion represents the motion of the engine’s
piston, a diagram is obtained which by its area measures the work done
by the steam during the stroke of the engine.
This instrument was designed by Watt to give his firm some standard
of work which would serve as a basis for the power of each engine,
on which to charge their customers; their engines being sold by the
horse-power. But its usefulness far exceeded the immediate purpose
for which it was produced. Its diagram, to the eye of an expert,
gave valuable information in respect of the setting of the valves,
the tightness of the piston, the dryness of the steam, the degree of
vacuum in the condenser, and, generally, of the state of efficiency of
the engine. “It would be difficult to exaggerate the part which this
little instrument has played in the evolution of the steam engine. The
eminently philosophic notion of an indicator diagram is fundamental
in the theory of thermodynamics; the instrument itself is to the steam
engineer what the stethoscope is to the physician, and more, for with
it he not only diagnoses the ailments of a faulty machine, whether in
one or another of its organs, but gauges its power in health.”[79]
§
We have now traced the evolution of the steam engine up to the time
when it was first adapted to the propulsion of war-vessels. There we
must leave it. In a later chapter we shall consider the evolution of
the propelling machinery in its relation, especially, to the military
qualities of ships. A few observations will be sufficient to illustrate
the conditions, as to design, practice, and material, under which the
steam engine made its appearance in the royal navy.
After the death of Watt all improvement of steam machinery was
strenuously opposed by the combined force of prejudice and vested
interest. The great Watt himself had set his face against the use
of high-pressure steam, and, such was the lingering force of his
authority, years passed before the general public gave assent to the
advances made by his talented successors--Hornblower, Woolf, Evans,
and Trevithick. Before the end of the eighteenth century the first
steps had been made to use the force of steam for driving ships.
Before Trafalgar was fought steam engines had made their appearance
in the royal dockyards. Then there was a pause; and many years passed
by before steam propulsion was admitted to be a necessity for certain
classes of war-vessels.
An interesting account of the state of design and practice as it
existed on ship-board in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession is
given by Commander Robert Otway, R.N., in his treatise on _Steam
Navigation_. Low-pressure principles are still in vogue; steam is
generated still, at a pressure not exceeding three pounds per square
inch, in rectangular boilers of various forms according to the fancy
of the maker, scarcely two being alike. The engines are also of
varying forms, every size, variety, and power being deemed suitable
for similar vessels. They are amazingly ponderous: weigh about twelve
hundredweight, and the boilers eight hundredweight, to the horsepower.
The engines of all makers exhibit the greatest variations in the
relative dimensions of their various parts: one firm embodies a massive
frame and light moving rods and shafts, another adopts massive rods and
shafts, and supports them within the lightest framework. The author
advocates a correct design and a “total dispensation of all superfluous
ornament.”
[Illustration: CONNECTING ROD
From Otway]
Already, however, following the example of the Cornish mines, the
builders of steam vessels were at this time beginning to adopt
high-pressure steam, generated at a pressure of ten to fifteen pounds
per square inch in cylindrical boilers, and working expansively--“doing
work in the cylinder by its elasticity alone”--before returning to
the jet condenser. This improvement, strenuously opposed by orthodox
engineers as being unsafe for ship practice, was introduced first
into the Packet Establishment at Falmouth, and then, tardily, into
Government steamers. It gave a gain in economy measured by the saving
of “thousands of bushels of coal per month.” Steam engines working
on the low-pressure system used from nine to twelve pounds of coal
per hour, for each horse-power. These engines were carried in vessels
“built on the scantling of 10-ton brigs,” of great draught and of
such small coal capacity--about 35 tons, on an average--that when
proceeding out of home waters “they were burthened with, at the least,
four days’ more fuel, _on their decks_ (top hamper), in addition to
that which already filled up their coal-boxes below.” Boilers emitted
black clouds of smoke at sea. In harbour the paddle-wheels had to be
turned daily, if but a few float-boards only, by the united force of
the crew. “Coaling ship” was carried out with the help of convicts from
the hulks:--“pampered delinquents,” observes the author, “whose very
movements are characteristic of their moral dispositions--being thieves
of time; for their whole day’s duty is not worth an hour’s purchase.”
In these unattractive circumstances the steam engine, most wonderful
contrivance of the brain and hand of man, presented itself for
embodiment in the navy, by the personnel of which it was regarded, not
without reason, as an unmitigated evil.
CHAPTER IV
“NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY”
We have traced the smooth-bore cannon through the successive stages
of its evolution. It is now proposed to give, in the form of a
biographical sketch, an account of the inception of scientific methods
as applied to its use, and at the same time to pay some tribute to the
memory of the man who laid the foundations deep and true of the science
of modern gunnery. One man was destined to develop, almost unaided, the
principles of gunnery as they are known to-day. This man was a young
Quaker of the eighteenth century, Benjamin Robins.
For a variety of reasons his fame and services seem never to have been
sufficiently recognized or acknowledged by his own countrymen. To many
his name is altogether unknown. To some it is associated solely with
the discovery of the ballistic pendulum: the ingenious instrument
by which, until the advent of electrical apparatus, the velocities
of bullets and cannon balls could be measured with a high degree of
accuracy. But the ballistic pendulum was, as we shall see, only one
manifestation of his great originating power. The following notes will
show to what a high place Robins attained among contemporary thinkers;
and demonstrate the extent to which, by happy combination of pure
reason and experiment, he influenced the development of artillery
and fire-arms. His _New Principles of Gunnery_ constituted a great
discovery, simple and surprisingly complete. In this work he had not
merely to extend or improve upon the inventive work of others; his
first task was to expose age-long absurdities and demolish all existing
theories; and only then could he replace them by true principles
founded on correct mathematical reasoning and confirmed by unwearying
experiment with a borrowed cannon or a “good Tower musquet.”
Down to the time of Robins, gunnery was still held to be an art
and a mystery. The gunner, that honest and godly man,[80] learned
in arithmetic and astronomy, was master of a terrible craft;--his
saltpetre gathered, it was said, from within vaults, tombs, and other
desolate places;--his touchwood made from old toadstools dried over a
smoky fire;--himself working unscathed only by grace of St. Barbara,
the protectress of all artillerymen. The efficiency of his practice
depended overwhelmingly on his own knowledge and on the skill with
which he mixed and adjusted his materials. No item in his system was of
sealed pattern; every element varied between the widest limits. There
were no range-tables. His shots varied in size according to the time
they happened to have been in service, to the degree of rusting and
flaking which they had suffered, and to their initial variations in
manufacture. His piece might be bored taper; if so, and if smaller at
the breech end than at the muzzle, there was a good chance of some shot
being rammed short of the powder, leaving an air space, so that the
gun might burst on discharge; if smaller at the muzzle end the initial
windage would be too great, perhaps, to allow of efficient discharge
of any shot which could be entered. There was always danger to be
apprehended from cracks and flaws.
But the greatest of mysteries was that in which the flight of
projectiles was shrouded. At this point gunnery touched one of the
oldest and one of the main aspects of natural philosophy.
The Greek philosophers failed, we are told, in spite of their great
mental subtlety, to arrive at any true conception of the laws governing
the motion of bodies. It was left to the period of the revival of
learning which followed the Middle Ages to produce ideas which were
in partial conformity with the truth. Galileo and his contemporaries
evolved the theory of the parabolic motion of falling bodies and
confirmed this brilliant discovery by experiment. Tartaglia sought
to apply it to the motion of balls projected from cannon, but was
held up by the opposing facts: the initial part of the trajectory was
seen to be a straight line in actual practice, and even, perhaps,
to have an upward curvature. So new hypotheses were called in aid,
and the path of projectiles was assumed to consist of three separate
motions: the _motus violentus_, the _motus mixtus_, and the _motus
naturalis_. During the _motus violentus_ the path of the spherical
projectile was assumed to be straight--and this fallacy, we may note in
passing, gave rise to the erroneous term “point blank,” to designate
the distance to which the shot would travel before gravity began to
operate; during the _motus naturalis_ the ball was assumed to fall
along a steep parabola; and during the _motus mixtus_, the path of the
trajectory near its summit, the motion was assumed to be a blend of
the other two. This theory, though entirely wrong, fitted in well with
practical observation; the trajectory of a spherical shot was actually
of this form described. But in many respects it had far-reaching
and undesirable consequences. Not only did it give rise to the
misconception of the _point en blanc_; it tended to emphasize the value
of heavy charges and high muzzle velocities while at the same time
obscuring other important considerations affecting range.
So the gunner was primed with a false theory of the trajectory.
But even this could not be relied on as constant in operation. The
ranging of his shot was supposed to be affected by the nature of
the intervening ground; shot were thought to range short, for some
mysterious reason, when fired over water or across valleys, and the
gunner had to correct, as best he could, for the extra-gravitational
attraction which water and valleys possessed. In addition to all these
bewilderments there was the error produced by the fact that the gun
itself was thicker at the breech than at the muzzle, so that the “line
of metal” sight was not parallel with the bore: a discrepancy which
to the lay mind, and not infrequently to the gunner himself, was a
perpetual stumbling-block.
It is not surprising that, in these conditions, the cannon remained a
singularly inefficient weapon. Imperfectly bored; discharging a ball of
iron or lead whose diameter was so much less than its own bore that the
projectile bounded along it and issued from the muzzle in a direction
often wildly divergent from that in which the piece had been laid;
on land it attained its effects by virtue of the size of the target
attacked, or by use of the _ricochet_; at sea it seldom flung its shot
at a distant ship, except for the purpose of dismasting, but, aided by
tactics, dealt its powerful blows at close quarters, double-shotted and
charged lavishly, with terrible effect. It was then that it was most
efficient.
Nor is it surprising that, in an atmosphere of ignorance as to the true
principles governing the combustion of gunpowder and the motion of
projectiles, false “systems” flourished. The records of actual firing
results were almost non-existent. Practitioners and mathematicians,
searching for the law which would give the true trajectories of cannon
balls, found that the results of their own experience would not square
with any tried combination of mathematical curves. They either gave up
the search for a solution, or pretended a knowledge which they were
unwilling to reveal.
§
In the year 1707 Robins was born at Bath. Studious and delicate in
childhood, he gave early proof of an unusual mathematical ability, and
the advice of influential friends who had seen a display of his talents
soon confirmed his careful parents in the choice of a profession for
him: the teaching of mathematics. Little, indeed, did the devout Quaker
couple dream, when the young Benjamin took coach for London with this
object in view, that their son was destined soon to be the first
artillerist in Europe.
That the choice of a profession was a wise one soon became evident.
He was persuaded to study the great scientific writers of all
ages--Archimedes, Huyghens, Slusius, Sir James Gregory and Sir Isaac
Newton; and these, says his biographer, he readily understood without
any assistance. His advance was extraordinarily rapid. When only
fifteen years old he aimed so high as to confute the redoubtable John
Bernouilli on the collision of bodies. His friends were already the
leading mathematicians of the day, and there were many who took a
strong interest in the brilliant and attractive lad. He certainly was
gifted with qualities making for success; for, we are told, “besides
his acquaintance with divers parts of learning, there was in him, to an
ingenuous aspect, joined an activity of temper, together with a great
facility in expressing his thoughts with clearness, brevity, strength,
and elegance.”
Robins’ mind was of too practical a bent, however, to allow him to stay
faithful to pure mathematics; his restless energy required another
outlet. Hence he was led to consider those “mechanic arts” that
depended on mathematical principles: bridge building, the construction
of mills, the draining of fens and the making of harbours. After a
while, taking up the controversial pen again, he wrote and published
papers by which a great reputation gradually accrued. In 1735 he
blew to pieces, with a _Discourse on Sir Isaac Newton’s Method of
Fluxions_, a treatise written against the mathematicians by the
Bishop of Cloyne. And shortly after followed further abstruse and
controversial studies: on M. Euler’s Treatise on Motion, on Dr. Smith’s
System of Optics, and on Dr. Jurin’s Distinct and Indistinct Vision.
His command of language now attracted the attention of certain
influential gentlemen who, deploring the waste of such talent on
mathematical subjects, persuaded their young acquaintance to try his
hand at the writing of political pamphlets: party politics being at
that time the absorbing occupation of the population of these islands.
His success was great; his writings were much admired. And--significant
of the country and the age--friendships and acquaintances were formed
by the pamphleteer which were later to be of great value to the rising
scientist.
This phase of his activities, fortunately, did not last long. Kindling
the lamp of science once more, he now started on the quest which was to
make him famous.
For thoughtful men of all ages, as we have already noted, the flight
of bodies through air had had an absorbing interest. The subject was
one of perennial disputation. The vagaries of projectiles, the laws
governing the discharge of balls from cannon, could not fail to arouse
the curiosity of an enthusiast like Robins, and he now set himself
in earnest to discover them by an examination of existing data, by
pure reason, and by actual experiment. Perusal of such books as had
been written on the subject soon convinced him of the shallowness of
existing theories. Of the English authors scarcely any two agreed
with one another, and all of them carped at Tartaglia, the Italian
scientist who in the classic book of the sixteenth century tried to
uphold Galileo’s theory of parabolic motion as applied to military
projectiles. But what struck Robins most forcibly about all their
writings was the almost entire absence of trial and experiment by which
to confirm their dogmatical assertions. This absence of any appeal to
experiment was certainly not confined to treatises on gunnery; it was
a conspicuous feature of most of the classical attempts to advance
the knowledge of physical science. Yet the flight of projectiles was
a problem which lent itself with ease to that inductive method of
discovering its laws through a careful accumulation of facts. This work
had not been done. Of all the native writers upon gunnery only four
had ventured out of two dimensions; only four had troubled to measure
definite ranges. All four asserted the general proposition that the
motion of bodies was parabolic. Only one noticed that practice did
not support this theory, and he, with misapplied ingenuity, called in
aid the traditional hypothesis of a violent, a crooked, and a natural
motion. Which wrong hypothesis enabled him, since he could choose for
himself the point at which the straight motion ceased, to square all
his results with his precious theory.
Leaving the books of the practitioners, Robins had more to learn
from the great circle of mathematicians who in the first part of
the eighteenth century lent a lustre to European science. The
old hypotheses were fast being discarded by them. Newton, in his
_Principia_, had investigated the laws of resistance of bodies to
motion through the air under gravity, by dropping balls from the
cupola of St. Paul’s Cathedral; and he believed that the trajectory of
a cannon ball differed from the parabola by but a small extent. The
problem was at this time under general discussion on the Continent; and
led to a collision between the English and the German mathematicians,
Newton and Leibnitz being the two protagonists.[81] But, whatever the
merits or outcome of the controversy, one thing seems certain. None
of the great men of the day understood the very great accession of
resistance which a fast-travelling body encountered in cleaving the
air, or realized the extent to which the trajectory was affected by
this opposing force. It was in fact universally believed and stated,
that “_in the case of large shot of metal, whose weight many times
surpasses that of air, and whose force is very great, the resistance
of air is scarcely discernible, and as such may, in all computations
concerning the ranges of great and weighty bombs, be very safely
neglected_.”[82]
In 1743 Robins’ _New Principles of Gunnery_ was read before the Royal
Society.
In a short but comprehensive paper which dealt with both internal and
external ballistics, with the operation of the propellant in the gun
and with the subsequent flight of the projectile, the author enunciated
a series of propositions which, founded on known laws of physics and
sustained by actual experiment, reduced to simple and calculable
phenomena the mysteries and anomalies of the art of shooting with great
guns. He showed the nature of the combustion of gunpowder, and how to
measure the force of the elastic fluid derived from it. He showed, by a
curve drawn with the gun axis as a base, the variation of pressure in
the gun as the fluid expanded, and the work done on the ball thereby.
Producing his ballistic pendulum he showed how, by firing a bullet of
known weight into a pendulum of known weight, the velocity of impact
could be directly ascertained. This was obviously a very important
discovery. For an accurate measurement of the “muzzle velocity” of the
bullet discharged from any given piece of ordnance was, and still is,
the solution and key to many another problem in connection with it:
for instance, the effect of such variable factors as the charge, the
windage or the length of gun. In fact, as the author claimed, there
followed from the theory thus set out a whole host of deductions of
the greatest consequence to the world’s knowledge of gunnery. Then,
following the projected bullet in its flight, he proceeded to tell of
the continuous retardation to which it was subject owing to the air’s
resistance. He found, he said, that this resistance was vastly greater
than had been anticipated. It certainly was not a negligible quantity.
The resistance of the air to a twenty-four pound cannon ball, fired
with its battering charge of sixteen pounds of powder, was no less
than twenty-four times the weight of the ball when it first issued
from the piece: a force which sufficiently confuted the theory that
the trajectory was a parabola, as it would have been if the shot were
fired in vacuo. It was neither a parabola, nor nearly a parabola. In
truth it was not a plane curve at all. For under the great force of
the air’s resistance, added to that of gravity, a ball (he explained)
has frequently a double curvature. Instead of travelling in one
vertical plane it actually takes an incurvated line sometimes to right,
sometimes to left, of the original plane of departure. And the cause of
this departure he ascribed to a whirling motion acquired by the ball
about an axis during its passage through the gun.
The reading of the paper provoked considerable discussion among the
learned Fellows, who found themselves presented with a series of the
most novel and unorthodox assertions, not in the form of speculations,
but as exact solutions to problems which had been hitherto unsolved;
and these were presented in the clearest language and were fortified
by experiments so careful and so consistent in their results as to
leave small room for doubt as to the certainty of the author’s theory.
Of special interest both to savants and artillerists must have been
his account of “a most extraordinary and astonishing increase in the
resistance of the air which occurs when the velocity comes to be that
of between eleven and twelve hundred feet in one second of time”: a
velocity, as he observed, which is equal to that at which sounds are
propagated in air. He suggested that perhaps the air, not making its
vibrations with sufficient speed to return immediately to the space
left in the rear of the ball, left a vacuum behind it which augmented
the resistance to its flight. His statement on the deflection of balls,
too, excited much comment. And, in order to convince his friends of the
reality of this phenomenon, which, though Sir Isaac Newton had himself
taken note of it in the case of tennis balls, had never been thoroughly
investigated, Robins arranged an ocular demonstration.
One summer afternoon the experiments took place in a shady grove in
the Charterhouse garden. Screens--“of finest tissue paper”--were set
up at intervals of fifty feet, and a common musket bored for an ounce
ball was firmly fixed in a vice so as to fire through the screens. By
repeated discharges the various deflections from the original plane of
departure were clearly shown; some of the balls whirled to the right,
some to the left of the vertical plane in which the musket lay. But not
only was the fact of this deflection established to the satisfaction
of the visitors. A simple but dramatic proof was afforded them of the
correctness of Robins’ surmise that the cause was the whirling of the
ball in flight. A musket-barrel was bent so that its last three or
four inches pointed to the left of the original plane of flight. The
ball when fired would then be expected to be thrown to the left of
the original plane. But, said Robins, since in passing through the
bent part the ball would be forced to roll upon the right-hand side
of the barrel; and as thereby the left side of the ball would turn up
against the air, and would increase the resistance on that side; then,
notwithstanding the bend of the piece to the left, the bullet itself
might incurvate towards the right. “And this, upon trial, did most
remarkably happen.”[83]
Robins by now had gained a European reputation. Mathematical
controversy and experiments in gunnery continued to occupy his time
and absorb his energies, and it was not long before he was again at
the rostrum of the Royal Society, uttering his eloquent prediction as
to the future of rifled guns. Speaking with all the emphasis at his
command he urged on his hearers the importance of applying rifling
not only to fire-arms but to heavy ordnance. That State, he said,
which first comprehended the advantages of rifled pieces; which first
facilitated their construction and armed its armies with them; would
by them acquire a superiority which would perhaps fall little short
of the wonderful effects formerly produced by the first appearance of
fire-arms. His words had little or no effect. Mechanical science was
not then equal to the task. A whole century was to elapse before rifled
ordnance came into general use. The genius of Whitworth was required to
enable the workshops of the world to cope with its refined construction.
Another subject which attracted Robins’ attention at this time was
fortification, the sister art of gunnery, which now had a vogue as a
result of the great continental wars. He was evidently regarded as an
authority on the subject, for we find him, in 1747, invited by the
Prince of Orange to assist in the defence of Berghen-op-Zoom, then
invested and shortly afterwards taken by the French.
Now befell an incident which, besides being a testimony to the
versatility of his genius, proved to be of great consequence to him in
his study of artillery. In 1740 Mr. Anson (by this time Lord Anson,
and at the head of the Admiralty) had set out on his famous voyage to
circumnavigate the world. For some time after his return the public
had looked forward to an authentic account, on the writing of which
the chaplain of the _Centurion_, Mr. Richard Walter, was known to be
engaged. Mr. Walter had collected, in the form of a journal, a mass
of material in connection with the incidents of the voyage. But on
a review of this it was decided that the whole should be rewritten
in narrative form by a writer of repute. Robins was approached, and
accepted the commission. The material of the chaplain’s journal was
worked up by him into a narrative, and the book was published in 1748.
“It was an immediate success; four large editions were sold in less
than a year; and it was translated, with its stirring accounts of
perils and successes, into nearly all the languages in Europe.” Robins’
name did not appear in it, and his share in the authorship is to this
day a subject of literary discussion.
The acquaintance with Lord Anson thus formed was of great benefit to
him, not only in securing for him the means of varied experiment with
all types of guns in use in the royal navy, but by the encouragement
which his lordship gave him to publish his opinions even when they
were in conflict with the orthodox professional opinion of the day.
To this encouragement was due the publication in 1747 of a pamphlet
entitled, _A Proposal for increasing the strength of the British
Navy, by changing all guns from 18-pounders downwards into others of
equal weight but of a greater bore_; a paper which, indirectly, had
considerable influence on the development of sea ordnance. In the
introduction to this paper the author explains that its subject-matter
is the result of the speculations and experiments of earlier years;
and he describes the incident which at the later date induced its
publication. It appears that at the capture of the _Mars_, man-of-war,
a manuscript was discovered on board which contained the results and
conclusions of some important gunnery trials which the French had been
carrying out. This manuscript, being shown to Robins by Lord Anson,
was found to contain strong confirmation of his own views both as to
the best proportions of guns and the most efficient powder-charges
for the same. He had not published these before, he plaintively
explains, because, “not being regularly initiated into the profession
of artillery, he would be considered a visionary speculatist.” But
fortified by the French MS. he no longer hesitated to submit his
proposal to the public.
Briefly, the paper is an argument for a more efficient disposition
of metal in ordnance. Robins states his case in language simple and
concise. Large shot, he says, have naturally great advantages in
ranging power over small shot; in sea fighting the size of the hole
they make and their increased power of penetration gives them a greatly
enhanced value. Hence the endeavour made in all cases to arm a vessel
with the largest cannon she can with safety bear. And hence the
necessity for so disposing the weight of metal in a ship’s ordnance to
the best advantage; all metal not usefully employed in contributing to
the strength of the pieces being not only useless but prejudicial to
efficiency.
He then proceeds to prove (not very convincingly, it must be admitted)
that there is a law of comparison to which the dimensions of all guns
should conform, and by which their weights could be calculated. For
every pound of bullet there should be allowed a certain weight of metal
for the gun. So, taking the service 32-pounder as having the correct
proportions, the weight and size of every other piece can be found
from this standard. He observes, however, that in actual practice the
smaller the gun, the greater its relative weight; the 6-pounder, for
example, weighs at least eighteen hundredweight, when by the rule it
should weigh ten. The proposal is therefore to utilize the redundant
weight of metal by increasing the calibre of the smaller guns. At the
same time it is proposed to limit the stress imposed on all guns by
reducing the powder-charge to one-third the weight of the bullet, for
all calibres; this smaller charge being almost as efficient for ranging
as the larger charges used, and infinitely less dangerous to the gun.
The publication of the pamphlet came at an opportune moment. A new
spirit was dawning in the navy, a new enthusiasm and search for
efficiency were abroad, which in the next half-century were to be
rewarded by a succession of well-earned and decisive victories.
Interest in the proposed change in armament was widespread, both in and
outside the royal service. And a significant commentary on the proposed
regulation of powder-charges was supplied, this very year, by Admiral
Hawke, who reported that in the fight off Ushant all the breechings
of his lower-deck guns broke with the repeated violence of recoil,
obliging him to shoot ahead of his opponent while new breechings were
being seized.
Some time was to elapse before the arguments of Robins gave signs of
bearing fruit. Experiments carried out at Woolwich in the seventies
by Dr. Hutton with all the facilities ensured by the patronage of a
ducal master-general of ordnance merely extended and confirmed Robins’
own results. In ’79 the carronade made its appearance, to attest in
dramatic fashion the value, at any rate for defensive work, of a large
ball, a small charge, and an unusually small windage. As offensive
armament it represented, of course, the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
principles enunciated by Robins; its dominant feature of a ball of
maximum volume projected with a minimum velocity was, in the words of
an American authority, “manifestly as great an error as the minima
masses and the maxima velocities of the long gun system, to which the
carronade was thus directly opposed.” Nevertheless, the carronade
(whose history we deal with in a later chapter) did excellent work.
Mounted upon the upper decks and forecastles of merchantmen and the
smaller classes of warships, it emphasized, by the powerful and often
unexpected blows which it planted in the ribs of such adversaries
as ventured within its range, the comparative inefficiency of the
smaller types of long gun with which our ships of war were armed.
To the clearest-sighted of our naval captains the relative merits
and defects of the carronade and the small long gun were evidently
clear. In the year 1780 we find Kempenfelt advocating, in a letter
to Sir Charles Middleton, a weapon with a little more length and
weight than a carronade: something between it and a long gun. Robins’
arguments against the still prevalent types of small pieces have proved
convincing to him, and he transcribes the whole of the _Proposal_ for
the consideration of his superior. “Here you have, sir,” he writes,
“the opinion of the ablest artillery officer in England at that time,
and perhaps in Europe.”
Once more the versatile and gifted pen was called in aid of politics.
In 1749 he was persuaded to write what his biographer describes as a
masterpiece of its kind: _An apology for the unfortunate affair at
Preston-Pans in Scotland_.[84] But soon an opening worthier of his
talents presented itself. The East India Company, whose forts in India
were as yet ill-adapted for defence, required the services of an expert
in military fortification. An offer was made, and, as Engineer-General
to the Company, Robins left England for the East at the end of ’49,
to the great sorrow of all his acquaintance. They were not to see him
again. In the summer of the following year he died of a fever, pen in
hand, at work upon his plans in the service of the Company.
* * * * *
So ended a short, a brilliant, and a very honourable career. Benjamin
Robins possessed in an exceptional degree the power, inherent in so
many of his countrymen, of applying the truths of science to practical
ends. An individualist deriving inspiration from the great masters of
the past, he followed the bent of his enthusiasms in whatever direction
it might lead him, till ultimately his talents found expression in a
field undreamed of by himself or by his early friends. In the realm of
gunnery he was an amateur of genius. Partly for that reason, perhaps,
his views do not appear to have been considered as authoritative by
our own professionals; the prophet had more honour in Berlin, Paris
and Washington. Speaking of the rifle, the true principle of which was
admittedly established by him, the American artillerist Dahlgren wrote
in 1856: “The surprizing neglect which seemed to attend his labours was
in nothing more conspicuous than in the history of this weapon. Now
that whole armies are to wield the rifled musket with its conical shot,
one is surprized at the time which was permitted to elapse since that
able experimenter so memorably expressed his convictions before the
Royal Society, in 1746.”
Of the value of his work to the nation there is now no doubt. Of
the man himself an entertaining picture is given in his biography,
published, together with his principal papers, by Dr. Hutton, from
which many of the foregoing notes have been taken. Among other eminent
men who have given their life and labours to the public service, and
whose efforts in building up the past greatness of England have been
generously acknowledged, let us not forget to honour that distinguished
civilian, Benjamin Robins.
[Illustration: TUDOR SHIPS UNDER SAIL
From the same MS. as plate facing page 60]
CHAPTER V
THE CARRONADE
AT the monthly meeting of the Carron Company, a Scotch iron-founding
and shipping firm, which was held in December, 1778, the manager
informed the board that, in order to provide armament for some of the
Company’s sailing packets, he had constructed a very light species
of gun, resembling a cohorn, which was much approved by many people
who had come on purpose to inspect it. So favourable, indeed, was
the impression given by the inspection of this weapon that, with the
company’s permission, he could receive a great many orders for them.
Whereon it was resolved to authorize the manufacture of the new species
in quantity; and to call all such guns as should be made by them of
this nature, Carronades.
Such were the circumstances in which the carronade first came into
use. And the following advertisement, appearing in Edinburgh shortly
afterwards, sufficiently explains the incentive for exploiting the new
type of ordnance, and the reason of its popularity among shipowners,
passengers and crews. “To sail March 5, 1779, the _Glasgow_,
Robert Paterson master, mounting fourteen twelve-pounders, and men
answerable.... N.B.--The Carron vessels are fitted out in the most
complete manner for defence at a very considerable expense, and are
well provided with small arms. All mariners, recruiting parties,
soldiers upon furlow, and all other steerage passengers who have been
accustomed to the use of fire-arms, and who will engage in defending
themselves, will be accommodated with their passage to and from London,
upon satisfying the masters for their provisions, which in no instance
shall exceed 10s. 6d. sterling. The Carron vessels sail regularly as
usual, without waiting for the convoy.”
The carronade was a very short, light, carriage gun of relatively
large bore, made to take a standard size of long-gun shot and project
it, by means of a small charge of powder, against an enemy at close
range. Its proprietors soon found a market for the produce of their
foundry, not only for merchant ships but for men-of-war. The reputation
of the new ordnance quickly spread; carronades found a place almost
immediately among the orthodox armament of the greater number of our
fighting ships; and kept their place till, after a chequered career of
half a century, during which they contributed both to victory and to
defeat, they were finally discarded from the sea service.
The story of the carronade begins some little time before the meeting
of the Carron board in the year 1778. It will be remembered that in
1747 Mr. Benjamin Robins had advocated, in a much-talked-of paper,
an increase in the calibre of warships’ guns at the expense of their
ranging power, and that in support of his argument he had drawn
attention to two features of ship actions--first, that the great
majority of duels were fought at close quarters; secondly, that the
destructive effect of a cannon-ball against an enemy’s hull depended
largely on the external dimensions of the ball, the larger of two balls
producing an effect altogether out of proportion to the mere difference
in size.
However invalid may have been the arguments founded on these
assertions--and that there was a serious flaw in them time was to
show--there could be no doubt that, so far as considerations of defence
were concerned, the conclusions reached were of important value. In
the case of a merchant packet defending herself from boarding by a
privateer, for example, a light, short-ranging gun throwing a large
ball would give far more effective protection than a small-calibre
long gun. And if, moreover, the former involved a dead weight less
than a quarter, and a personnel less than half, of that involved
by the latter, the consideration of its superiority in action was
strongly reinforced, in the opinion of shipowners and masters, by
less advertised considerations of weight, space, and equipment--very
important in their relation to the speed and convenience of the vessel,
and hence to all concerned.
So the arguments of Robins, though propounded solely with reference to
warships, yet applied with special force to the defensive armament of
merchant ships. A conception of this fact led a very able artillerist,
General Robert Melville, to propose, in 1774, a short eight-inch gun
weighing only thirty-one hundredweight yet firing a nicely fitting
sixty-eight pound ball with a charge of only five and a half pounds of
powder. This piece he induced the Carron company to cast, appropriately
naming it a Smasher. Of all the carronades the Smasher was the
prototype. It possessed the special attributes of the carronades in the
superlative degree; the carronade was a reproduction, to a convenient
scale, of the Smasher. That General Melville was the prime inventor
of the new type, has been placed beyond doubt by the inscription on
a model subsequently presented to him by the Carron Company. The
inscription runs: “Gift of the Carron Company to Lieut.-General
Melville, inventor of the Smashers and lesser carronades for solid,
ship, shell, and carcass shot, etc. First used against French ships in
1779.”[85]
In almost every respect the Smasher was the antithesis of the long
gun: the advantages of the one were founded on the shortcomings of
the other. For instance, the smallness of the long gun’s ball was a
feature which, as ships’ sides came to be made stronger and thicker,
rendered the smaller calibres of long guns of a diminishing value as
offensive armament. It was becoming increasingly difficult to sink a
ship by gunfire. The round hole made near the enemy’s water-line was
insufficient in size to have a decisive effect; the fibres of the
timber closed round the entering shot and, swelled by sea-water, half
closed the hole, leaving the carpenter an easy task to plug the inboard
end of it. The large and irregular hole made by a Smasher, on the other
hand, the ragged and splintered opening caused by the crashing of the
large ball against the frames and timbers, was quite likely to be the
cause of a foundering. Again, the high velocity of the long gun’s ball,
while giving it range and considerable penetrative power, was actually
a disadvantage when at close quarters with an enemy. The maximum effect
was gained, as every gunner knew, when the ball had just sufficient
momentum to enable it to penetrate an opponent’s timbers. The result of
a high velocity was often to make a clean hole through a ship without
making a splinter or causing her to heel at all. Hence the practice of
double-shotting: a system of two units which, as we have just seen,
was less likely to prove effective than a system of a larger single
unit. On the other hand the Smasher vaunted its low muzzle velocity. As
for the relative powder charges, that of the long gun was wastefully
large and inefficient, while that of the Smasher was small and very
effective. It was in this respect, perhaps, that the Smasher showed
itself to the greatest advantage. And as this feature exerted from
the first an important influence on all other types of ordnance, we
will examine in some detail the means by which its high efficiency was
attained.
Apart from the inefficiency inherent in the small-ball-and-big-velocity
system the long gun laboured under mechanical disadvantages from which
its squat competitor was happily free. In the eighteenth century the
state of workshop practice was so primitive as to render impossible any
fine measurements of material. Until the time of Whitworth the true
plane surface, the true cylinder and the true sphere were unattainable
in practice. For this reason a considerable clearance had to be
provided between round shot and the bores of the guns for which they
were intended; in other words, the inaccuracies which existed in the
dimensions of guns and shots necessitated the provision of a certain
“windage.” But other considerations had also to be taken into account.
The varying temperatures at which shot might require to be used; the
fouling of gun-bores by burnt powder; the effect of wear and rust on
both shot and bore, and especially the effect of rust on the shot
carried in ships of war (at first enlarged by the rust and then, the
rust flaking or being beaten off with hammers, reduced in size)--all
these factors combined to exact such disproportionate windage that, in
the best conditions, from one-quarter to one-third of the force of the
powder was altogether lost, while, in the worst conditions, as much as
one-half of the propulsive force of the powder escaped unused. Not only
was a large charge required, therefore, but the range and aim of the
loosely fitting shot was often incorrect and incalculable; the motion
of the shot was detrimental to the surface of the bore and the life of
the gun; while the recoil was so boisterous as sometimes to dismount
and disable the gun, injure the crew, and even endanger the vessel.
The inventor of the Smasher, by eliminating this obvious deficiency of
the long gun, gave to his weapon not only a direct advantage due to the
higher efficiency of the powder-charge, but also several collateral
advantages arising from it, such as, economy of powder, ease of recoil,
and small stresses upon the mounting and its supporting structure.
It had been laid down by Dr. Hutton in 1775, as one of the chief
results of the systematic experiments carried out by him at Woolwich
in extension of the inquiries originated by Robins, that if only the
windage of guns could be reduced very important advantages would
accrue; among others, a saving of at least one-third of the standard
charges of powder would result. General Melville determined to give the
Smasher the very minimum of windage necessary to prevent accident. The
shortness of the bore favoured such a reduction. The large diameter,
though at first it might appear to render necessary a correspondingly
large windage, was actually an advantage from this point of view.
For, instead of adhering to the orthodox practice with long guns, of
making the windage roughly proportional to the diameter of the bore, he
gave the Smasher a windage less than that of a much smaller long gun,
arguing that though a certain mechanical clearance was necessary, yet
the amount of this clearance was in no way dependent on the diameter
of the shot or piece. The large size of the Smasher acted therefore to
its advantage. The windage space through which the powder gases could
escape was very small in relation to the area of the large ball on
which they did useful work.
But this divergence from the standard practice would appear to
necessitate the provision of special ammunition for use with the
Smasher: the nicely fitting sixty-eight pound ball would require to
be specially made for it? And this would surely militate against
the general adoption of the Smasher in the public service? No such
difficulty confronted the inventor. For, curiously enough, the
principle on which the dimensions of gun-bores and shot were fixed
was the reverse of the principle which obtains to-day. Instead of the
diameter of the _gun_ being of the nominal dimension and the diameter
of the shot being equal to that of the gun minus the windage, the
diameter of the _shot_ was the datum from which the amount of the
windage and the calibre of the gun were determined.
So, the size of the shot being fixed, a reduction of windage was
obtainable in a new design of gun by boring it to a smaller than the
standard diameter. And this was what the inventor of the Smasher
did. The large ball, in combination with the restricted windage and
the small charge of powder, gave the Smasher ballistic results far
superior, relatively, to those obtained with the long gun. Its lack of
ranging power was admitted. But for close action it was claimed that it
would prove an invaluable weapon, especially in the defence of merchant
ships.[86] Not only would its large ball make such holes in the light
hull of an enemy privateer as would break through his beams and frames
and perhaps send all hands to the pumps; but, projected with just
sufficient velocity to carry it through an opponent’s timbers, it would
thereby produce a maximum of splintering effect and put out of action
guns, their crews, and perhaps the vessel itself.
§
On the lines of the Smasher the “lesser carronades,” more convenient in
size and more easily worked, were cast, and quickly made a reputation
in merchant shipping. The Smasher itself was offered to the admiralty,
but was never fitted in a royal ship; though trials were carried
out with it later with hollow or cored shot, to ascertain how these
lighter balls compared in action with the solid 68-pounders. Meanwhile
the Carron Company found a large market for the lighter patterns of
carronade; the 24, 18, and 12-pounders were sold in large numbers to
private ships and letters-of-marque, and to some of the frigates and
smaller ships of the royal navy. The progress of the new ordnance was
watched with interest by the board of admiralty. In 1779 we have Sir
Charles Douglas writing to Sir Charles Middleton in full accord with
his views on the desirability of mounting Carron 12-pounders on the
poop of the _Duke_, and suggesting 24-pounders, three a side, upon
her quarter-deck. To the same distinguished correspondent Captain
Kempenfelt writes, deploring that no trials have yet been made with
carronades. Shortly afterwards the navy board discusses the 68-pound
Smasher and desires the master-general of ordnance to make experiment
with it. A scale is drawn up by the navy board, moreover, and
sanctioned by the admiralty, for arming different rates with 18-and
12-pounder carronades. The larger classes of ships, the first, second,
and third rates, have their quarter-decks already filled with guns; but
accommodation is found for a couple of carronades on the forecastles,
and for half a dozen on the poop, which for nearly a century past has
served chiefly as a roof for the captain’s cabin. This is now timbered
up and given three pairs of ports, making a total of eight ports
for the reception of carronades. In the case of smaller ships less
difficulty is experienced. Ports are readily cut in their forecastles
and quarter-decks, and in some cases their poops are barricaded, to
give accommodation for from four to a dozen carronades.[87]
The new weapon found its way into most of our smaller ships, not always
and solely as an addition to the existing long-gun armament, for use
in special circumstances, but in many cases in lieu of the long guns
of the establishment. The saving in weight and space gained by this
substitution made the carronade especially popular in the smaller
classes of frigate, the sloops, and brigs; many of which became almost
entirely armed with the type. The weak feature of the carronade, which
in the end was to prove fatal to it--its feeble range and penetrating
power--was generally overlooked, or accepted as being more than
compensated for by its many obvious advantages. The carronade, it was
said by many, was the weapon specially suited to the favourite tactics
of the British navy--a yard-arm action.
There were others, however, who were inclined to emphasize the
disability under which the carronade would lie if the enemy could
contrive to avoid closing and keep just out of range. And on this
topic, the relative merits of long gun and carronade as armament
for the smaller ships, discussion among naval men was frequent and
emphatic. The king’s service was divided into two schools. The
advocates of long guns could quote many a case where, especially in
chase, the superior range of the long gun had helped to win the day.
The advocates of the carronade replied with recent and conclusive
examples of victories won by short-gun ships which had been able to
get to grips and quickly neutralize the advantages of a superior enemy
armed with long guns. When challenged with the argument that, since
the advantages of the carronade entirely disappear at long ranges it
is essential that ships armed with them should be exceptionally fast
sailers, they replied, that the very lightness of a carronade armament
would, other things being equal, give ships so armed the property
required. As for out-ranging, they were even ready to back their
carronades in that respect, if only they were well charged with powder.
It was a matter of faith with many that, in spite of Dr. Hutton’s
published proof to the contrary, a considerable increase of range could
be obtained by the expedient of shortening the gun’s recoil; so that in
chase it was a common procedure to lash the breechings of carronades to
the ship’s timbers, to prevent recoil and to help the shot upon its way.
At first mechanical difficulties occurred in the fitting of the new
carronade mountings which, though not due to any defect inherent in
the equipments, nevertheless placed them under suspicion in certain
quarters. Though the prototype had trunnions like a gun, the carronades
afterwards cast were attached by lugs to wooden slides which recoiled
on slotted carriages pivoted to the ship’s side timbers, the slide
being secured to the carriage by a vertical bolt which passed down
through the slot. The recoil was limited by breechings; but as these
stretched continuously the bolt eventually brought up with a blow
against the end of the slot in the carriage: the bolt broke, and
the carronade was disabled. This happened at Praya Bay, where the
carronades broke their beds, owing to slack breechings, after a few
rounds. Captains complained, too, that the fire of the carronades was a
danger to the shrouds and rigging.
[Illustration: A CARRONADE]
In spite of these views the popularity of the new ordnance increased so
rapidly that in January, 1781, there were, according to the historian
James, 429 ships in the royal navy which mounted carronades. On the
merits of these weapons opinion was still very much divided. The board
of ordnance was against their adoption; the navy board gave them a mild
approval. In practice considerable discretion appears to have been
granted to the commanders of ships in deciding what armament they
should actually carry.[88] But the uncertainty of official opinion
gave rise to a surprising anomaly: _the carronade, although officially
countenanced, was not recognized as part of the orthodox armament of a
ship_. What was the cause of this is not now clear. It has been said
in explanation, that the carronade formed too fluctuating a basis on
which to rate a ship’s force; that a long-gun basis afforded a key to
the stores and complement of a ship, whereas carronades had little
effect on either complement or stores; or that it may have been merely
inertia on the part of the navy board. Whatever the cause, the ignoring
of the carronade, in all official quotations of ships’ armaments, led
to great uncertainty and confusion in estimating the relative force of
our own and other navies, to suggestions of deception on the part of
antagonists, to the bickering of historians and the bewilderment of the
respective peoples. This extraordinary circumstance, that carronades
with all their alleged advantages were not thought worthy to be ranked
among the long guns of a ship, is commented on at length by James.
“Whether,” he says, “they equalled in calibre the heaviest of these
guns, added to their number a full third, or to their power a full
half, still they remained as mere a blank in the ship’s nominal, or
rated force, as the muskets in the arm-chest. On the other hand, the
addition of a single pair of guns of the old construction, to a ship’s
armament, removed her at once to a higher class and gave her, how novel
or inconvenient soever, a new denomination.”
While the products of the Carron firm were gaining unexpected success
in the defence of merchant shipping, their value in ships of the line
was not to remain long in doubt. Some of the heavier carronades had
been mounted in the _Formidable_, _Duke_, and other ships, and their
presence had a material effect in Admiral Rodney’s action of April,
1782. As had been generally recognized, the carronade was especially
suited to the British aims and methods of attack--the destruction of
the enemy by a yard-arm action. To the French, whose strategy and
methods were fundamentally different, its value was less apparent. So
that for long this country reaped alone the benefit of its invention;
until in somewhat half-hearted way France gradually adopted it, and
then mostly in the smaller sizes, and more apparently with a view to
defence than for offensive purposes. In the action with de Grasse the
carronades of the British fleet operated, in the opening stages, as an
additional incentive to the enemy to avoid close quarters. And later,
at the in-fighting, their weight of metal contributed in no small
degree to the superiority of fire which finally forced him to surrender.
It was later in this same year that the carronade won its most dramatic
victory as armament of a small ship. In order to give a thorough trial
to the system the navy board had ordered the _Rainbow_, an old 44, to
be experimentally armed with large carronades, some of which were of
as large a calibre as the original Smasher; by which her broadside
weight of metal was almost quadrupled. Thus armed she put to sea and
one day fell in with the French frigate _Hébé_, armed with 18-pounder
long guns. Luring her enemy to a close-quarter combat, the _Rainbow_
suddenly poured into the Frenchman the whole weight of her broadside.
The resistance was short, the _Hébé_ surrendered, and proved to be a
prize of exceptional value as a model for frigate design. The capture
was quoted as convincing proof of the value of a carronade armament,
and the type continued from this time to grow in popularity, until the
termination of the war in 1783 put a stop to further experiments with
it.
§
Throughout the long war which broke out ten years later the carronade
played a considerable part in the succession of duels and actions which
had their climax off Trafalgar. It was now generally adopted as a
secondary form of armament, captains being permitted, upon application,
to vary at discretion the proportion of long-gun to carronade armament
which they wished to carry. In the smaller classes especially, a
preponderance of carronades was frequently accepted; the accession
of force caused by the substitution of small carronades for 6-and
9-pounder long guns in brigs and sloops could hardly be disputed. In
ships-of-the-line the larger sizes continued in favour. The French now
benefited, too, by their adoption; on more than one occasion their
poop and forecastle carronades, loaded with langrage, played havoc
with our personnel. Spaniards and Dutchmen did not carry them. How far
their absence contributed to their defeats it is not now to inquire;
but how the tide of battle would have been affected by them--if the
Dutch fleet, for instance, had carried them at Camperdown--may be a not
unprofitable speculation.
Early in the war the carronade system was to score its greatest
defensive triumph, and this, by a happy coincidence, in the hands of
the old _Rainbow’s_ commander.
The _Glatton_, one of a few East Indiamen which had been bought by the
admiralty, was fitted out in 1795 as a ship of war, and left Sheerness
in the summer of the following year under the command of Captain Henry
Trollope to join a squadron in the North Sea. At her commander’s
request she was armed with carronades exclusively. She was without
ahead or astern fire, without a single long bow or stern chaser; she
carried 68-pounder carronades along her sides, whose muzzles were so
large that they almost filled the small port-holes of the converted
Indiaman and prevented more than a small traverse. Off the Flanders
coast she fell in one night with six French frigates, a brig-corvette,
and a cutter; and at ten o’clock a close action began. The _Glatton_
was engaged by her antagonists on both sides, her yard-arms almost
touching those of the enemy. She proved to be a very dangerous foe.
Her carronades, skilfully pointed and served by supply parties who
worked port and starboard pieces alternately, poured out their heavy
missiles at point-blank range. So heavy was her fire that one by one
the frigates had to haul off, severely damaged, and the _Glatton_ was
left at last to spend the night repairing her rigging unmolested, but
in the expectation that the French commodore would renew the attack in
the morning. To her surprise no action was offered. The blows of the
68-pounders had done their work. Followed by the _Glatton_ with a “brag
countenance,” the enemy retired with his squadron in the direction of
Flushing.
The action had more than one lesson to teach, however, and no more
ships, except small craft, were armed after this upon the model of the
_Glatton_.
We must at this point mention an experiment made in the year 1796,
at the instance of Sir Samuel Bentham, in the mounting of carronades
on a non-recoil system. Sir Samuel, who in the service of Russia had
armed long-boats and other craft with ordnance thus mounted, produced
arguments before the navy board for attaching carronades rigidly to
ships’ timbers; so as to allow of no other recoil than that resulting
from the elasticity of the carriage and the materials connecting it
to the ship. The ordnance board reported against the new idea. Sir
Samuel pointed out that the idea was not new. Both the largest and the
smallest pieces used on board ship (viz. the mortar and the swivel)
had always been mounted on the principle of non-recoil. He showed
how bad was the principle of first allowing a gun and its slide or
carriage to generate momentum in recoil and then of attempting to
absorb that momentum in the small stretch of a breeching-rope. He
argued that a rifle held at the shoulder is not allowed to recoil: if
it is, the rifleman smarts for it. He instanced the lashing of guns
fast to the ship, especially in chase, for the purpose of making them
carry farther. No; the novelty consisted in preparing suitable and
appropriate fastenings for intermediate sizes of guns between the
mortar and the swivel. The adoption of his proposal, he contended,
would result in smaller guns’ crews, quicker loading, and greater
safety.
As a result of these arguments certain sloops designed by him were
armed on this principle; and in other cases, notably in the case
of the boats used at the siege of Acre, the carronades and smaller
types of long gun were successfully mounted and worked without recoil
by attaching their carriages to vertical fir posts, built into the
hull structures to serve as front pivots. But, generally, the system
was found to be impracticable. The pivots successfully withstood
the stresses of carronades fired with normal charges of powder; no
permanent injury resulted to the elastic hull structures over which the
blows were spread. But the factor of safety allowed by this arrangement
was insufficient to cover the wild use of ordnance in emergencies.
The regulation of charges and the prevention of double-shotting was
difficult in action, and pieces were liable to be over-charged in the
excitement of battle in a way which Sir Samuel Bentham had failed to
realize. Pivots were broken, ships’ structures strained, and the whole
system found ill-adapted for warship requirements.
It was not till the war of 1812 that the fatal weakness of the
carronade, as primary armament, was fully revealed. The Americans had
not developed the carronade policy to the same extent as ourselves,
for transatlantic opinion was never at this period enamoured of the
short-range gun. Their well-built merchant ships, unhampered by tonnage
rules or by the convoy system which had taken so much of the stamina
from British shipping, were accustomed to trust to their speed and
good seamanship to keep an enemy at a distance. Their frigates, built
under less pedantic restrictions as to size and weight, were generally
swifter, stouter and more heavily armed than ours. And, though they
included carronades among their armament, these were not generally in
so large a proportion as in our ships, and in part were represented
by a superior type--the colombiad, a hybrid weapon of proportions
intermediate between the carronade and the long gun. Our ships often
depended heavily upon the carronade element of their armament.
Experience was soon to confirm what foresight might, surely, have
deduced: namely, that when pitted against an enemy who could choose his
range and shoot with tolerable accuracy the carronade would find itself
in certain circumstances reduced to absolute impotence.
This was to be the fate and predicament of our ships on Lakes Erie and
Ontario, in face of the Americans. “I found it impossible to bring
them to close action,” the English commodore reported. “We remained in
this mortifying situation five hours, having only six guns in all the
squadron that would reach the enemy, not a carronade being fired.” The
same lesson was to be enforced shortly afterwards on the Americans.
One of their frigates, the _Essex_, armed almost exclusively with
carronades, was fought by an English ship, the _Phœbe_, armed with
long guns. The _Essex_, it should be noted, possessed the quality
essential for a carronade armament, namely, superior speed. But the
_Phœbe_ fell in with her in circumstances when, owing to damage, her
superior speed could not be utilized. The captain of the _Phœbe_ was
able to choose the range at which the action should be fought. He kept
at a “respectful distance”: within range of his own long guns and out
of range of his opponent’s carronades. Both sides fought well, but the
result was a foregone conclusion. The _Essex_, disabled and on fire,
had to surrender. From that time the carronade was discredited. For
some years after the peace it found a place in the armament of all
classes of British ships, but it was a fallen favourite. The French
commission which visited this country in 1835 reported that, although
still accounted part of the regular armament of older ships, the
carronade was being replaced to a great extent by light long guns in
newer construction. Opinion certainly hardened more and more against
the type, and, gradually falling into disuse, it was at last altogether
abandoned.
There was a feature of the carronade, however, which if it had been
exploited might have made the story of the carronade much longer:
might, in fact, have made the carronade the starting-point of the
great evolution which ordnance was to undergo in the second quarter
of the nineteenth century. We refer to the large area of its bore, as
rendering it specially suitable for the projection of hollow spheres
charged with powder or combustibles: in short, for shells. Although,
as shown by the inscription on the model presented to him, General
Melville’s invention covered the use of shell and carcass shot, yet
there was no general appreciation in this country, at the time of
its invention, of the possibilities which the new weapon presented
for throwing charges of explosive or combustible matter against the
hulls of ships. Empty hollow shot were tried in the original Smasher
for comparison against solid shot, in case the latter might prove
too heavy;--and these, as was pointed out by an eminent writer on
artillery,[89] possessed in an accentuated degree all the disadvantages
of the carronade system, their adoption being tantamount to a reversion
to the long-exploded granite shot of the medieval ordnance--but the
use of _filled_ shell in connection with carronades does not appear
to have been seriously considered. The disadvantages of filled shell
as compared with solid shot were fairly obvious; their inferiority in
range, in penetrative power, in accuracy of flight, their inability to
stand double-shotting or battering charges--all these were capable of
proof or demonstration. Their destructive effect, both explosive and
incendiary, as compared with that of uncharged shot, was surprisingly
under-estimated. Had it been otherwise, the carronade principle would
have led naturally to the introduction of the shell gun. “The redeeming
trait in the project of General Melville,” wrote Dahlgren, “the
redeeming trait which, if properly appreciated and developed, might
have anticipated the Paixhans system by half a century, was hardly
thought of. The use of shells was, at best, little more than a vague
conception; its formidable powers unrealized, unnoticed, were doomed to
lie dormant for nearly half a century after the carronade was invented,
despite the evidence of actual trial and service.”
In other respects the carronade did good service in the development
of naval gunnery. Its introduction raised (as we have seen) the whole
question of windage and its effects, and was productive of general
improvement in the reduction and regulation of the windage in all types
of gun. By it the advantages of quick firing were clearly demonstrated.
And by its adoption in the ship-of-the-line it contributed largely to
bring about that approach to uniformity of calibre which was so marked
a feature of the armament schemes of the first half of the nineteenth
century.
CHAPTER VI
THE TRUCK CARRIAGE
From the small truck, _trochos_, or wheel on which it ran, the
four-wheeled carriage which served for centuries as a mounting for the
long guns of fighting ships has come to be known as a truck carriage:
the gun, with trunnions cast upon it, as a truck gun.
Artillery being from the first an affair common, in almost all
respects, to land and to sea service, and being applied to ships as
the result of its prior development on land, it would be expected that
naval practice should in its evolution follow in the wake of that on
land. And so it has, in the main, until the time of the Crimean War;
since when, completely revolutionizing and in turn revolutionized by
the rapid development of naval architecture and material, it has by far
surpassed land practice both in variety and power. But while the wooden
ship imposed its limitations no branch of affairs, perhaps, appeared to
be more conservative in its practice than naval gunnery. No material
seemed less subject to change, no service less inclined to draw
lessons from war experience. And in recent years the truck carriage
has often been taken as typifying the great lack of progress in all
naval material which existed between the sixteenth and the nineteenth
centuries.
Whether there was in fact so great a stagnation as is commonly
supposed, and to what causes such as existed may have been due, we may
discern from an examination of the truck carriage itself and of its
development from the earliest known forms of naval gun mounting.
§
The first large ordnance to be used on land, having as its object
the breaching of walls and gates and the reduction of fortresses,
was mounted solidly in the ground in a way which would have been
impracticable on board a ship at sea. In time, as the energy of
discharge increased, this method of embedding the gun in soil grew
dangerous: a certain recoil was necessary to absorb and carry off the
large stresses which would otherwise have shattered the piece. In time,
too, as the power of explosives and the strength of guns increased,
their size diminished; cannon, as we have seen, became more portable.
No longer embedded in earth or fixed on ponderous trestles, they were
transported from place to place on wheeled carriages. And on these
carriages, massive enough to stand the shock of discharge and well
adapted to allow a certain measure of recoil, the land ordnance were
fired with a tolerable degree of safety.
Both of these methods were followed in principle when guns came to be
used at sea.
In the early Mediterranean galley the cannon was mounted in a wooden
trough placed fore and aft on the deck in the bow of the vessel. The
trough was secured to the deck. In rear of the cannon’s breech and in
contact with it was a massive bitt of timber, worked vertically, which
took the force of the recoil. Later, as force of powder increased, this
non-recoil system of mounting ordnance failed. The cannon had to be
given a certain length of free recoil in order that, by the generation
of momentum, the energy which would otherwise be transmitted to the
ship in the form of a powerful blow might be safely diverted and more
gradually absorbed. Hence free recoil was allowed within certain
limits, the cannon being secured with ropes or chains.
But, as had doubtless been found already with land ordnance, the
violence of recoil depended largely upon the mass of the recoiling
piece; for any given conditions of discharge the heavier the gun, the
less violent was its recoil. It was a natural expedient, then, to make
the recoiling mass as large as possible. And this could be effected,
without the addition of useless and undesirable extra deadweight, by
making the wooden trough itself partake of the recoil. The cannon was
therefore lashed solidly to the trough, and both gun and trough were
left free to recoil in the desired direction. The primitive mounting
helped, in short, by augmenting the weight of the recoiling mass, to
give a quiet recoil and some degree of control over the piece.
Later, this trough or baulk of timber performed an additional function
when used as a mounting for a certain form of gun. When the piece was
a breech-loader--like those recovered from the wreck of the _Mary
Rose_--the trough had at its rear end a massive flange projecting
upwards, forming the rear working face for the wedge which secured the
removable breech chamber to the gun. “The shot and wadde being first
put into the chase,” wrote Norton in 1628, “then is the chamber to be
firmly wedged into the tayle of the chase and carriage.” The mounting
was, in fact, an integral part of the gun. In the 8-inch breech-loading
equipment of the _Mary Rose_ which lies in the museum of the Royal
United Service Institution in Whitehall there is evidence of two small
rear wheels. Most of these early ship carriages had two wheels, but
for the more powerful muzzle-loaders introduced toward the middle of
the sixteenth century, four came into favour. With four wheels our
timber baulk has become a primitive form of the truck carriage of the
succeeding centuries.[90]
But perhaps the truck carriage may more properly be regarded as a
derivative of the wheeled mounting on which, as we have seen, land
ordnance came eventually to be worked. The ship being a floating
fort, the mode of mounting the guns would be that in vogue in forts
and garrisons ashore, and the land pieces and their massive carriages
would be transferred, without modification, for use on shipboard. How
different the conditions under which they worked! The great cannon,
whose weight and high-wheeled carriages were positive advantages
when firing from land emplacements, suitably inclined, were found to
work at great disadvantage under sea conditions. Their great weight
strained the decks that bore them, and their wheeled carriages proved
difficult to control and even dangerous in any weather which caused
a rolling or pitching of the gun platform. With the introduction of
portholes their unfitness for ship work was doubtless emphasized;
there was neither height nor deck-space enough to accommodate them
between decks. Hence the necessity for a form of carriage suitable
for the special conditions of sea service, as well as for a size of
gun which would be within the capacity of a ship’s crew to work. In
the early Tudor ships the forms of mounting were various: guns were
mounted on two or four-wheeled carriages, or sometimes, especially the
large bombards, upon “scaffolds” of timber.[91] By Elizabeth’s reign
the limit had been set to the size of the gun; the demi-cannon had
been found to be the heaviest piece which could be safely mounted,
traversed, and discharged. This and the smaller guns which were plied
with such effect against the Spanish Armada were mounted on low,
wheeled, wooden carriages which were the crude models from which the
truck carriage, the finished article of the nineteenth century, was
subsequently evolved. Even then the carriages had parts which were
similar and similarly named to those of the later truck carriage; they
had trunnion-plates and sockets, capsquares, beds, quoins, axle-trees,
and trucks.[92] On them the various pieces--the demi-cannons, the
culverins, the basilisks and sakers--were worked by the nimble and
iron-sinewed seamen; run out by tackles through their ports, and
traversed by handspikes. Loaded and primed and laboriously fired by
means of spluttering linstocks, the guns recoiled upon discharge to a
length and in a direction which could not be accurately predicted. The
smaller guns, at any rate, had no breechings to restrain them: these
ropes being only used for the purpose of securing the guns at sea, and
chiefly in foul weather.[93]
On the whole these low sea carriages appear to have proved
satisfactory, and their continued use is evidence that they were
considered superior to those of the land service pattern. “The fashion
of those carriages we use at sea,” wrote Sir Henry Manwayring in 1625,
“are much better than those of the land; yet the Venetians and others
use the other in their shipping.” In essentials the carriage remained
the same from Elizabeth to Victoria. Surviving many attempts at its
supercession in favour of mechanically complicated forms of mounting,
it kept its place in naval favour for a surprising length of time;
challenging with its primitive simplicity all the elaborate mechanisms
which pitted themselves against it.
An illuminating passage from Sir Jonas Moore’s treatise on artillery,
written in 1689 and copied from the _Hydrographie_ of the Abbé
Fournier, shows at a glance the manner in which the armament of small
Mediterranean craft of that period was disposed, and the method on
which the guns were mounted. “At sea the ordnance are mounted upon
small carriages, and upon four and sometimes two low wheels without any
iron work. Each galley carries ordinarily nine pieces of ordnance in
its prow or chase, of which the greatest, and that which delivers his
shot just over the very stem, and lies just in the middle, is called
the Corsiere or ‘cannon of course’ or ‘chase cannon,’ which in time
of fight doth the most effectual service. It carries generally a shot
of thirty-three or forty pounds weight, and are generally very long
pieces. It recoils all along the middle of the galley to the mast,
where they place some soft substance to hinder its farther recoil, that
it might not endamage the mast. Next to this Corsiere are placed two
Minions on each side, which carries a five or six-pound ball; and next
to these are the Petrieroes, which are loaded with stone-shot to shoot
near at hand. Thirdly, there are some small pieces, which are open
at the breech, and called Petrieroes a Braga, and are charged with a
moveable chamber loaded with base and bar shot, to murder near at hand.
And the furthest from the Corsiere are the Harquebuss a Croc, which are
charged with small cross-bar shot, to cut sails and rigging. All these
small pieces are mounted on strong pins of iron having rings, in which
are placed the trunnions with a socket, so that they are easily turned
to any quarter.
“All the guns are mounted upon wheels and carriages; moreover the
Petrieroes, which are planted in the forecastle and quarter to defend
the prow and stern, are mounted upon strong pins of iron without any
reverse; the greatest pieces of battery are planted the lowest, just
above the surface of the water, the smallest in the waist and steerage,
and with the Petrieroes in quarter-deck and forecastle. Upon the sea,
to load great ordnance they never load with a ladle, but make use
of cartridges, as well for expedition as security in not firing the
powder, which in time of fight is in a continual motion.”
Before passing to a consideration of the truck carriage in detail there
is an important circumstance to be noted with regard to the conditions
under which its design and supply to the naval service were regulated.
It is a remarkable fact that, during almost the whole of what may be
called the truck carriage era, the arming of ships with ordnance,
the supply of the requisite guns and their carriages, the design of
the guns and their mode of mounting, was no part of a naval officer’s
affair. The Board of Ordnance had control both of land and of sea
artillery. From the death of Sir William Wynter onwards the mastership
of the ordnance by sea was absorbed into the mastership of the ordnance
by land. From this arrangement, as may be imagined, many inconveniences
arose, and many efforts were made at various times to disjoin the
offices and to place the armament of ships under naval control. For,
apart from the fact that at an early date the ordnance office acquired
“an unenviable reputation for sloth and incapacity,”[94] the interests
of the sea service were almost bound to suffer under such a system. And
in fact the inconvenience suffered by the navy, through the delays and
friction resulting from the system whereby all dealings with guns and
their mountings and ammunition were the work of military officials,
was notorious. The anomalous arrangement survived, in spite of the
efforts of reformers, till far into the nineteenth century. Probably
the Board of Ordnance argued honestly against reintroducing a dual
control for land and sea artillery material. They had, at any rate,
strong interests in favour of the status quo. For, writing in the
year 1660, Sir William Slingsby noted regretfully that “the masters
of the ordnance of England, having been ever since of great quality
and interest, would never suffer such a collop to be cut out of their
employment.”
The arming of ships, therefore, apart from the original assignment of
the armament, remained in the province of the military authorities.
§
An examination of the design of the perfected truck carriage and a
glance at the records of its performances in action show that the
advocates of rival gun mountings were not altogether incorrect in their
contention that the manner in which the broadside armament of our ships
was mounted was wrong in principle and unsatisfactory in actual detail.
The many defects of the truck carriage were indeed only too obvious.
In the first place, the breechings were so reeved that the force
sustained by them in opposition to the recoil of the gun tended
inevitably to cause the piece to jump. The reaction of the breeching
acted along lines below the level of the gun-axis; the breeching
therefore exerted a lifting force which, instead of pressing down
all of the four trucks upon the deck and thus deadening the recoil,
tended to raise the fore trucks in the air and reduce the friction
of the carriage upon the deck. The larger the gun and the higher the
gun-axis above the trucks, the greater was this tendency of the gun
to lift and overturn. If the rear trucks, about which the gun and
carriage tended to revolve, had been set at some distance in rear of
the centre of gravity of the equipment, it would have been rendered
thereby more stable. But space did not permit of this. And actually
they were so placed that, when discharge was most violent, the weight
of the equipment was scarcely sufficient to oppose effectively the
tendency to jump. Again, the anchoring of the breeching to two points
in the ship’s frames, one on either side of the gun, was wrong and
liable to have serious consequences. For with this arrangement not only
had the breeching to be continuously “middled” as the gun shifted its
bearing, but even when accurately adjusted the “legs” of the breeching
bore an unequal strain when the gun was fired off the beam. In other
words, the horizontal angles subtended between the gun-axis, when off
the beam, and the two lines of the breeching were unequal; one side of
the breeching took more of the blow of gunfire than the other; and not
infrequently the gun carriage was thrown round violently out of the
line of recoil, with damage to the equipment and injury to the crew.
The design of the carriage was in no way influenced, apparently, by a
desire to obtain a minimum area of port opening in combination with a
maximum traverse of the gun. For the broad span of the front part of
the carriage soon caused the gun to be “wooded” when slewed off the
beam. And a further disadvantage of this broad span was in the effect
it had of automatically bringing the gun right abeam every time it was
hauled out after loading: the front span of the carriage coming square
with the timbers of the port-sill.
As for the system of recoil, while the recoiling of the carriage with
the gun had an advantage in reducing the stresses brought on the hull
structure, yet this arrangement had the correlative disadvantage that
the carriage as well as the gun had to be hauled out again. And, as
regards safety, it is a matter for surprise that the system of chocking
recoil by means of large ropes--of absorbing the momentum of a heavy
gun and its carriage in a distance corresponding to the stretch of
the breechings under their suddenly applied load--was not far more
injurious than experience proved to be the case. Even so, the results
obtained from it were far from satisfactory. “It is a lamentable
truth”--we quote Sir William Congreve, writing in 1811--“that numbers
of men are constantly maimed, one way or another, by the recoiling of
the heavy ordnance used on board ships of war. Most of the damage is
done by the random recoil of the carriage which, moving with the gun
along no certain path, is much affected by the motion of the vessel and
the inequalities of the deck. It is difficult to know, within a few
feet, to where the carriage will come, and the greatest watchfulness
is necessary on all hands to prevent accidents.” This refers, observe,
to the truck gun under control. How terrible an uncontrolled gun could
be, may be read in the pages of Victor Hugo’s _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_,
of which romance the breaking loose of a piece on the gun-deck of a
frigate forms a central incident. It was conjectured that the old
_Victory_, Admiral Balchen’s flagship which went down off the Casquets
in 1744, “mouse and man,” was lost through the breaking loose of her
great guns in a gale.[95]
[Illustration: A TRUCK GUN]
The accessories of the truck carriage were a source of frequent
accident. The attachment of breechings and tackles to the ship’s side
often involved disablement in action, the numerous bolts being driven
in as missiles among the crew, who were also in danger of having their
limbs caught up in the maze of ropes and trappings with which the deck
round the gun was encumbered. Considered as a mechanism the whole
gun-equipment was a rude and primitive affair; the clumsy carriage
run out to battery by laborious tackles, the cast-iron gun laid by
a simple wedge, the whole equipment traversed by prising round with
handspikes--by exactly the same process, it has been remarked, as that
by which the savage moved a log in the beginning of the world.
_Why, then, did the truck carriage maintain its long supremacy?_
The answer is, that with all its acknowledged defects it had merits
which universally recommended it, while its successive rivals exhibited
defects or disadvantages sufficient to prevent their adoption to its
own exclusion. It was a case, in fact, of the survival of the fittest.
And if we examine its various features in the light of the records
of its performances in action (the truck carriage appears in the
background of most of our naval letters and biographies), we shall
understand why it was not easily displaced from favour with generation
after generation of our officers and seamen.
In the first place the truck carriage, a simple structure of resilient
elm, with bed, cheek-plates, and trunnions strongly fitted together and
secured by iron bolts, was better adapted than any other form for the
prevention of excessive stresses, resulting from the shock of recoil,
on either gun or ship’s structure. By the expedient of allowing the
whole gun equipment to recoil freely across the deck, by allowing the
energy of recoil to assume the form of kinetic energy given to the
gun and carriage, the violent reactionary stresses due to the sudden
combustion of the gunpowder were safely diverted from the ship’s
structure, which was thus relieved of nearly the whole of the firing
stresses. Moreover, by allowing the gun to recoil readily under the
influence of the powder-gases the gun itself was saved from excessive
stresses which would otherwise have shattered it. From this point of
view the weight of the carriage, relatively to that of the gun, was of
considerable importance. If the carriage had been at all too heavy it
would not have yielded sufficiently under the blow of the gun, and,
howsoever strongly made, would eventually have been destroyed, if it
had not by its inertia caused the gun to break; if too light, the
violence of the recoil would have torn loose the breechings. Actually,
and as the result of a process of trial-and-error continuously
carried on, the weight of the finally evolved elm carriage was so
nicely adapted to that of its gun that a recoil of the most suitable
proportions was generally obtained, a free yet not too boisterous
run back. This, of course, upon an even keel. Conditions varied when
the guns were at sea upon a moving platform. With the ship heeled
under a strong wind the weather guns were often fired with difficulty
owing to the violence of the recoil. On the other hand the listing of
the ship when attacking an enemy from windward favoured the lee guns
by providing a natural ramp up which they smoothly recoiled and down
which they ran by gravity to battery, as in a shore emplacement. Of
which advantage, as we know, British sea tactics made full use at every
opportunity.
It was strong, simple, and self-contained. Metal carriages, whose
claims were periodically under examination, proved brittle, too rigid,
heavy, and dangerous from their liability to splinter. Gunslides,
traverses, or structures laid on the deck to form a definite path for
the recoil of the gun (such as the Swedish ships of Chapman’s time, for
example, carried) were disliked on account of their complication, the
deck-space occupied, and the difficulty which their use entailed of
keeping the deck under the gun dry and free from rotting; though beds
laid so as to raise the guns to the level of the ports were sometimes
fitted, and were indeed a necessity in the earlier days owing to the
large sheer and camber given to the decks. The use of compressors, or
of adjustable friction devices, in any form, for limiting the recoil,
was objected to on account of the possibilities which they presented
for accident owing to the forgetfulness of an excited crew. The truck
carriage, being self-contained and independent of external adjustment,
was safe in this respect.
The four wood trucks were of the correct form and size to give the
results required. The resistance of a truck to rolling depends largely
upon the relative diameters of itself and its axle. It was thus
possible, by making gun-carriage trucks of small diameter and their
axles relatively large, to obtain the following effect: on gunfire
the carriage started from rest suddenly, the trucks skidding on the
deck without rotating and thus checking by their friction the first
violent motion of recoil; during the latter phase of the recoil the
trucks rotated, and the carriage ran smoothly back until checked by the
breechings.
The friction of the trucks on the deck was also affected, however,
by another feature of the design: the position of the trunnions
relatively to the axis of the gun. How important was this position as
influencing the history of land artillery, we have already seen. Truck
guns were nearly always “quarter-hung,” or cast with their trunnions
slightly below their axis, so as to cause the breech to exert a
downward pressure on firing, and thus augment the friction of the rear
trucks on the deck and check the recoil. The position of the trunnions
was studied from yet another point of view: namely, to give the minimum
of jump to the gun and ensure a smooth start to the recoil. With this
object they were so placed that the two ends of the gun were not
equally balanced about the trunnion axis, but a preponderance of about
one-twentieth of the weight of the gun was given to the breech-end,
thus bringing a slight pressure, due to deadweight alone, upon the
quoin.
As for this quoin or primitive wedge by which the gun was roughly laid,
this had a great advantage over the screw (which gained a footing, as
an alternative, when the carronade came into use) in that it allowed
of rapid changes of elevation of the gun. Hence, though the quoin was
liable to jump from its bed on gunfire and do injury to the crew, it
kept its place as an accessory almost as long as the truck carriage
itself survived.
There was one advantage possessed by the truck carriage which was
perhaps the most important of all: its superior transportability.
The gun equipment was easily transferable, and what this meant to
the seaman may be gathered from the accounts of the way in which, in
sailing-ship days, ships’ armaments were continually being shifted.
The armament, we have noted, was not embodied, as it is to-day, as an
integral part of the design of the ship. The guns and their carriages
were in the nature of stock articles, which could be changed in size,
number and position according to the whim of the captain or the service
of the ship. And there was every reason why all parties concerned, and
especially the ordnance people, should tend to standardize the forms of
guns and carriages, to keep them self-contained and as independent as
possible of the special requirements of individual ships or positions.
The shifting of guns was constantly going on in a commissioned ship.
At sea they were lashed against the sides so as to leave as clear
a deck as possible. In chase a shifting of guns, among other heavy
weights, was resorted to in order that the vessel should not lose
way by plunging heavily. If she set sail on a long voyage some of the
guns were struck down into the hold, to stiffen her and give her an
increased stability. And on her return to harbour the guns might be
removed for examination and repair by the ordnance officials, the ship
being laid alongside a sheer hulk for the purpose. In the days before
the sheathing of ships’ bottoms was successfully practised, and in
the absence of docks, it was constantly necessary to careen ships for
the repair of their ground-timbers, for the cleaning of their sides
and the caulking of their seams. This, again, necessitated a shifting
or complete removal of most of their stores and ordnance. Great
advantages were offered, therefore, from having gun-carriages compact,
self-contained, and capable of being quickly removed from one place to
another.
§
Having inspected the truck carriage in some detail, let us now briefly
glance at the development of its use which took place in the last
hundred years of its service, between the middle of the eighteenth and
the middle of the nineteenth centuries.
The stream of improvement in naval gunnery began to flow strongly under
the administration of Lord Anson. New methods of firing, experiments
with priming tubes to replace the primitive powder horns and trains
of vent powder, and gun locks to replace the dangerous and unreliable
slow match and linstock,[96] were under trial in the fleets commanded
by Admiral Hawke, but with results not altogether satisfactory.
The locks supplied were lacking in mechanical precision, and the
tubes--“very pernicious things” they were voted--were apt to fly out
and wound the men. But that the unsatisfactory results obtained were
not due to defects inherent in the new devices was soon clearly proved.
Twenty years later an eminent gunnery officer, Sir Charles Douglas,
by perseverance and an enthusiastic attention to mechanical detail,
succeeded in making both locks and priming tubes a practical success,
greatly enhancing by their aid the rate and effectiveness of fire of
the great guns. Flint-locks of his own design he bought and fitted
to the guns of his ship at his private expense. Flannel-bottomed
cartridges, to replace the parchment-covered cartridges which had
caused so much fouling, and goose-quill priming tubes, were provided
by him, and to him is certainly due the credit for initiating the
series of improvements in material which, trivial as they may seem in
detail, yet in the aggregate had the effect of placing our gunnery at a
relatively high level in the ensuing wars.
In addition to introducing improvements in methods of firing, Sir
Charles Douglas did much to improve the efficiency of the truck
carriages themselves. On his appointment to the _Duke_ in 1779 he at
once began to put his schemes in hand. To ease the recoil of the guns
and to save their breechings he devised and fitted steel springs in
some way to the latter; with such surprising good effect (he reported)
that even with a restricted length of recoil no breeching, not even
that of a 32-pounder weather gun double-shotted and fired over a
slippery deck, was ever known to break. The recoil he further eased by
loading the truck carriage with shot, which he slung on it, thereby
augmenting the recoiling mass. He also proposed and tried another
apparatus having the same effect: suspended weights, secured to the
carriage by ropes reeved through fairleads, which on recoil the gun was
made to lift. Which weights also had an effect in helping to run the
gun out again which he calculated to be equal to that of two extra men
on the tackles.
Perhaps the principal improvements due to Sir Charles Douglas were
those which had as their object the firing of ships’ guns on other
bearings than right abeam. He realized the importance of possessing a
large arc of training for his guns; and with this object he cleared
away all possible obstructions on the gun decks of the _Duke_, removing
and modifying knees, standards and pillars to allow his guns to be
pointed a full four points before and abaft the beam: a degree of
obliquity hitherto unknown in the navy for broadside armament. To
traverse the carriages quickly to the required line of bearing he had
eyebolts fitted in line between the guns for attachment to the tackles;
and to shorten and control the recoil and thus allow of firing on an
extreme bearing in a confined space, and also to improve the rate of
fire, he shod the carriage-trucks with wedges designed to act as drags.
“We now dare to fire our guns without running them out,” he wrote to
Lord Barham, “and so as to admit of the ports being shut, with certain
impunity, even to the obliquity of three points before or abaft the
beam. A wedge properly adapted is placed behind each truck, to make up
for the reduction of space to recoil in, in firing to windward or in
rolling weather. The gun first ascends the wedges by rotation, and when
stopped, performs the remainder of her recoil as a sledge, so feebly
as scarce to bring her breeching tight. The bottoms of the wedges, to
augment their friction against the deck, are pinked, tarred, and rubbed
with very rough sand or with coarse coal dust. This method has also, I
hear, been adopted in the _Union_.”
It was also adopted in the _Formidable_, in which ship Sir Charles
fought as first captain to Admiral Rodney in the great fight which
took place three years after the above was written. At the Battle
of the Saints not a single goose-quill failed in the _Formidable_,
nor did a gun require to be wormed so long as the flannel-bottomed
cartridges held out. Of the hundred and twenty-six locks fitted in
the _Duke_, only one failed; with this exception a single Kentish
black flint served for each gun throughout the whole engagement. The
oblique fire which our ships were enabled to employ so shattered the
enemy by the unexpectedly rapid and concentrated fire poured into him,
that victory was not left long in doubt; the toll of his killed and
wounded was enormous. The _Duke_, it was reckoned, fired twice as many
effective shots as would have been possible under the old system. The
_Formidable_ reported that two, and sometimes three, broadsides were
fired at every passing Frenchman before he could bring a gun to bear in
reply.[97] If all the ships of the fleet, it was said, had been able to
use their guns as they were used in these two, very few of the enemy
would have escaped. The advantage accruing to the British fleets from
the improvements initiated and developed by Sir Charles Douglas and
other captains of his time was palpable and undisputed. It is possible,
however, that the total effect produced by all these developments in
gunnery material, both in this action and in those of the following
war, may have been insufficiently emphasized by historians?
It is to the war which broke out with the United States of America
in 1812 that we must turn to see the truck equipment working at
its highest point of efficiency. By this time the advantage of
gun-sights[98] for giving accuracy of aim has been seized by a few
individual officers, and sights of various patterns have been fitted
by enthusiasts. No official encouragement is given, however, to
experiments with sights and scales and disparting devices, and once
again it is left to private initiative and expense to make a further
advance toward efficiency. Applications for gun-sights are rejected
during the war on the ground that these novelties are “not according to
the regulation of the Service.”[99]
These are the circumstances in which a certain vessel in the royal navy
exhibits such a superiority in gunnery over her contemporaries as to
render her conspicuous at the time and, for several decades afterwards,
the accepted model by which all such as care may measure themselves.
The _Shannon_, nominally a 38-gun frigate, carried twenty-eight
18-pounder long guns on her gun deck and fourteen carronades,
32-pounders, upon her quarter-deck and forecastle; in addition to four
long 9-pounders. She was commanded by Captain Philip Broke, whose fame
as a gallant commander is secure for all time but whose attainments in
the realm of gunnery have been less widely appreciated. Captain Broke,
possessing a keen insight into the possibilities of the _Shannon’s_
armament, set himself to organize, from the first day of his ship’s
memorable commission, her crew and material for the day of battle.
No other ship of the time was so highly organized. For all the guns
sighting arrangements were provided by him. To each gun-carriage
side-scales of his own design were attached, marked with a scale of
degrees and showing by means of a plumb-bob the actual heel of the
ship; so that every gun could be laid by word of command at any desired
angle of elevation. For giving all guns a correct bearing a circle was
inscribed on the deck round every gun-port, degrees being represented
by grooves cut in the planks and inlaid with white putty; by which
device concentration of fire of a whole battery was rendered possible,
the sheer of the ship being compensated for by cutting down the
carriages and adjusting them with spirit-levels.
[Illustration: METHOD OF GUN-EXERCISE IN H.M.S. “SHANNON”
From a pamphlet by Captain S. J. Pechell, R.N.]
Beside these improvements applied to his material--steps which seem
simple and obvious to-day, but which were far-sighted strides in
1812--the training of his personnel was a matter to which he paid
unremitting attention. His gunners were carefully taught the mysteries
of the dispart. Gun drill was made as realistic as possible and prizes
were given out of his private purse for the winners of the various
competitions. Often a beef cask, with a piece of canvas four feet
square attached to it, was thrown overboard as a target, the ship
being laid to some three hundred yards away from it. The captain’s log
was full of such entries as: “Seamen at target,” “fixed and corrected
nine-pounder sights,” “mids at target and carronade,” “swivels in
maintop,” “practised with musket,” “exercised at the great guns,” etc.
etc. Systematic instruction in working the guns, fixing sights and
reading scales, was carried out. And a method of practising gun-laying,
which later came to be used in other ships from the example set by the
_Shannon_, is illustrated by the accompanying sketch. A gun was taken
onto the quarter-deck and secured; a spar was placed in its muzzle with
a handspike lashed across it; and then two men surged the gun by means
of the handspike to imitate the rolling of the ship, while the captain
of the gun, crouching behind it, looked along his line of sight for the
target (a disc placed in the forepart of the ship) and threw in the
quoin when he had taken aim.
With such a training did the captain of the _Shannon_ prepare for the
duel which fortune was to give him with the _Chesapeake_. The pick
of the British fleets was to meet an American of average efficiency.
Superiority of gunnery would have decided that famous action in favour
of the former, it may safely be said, whatever the conditions in which
it had been fought. At long range the deliberate and practised aim
of the _Shannon’s_ 18-pounders would have overborne even the good
individual shooting of an American crew. At night or in foggy weather
or in a choppy sea the _Shannon’s_ arrangements for firing on a given
bearing and at a given elevation would have given her the superiority.
As it happened, the combined and correct fire at pistol range, of
long gun and carronade--the long gun, double-shotted, searching the
_Chesapeake’s_ decks with ball and grape, the carronade splintering her
light fir-lined sides and spreading death and destruction among the
crew--quickly secured a victory, and showed the naval world the value
of high ideals in the technique of gunnery.
In the _Shannon_ we have the high-water mark of smooth-bore gunnery.
From that time onward, in spite of the precedents which her captain
created, little appears to have been done in the way of extending his
methods or of applying his improvements to the armament of the navy
generally. As a consequence, relatively to the continuously improving
defensive efficiency of the ships themselves there was an actual
decline in the efficiency of the truck gun after the American War: a
decline which culminated in Navarino. It was a time when “new-fangled
notions,” developments of method and material, were viewed with strong
suspicion, even with resentment, by many of the most influential of
naval officers. In the case of the truck gun, strong prejudices reacted
against the general introduction of such refinements as had admittedly
been found effective in exceptional cases, and the demand still went
up for everything in connection with gunnery to be “coarsely simple.”
To many it doubtless seemed impolitic, to say the least, that anything
should be done in the way of mechanical development which would have
the effect of substituting pure skill for the physical force and
endurance, in the exertion of which the British seaman so obviously
excelled. The truck gun was merely the rough medium by which this
physical superiority gained the desired end, and it had been proved
well suited to the English genius. Nothing more was asked than a rough
equality of weapons. The arguments used against such finesse in gunnery
as that used by the commander of the _Shannon_ were much the same, it
may be imagined, as those used at an earlier date (and with better
reason) to prohibit the use of the mechanically worked crossbow in
favour of the simple longbow, strung by the athletic arm of the English
archer.
That little was done for years to improve the truck gun equipment, is
evident from a letter, written in 1825 by Captain S. J. Pechell and
addressed to the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean squadron,
deploring the defective equipment of ships’ guns. Even at this date,
it appears, few of the guns were properly disparted, few had sights
or scales fitted to them. No arrangements had yet been generally
adapted for permitting horizontal, or what Captain Broke had called
“blindfold” firing; or for laying all the guns together by word of
command. The truck carriages still gave insufficient depression,
preventing a ship from firing her weather guns at point-blank when
listed more than four degrees. The quantity of powder and shot allowed
for exercise only amounted to one shot for each captain of a gun in
seven months. No instruction was given in sighting or fixing sights, no
system of instruction in principles was followed. And once again, as
in the seventeenth century, the disadvantage under which naval gunnery
laboured by reason of the dual control in all matters pertaining to the
ordnance was strongly felt. “It is singular,” wrote Captain Pechell,
“that the arming of a ship is the only part of her equipment which has
not the superintendence of a Naval Officer. We have no sea Officer at
the Ordnance to arrange and decide upon the proper equipment of Ships
of War; or to carry into effect any improvement which experience might
suggest. It is in this way that everything relating to the Ordnance
on board a Man of War has remained nearly in the same state for the
last thirty years; and is the only department (I mean the naval part
of it) that has not profited by experience or encouraged Officers
to communicate information. Much might be done now that the Marine
Artillery are stationed at Portsmouth. At present it is not even
generally known that a manual exercise exists.... If some such system
were adopted, we should no longer consider the length of an action at
its principal merit; the _Chesapeake_ was beat in eleven minutes!”
Captain Pechell was a firm believer in the desirability of developing
to its utmost British material. He had an enthusiastic belief,
moreover, in the possibilities of his personnel; and stated his
conviction that officers were only too anxious to be given the chance
of instruction, prophesying an emulation among them and as great a
desire to be distinguished “in gunnery as in Seamanship.” His advocacy
of a system of gunnery training bore fruit later in the establishment
of the _Excellent_ at Portsmouth. The scheme for the development of a
corps of scientific naval officers, which had been foreshadowed by Sir
Howard Douglas in his classic treatise on Naval Gunnery and which was
formulated later in detail by Captain Pechell, was one of the reforms
brought to maturity by Sir James Graham in the year 1832.
Through all the subsequent changes of armament up to the Crimean War,
from solid shot to shell-fire, the truck carriage maintained its place
of favour. In 1811 Colonel (afterwards Sir William) Congreve had
published a treatise demonstrating the defects of the truck carriage
and proposing in its place a far more scientific and ingenious form of
mounting. It lacked, however, some of the characteristics which, as we
have seen, gave value to the old truck carriage. Except where special
conditions gave additional value to its rival, the truck carriage
kept its place. In 1820 an iron carriage was tried officially, for
24-pounders, but gave unsatisfactory results. In 1829 the Marshall
carriage was tried, offering important advantages over the standard
pattern. Its main feature was a narrow fore-carriage separate from the
recoiling rear portion, this fore-carriage being pivoted to a socket in
the centre of the gun-port. But still the truck carriage survived the
very favourable reports given on its latest rival.
As concentration of fire became developed new fittings such as
directing bars, breast chocks and training racers made their appearance
and were embodied in its design. As the power of guns and the energy
requiring to be absorbed on recoil increased, the rear trucks
disappeared and gave place, in the two-truck Marsilly carriage, to
flat chocks which by the friction of their broad surfaces against the
deck helped more than trucks to deaden the motion of the carriage.
The quoin, perfected by the addition of a graduated scale marked
to show the elevation corresponding to each of its positions, gave
place at length to various mechanical forms of elevating gear. The
elm body was replaced by iron plates bolted and riveted together. And
then at length, with the continuous growth of gun-energy, the forces
of recoil became so great that the ordinary carriage constrained by
rope breechings could no longer cope with them. The friction of wood
rear-chocks against the deck was replaced by the friction of vertical
iron plates, attached to the carriage, against similar plates attached
to a slide interposed between carriage and deck, and automatically
compressed: the invention, it is said, of Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. The
truck carriage, as it had been known for centuries, had at last been
left behind in the evolution of naval artillery.
* * * * *
With the advent of modern gun mountings the old anomaly of the divided
responsibility of War Office and Admiralty became unbearable; the
necessity for a close adaptation of each gun to its ship-position,
for careful co-ordination of the work of artillerist, engineer and
shipbuilder, produced a crisis which had important effects on future
naval administration. A single paragraph will suffice to show the
position as it presented itself in the early ’sixties. “There were a
thousand points of possible collision,” wrote the biographer of Captain
Cooper Key, the captain of the _Excellent_, “as it became more and more
certain that gun carriages, instead of being loose movable structures
capable of being used in any port, were henceforth to be fixed in the
particular port which was adapted for them, with special pivoting bolts
and deck racers--all part of the ship’s structure. Where the War Office
work began and the Controller’s ended in these cases, no one knew, but
the captain of the _Excellent_ came in as one interfering between a
married pair, and was misunderstood and condemned on both sides.”
In 1866 the solution was found. Captain Cooper Key was appointed to the
Admiralty as Director-General of Naval Ordnance.
CHAPTER VII
THE SHELL GUN
The chief function of land artillery in its earlier days was the
destruction of material. The huge engines of the ancients were of
value in effecting from a safe distance what the tortoise and the
battering-ram could only do at close quarters: the breaching of
walls and the battering-in of gates, doors and bulwarks. After the
invention of gunpowder the use of artillery remained, we have seen,
substantially the same. Apart from the moral effect on horse and man of
the “monstrous roare of noise” when in defence, the offensive object of
ordnance was almost entirely the breaching of the enemy’s works. The
guns were literally “pieces of battery,” doing their slow work by the
momentum of their large projectiles.
Thus considered, artillery was not a very effective instrument.
And, just as in earlier times it had been sought to supplement mere
impact by other effects--by the throwing into besieged fortresses of
quicklime, for instance, “dead horses and other carrion,”--so, after
the arrival of gunpowder, endeavour was made to substitute incendiarism
or explosion for the relatively ineffective method of impact. The use
of grenades, hand-thrown, was discovered. And then followed, as a
matter of course, their adaptation to the mortars already in use for
the projection of stones and other solid material. These mortars, as in
the case of the early cannon, were at first made of an inconveniently
large size; and, also as in the case of cannon, they came later to
be cast of more moderate proportions to facilitate their transport
and thus render them more serviceable for operations in the field.
Artillery was now devoting its attention to the personnel. The result
of this evolution was the howitzer, a weapon whose value to land armies
was greatly enhanced by the discovery, by Marshal Vauban at the end
of the seventeenth century, of the efficacy of the _ricochet_. Under
this system the fuzed bomb or grenade, instead of being projected
from a mortar set at a high elevation, to describe a lofty and almost
parabolic trajectory, was discharged from a howitzer at a sufficiently
low elevation to cause it to strike the ground some distance short of
its objective, whence it proceeded, leaping and finally rolling along
the ground till it came to its target, where it exploded.
[Illustration]
So far shell fire had developed on land. In sea warfare the solid
cannon ball remained the orthodox missile; the use of explosive or
incendiary shells was deemed so dangerous a practice as to forbid
its acceptance by the great maritime powers, save in exceptional
cases, until the nineteenth century. Toward the end of the eighteenth
century serious consideration was given, by France especially, to the
possibilities of shell fire. Frenchmen felt restless and dissatisfied
with the conditions in which they were waging war with England. Sea
ordnance, which in the past had wrought so much by the destruction
of personnel, was becoming increasingly impotent, not only against
personnel but against ships themselves. Trafalgar came as a proof
of this, when not a single ship was sunk by gunfire. Sea fighting
was again resolving itself into a straightforward physical struggle
between the guns’ crews of the opposing fleets, in which struggle
the victory went by attrition to the side which plied its guns with
the greatest rapidity and perseverance. Élan, enthusiasm, science,
the mental alertness of the individual, were bound to be overborne
in such a case by superior endurance, physique, coolness, and sound
workmanship. Both sides had a profound belief in the superiority of
their personnel in hand-to-hand conflict. Where fighting was, as in
the earliest days of the rival navies, “man to man, lance to lance,
arrow to arrow, stone to stone,” success depended entirely upon
courage and physical strength; and in such cases, says Nicolas, the
English were almost always victorious. If, stated a French writer, sea
actions could be decided by hand-to-hand combat the arms of France
would triumph. But sea fights were in fact almost solely a matter of
artillery. If only the conditions of battle could be altered; if only
the forces of incendiarism or explosion could be summoned to put the
enemy ships-of-the-line in jeopardy, a short cut to victory might be
found or, at any rate, the superiority of England in material might be
seriously depreciated.
[Illustration]
Some time was to elapse, however, before France was to see even the
partial consummation of this fervent desire.
While the use of grenades, bombs, carcasses and other explosive
and incendiary missiles had been recognized on land for centuries,
an event occurred in the year 1788 which, coming to the ears of
Europe, should have had considerable effect in turning the thoughts
of artillerists to the possibilities of their use at sea. In that
year, some sixty-five years before the action off Sinope, a Deptford
shipwright who had risen to high service under the Russian government
fitted out for his employers a flotilla of long-boats for an attack
upon a Turkish squadron. These long-boats Sir Samuel Bentham--he was
the ex-shipwright--armed with brass ordnance mounted on his favourite
non-recoil system, and for them he requisitioned a large supply of
shells, carcasses and solid shot. At the mouth of the Liman river in
the Sea of Azov the Russians, with these insignificant war vessels,
attacked a very superior force of Turkish ships, and gained a complete
victory. The effect of the shells, fired at close range into the
Turkish ships, was startling and impressive. Great holes were torn in
the sides of the vessels, and fires were started which, in a favouring
medium of dry timber and paint and pitch, rapidly spread and caused the
squadron’s destruction.
No evidence can be quoted, it must be admitted, to show that
contemporary opinion realized how portentous was this sea action;
no stress is laid on the event in histories relating to that time.
Nor does another event which occurred at this period appear to have
caused the notice it deserved: the firing, at the suggestion of a
Captain Mercier, 35th Regiment, of mortar shells from the British
long 24-pounders, from Gibraltar into the Spanish lines.[100] Nor
was Lieutenant Shrapnel’s contemporaneous invention,[101] of a
shell containing case shot explodable by a small bursting charge,
developed or the possible adaptation of its use for sea warfare fully
appreciated. Or, if authority did discern the eventual effect of these
innovations, a wholesome dread of their extension and development
in naval warfare appears to have dictated a policy of calculated
conservatism in respect of them, a suppression of all ideas and
experiments which had in view any intensifying or improvement of
our artillery methods. “So long as foreign powers did not innovate
by improving their guns, by extending the use of carronades and,
above all, by projecting shells horizontally from shipping; so long
it was our interest not to set the example of any improvement in
naval ordnance--the value of our immense material might otherwise be
depreciated. Many of the defects which were known to exist, so long
as they were common to all navies, operated to the advantage of Great
Britain.”[102]
Apart from this consideration, however, it is remarkable how small a
value was set by English opinion, even at a late date, upon explosive
as compared with solid projectiles. The obvious disadvantages of
hollow spherical shell--their smaller range, more devious flight and
less penetrative power--were emphasized; their admittedly greater
destructive effect (even taking into account the small bursting charges
deemed suitable for use with them) was rated at a surprisingly low
figure.
The French, on the other hand, showed great eagerness to explore the
possibilities of shell fire in fighting ships. Addicted to science,
they searched unceasingly throughout the revolutionary wars for some
development of naval material which would neutralize the obvious
and ever-increasing superiority of the British navy under existing
conditions, even if it might not actually incline the balance of
power in their favour. To this end they courted the use of incendiary
projectiles. Our own authorities, partly from a lively apprehension
of the danger believed to be inherent in their carriage and use in
wooden ships and partly from a feeling of moral revulsion against
the employment of what they genuinely believed to be an unfair and
unchivalrous agency, limited the use of fuzed shells, carcasses and
other fireworks as much as possible to small bomb vessels of special
construction--and inferior morals. But in ships-of-the-line the use
of such missiles was strongly deprecated by naval opinion, and even
the use of hand-grenades in the tops was forbidden by some captains.
Time justified this cautious attitude. The French suffered for the
precipitancy with which they adopted inflammatory agents; fires and
explosions were frequent in their fleets; the history of their navy in
these wars--“la longue et funeste guerre de la Révolution”--is lit up
from time to time with the conflagrations of their finest ships, prey
to the improperly controlled chemical forces of their own adoption. One
example alone need be cited: the _Orient_ at the battle of the Nile.
Even if the French flagship was not set on fire by their direct agency,
small doubt exists that the spread of the fire which broke out in her
was accelerated by the presence of the combustibles which, in common
with most of the French ships, she carried. Throughout the wars fuzed
shells, carcasses, stinkpots, port-fires, proved far more terrible to
friend than foe. And the foe doubtless felt confirmed and fortified in
his opinions that such substances were quite unsuitable for carriage
in warships. As to the ethics of explosives even the French themselves
seem to have been doubtful. For, shortly after the battle in Aboukir
Bay, some of their officers accused an English captain of having been
so “unfair” as to use shells: an audacious manœuvre on their part,
for, on some of the shells in question being produced and the gunner
questioned as to whence they came, “to the confusion of the accusers,
he related that they were found on board the _Spartiate_, one of the
ships captured on the first of August!”[103]
Continuous trials were carried out in France with shells fired
from guns. In 1798, following a series of successful experiments,
trials were prosecuted at Meudon by a special commission, who caused
24-and 36-pound shells to be fired at a target representing a
ship-of-the-line, at ranges of 400 and 600 yards. The results were
impressive, and the report rendered to Bonaparte such as to confirm
his personal conviction in the value of shell fire. Less than a year
later, we may note in passing, the Consul was himself the target of
shell fire: being subjected, at the siege of Acre, to the unpleasant
attentions of a 68-pounder carronade from the English fleet. In 1804,
with the avowed object of keeping our cruisers at a distance, he had
long howitzers cast and placed for the defence of Toulon and other
ports. And hardly a year passed but some trial was made of horizontal
fire of shells from guns and mortars.
Of the two great maritime powers, Britain had contributed more,
perhaps, towards the building up by actual practice of the system of
artillery which was shortly to come into vogue. Shell fire from mortars
had been used with far more effect by her forces than by those of her
great enemy. The invention of the carronade was in itself almost a
solution; and, though it did not lead directly to the shell gun, yet
it undoubtedly induced the weapon which most strongly resembled it:
the medium ship-gun, as designed by Congreve and Blomefield, which was
something between the carronade and the long gun, and which for a time
was mounted in our two-decked ships for the purpose of preserving unity
of calibre.
But the French, free from the bias against change of method and
material which operated in this country, seized on the possibilities
of existing elements, and combined them in such a way as to form a
complete solution of the shell-fire problem. To General Paixhans,
the eminent officer of artillery, the credit for this solution is
undoubtedly due.
§
The experiments of M. Paixhans, carried out in order to confirm the
theories on which his new system was founded, extended over several
years and resulted in the publication of two books--the _Nouvelle Force
Maritime et Artillerie_, 1822, and _Expériences faites sur une Arme
Nouvelle_, 1825.
In these works[104] the author developed in detail the scheme of ship
armament which was to win adoption, in the course of time, in the
French navy; whereby our own authorities were also gradually forced to
abandon methods and standards of force by which the British navy had
grown great. Two principles formed the basis of this scheme:--(1) unity
of calibre, embodying the maximum simplification of means; (2) shell
fire, embodying the maximum augmentation of effect.
On these two principles M. Paixhans reared and elaborated in minutest
detail the revolutionary system with which his name is associated.
No new element or discovery was necessary for giving effect to his
designs. Indeed he expressly disclaimed having introduced any novelty:
“Nous n’avons donc rien inventé, rien innové, et presque rien changé;
nous avons seulement réuni des élémens épars, auxquels il suffisait
de donner, avec un peu d’attention, la grandeur et les proportions
convenables, pour atteindre le but important que nous étions proposé.”
It may be said, in fact, that unity of calibre had been an ideal sought
for years before M. Paixhans’ time; while shell fire, the New Arm of
1822, was almost the logical consequence of Robins’ discoveries in
the principles of gunnery, extended as they were by the researches
of Doctors Hutton and Gregory. In particular, mention is made by M.
Paixhans himself of two of the results brought out by Dr. Hutton’s
experiments: one, that the length of the bore of a gun has but a
small effect upon the range of its projectile, the range varying as
the fifth root of the length; two, that the muzzle velocity may be
considered to be independent of the weight of the gun.
As to the lack of novelty of shell fire on ship-board, M. Paixhans
gives a significant extract from French naval annals. In 1690, it
appears, a M. Deschiens had invented a means of firing bombs from long
guns horizontally, instead of parabolically as from mortars. This
secret was of great use to him; for, falling in with four English ships
at sea, he so surprised them by this new invention that, fearful of
being set on fire, they drew off and did not attempt to renew battle.
This same French captain at a later date attacked two Dutch ships more
than a match for him, and, by means of these horizontally fired bombs,
sank one and disabled the other. But M. Deschiens died and his secret
with him; though, as M. Paixhans remarks, this “secret” would have been
easy to find if anyone had looked for it.
A whole chapter of _The Genuine Use and Effects of the Gunne_, written
by Robert Anderson and published at London in 1674, concerns “the
shooting of Granados out of Long Gunnes.”
Briefly, the grand idea of M. Paixhans consisted in the establishment
of a fleet of steam vessels armed with guns designed to project
charged shells horizontally at considerable velocities. But as this
consummation could only be attained by degrees, he proposed that in
the meantime the existing French fleet should be re-armed in such a
way as to give to each ship a maximum of force combined with unity of
calibre. This part of his scheme was applicable to solid shot (_boulets
massifs_) as well as to shell (_boulets creux_). But the former he
considered too ineffectual for use in future sea engagements. Although
they might be the most suitable projectiles for the destruction of land
works, the breaching of ramparts and the battering of stone walls,
yet hollow shot, filled with powder and other combustible material,
were far better adapted to rend and set fire to defences of wood,
impregnated with tar, and, in time of action, replete with every
species of inflammable substance, and crowded with combatants. No, M.
Paixhans hoped to make solid shots entirely obsolete, by adopting,
in combination with small steam vessels, or, for the present, in
combination with the existing fleets of sailing ships, an ordnance
specially dedicated to shell fire, and to shell fire alone. By its
means the enormous superiority of Great Britain would be effectually
eliminated, or transferred into the hands of France; her material
would be rendered suddenly obsolete, her maritime power would shrivel;
and the power of France would be augmented to such a degree that the
defeat of these islands might at last be encompassed.
Such was the amiable intention of M. Paixhans.
The arguments which he employed in favour of his revolutionary
proposals are of sufficient interest and importance, perhaps, to merit
consideration. The past histories of the two navies showed, he argued,
that the introduction of improvement or of innovation into either navy
was shortly afterwards followed by its introduction into the other;
so that there was never any important change in the relative naval
strength of the two nations. It followed, therefore, that the only
means by which power could be wrested from the possessor of it, must be
such a change of system as would render useless the existing means by
which that power was sustained. How could this be accomplished? Foreign
nations had always felt the innate strength of England, residing in the
race of splendid seamen (a highly specialized profession) who formed
so great a part of her population. France especially had felt her own
weakness in not possessing a reserve, a nursery of seamen, such as
England had. If only seamanship could be discounted----! M. Paixhans
proceeded to show that the coming of the steamer was itself an event
which would go a long way to discount a superiority in seamanship. The
accursed English “devil boat,”[105] which had begun to spread its pall
of smoke over all the northern waters, might be, in truth, a potent
friend to France. Steam vessels required only a small and unskilled
personnel to man them, instead of prime seamen. Steam vessels could
always outstrip sailing ships, and thus could choose their own range
and accept or decline battle as occasion required. Moreover, the
effect of shell fire would be to upset completely the balance of power
existing between big ships and little ships, as such. Instead of size
being a measure of power, it would be a measure of vulnerability. The
larger the ship the more she would be endangered. Costly three-deckers
would cease to exist, and in their place small steam vessels, fast
and heavily armed, easily manœuvred and perhaps encased in armour,
would hold power. Thus the great obstacle to the acquirement by France
of a large naval force--the necessity for a numerous and experienced
personnel--would be easily removed. In short, the adoption of his
scheme would in any case be most favourable to France. Even if it were
simultaneously adopted by Great Britain its adoption would at least
ensure that in future the naval power of the two states would be in
proportion to the strength of their _whole_ population, instead of only
that part of it familiarized with maritime affairs.
Considering first the conversion of the existing French navy, he
examined and enlarged upon the various inefficiencies inherent in
the usual disposition of ship armaments; in the manner in which the
unit and the number of units of artillery force were selected for any
individual design of ship; in the variety of the units, and in the
lack of system observed in the various proportions between the gun,
the charge and the projectile. He observed that the constant tendency
of development, both in the French and in the English navy, was in
the replacing of smaller by greater calibres, by which process the
diversity of calibres was diminished and the effective force of the
armament increased. Continuing this process, it appeared that the
ideal armament would be reached, the maximum degree of force would
be attained, when unity of calibre was achieved. When the calibre
of the largest-sized cannon carried on the principal gun deck of
ships-of-the-line was adopted as the sole calibre used, the maximum
of force would be attained: the greatest possible destructive effect
combined with the greatest possible simplification of means. These
remarks applied equally to a solid shot and to a shell gun armament. If
for some reason it were decided not to adopt shell fire, nevertheless
it would be of advantage to re-arm the French sailing fleets on this
principle, with guns of one calibre.
M. Paixhans proposed as the unit the French 36-pounder. He explained
the advantages to be derived from arming existing ships-of-the-line
with 36-pounders all of the same calibre but of different weights on
the respective decks. The guns on different decks would take different
charges and would therefore project the shot with different muzzle
velocities. They would be disposed, the heaviest on the lower deck;
a lighter type (reamed out from 24-pounders) on the main deck; still
lighter guns on the upper deck, and 36-pounder carronades on the
quarter-deck and forecastle would complete the armament.
The employment of solid shot was not favoured by him, however, and
he claimed the results of various trials as showing the superior
offensive value of shells, when compared with solid shot. Comparing a
solid shot and a shell of the same external dimensions discharged with
the same muzzle velocity, the former, he said, had only the advantage
in superior range and penetrative power. The latter, while having a
range greater than those at which sea actions were invariably fought
and sufficient penetrative power to effect a lodgment in a ship’s
timbers, required less powder to propel it, a lighter and therefore
more rapidly worked gun from which to discharge it, and it had a
destructive effect enormously greater than that of the solid ball.
The complete proposal therefore involved the adoption of shell guns
exclusively, new guns being made and old guns being reamed out as
necessary to enable each ship to carry pieces of one calibre alone. The
calibre proposed as unit was the long French 48-pounder. And, as an
example of the way in which M. Paixhans would convert armaments, the
case of the French 74-gun ship is here taken. This, with an existing
armament of:--
28 36-pounders,
30 18-pounders,
14 6-pounders,
14 6-pounder carronades,
a total of 86 pieces throwing 2250 pounds of solid shot, he would
convert into a ship armed with:--
28 48-pounders (reamed from 36-pounders),
30 48-pounders (of same weight as 18-pounders),
28 48-pounder carronades;
eighty-six pieces throwing 3010 pounds of charged shell weighing 35
pounds each.
For the new shell gun he proposed a design of iron howitzer in which
the distribution of metal was so adjusted as to give a sufficient
factor of safety at every section, while at the same time allowing
the total weight of the piece to be reduced to a minimum. This
_canon-à-bombe_ was to be mounted on a stable form of carriage, made
without trucks but fitted with running-out rollers and directing bars
to control the line of fire and the direction of recoil.
To those who were inclined to regard with feelings of horror this new
use of explosive missiles, this progress in the art of destruction,
the inventor put the question, whether experience had not proved
that the perfection of arms had not had the effect of making warfare
actually less bloody; whether it was not a fact worth consideration,
that, while in days of old the destruction and loss of life in battles
was enormous, the loss of English seamen by gunfire in the numerous
combats of three long and bitter wars of recent times amounted to
less than five thousand killed. And would not, therefore, further
development of arms be a positive benefit to humanity?[106]
One other feature was put forward to complete this scheme of
re-armament, the importance of which it is unnecessary to emphasize.
M. Paixhans explored the possibility, by the sacrifice of a tier or
more of guns, of rendering all classes of ships invulnerable by casing
their sides with iron plates. Although rejected at the time, and as
the result of trials which he himself carried out, this suggestion was
destined to be carried into effect in startling fashion some thirty
years later: with what consequences to naval architecture we shall
presently see. In connection with the scheme of re-armament outlined
by M. Paixhans in 1822 the suggestion was important in that there was
implied in it an admission of one of the two weak features of the
inventor’s system. The shell gun would lose its superiority over the
shot gun, and might indeed be reduced to absolute impotence if, in
imitation of France, the enemy also cased his ships of war with iron.
The solid shot gun would once again have the advantage; in fact, that
very equilibrium of relative values which M. Paixhans was endeavouring
to destroy would once more obtain between the navies of the two rival
powers.
For this reason, presumably, and because the shell gun system
contained, though in a less degree, the disability inherent in the
carronade system--inferior ranging power, enabling a clever opponent
armed with long solid shot guns to fight at a range which was too great
for shell--the Paixhans scheme was not adopted in its entirety by the
French government of the time. But the principle of unity of calibre
was acclaimed and approved almost immediately, applied to solid shot
guns. The French 30-pounder was chosen as the unit. In 1829 guns of
this calibre, made on several different models to suit the various
decks and classes of ship, were mounted in their fleets.[107]
In the meantime M. Paixhans had made further progress toward perfecting
the details of his shell gun system. A _canon-obusier_ of 80 pounds
was made to his design, a chambered howitzer of the same weight
(about 72 hundredweight) as the French 36-pounder truck gun and of 22
centimetres calibre. This was designed to project a hollow shell of
the same size as the French 80-pound solid shot, but weighing, when
its cavity was filled with a charge of 4 pounds of powder, 56 pounds
French (62½ pounds English). The shell gun itself was of a distinctive
shape. The characteristics of short chase, large bore, a chamber, a
small propelling charge, and a scientific elimination of all useless
metal, resulted in a form of ordnance quite different from that of the
long-accepted smooth-bore cannon. It was easily recognizable by its
straight muzzle, smooth lines and the absence of the usual ornaments
and reinforcing rings. When, eventually, the New Arm was adopted by
other powers, their shell guns too, though independently evolved, were
found to exhibit the same external features: the features of what came
to be known universally as a “Paixhans gun.”
The terrific effect of charged shell, fired from this form of gun
with sufficient velocity to find a lodgment in a ship’s timbers, was
demonstrated at Brest in 1821 and 1824; in the latter trials the target
being a frigate, the _Pacificateur_, moored in the roadstead. High
range and accurate shooting were obtained. The incendiary effect of
the shell was prodigious: so impressive, indeed, that in spite of a
strong opinion in the French navy against further carriage of bombs in
ships-of-the-line, the Commission recommended “that _canons-à-bombe_ be
adopted, even in ships-of-the-line, but in small numbers.”
But though the principle of the shell gun was accepted by experts,
public opinion was not yet ready for the change. The Commission had
shown a sage circumspection in regard to the extent of the change
proposed; but public opinion was not yet satisfied that the new arm
was sufficiently safe. The scheme suffered a long postponement. In the
meantime several further trials were held. The design of the piece
was again modified; a larger chamber was arranged and a support was
cast, at the commencement of the chase, for carrying a sight. Tests _à
outrance_ were made to find what maximum charge such a shell gun would
safely stand; and at last, in 1837, the principle of shell fire was
accepted by the government, the Paixhans gun being assigned a place
in the prescribed armament of the fleets of France. To the impairment
of the unity-of-calibre principle, lately achieved, shell guns of 22
centimetres were admitted as part-armament of ships the greater number
of whose pieces were 30-pounders firing solid shot.
[Illustration: A PAIXHANS GUN]
§
In England the arguments in favour of a new and more scientific
adjustment of ship armament had not until this date been clearly
formulated. Of the tendency to a single calibre there certainly had
been many demonstrations in the last decades of the eighteenth century:
a tendency favoured by the replacement of the smaller long guns of the
fleet by carronades. Sir Howard Douglas, in his _Naval Gunnery_, the
first edition of which was published in 1820, had demonstrated the
advantages of large calibre, the inefficiency of random broadsides, and
the high importance of the deliberate aim of single guns. And in 1825,
before the French began to remodel their ordnance, Colonel Munro, of
the Royal Artillery, submitted his project to the naval authorities
of arming our ships solely with 32-pounders, of different classes and
weights to suit the various circumstances. But no radical revision
of armament was made in the British navy until some years after the
French had made the great stride of 1829, already described.
Unity of calibre, then, was no novel idea on the part of M. Paixhans.
“No project,” says Dahlgren--“no project has proved more attractive to
naval men than that of having a uniform calibre throughout the entire
fleet. It has been proposed from time to time without success, until
adopted for the French navy in 1829.
“In the promptness with which the example was followed by England and
the United States, may be recognized the general convictions of the
profession in regard to the serious mischief inseparable from the chaos
of calibres that prevailed, and the urgent necessity for some measure
that would simplify the complex economy of naval ordnance.
“In a three-decker might be witnessed the extreme phase of the evil:
long 32-pounders, 18-pounders, and carronades, requiring three sizes of
shot and four classes of full charge, with as many reduces as caprice
might suggest. All this variety of supply was to be distinguished and
selected in the magazines and shot-lockers--circulated with perfect
exactness in the confusion and obscurity of the lower passages, to
a particular hatchway, then up to the deck where was placed the
gun for which each charge or shot was designed: and this was to be
accomplished, not with the composure, deliberation, and attention
that the nature of the operation itself demanded, but amid all the
excitement and hot haste of battle.”[108]
The plans of M. Paixhans, in particular those for the adoption of shell
fire on a large scale, were viewed with much misgiving in this country.
But, as already noted, Great Britain moved very cautiously in the
counter-measures which she took in view of the policy then under review
in France. It is probable that the publication, in 1828, of a memoir
by Captain F. A. Hastings, R.N., commanding the Greek steam vessel
of war _Karteria_, had great effect in encouraging the authorities
to countenance shell fire. From this memoir it appears that Captain
Hastings was led, by arguments similar to those which influenced M.
Paixhans, to consider the possibilities of discharging at an enemy
something more devastating in effect than the solid sphere of iron
in general use. His navy was inferior in numbers to possible rivals;
he expressed the opinion that this inferiority might be nullified by
the use of shell, but he “got well laughed at for his pains.” Soon
afterwards, however, he came across Paixhans’ work. Acting on his
ideas, he applied shell fire with great success in action, and at once
became an enthusiastic advocate of the new arm. One great objection
to its adoption he almost laid to rest: the increased danger due to
the carriage of shells. He denied that there was any increased danger.
On the contrary, he considered charged shells less dangerous than
powder in cartridges, if properly packed. They were less dangerous,
he argued, because their use involved bigger and therefore fewer guns
than an ordinary ship would carry. Therefore there was less confusion
in action, less jostling, more working spaces, and fewer cartridges and
projectiles to be handled. In support of his opinion he could point to
an entire absence of accidents during his commission in the _Karteria_.
In 1829 a general increase of calibre was obtained by the inexpensive
expedient of boring out guns to their next larger calibre; in which
operation the opportunity was taken to arrange for a reduced allowance
of windage for the guns thus altered, and thus to secure a double gain,
of increased calibre and improved discharge. Experiments were made
with shell fire _à la Paixhans_. Tentative designs of shell gun were
produced by the ordnance department, and guns of 8-inch, 10-inch and
12-inch calibre were made; one of which, an 8-inch, mounted in H.M.S.
_Phœnix_, made very effective shooting at San Sebastian in the year ’36
and gave thereby an advertisement to shell fire.
And then, in 1837, came the French decision to adopt a shell gun
armament generally.
The result was a complete and corresponding reorganization of British
ship armament.[109] By 1839, the authorities being at last convinced
of the necessity of meeting the French innovations with similar
innovations on our part, Colonel Munro’s proposal of 1825 had been
adopted, and various classes of ship were equipped with six different
patterns of 32-pounder long gun. With these were associated, in small
numbers, 8-inch shell guns of fifty-three and sixty-five hundredweight.
Thus this country by a single move countered the two moves made
by France in ’29 and ’37 respectively, and denied to M. Paixhans,
for a while at any rate, any considerable change in the relative
strength of the two navies. As in the French navy, shell fire was only
introduced as an auxiliary to the solid shot. Thus the great ideal
of unity-of-calibre, so long sought and at last almost attained, was
found incompatible with the other ideal, shell fire; and was therefore
sacrificed. No doubt was felt, at this time, as to the necessity for
two types of gun. The superior power of shells was dreaded, suspected,
half-acknowledged; but the superior range and penetration of solid shot
fired from long guns made the latter indispensable to ships’ equipment.
So shell and large-bore shot guns were mounted in ships side by side.
Old guns and carronades were “scrapped” in large numbers to give
place to the new ordnance; and an official announcement was made, in
justification of the Admiralty policy, that “the changes were not made
until they had been adopted by foreign powers.”
§
Shell fire was at last accepted. The perils associated with the
carriage of shells in wooden ships were found to have been exaggerated;
experience soon confirmed that, if special precautions were taken, no
danger was inherent in their use.
Even after its introduction into our fleets the shell gun was regarded
by many as of doubtful value. For some years previously the opponents
of shells had agitated the question of a compromise: viz. the use of
hollow shot uncharged, instead of solid balls. And when M. Paixhans
had published his great scheme they had held that more advantages
would have been offered by it if he had stopped short at charging the
shot with powder, and had advocated merely hollow shot, which by their
larger size would give the advantages of heavier calibre. But the
argument for hollow shot was finally demolished in 1837 by a writer
whose views carried great influence. Incorrectly attributing to M.
Paixhans himself the proposal to use them, Captain Simmons, R.A. proved
clearly and conclusively their comparative uselessness. The adoption
of hollow shot, he showed,[110] would be tantamount to a reversion
to the use of stone or granite projectiles; it mattered little, for
practical purposes, what the projectile be formed of, so that its
density be what was desired: whether hollow iron or solid granite.
Except the Turks, who still guarded the Dardanelles with granite-firing
cannon, all nations had abandoned granite in favour of the heaviest
metals, and no one questioned the vast improvement thereby obtained,
“except the inventors of the carronade and the promoters of this same
system, improved by M. Paixhans.” As a matter of fact the carronade was
designed for the special circumstances in which hollow shot were not
without value. And M. Paixhans, as we know, never intended to forego
the use of a charge of powder in the cavity of his _boulet creux_.
But the arguments of Simmons sufficed to kill the advocacy of hollow,
uncharged shot.
Doubt was cast, too, on the capacity of the shell gun to project its
shells to a sufficient range and with sufficient striking velocity in
action. In the case of the first shell guns cast, a strict limitation
had to be placed on the powder-charges which could safely be used;
and this involved a limitation of range, apart from the reduction
due to the lower specific gravity of the projectile. Both French and
English shell guns suffered in this respect. For this reason they had
been deemed by the French specially suited for use in steam vessels,
which could by their locomotive power attain the desired range. But,
it was said, steam gives the power of avoiding, as well as of closing
to action; and steam, it was foreseen, was a giant which would one day
haul even ships-of-the-line into position for battle. Might not future
actions be fought at considerable ranges? And for close-quarter work,
could not our powerful long guns, double-shotted, be used with greater
effect than shell guns?
Then, again, the flight of shells was not nearly so certain as that of
solid shot. The effects of eccentricity, which in the case of solid
shot had always militated against accurate shooting, were in the case
of shells considerably enhanced. The varying thickness of the shell,
the lack of homogeneity of the metal, the presence of the protruding
fuze, all tended to produce eccentricity and give a bias. The centre
of gravity of a shell was seldom at its centre of figure; and this
eccentricity was the cause of deviations in flight, in range and
direction, which made the trajectory of a shell not easily predictable.
Savants and artillerists, both here and in other countries, discussed
for years these deviations, and on the relationship between range and
eccentricity numbers of trials were made and theories were propounded.
Which is the more strange, seeing that Robins had placed on record
an almost complete solution. Briefly, the effect of eccentricity may
be explained as follows. Just as a stick held vertically by a thread
receives, when struck at a point in it other than the centre of
percussion, a tendency to motion not only of translation but also of
rotation round that centre of percussion; so a spherical shell whose
centre of gravity lies away from its centre of figure receives, from
the pressure of the powder gases acting at its centre of figure, a
rotary motion about its centre of gravity in addition to a motion along
the bore. If the centre of gravity lies below the centre of figure this
rotary motion is in such a direction that, as the shell approaches the
muzzle, points on its upper surface are moving towards the muzzle,
points on the lower part are moving inwards. And this rotation,
maintained during flight, has the effect--as was demonstrated by Robins
with the musket ball--of giving the sphere a vertical deviation in a
downward direction; i.e. of reducing its range.
It follows, then, that an artificial increase of range could be
obtained by placing the sphere with its centre of gravity _above_
the centre of figure? This is precisely what was done; and by many a
measured eccentricity was considered a desideratum, as giving a higher
range than could be obtained without it. With such a system, however,
the deviations still remained large and flights still more irregular.
And the best opinion held that the most satisfactory solution lay
in reducing the errors of flight as far as possible by the use of
perfectly concentric shells. This ideal was difficult of attainment.
Sir Howard Douglas has described at length experiments with shells
the axis of whose eccentricity was found by floating them in mercury:
experiments which revealed that not one shell in a hundred of those
supplied was perfectly balanced. For this reason misgiving was felt as
to the effectiveness of shell fire when carried out at considerable
ranges against solid shot, and efforts were continuously made to
correct all shell before issue.
Nor were the Americans inclined to view the shell gun with much favour;
remembering, doubtless, what they owed to their long and powerful guns
when they were opposed to our light guns and carronades in the war of
’12 and ’13. America was more cautious even than this country. But in
’41 the 8-inch shell gun appeared in American ships as an auxiliary
to the long guns: four or so on each gun deck. And four years later
the types of guns in their ships were limited to 8-inch shell guns, in
combination with 32-pounder long guns of various patterns; in fact,
their system of armament was assimilated to that of the French and
British.
Whatever the relative value of shell and solid shot might be,
experience showed that increase in size favoured the former. Though
medium-sized solid shot might be more efficient than medium-sized
shells, yet it was widely accepted that large solid shot would probably
be of less value than large shell. Strong tendencies were at work,
making for such increase in the size of artillery. It was in 1837 that
a writer already quoted showed the direction in which the arguments of
M. Paixhans were leading. Citing Sir Howard Douglas on the advantages
of large calibre and the inefficiency of random broadsides, Captain
Simmons put forward the argument that, if these statements were
accepted, it followed that all ships of war should be armed with a
few long guns of the maximum calibre and giving the maximum muzzle
energy which the ship could safely carry, with other guns on other
decks of the same calibre but of varying weight and range. “Instead of
determining the armament of a ship from the length of her decks and
crowding as many guns together as possible; determining the number
by the extent of the battery, and subjecting their nature to their
number--making, in fact, the weight and type of gun depend, not on the
service demanded, but on the quotient arising from dividing the total
deck-weight by the number, previously fixed on; it might be safer to
place on board a few of the most powerful guns which her construction
would admit, and then regulate the total number carried by their
aggregate weight--making the _number_ and not the _nature_ of the guns
depend on what is inevitably fixed: the capacity of the vessel?”
The English writer went farther than M. Paixhans had gone. His argument
foreshadowed the evolution which was so largely influenced by the
coming of the steam vessel, with its large paddle-wheels and small
crew, and with its deck space necessitating the concentration of its
armament into a few guns of the largest calibre; it foreshadowed the
supersession of the broadside by the pivot gun, and the enormous
expansion in the size of ordnance which took place after the Crimean
War.
* * * * *
The evolution of the shell gun was at this partial stage when the
Crimean War broke out. In 1854 both types of projectiles were still
struggling for ascendancy, though large shell guns were by this time
acknowledged as the superior armament for steam vessels. Both friend
and foe were now literally “stormed at by shot and shell”--of which
the shell proved on the whole the more effective missile. No decisive
superiority could be claimed, however, by one type over the other; and,
as we shall see later in surveying the evolution of the ironclad, it
was only gradually that the inherent superiority of the shell gun came
to be recognized.
Soon after the close of the war a new step in the evolution of armament
made its supremacy decisive. The rifled cannon at last materialized.
The cylinder superseded the sphere. The increase in volume gained by
the adoption of this form of projectile, and the enhanced range and
striking velocity which it was possible to impart to it, set all doubts
at rest as to the military value of the _Arme Nouvelle_.
[Illustration: THE _SPEAKER_, A SECOND-RATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH
From Fincham’s _Naval Architecture_]
CHAPTER VIII
THE RIFLED GUN
While the evolution of smooth-bore ordnance owed little if anything to
the prior development of small arms, the evolution of rifled ordnance
which took place in the middle of the nineteenth century followed
closely on that of rifling as applied to the musket. Experience
with the rifled musket supplied the information necessary for the
application of rifling on the larger scale. In tracing the development
of rifled ordnance, therefore, the development of the rifled musket
must first be considered: the two evolutions are historically linked
together. In this chapter an endeavour is made to trace these two
evolutions in their natural sequence, and to describe the circumstances
in which each took place, the objects aimed at, the difficulties
encountered and the results achieved. We shall see how the smooth-bore
musket was replaced by the rifle firing a spherical ball; how the
spherical ball gave place, in the course of time, to an elongated
bullet; and how, when the elongated bullet had been evolved, the
principle of the rifle was extended to field and to heavy ordnance. A
complete survey of the whole process can be obtained only by stepping
back, past the days of the primitive rifled fire-arm, to the age when
the longbow was still “the surety, safeguard, and continual defence
of this realm of England and an inestimable dread and terror to the
enemies of the same.”
§
The might of England, avouches the historian, stood upon archers. The
prowess of the archer, the dreadful precision of the longbow, and the
athletic arm by which it was strung, form the constant and animated
theme of ancient British story. In battle and the chase, we are told,
the power of the archers always prevailed, and the attainment of that
power was an object of incessant anxiety, in all ranks of people,
from their earliest infancy. The longbow was thus, as described in
the above-quoted act of Henry VIII, a continual defence of the realm.
Over all other countries England had this advantage, that against the
exigencies of war she had, not only her race of splendid seamen, but
armies of the most skilful archers in the world. In peace she was thus
well prepared. Good use was made by legislation to maintain the skill
and stimulate the ardour of the bowmen, and the statute book bears
witness, reign after reign, to the importance attached to archery from
its military aspect. At one time every man between the ages of fifteen
and sixty had to possess a bow equal in length to his own height. Every
township had to maintain its butts, each saint’s day had its shooting
competition. The churchyard yew gave its wood for staves, the geese on
the green their best wing feathers; and a goose’s head was the orthodox
and inconspicuous target. No man under the age of twenty-four was
allowed to shoot at any standing mark, and none over that age at any
mark of eleven score yards or under. Restraint was laid on the exercise
of sports which might interfere with archery, and when the mechanically
strung crossbow was introduced its use was forbidden except under
special conditions.[111] Honours and prizes were awarded the best
marksmen. The range and accuracy achieved by them was without doubt
prodigious. Much of their power lay in their strength of arm; but one
of the chief secrets of their craft lay in the way in which they set
their arrow-feathers at the requisite angle to give the arrows a spin
which would ensure a long, a true and a steady flight.
With the advent of gunpowder the shooting competitions declined. An
embargo was put on fire-arms; instead of being pressed to possess
them the people were forbidden their use except under conditions. The
military character became a separate order in society. Encouragement
was no longer given to the individual to own and master the unwieldy
fire-arm. The English peasant, enthusiasm evaporating as his skill
declined, no longer gave the State the military value which his
forefathers possessed. The clumsy mechanism of the English musket, the
uncertainty of its action (especially in wet weather), its slow rate
of fire, its gross inaccuracy, and its inability to penetrate armour
under all conditions, were factors which kept fire-arms for long years
in disfavour in this country.
Abroad, on the other hand, the development of fire-arms was actually
encouraged and skill in their use patronised. The rivalry which already
existed with bow and arrow was extended to the new medium, and in
Sweden and Switzerland, Germany and France, shooting competitions
continued in vogue and proficiency with musket and arquebus was
honoured and substantially rewarded. In Switzerland and Southern
Germany especially, shooting was very popular. The character of the
people, their skill in making delicate mechanisms, the nature of the
country, all tended to promote an interest in musketry which did not
exist among our own people. As a result England has little to claim in
the early stages of the development of portable fire-arms.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries smooth-bore weapons
firing spherical lead balls were the only kind known and used. But in
the early part of the sixteenth century a development took place which
was to prove of the first importance to fire-arms; which was to make
the primitive weapon in the course of time “the most beautiful, and at
the same time the most deadly instrument of warfare ever devised by the
ingenuity of man.” The value of rifling was discovered.
How, when, or where this discovery was first made, appears to have
defied the researches of investigators. As to the manner in which
the development took place and the effects which it was intended to
produce by its means there is an assortment of evidence; and this is so
various and so interesting as bearing on the action of the rifle and
its evolution, that we reproduce it in some detail. On one point there
appears to be small doubt: _The earliest rifling had no twist in it_.
“It seems to have been generally accepted by writers on the subject,”
says the author of _The Book of the Rifle_, “that the earliest
barrels had straight grooves, the object of which was to give a space
into which the fouling of previous shots might stow itself without
obstructing the process of loading with a well-fitting ball, and that
spiral grooving was merely an accidental variation of this, afterwards
found to possess special advantages.” Nevertheless, he himself inclines
to the opinion that the straight groove was not necessarily a prior
form of the spiral. The collections in museums contain examples of
spiral grooving older than the oldest straight-grooved barrels. In any
case, it is antecedently more probable, he considers, that the spiral
grooving was not a variation of the straight groove, but that it was “a
deliberate attempt to find a means of giving to the bullet the spiral
spin which was well known as having a steadying effect on the javelin,
or on the arrow or bolt discharged from the bow.”[112]
But in this view he is in a minority. Whereas the invention of helical
grooving is generally attributed to Augustin Kutter, a gunmaker of
Nuremburg who died in A.D. 1630, straight grooving had been known
since 1480, and is ascribed to one Gaspard Zöllner, a gunmaker of
Vienna. “Smooth-bore guns,” says Schmidt,[113] “had the disadvantage of
fouling, and with the poor powder could only be recharged by leaving a
comparatively large space between the ball and the barrel. This windage
prejudiced straight shooting. To overcome this deficiency the practice
was adopted of cutting grooves, more or less numerous, in the barrel,
and in wrapping the ball in a rag greased with suet. In this way the
windage was reduced, and as the greased rag cleaned the barrel, the
weapon could be recharged for a large number of rounds. At first these
grooves were made straight.”
A theory propounded in a well-known treatise published in the year
1808, entitled _Scloppetaria_, was to the effect that grooving had its
origin in the habit which the early huntsman had of gnawing or biting
the balls before putting them into the piece, with a view to causing
the wound inflicted by them to be rendered more severe. This habit gave
rise to the idea that the barrel itself might be made to do the work
of jagging or indenting the bullet. “These grooved or sulcated barrels
appear to be of great antiquity, and are said to have existed in Russia
long before their introduction among the civilized nations of the
south.”
According to Hans Busk, straight grooving was adopted for the reason
given by Schmidt: i.e., purely for the purpose of facilitating loading,
and for assisting to dislodge the products of combustion left in the
bore. “No doubt the adoption of this plan was calculated to increase
the efficiency and accuracy of the arm from the steadiness it imparted
to the bullet in its passage through the barrel.”
And that is a view which, it is suggested, might be expanded to give a
motive or combination of motives which may well have operated to induce
the early gunmakers to cut grooves in their musket-barrels. Thus: the
variations in the flight of spherical lead balls fired from smooth-bore
guns were chiefly due (though these causes were not clearly appreciated
till a much later date) to the incalculable effect of windage and to
the varying axis about which spin took place. If by any means windage
could be reduced, and if the ball could be made to assume a central
position in the bore and spin about a definite axis in its flight, a
large increase in accuracy would be attained. Suppose, for instance, a
single groove or gutter were filed along the barrel parallel with its
axis. The effect surely would be, by creating a rush of powder-gases
along this groove, to cause the ball, under the tangential impulse of
the gases, to rotate always in the same plane as it passed through the
bore. And thus by the cutting of this single groove a uniformity of
flight of the ball would be attained which was unattainable without the
groove. The same effect, in fact, was produced by Robins when he bent
the musket barrel. He demonstrated that the result was to make the ball
roll on a definite part of the barrel and thus to deviate during flight
in a definite direction. He might have shewn, as another result of his
experiment, that by giving the ball a uniform spin he had endowed it
with a regularity of flight, or accuracy, many times greater than it
before possessed.
Or suppose that, instead of one groove, two or more grooves were filed
in the same way. While the above advantage derived from the single
groove would be less fully obtained, another would result. By providing
a space on each side into which fouling might spread, and into which
the plastic metal of the ball might be intruded by the pressure of the
ramrod, their presence would certainly allow of a tight-fitting ball
being used. The loss in efficiency of discharge due to friction between
ball and barrel would be more than compensated for by the annihilation
of windage.[114]
Suppose, however, that the grooves were augmented in number until they
became a series of triangular serrations all round the interior of
the barrel. The value of this formation might lie, not so much in the
grooves, as in the ends or points of the serrations which supported the
ball and held it in a central position on the true axis of the gun. In
short, the prime idea of the gunmaker may have been, not so much the
provision of grooves, as the provision of internal ribs for holding the
ball truly in the musket.
Whatever the cause or motive which led to its adoption, the rifling
of musket barrels became a common practice in the sixteenth century.
Two significant quotations will suffice to show the period of the
invention. The first is an edict issued by the Swiss Government in 1563:
“For the last few years the art of cutting grooves in the
chambers of the guns has been introduced with the object of
increasing the accuracy of fire; the disadvantage resulting
therefrom to the common marksmen has sown discord among them.
In ordinary shooting matches marksmen are therefore forbidden
under a penalty of £10 to provide themselves with rifled arms.
Everyone is nevertheless permitted to rifle his military weapon
and to compete with marksmen armed with similar weapons for
special prizes.”[115]
The second is a recipe from a book by Sir Hugh Plat, written in 1594.
“How to make a pistol whose barrel is two feet in length to
deliver a bullet point blank at eight score. A pistol of the
aforesaid length and being of petronel bore, or a bore higher,
having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside of the barrel,
and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore, and is rammed
in at the first three or four inches at the least, and after
driven down with the skowring-stick, will deliver his bullet at
such distance.”
So at some date not long after that at which straight grooving was put
into common practice, the evolution of the rifle made a further advance
by the introduction of spiral grooving. This gave all the advantages
of the straight grooving, and in addition, spin in a definite plane to
a definite degree; so that it entirely superseded straight grooving
in all countries where fire-arms were in common use. Experience
amply confirmed the superiority of the twisted rifling. With the
accession of accuracy the skill of the marksman naturally increased,
enthusiasm grew, and the shooting competitions gained in popularity and
importance. “Le goût de tir des armes rayées de précision est poussé
jusqu’à la passion: passion qui excite l’amour-propre en ne laissant
pas à la maladresse l’excuse si facile de l’imperfection inévitable de
l’arme à canon lisse.”[116]
[Illustration: BULLET MOULD]
Yet in spite of improvements the rifled musket remained unrecognized
as a military weapon for another two hundred years. Its use was
confined to sporting purposes; though far less in common use than the
smooth-bore it became, for its increased accuracy, the favourite weapon
of the deer-stalker and the chamois hunter. In England it was little
known before the nineteenth century; and when, in 1746, Robins made his
famous prophecy, the possibilities inherent in rifled fire-arms, even
such as were then in existence, were unrealized by the people of this
country.
It is to be noted that it was only in increased accuracy of flight that
the rifled gun had a superiority over the smooth-bore; no increase in
ranging power was possessed by it. And yet this claim is constantly
made by old writers, that, probably (as they say) owing to the fact
that increased resistance of the ball to initial motion gave time for
all the charge to be thoroughly ignited, the rifled gun carried further
than the smooth-bore. As a fact, the contrary was true; other things
being equal, the range of the rifle was actually less than that of the
smooth-bore. The explanation of the paradox was given by Robins. “It is
not surprising,” he said, “that those habituated to the use of rifled
pieces gave way to prepossessions like these; for they found that with
them they could fire at a mark with tolerable success, though it were
placed at three or four times the distance to which the ordinary pieces
were supposed to reach: and therefore as they were ignorant of the true
cause of this variation ... it was not unnatural for them to imagine,
that the superiority in the effect of rifled pieces was owing either to
a more violent impulse at first, or to a more easy passage through the
air.” The true value of the spiral grooving resided, of course, in the
spinning motion which it gave the ball. By making this spin uniform two
variable factors determining the trajectory were thereby transformed
into constants: first, the effect just mentioned, the influence of the
varying resistance of the air on the parts of the ball which met it at
different speeds, some parts moving forward relatively to its centre
and some parts retreating; secondly, the effect of eccentricity of mass
and irregularity of exterior surface, which were both almost nullified
by the rotation. The importance of this second effect may not at first
sight be apparent. It must be remembered, however, that the balls used
in those days were of the roughest description; cast in hand moulds,
“drawn” in cooling to such an extent that in a large proportion an
actual cavity was left in their interior, which could be revealed only
by cutting them open; their burrs removed with pincers, their surface
rough and broken, their shape distorted by the ramrod’s blows.
The superiority of the rifle in accuracy was generally admitted; and
this advantage not only counterbalanced such deficiency in ranging
power as may have accrued from the use of grooving, but actually led
to a general but mistaken belief that the rifle carried farther than
the smooth-bore. The reverse was the case. Moreover, it was not safe to
use with a rifle the very large charges of powder which could be used
with safety with a smooth-bore musket. On account of the resistance to
motion of the ball which had been forced by ramrod, sometimes even by
mallet, down the grooved barrel of the rifle, high chamber pressures
resulted, and not infrequently the barrels burst. Hence in spite of the
thicker metal of which they were generally made, rifles could only be
used with moderate charges, and so could not compete on equal terms, in
this respect, with the smooth-bores for superiority of range.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century events occurred which drew
attention to the utility of the rifle for military purposes. In spite
of its slow rate of fire--to load it carefully took from one and a
half to two minutes--it showed itself to be a very effective weapon
in the hands of French tirailleurs, Swiss, Austrian, and Tyrolese
_Jägers_, Hottentots and American Indians. In the War of Independence
the superior accuracy of their rifles, and their capacity for hitting
at ranges beyond the 200 yards which were about the limit of the
smooth-bore musket, placed the American backwoodsmen at such an
advantage over the British troops that riflemen were recruited on the
Continent and sent across the Atlantic to counter them. New military
tactics came into vogue at this time, their inception influenced by the
gradual improvement in fire-arms and artillery. Bodies of riflemen,
“a light erratic force concealing itself with facility and forming an
ambuscade at will,” were formed in the continental armies to act in
concert with the masses of infantry as skirmishers or sharp-shooters,
their object being to surprise and demoralize the enemy by the accuracy
of their long-range shooting. Rifles were now looked on, too, as the
natural counterpart of the now flying or horse artillery, “which,
from the rapidity of its motions, the execution of cannon-shot in all
situations, appears to be the effects of little less than magic.”[117]
[Illustration: RIFLEMAN PRESENTING
(From Ezekiel Baker’s _Rifled Guns_, A.D. 1813.)]
In 1800 a rifle corps was raised by the British government from the old
95th Regiment. As the result of competitive trials the rifle made by
Ezekiel Baker, a gunmaker of Whitechapel, was adopted: taking spherical
balls of twenty to the pound, and having a barrel 30 inches long,
rifled with two grooves twisted one-quarter of a turn. This degree of
twist was certainly much less than that used in French, German and
American rifles, which as a rule had three-quarters or a whole turn in
them; but Baker found that so great a twist caused stripping of the
balls; so, as the accuracy of the lower twist was as great as that of
the higher up to a range of 300 yards, and as it required a relatively
smaller charge, gave smaller chamber pressures and caused less fouling
of the barrel than its competitors, it was accepted. There was a strong
opinion at the time in favour of the larger twist as universally used
by the more expert foreign marksmen; and this opinion was justified by
experience.[118] The quarter-turn twist might give sufficient accuracy
at low ranges, but as the skill of the riflemen increased longer ranges
were attempted; and then it was found that sufficient accuracy was
unattainable with the approved weapon. Rifles having a larger twist
were therefore made by rival gunmakers and, the results of shooting
matches giving incontestable evidence of their superiority, a demand
arose for their supply to the army riflemen. Accordingly in 1839 the
Brunswick rifle was adopted for the British army. The new weapon had
two deep grooves twisted a whole turn in the length of the barrel,
in which grooves studs, cast on the ball and designed to prevent
stripping, were made to engage.
This was the last stage of the evolution of the rifle firing a
spherical ball. So long as the spherical ball was retained, spiral
grooving offered relatively small advantages over straight grooving;
straight grooving offered small advantages over the best smooth-bore
muskets. The tedious loading of these rifles and the inefficiency of
the system by which windage was eliminated by the force of ramming, are
sufficiently set forth by the various writers on early fire arms; and
there is small wonder that the value of rifles as military weapons was
seriously questioned by the highest professional opinion of the time.
The charge of powder had to be carefully varied according to the state
of the weather and the foulness of the piece. Care had to be taken
that all the grains of the charge poured into it went to the breech
end and did not stick to the sides of the barrel. Patches of leather
or fustian were carried, in which the ball was wrapped on loading, to
absorb windage, lubricate the rifling, and prevent the “leading” of
the barrel and the wear which would ensue if a naked ball were used.
“Place the ball,” says Ezekiel Baker, “upon the greased patch with the
neck or castable, where it is cut off from the moulds, downwards, as
generally there is a small hole or cavity in it, which would gather
the air in its flight.” The ball, a good tight fit, had to be rammed,
in its surrounding patch, right down to the powder: for, if not rammed
properly home, an air-space would be left and the barrel would perhaps
burst on discharge; at the least, would give an inaccurate flight to
the ball. If the barrel were at all worn, double or treble patches were
necessary. To loosen the filth which collected in the barrel, and which
sometimes prevented the ball from being either rammed or withdrawn,
water had to be poured down; not infrequently urine was used.
All sizes and shapes of groove were given to the early rifle, and
their number depended largely upon caprice or superstition. Seven,
for instance, was a number frequently chosen on account of its mystic
properties; in _Scloppetaria_ an attempt is made to prove that an
odd number has an advantage over an even. So, also, various degrees
of twist were used. But in respect of this the evolution followed a
definite course. The pitch of the twist necessarily bore a certain
relationship to muzzle velocity. With the earliest rifles a fairly
rapid twist was given, being rendered possible by the small muzzle
velocities employed, and indeed being rendered necessary to ensure
stability to the flight of the ball. Then, with the endeavours made, at
the end of the eighteenth century, to use higher charges and thereby
to extend their range, higher muzzle velocities came into use, and the
danger of stripping was then only prevented by the use of low twists.
Special devices enabled a return to be made, in the Brunswick and other
patterns, to the more rapid twists originally used.
Whatever devices were adopted to prevent stripping, however perfect
the design and material of the equipment employed, two factors stood
in the way of any further advance in the evolution of the rifle firing
the spherical ball. First, the unsuitability of the sphere itself
for projection through a resisting medium, by reason of the large
surface which it offered to the air’s resistance and the relatively
small mass by means of which it could maintain its flight. Second, the
gyroscopic action of the spinning sphere, which limited its effective
range in a manner which was probably unrealized until after it had
been completely superseded. The sphere, unlike the elongated bullet,
which always keeps its axis approximately tangential to its trajectory,
maintained throughout flight its spin on its original axis. This did
not matter much when ranges were short and trajectories flat; but as
greater ranges and loftier trajectories came into use the effect on
accuracy of aim became very important. During its descent through the
latter part of the trajectory the rifle ball rotated in a plane no
longer normal to its direction of flight; “it tended more and more to
roll upon the air, and deviated considerably.”[119]
§
The old Brown Bess, the ¾-inch smooth-bore musket which our armies
carried at Waterloo, in the Peninsula, and even at the Crimea,
differed in no great respect from the muskets borne by British troops
at Ramillies, whose inefficiency was such that it was seriously
questioned whether, without the invention of the bayonet, they would
have permanently superseded the crossbow of the Middle Ages. The
inefficiency of Brown Bess was indeed remarkable. Its standard of
accuracy was so low that a trained marksman could only depend on
putting one shot in twenty into an eighteen-foot square target at two
hundred yards, at which range it was supposed to be effective. Its
windage was so great that bullets flew wild from the muzzle; and it
is not very surprising that, armed with such a weapon, our infantry
should often have been impelled “to resort to the strong and certain
thrust of the bayonet, rather than rely for their safety on the chance
performances of the clumsy and capricious Brown Bess.” Writers on
fire-arms are able to give dozens of tragic and laughable instances
of its erratic shooting. In the Kaffir war, for example, our troops
had to expend no fewer than eighty thousand rounds to kill or cripple
some twenty-five naked savages. After Waterloo a musket was sent down
to Woolwich, to ascertain whether its ball would penetrate a French
cuirass at two hundred yards’ range. The cuirass was mounted on a
pole, the musket aligned and held firmly in a vice; but it was found
impossible to secure a hit until, at last, a random shot fired by one
of the officers present did take effect! Nevertheless, Brown Bess
remained in favour for a number of years after Waterloo. It had a flat
and raking trajectory, owing to the very high muzzle velocity imparted
to it by the large charge of powder used; from its great windage it
loaded easily; and, although rather too heavy for long marches, it was
strong enough to bear any amount of hard usage.[120]
So long as the rifle used a spherical ball it could not claim to rival
Brown Bess for general service. As soon as the elongated projectile
was developed the supersession of the smooth-bore was a matter of
time alone. It is strange, however, in view of the enthusiasm of the
Victorian rifleman and the ease with which the fire-arm lent itself
to novel experiments, that the evolution of the elongated projectile
covered so long a period as it did.
Apart from the fact that cylindrical bars and shot had often been fired
from ordnance, it was known that Benjamin Robins himself had tried the
experiment of firing egg-shaped projectiles from a rifle with a certain
amount of success. The inefficiency of the loose sphere, in the case
of the smooth-bore, and of the tightly rammed sphere, in the case of
the rifle, were both recognized in the early days of the century. And,
while no solution could be found, the problem was generally agreed to
be: how to drop the projectile loosely down the barrel, and tighten it
so as to absorb the windage when already there.
Two or three English inventors made proposals. In 1823 a Captain
Norton, of the 34th Regiment, submitted an elongated projectile with
a base hollowed out in such a way as to expand automatically when the
pressure of the powder-gas came on it, and thus seal the bore. The
idea came to him from an examination of the arrow used by the natives
of Southern India with their blow-tube: an examination which revealed
that the base of the arrow was formed of elastic lotus-pith, which by
its expansion against the cylindrical surface of the tube prevented the
escape of air past it. In 1836 Mr. Greener submitted a pointed bullet
having a cylindrical cavity in its base in which a conical plug was
fixed, expanding the base by a wedging action when under the pressure
of the powder gases.[121] Had either of these ideas been considered
with the attention which it deserved, the development of the rifle
in this country might have been more rapid than it was. “By blindly
rejecting both of these inventions the authorities deprived England of
the honour of having initiated the greatest improvement in small arms.”
It was in France that the elongated projectile waged an eventually
successful struggle against the spherical ball, its ancient rival.
The French, troubled by the superiority of their Arab enemies in
shooting at long range, founded a School of Musketry at Vincennes. In
1828 Captain Delvigne, a distinguished staff officer of that school,
established the two main principles on which all succeeding inventors
were obliged to rely: one, that in muzzle-loading rifles the projectile
must slip down the barrel with a certain windage, so as to admit of
easy loading; two, that only elongated projectiles were suited to
modern rifles.
Before coming to these two conclusions Delvigne had made important
efforts to render the spherical ball as efficient as possible. He
had, in particular, proposed to make that part of the barrel near the
breech which formed the powder-chamber of slightly smaller diameter
than the rest of the barrel; so that a spherical ball, rammed down
on it, became indented against its ledge and flattened sufficiently
to fill the rifling grooves. By this device quick loading was
obtained and the accuracy of aim, it was found, was doubled. Certain
practical disadvantages, however, were associated with it: the chamber
fouled rapidly, and the ball was frequently distorted and jagged
by over-ramming. So in ’33 the Delvigne system, as it was called,
was modified by the wrapping of the ball in a greased patch and the
attaching of the patch to a “sabot” or wad of wood which was interposed
between the ball and the shoulders of the powder-chamber. Rifles thus
loaded did good work in Algeria in ’38.
In the meantime Delvigne, admittedly inspired by the writings of
Robins, was urging on the authorities the superiority of the elongated
ball. He was insistent on the advantages which would accrue from
augmenting the mass of the projectile while at the same time making
it present to the air during flight its smallest surface. The shape
he proposed was that of the present-day rifle bullet, considerably
shortened: a bullet with a flat base, cylindrical sides and ogival
head, somewhat resembling the form which had been proposed by Sir
Isaac Newton as a “solid of least resistance.” After a succession of
disappointments and refusals, the inventor had the satisfaction of
seeing his bullet accepted. Its advantages over the spherical ball
had been made manifest on the proving-ground. It was accepted in
combination with the _carabine à tige_, a rifle invented by a Colonel
Thouvenin, in which the Delvigne shouldered chamber was replaced by a
small central pillar or anvil, projecting from the breech-end of the
bore, against which the bullet was rammed. The powder, when poured into
the barrel, collected in the annular space around the pillar. By this
arrangement the necessity for the sabot was obviated and the charge of
powder, protected by the pillar, was not in danger of being crushed
or mealed. In ’46 the new bullet proved its high accuracy and ranging
power on active service in Algeria. But the pillar was found liable to
bend and distort; and the difficulty in keeping the space round it free
from fouling proved to be another of its inherent disadvantages.
[Illustration: “CARABINE À TIGE”]
[Illustration: MINIÉ BULLET]
And then, in 49 the Minié compound bullet, self-expanding, of the same
shape as the Delvigne and utilizing the same principle of an expansive
bore as that embodied in Greener’s bullet, was produced. The full value
of the rifle was at last obtained. By virtue of the elongated bullet
the mass of the projectile could be increased to a large extent without
any increase in the cross-sectional area exposed to air resistance.
With such a projectile, impelled by a charge whose combustive effect
could be accurately gauged owing to the absence of all windage losses,
great speed and accuracy were possible. As to power, the only limit
imposed was the strength of the barrel and the capacity of the marksman
to withstand the reactionary blow due to the projectile’s momentum.
But now, not only was rifling advantageous: with the elongated bullet
rifling was an absolute necessity. “Rotation,” it was said, “is the
soul of the bullet.” Rotation was necessary to impart stability, and to
keep the projectile, by virtue of the initial spin acquired, true in
its flight throughout the whole trajectory.
In England, where the two-grooved Brunswick still marked the limit
of development, the discovery of the Minié weapon and its powers
occasioned misgiving and surprise.[122] In ’51 some Minié rifles were
purchased and issued, as a temporary expedient, to our army. And,
interest in the question now becoming general,[123] it was resolved
to take under government control the future manufacture of military
small arms. A commission of officers visited America for the purpose
of inspecting the ingenious tools and appliances known to be employed
there in the manufacture of rifles; and the features of the various
European and American weapons were seriously studied. A government
factory was established at Enfield, and with the products of this
factory certain of our regiments were armed for service when the
Crimean War broke out. The Enfield rifle, as it was called, combined
the best features of the Minié with those of other types. It had a
three-grooved barrel with a half-turn twist in its length of 39 inches.
It was .577 inch in the bore, and fired a bullet whose recessed base
was filled with a boxwood instead of an iron cup or plug.
The nation soon obtained value from the new development. The efficiency
of the Enfield rifle at the Alma and at Inkerman was attested by the
correspondent of _The Times_, who reported that “it smote the enemy
like a destroying angel.” Three years later the Indian Mutiny afforded
a still more conclusive proof of the value of this weapon. Though,
from the greased cartridges which were used, it served as one of the
pretexts for the mutiny, it proved in the sequel a powerful military
instrument, and demonstrated both to friend and foe its superiority
over the smooth-bore musket with which the rebels were armed. In
fact, with the adoption of the Enfield rifle, England found herself
in advance even of France; the French, partly perhaps from motives
of economy, partly from a desire for symmetry, had retained in their
Minié rifle the same calibre as that of their old smooth-bore: indeed,
the greater part of the French army rifles were merely converted
smooth-bores. In the Enfield a wise reduction of calibre had been
made; whereby, while the weight of the rifle was reduced, its strength
and the size of the permissible charges, and therefore the range and
penetrating power of the projectile were all considerably augmented.
Having once gained the lead, England now took another rapid move
forward in the development of the rifle. Though the new standards set
by the Enfield were high, expert opinion aimed at something still
higher; the Enfield gave variations in range and direction which could
not be accounted for by errors in manufacture, nor did the range and
penetrative power of the bullet come up to expectations. In these
circumstances the government sought the advice of a man whose name was
destined to loom large in the story of the subsequent development of
ordnance: Mr. Whitworth. Mr. Whitworth was described as the greatest
mechanical genius in Europe at that time. Certain it is that, although
in the realm of ordnance his name may have been overshadowed to a
certain extent by that of his great rival, yet on the broad ground of
the influence his inventions exerted on the progress of mechanical
science generally, his fame now grows with time. He it was who first
swept away the medieval conception of measurement which hitherto had
obtained in factories and workshops, and introduced a scientific
precision into the manufacture of machines and mechanisms. The true
plane surface, as we know it to-day, was unattained before his time;
and his contemporaries marvelled at plates of metal prepared by him of
so true a surface that, by their mere adhesion, one could be lifted by
means of the other. The micrometer was a similar revelation. Men whose
minimum of size had hitherto been the thickness of a chalk-line or a
simple fraction of an inch, were taught by him to measure the inch
to its ten-thousandth part, and even to gauge the expansion of a rod
caused by the warmth imparted by the contact of a finger.
Such was the man who made modern artillery possible. To Mr. Whitworth,
who knew nothing himself of guns or of gun-making, the government went
for advice on the shortcomings of the Enfield rifle. At their request
he promptly began an analytical inquiry into the principles underlying
the action of rifles and the flight of their projectiles, resolved
and urged to discover the secret of the very partial success so far
attained. The results of this inquiry, published in ’57, had a great
influence on the future of rifled fire-arms and ordnance. Briefly, he
discovered that the amount of twist hitherto given to the rifling of
gun-barrels had been wholly insufficient to maintain the projectile
in its true direction during flight; the weight of the projectile,
relatively to its diameter, had been insufficient to give it the
necessary momentum to sustain its velocity against the resistance
of the air; lastly, the accuracy of manufacture of rifles had been
inadequate to the ensuring of a good fit of the bullet in the bore. To
prove the truth of these assertions a Whitworth rifle was produced by
him which gave better results than any other hitherto made. The form
of rifling which the inventor adopted was considered objectionable,
and the rifle itself, with its polygonal barrel, was not approved by
the authorities; but, instead, the valuable results of Whitworth’s
experiments were embodied in the Enfield, to its obvious improvement.
[Illustration: WHITWORTH RIFLE BULLET]
The muzzle-loading rifle had now reached the limit of its development.
The rifle was the accepted arm of all the great military powers. But
in the case of one of them, Prussia, the principle of breech-loading
was already in favour, and it was not long before the progress in
mechanical science enabled this principle to prove its superiority
over the ancient principle of muzzle-loading. Although in the Prussian
needle-gun great difficulties were encountered; although in service its
reputation suffered from such defects as the rusting of the needles
which pierced the percussion cartridges, the failure of springs, the
escape of gases at the breech; yet it was recognized that none of these
defects was necessarily inherent in the breech-loading system, and its
merits were admitted. With the breech-loader a greater rapidity of fire
was always attainable, there was less difficulty in preventing fouling,
and, above all, there was the certainty that the powder-charge would be
fired to its last effective grain.
In 1864 breech-loading rifles were recommended for the British army,
and shortly afterwards they were introduced in the form of converted
Enfields.
§
We have seen how the development of field ordnance stimulated the
development of the rifle. In turn the attainment of superior range
and accuracy by rifled small arms led directly to a corresponding
development of field ordnance, designed to recover the loss of its
ascendancy. In France, where the logical consequences of the progress
in small arms were officially noted on several occasions, Napoleon
III, himself an authority on artillery, took the initiative to restore
field ordnance to its former relative position. It was in the Crimean
War that the enhanced effects of rifle regiments were first seriously
felt. Convinced by the protraction of the operations before Sebastopol
of the inadequacy of smooth-bore guns, the Emperor caused bronze pieces
to be rifled, and these, being sent to Algeria on active service, gave
conclusive proof of their increased efficiency. On report of which, all
the bronze field pieces in the French army were rifled in accordance
with the plans which a M. Treuille de Beaulieu had submitted in 1842,
viz. with six shallow rounded grooves in which engaged zinc studs
carried on two bands formed on the cylindrical projectile. The gain in
power obtained by rifling ordnance was greater even than that obtained
from rifling as applied to small arms. For not only did rifling confer
the advantages of a more massive projectile more suitably shaped for
flight through a resisting medium, but it allowed a large increase
in the number of balls which could be discharged in the form of case
or shrapnel, and a large increase in the powder-charge which could
be carried inside a common shell. An advantage was also gained in
respect of that important detail, the fusee or fuze; the rotation of
the projectile about a definite axis made it possible to use fuses
whose action depended on one definite part of the projectile coming
first in contact with the ground or target.[124] All these advantages
were found to be present in the French field pieces when rifled on the
above plan. “And thus,” said an English writer, “at slight expense
but too late for use in the Crimean War, France was put in possession
of an artillery which, consuming its usual powder and using either
round ball or elongated projectiles, proved of immense value in the war
against Austria in 1856, when, at Magenta and at Solferino, the case
shot from their rifled field-pieces ploughed through the distant masses
of opposing infantry and decimated the cavalry as they formed for the
attack.”[125]
In England an almost simultaneous development took place, but on
entirely different lines. Let us tell it in the words of Sir Emerson
Tennant:
“The fate of the battle of Inkerman in November, 1854, was decided
by two eighteen-pounder guns which by almost superhuman efforts were
got up late into the field, and these, by their superior range, were
effectual in silencing the Russian fire. Mr. William Armstrong was
amongst those who perceived that another such emergency could only be
met by imparting to field-guns the accuracy and range of the rifle; and
that the impediment of weight must be removed by substituting forged
instead of cast-iron guns. With his earliest design for the realization
of this conception, he waited on the Secretary for War in December,
1854, to propose the enlargement of the rifle musket to the standard of
a field gun, and to substitute elongated projectiles of lead instead
of balls of cast iron. Encouraged by the Duke of Newcastle, he put
together his first wrought-iron gun in the spring of 1855.”[126]
The manufacture of this gun marked a new era in ordnance. Repeated
trials followed its completion; with the result that in 1858 the
Armstrong gun was officially adopted for service in the field,--the
epoch-making Armstrong gun: a tube made of wrought-iron bar coiled in
a closed helix and welded at a white heat into a solid mass; turned
to a true cylinder and reinforced by outer tubes shrunk on to it;
rifled with a large number of grooves; breech-loading, a powerful screw
holding a sliding vent-piece tightly against the face of the breech;
firing a lead-coated projectile in whose plastic covering the rifling
engaged as soon as it started its passage through the bore; and mounted
on a field-carriage in such a way that the gun could recoil up an
inclined slide and return by gravity, and in such a way that its motion
both for elevating and for traversing was under the accurate control
given by screw gearing.
The coming of the Armstrong gun at once revolutionized artillery
practice and material in this country. The sum of all the improvements
embodied in it was so great that existing material scarcely bore
comparison with it. Its accuracy as compared with that of the
smooth-bore field piece which it displaced was stated in parliament to
be in the ratio of fifty-seven to one. And the effect of its inventor’s
achievement was, “that from being the rudest of weapons, artillery has
been advanced to be nearly on a par mechanically with the steam engine
or the power-loom; and it differs as essentially from the old cast-iron
tube dignified with the name of a gun, as the railway train of the
present day differs from the stagecoach of our forefathers.”[127] A
revolutionary invention it certainly was. Yet, like most revolutionary
inventions, it relied for its grand effect more on the aggregate
effect of the small improvements in its various elements than on the
materialization of some new-born idea. The building up of guns in coils
was not a new discovery, polygroove rifling was already in use abroad,
breech-loading, lead-coated projectiles, elevating screws--all had
been known for years. Nor does this fact detract in the least from the
fame of Mr. Armstrong in this connection. His greatness lay, surely,
in the insight and initiative with which he made use of known forms
and combinations, summoning to his aid the new powers placed at his
disposal by Whitworth, Nasmyth, Bessemer and their contemporaries in
order to evolve a system incomparably superior to anything hitherto
achieved.
In England, too, an independent development was at the same time taking
place in yet another direction. Mr. Whitworth, having satisfactorily
established the principles governing the design of rifles, felt
confident of extending them to field and heavy ordnance. Adhering to
the muzzle-loading principle and to his hexagonal form of rifling he
manufactured, between the years 1854 and 1857, several guns which
fired projectiles of from six to twenty-four pounds’ weight with
great accuracy and to ranges greater than any yet attained. Events
occurred which caused him to be given every encouragement by the
government. The attitude of the French in these years was suspicious
and unfriendly. Schemes of invasion were openly discussed in their
press, and war vessels of various types equipped with armour plate
were designed and actually built. Reports of their plans, following
closely on the exposures of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny,
rendered the country increasingly restless and apprehensive as to the
value of our offensive and defensive armaments. And then, although the
new Armstrong gun was acclaimed as eminently suited for service in the
field, doubts had been cast as to whether the principles of its design
could be applied satisfactorily to the heaviest ordnance. Other rifled
artillery had certainly failed to give the results expected from it.
The Lancaster rifled gun, a muzzle-loading gun with a twisted bore of
a slightly oval section, had failed lamentably at the Crimea owing
to the tendency, according to one account, of the oval projectile to
wedge itself against the slightly larger oval of the bore; according to
another account, owing to the flames from the powder gases penetrating
the interior of the welded shells which had been supplied for it. The
breech-loading ordnance of Cavalli had failed the Italians. In Sweden
several accidents had occurred with Wahrendorf’s breech-loading pieces.
The French system, which had been copied by the majority of the powers,
was that which appeared to be giving the least unsatisfactory results.
In these circumstances every encouragement was given Mr. Whitworth to
develop ordnance on his own lines. In ’58 a committee on rifled guns
was appointed by parliament to examine and report on the relative
merits of the various systems in use. The committee quickly set to
work. No difficulty was found in eliminating all but two, on which
attention was soon concentrated: the Armstrong and the Whitworth.
The result of the final investigation was a report in favour of the
Armstrong gun, which, as we have already seen, was adopted in the same
year for field service. Mr. Armstrong, who had handed over his rights
in the gun for the benefit of the nation, was knighted and his services
were subsidized for the improvement of rifled ordnance generally. The
title of “Engineer to the War Department” was conferred on him, and
later he received the further appointment of “Superintendent of the
Royal Gun Factory” at Woolwich.
§
The revolution in field guns was closely followed by a corresponding
revolution in heavy ordnance. The experience of the Crimean War proved
two things: that the development of the shell gun necessitated the
provision of armour to protect the flanks of warships; and that the
development of armour necessitated a heavy ordnance of a greater power
than existing smooth-bore cannon. The shell gun, in fact, induced a
rifled ordnance.
The French, who had already found a cheap and sufficiently effective
rifled field artillery in the conversion of their smooth-bores on the
de Beaulieu principle, merely had to extend this conversion to their
heavier pieces. By 1860 they had converted their 30- and 50-pounder
cannon in this way, thus enabling them to be used for the discharge of
either spherical or elongated projectiles.
Britain, on the other hand, found herself committed to an entirely
new and experimental system which could not be applied to existing
ordnance; a large outlay of money was thereby involved for new plant
and guns; our vast establishment of smooth-bore cast-iron cannon was
in danger of being reduced to scrap material. At the same time doubts
were expressed whether this new system, whose success as applied to
medium pieces was generally admitted, would be found satisfactory
when applied to the largest size of ordnance. It was natural, then,
that great interest should be centred in what was regarded as a less
experimental alternative to the Armstrong system, in case the latter
failed. The results obtained by Mr. Whitworth in the manufacture
of solid cannon, rifled hexagonally, muzzle-loading and capable of
firing hexagonal bolts or, in emergency, spherical balls, were such
as to give promise of competing successfully with those obtained from
the ordnance officially patronized. To the public the simplicity of
his system strongly appealed. Mr. Whitworth himself, far from being
deterred by the decision given in favour of his rival, was now an
enthusiastic exponent of the constructive principles which he had
made his own. Trial succeeded trial, piece after piece was made and
tested to destruction. By 1860 a very successful ordnance was evolved
at Manchester by him: guns made of homogeneous iron, forged in large
masses, and formed of cylindrical tubes forced one over another by
means of a known hydraulic pressure--not, as in the Armstrong system,
by heating and shrinking. And on the sands at Southport a series of
public trials were carried out with these guns, the results of which
proved a great advertisement for the Whitworth system. The accuracy of
flight of the projectiles was unprecedented, and all records in ranging
power were broken by one of the pieces, a 3-pounder, which threw a shot
to a distance of 9,688 yards![128]
Even if the new Whitworth system were adopted, the utilization of the
old smooth-bore cannon which formed the existing national armament
of ships and fortresses was not secured. Neither the Armstrong nor
the Whitworth system provided an expedient for converting to rifled
ordnance the thousands of cast-iron guns in which the defence of the
country was invested. Efforts were therefore made to reinforce the
old pieces so that, when rifled, they would be sufficiently strong to
withstand the greater stresses entailed. Greater stresses in the metal,
due to higher chamber pressures of the powder gases, were almost a
necessary concomitant of rifling. For, apart from the increase in the
size and mass of the projectile and its greater initial resistance
to motion, pressures tended to increase in a greater ratio than the
size of the pieces themselves; the mass of the projectile increased
as the cube, the propulsive force of the gases as the square, of the
diameter of the bore; hence to attain a given velocity, the larger the
bore the higher the pressure required to propel it with a given type
of powder,--other things being equal. No limit, therefore, could be
assigned to the strength and power required of heavy ordnance. Moreover
a struggle had begun in ’59, with the building of the _Gloire_ and
_Warrior_, which was already foreshadowing tremendous developments both
of guns and of armour.
The experiences of America in this connection were not encouraging.
The civil war served as an incentive to the Americans to rifle all
their large calibre guns as quickly as possible. In ’62 large numbers
of cast-iron cannon were rifled and reinforced by external hoops of
iron. The results were deplorable. A great number of pieces burst; and
experience made it clear that “a gun made up of a single homogeneous
casting soon reaches a limit of resistance to internal pressure beyond
which the addition of extra metal has little or no effect.” Two
improvements must be mentioned as having more than a passing effect on
the progress of ordnance in America: first, the adoption of compressed
and perforated powder which, by prolonging the combustion period,
caused a more even distribution of stresses over all sections of the
barrel; second, the casting of guns hollow and the chilling of their
interiors, so as to form on the inside of the piece a hardened stratum
on which the outer parts of the casting contracted as they slowly
cooled, thus giving it support. But in spite of these inventions it
became apparent that cast iron was in its nature unsuited as a material
for rifled ordnance.
In England a safer method of conversion was followed. Guns were bored
out, on a scheme proposed in ’63 by Major Palliser, and accurately
turned tubes of coiled wrought iron were fitted in them, which
were afterwards rifled. The resulting pieces consisted, then, of a
wrought-iron inner tube, supported by a surrounding cast-iron jacket
against which, on firing, the inner tube expanded. Thus converted, the
old smooth-bores were enabled to develop an energy far in excess of
their original limit, and so to prolong for some years their period of
usefulness.
The conversion of the cast-iron guns was seen to be only a temporary
expedient. Just as the smooth-bore cannon, after a last effort
to overcome iron plates with spherical solid shot of the largest
calibre, withdrew from the competition; so, as the thickness of
armour increased, the converted cast-iron cannon, with its special
armour-piercing shot of chilled iron, soon reached the limit of its
power and gave place to the rifled artillery of wrought iron or steel.
And now, rifled ordnance having definitely supplanted the smooth-bore,
a new struggle arose between the various systems of gunmaking, and
more especially between the two rival methods of loading: by the
breech and by the muzzle. The prognostications of those who had
doubted whether the latter method was suitable for large ordnance were
seen to be partially justified. Other nations had already relapsed
into muzzle-loading, impressed by the complexity and weakness of the
breech-loading systems of Cavalli, Wahrendorf and other inventors.
Besides ourselves only the Prussians, the originators of the
breech-loading rifled musket in its modern form, continued to trust in
breech-loading ordnance. The Italians, following the example of the
French and Americans, abandoned the system. “Thus,” said an English
authority in ’62, “while, after more than four centuries of trial,
other nations were giving up the moveable breech, ... we are still
going from plan to plan in the hope of effecting what will, even if
successful in closing the breech, be scarcely safe with the heavy
charges necessary for smashing armour plates.”[129]
In the following year, ’63, the committee appointed to carry out the
competitive trials between Whitworth and Armstrong guns, reported that
the many-grooved system of rifling, with its lead-coated projectiles
and complicated breech-loading arrangements, entailing the use of tin
caps for obturation and lubricators for the rifling grooves, was far
inferior for the general purposes of war to both of the muzzle-loading
systems tried. This view received early and practical confirmation
from a report sent to the Admiralty by Vice-Admiral Sir Augustus
Kuper, after the bombardment of Kagosima. In that action several
accidents occurred owing to the Armstrong guns being fired with their
breech-blocks not properly screwed up. The guns were accordingly
withdrawn from service and replaced by muzzle-loaders. In 1864 England
reverted definitely to muzzle-loading ordnance, which, in the face of
violent controversy and in spite of the gradual reconversion of her
rivals to the breech-loading principle, she maintained for the next
fifteen years. Whitworth’s system was adopted in the main, but the
hexagonal form of bore and projectile was avoided. Studded projectiles
were approved, the pieces being rifled with a few broad shallow grooves
not unlike those used by the French. England at last possessed a
muzzle-loading sea ordnance, characterized by ease and rapidity of
loading, accuracy, cheapness, and capacity for firing, in emergency,
spherical shot as well as rifled projectiles.
What was the effect of this retrogression upon the status of our naval
armaments?
It seems frequently to have been held that, in view of the eventual
victory of the breech-loading gun, the policy of reverting to
muzzle-loading was wrong, and that this country was thereby placed at
a serious disadvantage to her rivals. Several good reasons existed,
however, for the preference given to muzzle-loading ordnance at that
time. The accidents with removable breeches had been numerous and
demoralizing. Muzzle-loading guns, besides the advantages which they
possessed of strength, solidity and simplicity of construction, offered
important advantages in ease and rapidity of loading--particularly
in the case of turret or barbette guns, where “outside loading” was
a great convenience. On the other hand the principal deficiency of
the muzzle-loader, namely, the large windage required with studded
projectiles, was now eliminated by the invention of the cupped “gas
check,” a copper disc attached to the rear of the projectile which, on
discharge, expanded automatically and sealed the bore.
Expert opinion confirmed the wisdom of the government policy.
Experience, in the Franco-Prussian war and elsewhere, confirmed the
views of the experts. “Reviewing the action of the artillerists who
decided to adopt muzzle-loaders, with the greater experience we now
possess it seems that they were right in their decision at the time it
was first made; but there was too much hesitation in coming back to
breech-loaders when new discoveries and great progress in powder quite
altered conditions.”[130] In fact, once having abandoned the disparaged
system, the country was with difficulty persuaded by the professionals
to retrace its steps. In the end, ordnance followed small arms; the
researches of Captain Noble at Elswick proved conclusively to the world
at large the necessity for a reversion to breech-loading; and in 1880
the muzzle-loading gun was finally superseded by a greatly improved
form of breech-loader.
In 1880 the state of knowledge and the conditions under which ordnance
was manufactured were certainly altered from those of ’64. The struggle
between guns and armour begun with the _Gloire_ and _Warrior_ had
continued. In the presence of the new powers of mechanical science,
artillerists and shipbuilders had sought to plumb the possibilities of
offensive and defensive elements in warship design. Guns influenced
armour, armour reacted on guns; both revolutionized contemporary naval
architecture. It was in the effort to aggrandize the power of guns
that Noble discovered that, with the existing powders and with the
short muzzle-loading gun, a natural limit of power was soon reached.
Better results could only be obtained, he showed, by the adoption of
slow-burning powder and a longer gun; by the avoidance of the sudden
high chamber pressure which resulted from the small-grained powder,
and the substitution for it of a chamber pressure which would rise
gradually to a safe maximum and then suffer only a gradual reduction as
the gases expanded behind the moving projectile. The work done by the
gases on the projectile could by this means be enormously increased.
But, for this result, larger powder-charges were required; and these
larger charges of slow-burning powder were found to require much
larger chambers than those embodied in existing guns; in short, the
new conditions called for a new shape of gun. Long guns, having powder
chambers of larger diameter than that of the bore, were necessary, and
these could not conveniently be made muzzle-loading.
So a return to the breech-loading ordnance became inevitable, and the
change was made. The old Armstrong moveable vent-piece was avoided,
however, in the new designs; of the two alternative breech-closing
systems in use, viz. the wedge system of Krupp and the “interrupted
screw” system of the French, the latter was adopted. A steel tube,
rifled on the polygroove system, formed the body of the piece, and this
was strengthened by hoops of iron or steel shrunk on its exterior. The
new gun yielded a very great increase of power. Muzzle-loading guns
were at once displaced, in the projected programme of new battleships,
for the new type of ordnance, and a further series of revolutionary
changes in ship armament at once took place. Other nations had already
augmented the length and power of their guns. By the adoption of the
improved breech-loading ordnance, Great Britain, who for the last few
years had been falling behind her rivals, not only drew level with them
but definitely took the lead in the power of her heavy ordnance: a lead
which from that time to this she has successfully maintained.
CHAPTER IX
PROPELLING MACHINERY
No aspect of old naval warfare is so difficult for the modern reader
to visualize, perhaps, as that which displays the essential weakness
of the sailing warship: its impotence in a calm. It was a creature
requiring for its activities two elements, air and water. Ruffle the
sea with a breeze, and the sailing ship had power of motion towards
most of the points of the compass; withdraw the winds, and she lay
glued to the smooth water or rolling dangerously in the heavy swell,
without power either of turning or translation. For centuries this
weakness told heavily against her and in favour of the oar-propelled
vessel, particularly in certain latitudes. Through many years, indeed,
the two types held ascendancy each in its own waters; in the smooth
stretches of the Mediterranean the oar-driven galley, light, swift,
and using its sharp ram or bow-cannon as chief means of offence or
defence, was a deadly danger to the becalmed sailing ship; in the
rougher north Atlantic the sailing ship, strong, heavy, capacious,
and armed for attack and defence only along its sides, proved far
too fast and powerful for the oar-driven rival. Progress--increase
of size, improvement in artillery, the development of the science of
navigation--favoured the sailing ship, so that there came at last the
day when, even in the Mediterranean, she attained ascendancy over the
galley. But always there was this inherent weakness: in a dead calm
the sailing ship lay open to attack from a quarter where her defence
lay bare. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, perhaps, she could move
sufficiently to beat off her attacker by bringing her broadsides
to bear. The hundredth, she lay at the mercy of her adversary, who
could, by choosing his range and quarter of attack, make her temporary
inferiority the occasion of defeat. For this military reason many
attempts were made to supplement sails with oars. But oars and sails
were incompatible. They were often, seen together in early times,
but with progress the use of one became more and more irreconcilable
with the use of the other. The Tudor galleasse, though possessing
in our northern waters many advantages over the galley type, had
the defects inherent in the compromise, and gave place in a short
time to the high-charged “great ship” propelled by sails alone. The
sailing ship was by that time strong and powerful enough to risk the
one-in-a-hundred chance of being attacked by oared galleys in a stark
calm. It was only when the first steam vessels plied English waters
that the old weakness became apparent again. It was then seriously
urged that the ship-of-the-line should carry oars once more, against
the attack of small steamers converging on her from a weakly defended
quarter.
[Illustration: SHIP AND GALLEY
(From Tartagliá’s _Arte of Shooting_, English Ed., A.D. 1588.)]
§
The oar was in many ways an objectionable form of power. It was very
vulnerable, its presence made manœuvring at close quarters risky and
difficult; and apart from the necessity, on which the galley service
was based, of a large supply of slave-labour for working them, oars and
the rowers absorbed a large proportion of the available inboard space,
to the detriment both of artillery and merchandise.
Many attempts were therefore made, not only to substitute animals for
men, for the work of propulsion, but to apply power in a manner more
suitable than by the primitive method of levers: oars or sweeps. The
paddlewheel was thought of at a very early date; a Roman army is said
to have been transported into Sicily by boats propelled by wheels moved
by oxen, and in many old military treatises the substitution of wheels
for oars is mentioned.[131] In 1588 Ramelli, engineer-in-ordinary to
the French king, published a book in which was sketched an amphibious
vehicle propelled by hand-worked paddlewheels: “une sorte de canot
automobile blindé et percé de meurtrières pour les arquesbusiers.”
In 1619 Torelli, Governor of Malta, fitted a ship with paddles, and
in it passed through the Straits of Messina against the tide. But
Richelieu, to whom he offered his invention, was not impressed with
its value.[132] Before this, Blasco de Garoy, a Spanish captain, had
exhibited to the Emperor Charles V, in 1543, an engine by which ships
of the largest size could be propelled in a calm: an arrangement of
hand-operated paddlewheels.
In Bourne’s _Inventions and Devices_, published in 1578, is the first
mention of paddlewheels (so far as we know) in any English book. By
the placing of certain wheels on the outside of the boat, he says, and
“so turning the wheels by some provision,” the boat may be made to go.
And then he proceeds to mention the inversion of the paddlewheel, or
the paddlewheel which is driven, as distinguished from the paddlewheel
which drives. “They make a watermill in a boat, for when that it rideth
at an anker, the tide or stream will turn the wheels with great force,
and these mills are used in France,” etc. It is possible, indeed, that
this was the prior form, and that the earliest paddlewheel was a mill
and not primarily a means of propelling the vessel.
Early in the seventeenth century the mechanical sciences began to
develop rapidly and as the century advanced the flood of patents for
the propulsion of ships increased. “To make boats, ships, and barges
to go against the wind and tide”; “the drawing and working of barges
and other vessels without the use of horses”; “for making vessels to
navigate in a straight line with all winds though contrary”; these
are some of the patents granted, the details of which are not known.
At last the ingenious Marquis of Worcester, who in 1663 was granted a
patent for his steam engine, also obtained a patent for an invention
for propelling a vessel against wind and stream. It has sometimes been
inferred that this invention was connected in some way with the steam
engine, and the claim has been made that the Marquis was one of the
first authors of steam propulsion. This is not so. Contained in the
description of the ship-propelling invention are two statements which
dispose completely of the theory that steam was the motive force;
first, that the “force of the wind or stream causeth its (the engine’s)
motion”; secondly, that “the more rapid the stream, the faster it (the
vessel) advances against it.” From this it appears that the Marquis
intended to utilize the watermill as described by Bourne. From a study
of the description of the apparatus it has been concluded that “a
rope fastened at one end up the stream, and at the other to the axis
of waterwheels lying across the boat, and dipping into the water so
as to be turned by the wheels, would fulfil the conditions proposed
of advancing the boat faster, the more rapid the stream; and when at
anchor such wheels might have been applied to other purposes.”[133] If
this reconstruction is correct, the scope of the propelling device was
very limited.
In Bushnell’s _Compleat Shipwright_, published in 1678, a proposal
was made for working oars by pivoting them at the vessel’s side and
connecting their inboard ends by longitudinal rods operated by cranks
geared to a centre-line capstan. But the disadvantages of oars so
used must have been apparent, and there is no evidence that this
invention was ever put into practice. The obvious alternative was
the paddlewheel, and though that device had been known and used in a
primitive form long before the seventeenth century, it was continually
being reinvented (especially in the ’nineties) and tried by inventors
in various countries. Denis Papin turned his original mind to the
solution of this problem. A paper on the subject written by him in
Germany in 1690 is of interest. Discussing the use of oars from ships’
sides he notes that, “Common oars could not be conveniently used in
this way, and it would be necessary to use for this purpose those of
a rotary construction, such as I remember to have seen at London.
They were affixed to a machine made by direction of Prince Rupert,
and were set in motion by horses, so as to produce a much greater
velocity than could be given by sixteen watermen to the Royal Barge.”
Papin, who had suggested the atmospheric steam engine, also suggested
the possible application of steam to propulsion. But it was left to
others to achieve what he had to propose. His talent, it has been
said, lay rather in speculations on ingenious combinations, than in
the mechanical power of carrying them into execution on a great scale.
In 1708 he laid before the Royal Society, accompanied by a letter of
recommendation from Leibnitz, a definite proposal for a boat “to be
moved with oars by heat ... by an engine after the manner that has
been practised at Cassel.” What form this engine was to take, and how
the power was to be transmitted to the oars, is still a matter of
conjecture. Only this is known, that the proposal was considered in
detail by the president, Sir Isaac Newton, and that on his advice no
further action was taken.[134]
In France it has been widely claimed that Papin actually engined a
boat and propelled it over the waters of the Weser by the force of
steam. His biographer states that on the 24th September, 1707, Papin
“embarquait sur le premier bateau à vapeur toute sa fortune.”[135]
But the statement is not correct. The misconception, like that which
assigned to the Marquis of Worcester the invention of a steam-propelled
vessel, was doubtless due to the fact that the inventor was known to
be engaged in the study of the steam engine and of ship-propelling
mechanism. The two things, though distinct in themselves, were readily
combined in the minds of his admirers. It is generally agreed to-day,
we think, even by his own countrymen, that Papin, though he may claim
the honour of having first suggested the application of steam to ship
propulsion, never himself achieved a practical success.
In the meantime Savery in England had produced his successful engine.
In his case, too, the claim has been made that he first proposed steam
propulsion for ships. But in his _Miner’s Friend_ this able mechanician
showed that he recognized the limited application of his steam engine.
“I believe,” he says, “it may be made very _useful_ to ships, but I
dare not meddle with that matter; and leave it to the judgment of those
who are the best judges of maritime affairs.” But in propulsion by
hand-operated paddlewheels Savery was an enthusiastic believer. In 1698
he had published, in a book bearing the title, “_Navigation Improv’d:
Or the Art of Rowing Ships of all Rates, in Calms, with a more easy,
swift, and steady Motion than Oars can_,” a description of a mechanism
consisting of paddlewheels formed of oars fitted radially to drumheads
which were mounted on the two ends of an iron bar placed horizontally
across the ship. This bar was geared by mortice wheels with another
bar mounted vertically as the axis of a capstan; rotation of the
capstan was thus transmitted to the paddlewheels. Savery fitted this
mechanism to a wherry and carried out successful trials on the Thames
before thousands of people. But the Navy Board would not consider it.
They had incurred a loss, it appeared, on a horse tow-vessel which had
been in use at Chatham a few years previously: a vessel which towed
the greatest ships with the help of four, six, or eight horses, and
which, incidentally, may have influenced Savery in adopting the term
“horse power” as the unit of work for his steam engine. The sanguine
inventor made great efforts to interest the authorities, but without
avail; the Surveyor rejected the proposal. So in an angry mood Savery
published his book, with a description of his mechanism and an account
of his efforts to interest the authorities, to show how one man’s
humour had obstructed his engine. “You see, Reader, what to trust to,”
he concluded, “though you have found out an improvement as great to
shipping as turning to windward, or the compass; unless you can sit
round the green table in Crutched Friars, your invention is damned of
course.”
The first detailed scheme for applying steam-power to ship propulsion
was contained in the patent of Jonathan Hulls, in 1736. Though great
credit is generally given to this inventor (who has even been dubbed
the father of steam navigation), it does not appear that in reality
he contributed much to the advancement of the problem; which was,
indeed, still waiting on the development of the steam engine. Hulls’
notion, explained in a pamphlet which he published in 1737, was to
connect the piston of a Newcomen engine by a rope gearing with some
wheels mounted in the waist of the vessel, which wheels oscillated as
the piston moved up and down. These wheels were in turn connected by
rope gearing with a large fan-wheel mounted in a frame rigged out over
the vessel’s stern, the fans in their lowest position dipping into
the water. The oscillating motion of the inboard wheels was converted
into a continuous ahead motion of the fan-wheel by means of a ratchet.
With this machinery he designed to tow ships in harbours and rivers.
It must, however, be remarked that the invention was never more than
a paper project; and that if Hulls had tried to translate his ideas
into three dimensions he would have encountered, in all probability,
insuperable practical difficulties. One very original suggestion of
his certainly deserves notice; as a special case he proposed that when
the tow-boat was used in shallow rivers two cranks, fitted to the axis
of his driving wheels, should operate two long poles of sufficient
length to reach the bottom of the river; these trailing poles, moving
alternately forward, would propel the vessel. Here is an early
application of the crank. But in this case it will be noted that the
crank is driven, and that it converts a rotary into a reciprocating
motion; in short, it is an inversion of the driving crank which, as
applied to the steam engine, was not invented till some years later.
As before remarked, the whole problem of steam propulsion waited upon
the development of the steam engine. In the meantime the application of
convenient forms of man power received considerable study, especially
in France. In Bouguer’s _Traité du Navire_ the problem was investigated
of propulsion by blades or panels, hinged, and folding when not in
use against the vessel’s sides; and in 1753 the prize offered by the
Academy of Sciences for an essay on the subject was won by Daniel
Bernouilli, for a plan on those lines. Euler proposed paddlewheels on a
transverse shaft geared like Savery’s, by mortice wheels to a multiple
capstan. Variations of this method were proposed by other writers and
inventors, and some of the best intellects in France attacked the
problem. But nothing definite resulted. The most valuable result of
the discussion was the conclusion drawn by M. Gautier, a professor of
mathematics at Nancy, that the strength of the crew was not sufficient
to give any great velocity to a ship. He proposed, therefore, as the
only means of attaining that object, the employment of a steam engine,
and pointed out several ways in which it might be applied to produce a
rotary motion.[136]
In the course of time the problem marched forward to a solution. The
first great improvement in the steam engine which rendered it adaptable
to marine use was the invention by Watt of the “double impulse”;
the second, Pickard’s invention of the crank and connecting-rod. By
virtue of these two developments the steam engine was made capable of
imparting to a shaft a continuous rotary motion without the medium of
noisy, brittle or inefficient gearing. As soon as engines having this
power were placed on the public market attempts were made to mount
them in boats and larger vessels; steam navigation was discerned as a
possibility.
§
Of the many efforts which were made at the end of the eighteenth
century to apply steam power to the propulsion of ships a striking
feature is their complete independence from each other and from the
results of prior experience and research. Little information is
available as to the results of various experiments which were known
to be carried on in France at this time, and, with all respect, it is
improbable that they contributed in any way to the subsequent evolution
of the steam vessel. The Abbé Darnal in 1781, M. de Jouffroi in 1782,
and M. Desblancs in 1802 and 1803, proposed or constructed steamboats.
M. de Jouffroi is said to have made several successful attempts on the
Saone at Lyons; but the intervention of the Revolution put an end to
his undertakings.
In Britain a successful attempt to apply the steam engine to the
paddlewheel was made in 1788. In that year three men, combining
initiative, financial resource, and a large measure of engineering
ingenuity, proved the possibility of steam propulsion in an experiment
singularly complete and of singularly little effect on subsequent
progress. In the summer of ’87 a wealthy and inventive banker, Mr.
Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, Edinburgh, had been making experiments
in the Firth of Forth with a double vessel of his own invention, sixty
feet long, which, when wind failed for sailing, was set in motion by
two paddlewheels. These paddlewheels were fitted between the two hulls
of the vessel and were worked by men, by means of a geared capstan.
Miller believed that a boat furnished with paddlewheels and worked
manually would be of great advantage for working in shallow rivers
and canals. But the result of a sailing race between his boat and a
custom-house wherry of Leith, in which his own sails were supplemented
by the labours of four men at the wheels, convinced him that manpower
was insufficient. His sons’ tutor, a Mr. Taylor, suggested the
application of a steam engine. And being acquainted with an engineer
named Symington, Taylor prevailed on his patron to engage him to mount
a one-horse-power engine in a double pleasure boat, upon the lake
at Dalswinton. The experiment was a complete success. “The vessel
moved delightfully, and notwithstanding the smallness of the cylinder
(4 inches diameter), at the rate of 5 miles an hour. After amusing
ourselves a few days the engine was removed and carried into the house,
where it remained as a piece of ornamental furniture for a number of
years.”[137] Determined to pursue the experiment, Miller ordered a
replica of the original engine on a larger scale, and this engine, with
a cylinder of 18 inches diameter, was erected at Carron and fitted to
a larger boat. This also was successful. But no further trials were
made after ’89; for Patrick Miller, who had spent a large sum in order
to establish the feasibility of the invention, decided to close his
investigations, and to turn to other pursuits.
No further attempt was made in Great Britain until 1801, when Lord
Dundas engaged Symington to make a series of experiments on the
substitution of steam power for horse towage of barges on the Forth and
Clyde canal: experiments which resulted in the _Charlotte Dundas_. In
this celebrated vessel a double-acting Watt engine, with its 22-inch
diameter cylinder mounted horizontally on the deck, actuated, through
a simple connecting-rod and a crank with a 4-foot throw, a paddlewheel
which was carried in a centre-line recess at the stern. In March, ’03,
Symington in the _Charlotte Dundas_ towed two 70-ton vessels nineteen
miles against a strong head wind in six hours. Success seemed assured
to him. His reputation was already high, and now an invitation came
from the Duke of Bridgewater for eight similar tow-boats to ply on
his canal. But the inventor’s hopes were disappointed. The Duke died
suddenly, and the governing body of the Forth and Clyde canal vetoed
the further use of steam vessels for fear of the damage the waves might
cause the banks. Other bodies took the same view, and thus came to an
end an important passage in the history of steam navigation. It is
remarkable, considering the efforts which had been made by inventors
from the sixteenth century onwards to improve on oar-propulsion for
military purposes, that Miller, Symington, and their friends do not
seem to have envisaged any use for steamboats other than as tugs on
canals. It is remarkable that in the presence of this initial success
neither the government nor the public showed any realization of the
possibilities which it unfolded; that no attempt was made by commercial
enterprise--even if, in the realm of naval strategy, such an innovation
was regarded as impolitic or impracticable[138]--to develop its
advantages and to secure an undisputed lead in the new application of
steam power.
[Illustration: THE “CHARLOTTE DUNDAS”
(From Fincham.)]
It was in America that the most persistent and continuous development
took place, quite independently of efforts elsewhere and almost
contemporaneously with those above described. America, whose
geographical conditions made water transport relatively far more
important than it was in Great Britain, lent a ready ear to the schemes
of inventors. In 1784 James Rumsey, and shortly afterwards John Fitch,
had already laid plans before General Washington for the propulsion of
boats by steam.
John Fitch, whose original idea was a steamboat propelled by means
of an endless chain of flat boards, afterwards experimented with
an arrangement, “borrowed no doubt from the action of Indians in a
canoe,” of paddles held vertically in frames mounted along the sides
of the boat and operated by cranks. In 1786 a boat thus equipped made
a successful trial on the Delaware, and in the following year a larger
boat, fitted with a horizontal double-acting engine with a 12-inch
cylinder and a 3-foot stroke, giving motion to six paddles on each
side, was publicly tried on the same river. The speed attained was
very small. At last in 1790, still protected by a patent which granted
him a temporary monopoly in steamboat building, Fitch succeeded in
building a boat which was an undisputed mechanical success. Discarding
the paddle-frame and adopting a beam engine to drive paddle-boards
at the stern, he produced a steamboat which, after being tested and
credited with eight knots’ speed on a measured mile in front of Water
Street, Philadelphia, in the presence of the governor and council
of Pennsylvania, ran two or three thousand miles as a passenger
boat on the Delaware before being dismantled. It was a considerable
achievement. But the excessive weight and space absorbed by the
machinery prevented the boat from being a financial success; and, after
a journey to France, then distracted by the Revolution, Fitch returned
home to America and ended his days a disappointed and a broken man.
Nevertheless, the work he did was of service to others. He proved that
the ponderous nature of the machinery was the greatest obstacle to
the propulsion of small craft by steam, and from his failure deduced
the conclusion, on which later inventors were able to build, that the
solution of the problem lay in the _scale_: that, “it would be much
easier to carry a first-rate man-of-war by steam at an equal rate than
a small boat.”[139]
James Rumsey, a Virginian, carried out in 1775 the first practical
trials of water-jet propulsion, a small boat of his plying the Potomac
at a small speed by means of a steam pump which sucked in water at the
bow and threw it out at the stern. But as he felt himself obstructed
in further experiments by the patent rights which had been given his
rival Fitch he came to England; where, financed by a wealthy compatriot
and aided by James Watt himself, he produced in ’93 a boat which on the
Thames attained a speed of over four knots. Unfortunately Rumsey died
in the middle of his experiments.
An individual of extraordinary qualities had now turned his attention
to the problem of steam propulsion. In that same year a young American
artist, Robert Fulton, who had come to England to work under the
guidance of his countryman Benjamin West, wrote to Lord Stanhope
informing him of a plan which he had formed for moving ships by steam.
Lord Stanhope, well known as a scientific inventor, had recently been
experimenting with a vessel fitted with a 12-horse-power engine of
Boulton and Watt’s working a propeller which operated like the foot of
an aquatic bird. A correspondence ensued. Fulton, whose self-confidence
equalled his originality, illustrated by drawings and diagrams his
ideas on the subject. At first, he said, he thought of applying the
force of an engine to an oar or paddle which, hinged on the counter
at the stern, by a reciprocating motion would urge the vessel ahead.
But on experimenting with a clockwork model he found that, though the
boat sprang forward, the return stroke of the paddle interfered with
the continuity of the motion. “I then endeavoured,” he wrote, “to give
it a circular motion, which I effected by applying two paddles on an
axis. Then the boat moved by jerks; there was too great a space between
the strokes. I then applied three paddles, forming an equilateral
triangle to which I gave a circular motion.” These paddles he proposed
to place in cast-iron wheels one on each side of the boat and mounted
on the same shaft at some height over the waterline, so that each wheel
would “answer as a fly and brace to the perpendicular oars.” And he
stated that he found, from his experiments with models, that three or
six oars gave better results than any other number. From which it is
clear that the paddlewheel was evolved by Fulton from the simple paddle
independently of suggestion received from previous inventors.
Some time was to elapse before the results of his experiments were
utilized. Attracted by the boom in canal construction then in vogue
Fulton devoted his mind to that subject; though in this connection
the idea of steam-propelled boats still occupied him, as is shown
by a letter he wrote in ’94 to Messrs. Boulton and Watt, asking for
an estimate of costs and dimensions of “an engine with a rotative
movement of the purchase of 3 or 4 horses which is designed to be
placed in a boat.” From England he went to Paris, to try his fortune at
half a dozen projects. In ’98 he was experimenting on the Seine with a
screw propeller--“a fly of four parts similar to that of a smoke-jack,”
which gave promising results. This screw propeller, however, was as yet
unrecognized as the propulsive medium of the future. It had already
been patented in England by Bramah in 1785--“a wheel with inclined
fans, or wings, similar to the fly of a smoke-jack or the vertical
sails of a windmill”; and, hand-operated, it had actually been used
in America in 1776 by Bushnell in connection with his submarine. But
in 1802 Fulton had decided against the screw, and in favour of the
paddlewheel.
It was in this year that an introduction to an influential
compatriot, himself an experimenter in steam propulsion, gave Fulton
the opportunity to display his talents to their mutual advantage.
Chancellor Livingston, U.S. Minister to France, was aware of the
enormous advantages which would accrue to America (and to the happy
inventor) if steam propulsion could be achieved economically. With
Fulton’s aid he decided on building an experimental steam vessel
in France, with a view to transferring to America for commercial
enterprise the perfected results of their labour. A partnership was
formed, the work proceeded; but the experimental steamboat, whose
scantlings were unequal to supporting the weight of the 8-horsepower
machinery placed on board, sank at her moorings in a storm. A second
boat, stronger and bigger, attained complete success. Fulton promptly
wrote to Messrs. Boulton and Watt asking them to export to America a
24-horse-power engine complete with all accessories, in accordance
with his sketches; and with a brass air-pump suitable for working in
salt water. Then, going himself to England, he visited Messrs. Boulton
and Watt and gleaned what information he could as to the properties
of their machinery; studied the newly published results of Colonel
Beaufoy’s experiments on ship form and fluid resistance; and journeyed
to Scotland to visit Symington and see the famous _Charlotte Dundas_.
Armed with this knowledge, with all the experience of Rumsey and Fitch,
and with the data from his own trials, Fulton brought to a successful
solution the problem of steam propulsion on a commercial scale. It
has been remarked that there was no element in the _Clermont_ or her
successors so original in conception that it would entitle Fulton to
be regarded as the inventor of steam navigation. Nor did he himself
claim to be such. He was successful in fitting together the elements,
the inventions of others. Science is measurement, and Fulton applied
his data and measured with great insight, adapting his elements in the
right manner and proportion to form an efficient whole. “He was the
first to treat the elementary factors in steamship design--dimensions,
form, horse-power, speed, etc.--in a scientific spirit; to him belongs
the credit of having coupled the boat and engine as a working unit.”
From Fitch he had learned the economy of size, and the advantages of
enlarging the scale of operations; from Beaufoy, the importance of a
fair underwater form, with a sharp bow and stern. From Symington, who
generously took him for a trip in the _Charlotte Dundas_, he could
not fail to have gleaned much practical advice and information; it is
remarkable, in this connection, that, after a sight of Symington’s
horizontal cylinder with its simple connecting-rod drive to the
stern wheel, he should have adhered to the vertical cylinder and the
bell-crank or beam for the transmission of the force: an initial
divergence which was perpetuated, and which became the hall-mark
distinguishing American from English practice for some years to come.
Most of his knowledge he gained by his activities in England, and many
writers have contested a claim--which so far as is known was never
made by him--to the invention of the steamship. His achievements were
well defined and legitimately executed, and the remarkable insight and
initiative which he displayed in adapting the labours of others to
serve his own utilitarian ends cannot, surely, deserve the opprobrium
cast on them by some of the nineteenth-century writers. Prometheus,
it is said, stole fire from heaven. Fulton bought his in the open
market; obtaining his engine in Soho and his boiler in Smithfield
he transported them across the Atlantic, and in 1807 produced the
_Clermont_.
The _Clermont_, a flat-bottomed wall-sided craft 166 feet in length and
only 18 feet in beam, steamed at a speed of five knots from New York
to Albany, in August, 1807; to the surprise of thousands of spectators
who knew her as “Fulton’s folly,” and whose shouts of derision gave
place to silence, and then to a chorus of applause and congratulation.
Many of the inhabitants of the banks of the Hudson had never heard
even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. “A monster moving on the
waters, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke!
The first steamboat used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a
column of ignited vapour many feet above the flue, and, whenever the
fire is stirred, a galaxy of sparks fly off which, in the night, have
a very brilliant and beautiful appearance.”[140] The _Clermont_ was
followed by others, each an improvement on the last; until in 1816,
so rapid was the process of evolution, the _Chancellor Livingston_
was built, ship-shaped, with figure-head and fine bows, faired sides
and tapering stern, with engines of 75-horse-power and with promenade
decks and accommodation for 120 passengers. Certain characteristics
now showed themselves in all American construction. The engines were
mounted with cylinders vertical, their rods actuating large overhead
beams which transmitted the force of the steam to the paddlewheels.
The boats were made very broad to give the necessary stability, the
machinery being carried high; and to reduce their underwater resistance
as much as possible their bodies were made full near the water-line and
lean below. For the same reason, and since the principal weights were
concentrated amidships, fine forward and after bodies were given them;
a rising floor, and a deep draught if necessary. The position of the
paddlewheels was limited by that of the engine. Experience showed that
where two paddles on each side were used their relative position had to
be adjusted nicely, otherwise the rear paddles, acting on accelerated
water, might actually be a disadvantage. Much difficulty was caused
with accidents to paddles; on the Mississippi the wheels were generally
mounted astern, where they were protected from floating logs of timber.
In some cases double hulls were built, with the paddlewheels between
them; but owing to the rush of water on which they acted these wheels
were not very efficient.[141]
[Illustration: THE _COMET_ OF 1812
From an oil painting in the South Kensington Museum]
Fulton had so far built steam vessels only for commercial traffic. He
now came near to revolutionizing naval warfare with them. In 1813, in
the middle of the war with this country, he presented to the President
his plan for a steam-propelled armoured warship for coast defence, a
design of an invulnerable vessel of thirty guns, twin-hulled, with a
120-horse-power engine in one hull, a boiler in the other, and a single
paddlewheel in a space between the two; double-ended, flat-bottomed,
and protected by a belt of solid timber 58 inches thick. Her armament
was to consist, in addition to thirty 32-pounders, of submarine guns
or columbiads, carried at each end and firing 100-pound projectiles
below the water-line. Named the _Demologos_, this monstrous vessel was
nearly completed when the war came to an end. It was too late for use.
The treaty of Ghent being signed, interest in armaments immediately
evaporated. Nevertheless, in the following year a trial of the
_Demologos_ was carried out, which showed that a speed of five and a
half knots could be attained with her. The _Demologos_, now renamed the
_Fulton_, served no useful purpose. She was laid up in Brooklyn Navy
Yard, and many years elapsed before steam war vessels were built again
in America.
§
In the meantime progress had been made on this side of the Atlantic.
Stimulated by Fulton’s commercial successes, Thomas Bell of Helensburgh
built in 1812 a vessel of thirty tons’ burden named the _Comet_,
successfully propelled by a 3-horse-power engine which worked a
paddlewheel on each beam. This “handsome vessel” was intended to ply
between Glasgow and Greenock, to sail by the power of wind, air, and
steam; and so it did, with fair financial success, with a square sail
triced to the top of a tall smoke-stack: the first passenger steamer
to ply in European waters. Shortly afterwards steam vessels were built
which pushed out to the open sea. In 1815 the _Argyle_, built on the
Clyde and renamed _Thames_ on being purchased by a London company, made
a voyage from Greenock to London which was the subject of much comment.
On making the Cornish coast after a stormy run south, boats were seen
by those on board making towards her with all possible speed in the
belief that she was on fire! All the rocks commanding St. Ives were
covered with spectators as she entered the harbour, and the aspect of
the vessel, we are told, “appeared to occasion as much surprise amongst
the inhabitants, as the ships of Captain Cook must have produced on
his first appearance among the islands of the South Seas.” Next day
the _Thames_, her 9-foot paddlewheels driven by a 16-horse-power
engine, reached Plymouth, where the crews of all the vessels in the
Sound filled the rigging, and the harbour-master was “struck with
astonishment.” From Plymouth she steamed to Portsmouth, making the
passage in twenty-three hours. So great was the swarm of vessels that
crowded round her, that the port admiral was asked to send a guard
to preserve order. She steamed into harbour, with wind and tide, at
from twelve to fourteen knots. A court-martial was sitting in the
_Gladiator_ frigate, but the whole court except the president adjourned
to inspect the strange visitor. Next day the port admiral sent off a
guard and band; and soon afterwards he followed, accompanied by three
admirals, eighteen post captains, and a large number of ladies.[142]
The success of the _Thames_ led to the immediate building of other
and larger steamers. In ’17 the son of James Watt purchased a 94-foot
boat, the _Caledonia_, fitted her with 28-horse-power machinery
driving 10-foot paddlewheels, and for a pleasure trip proceeded in
her up the Rhine as far as Coblentz. From this time onwards steam
navigation for commercial purposes progressed rapidly. In 1818 a
steamboat made regular voyages at sea; the _Rob Roy_, 90 tons, built
by Denny of Dumbarton, with engines of 30 horse-power made by Napier,
plied regularly between Holyhead and Dublin. In the same year the
_Savannah_, a ship of 350 tons’ burden built and fitted with auxiliary
steam machinery at New York, crossed the Atlantic, partly under steam;
her paddlewheels with their cast-iron frame and axletree successfully
withstanding heavy weather. In ’21 the postmaster-general introduced a
steam service for the mails at Dover and Holyhead; and in the following
year there were steamboats running between London and Leith, and other
seaports. The experience of the Holyhead packets was of special value,
as it proved that steam vessels could go to sea in weather which would
keep sailing vessels in harbour. Soon after this the question was
raised of employing steam power to shorten the passage between England
and the East, as well as of the navigation by steam of the great
Indian rivers. Steam superseded sails in the government mail service
between Falmouth, Malta and Corfu; everywhere commercial enterprise
was planning new lines of steamships and new possibilities of ocean
travel. In ’25 a barque belonging to Mr. Pelham, afterwards Earl of
Yarborough, was fitted with steam machinery as an auxiliary and made
the voyage to India. The plash of the paddlewheel was then heard for
the first time in Oriental waters.
By this time the great question of steam as applied to naval ends had
arrived to agitate the Admiralty.
In ’22 M. Paixhans discharged his revolutionary treatise at the
French nation, advocating, with a wealth of argument, a navy of
steam-propelled warships armed with a few shell guns. Six years later
a warning echo reverberated through Whitehall. Captain Sir John Ross
published a volume on “Steam Navigation, with a System of the Naval
Tactics peculiar to it,” in which, though his name was not mentioned,
the arguments of M. Paixhans were set forth from an opposite point
of view. The two books, starting with the same arguments, arrived
at diametrically opposite conclusions. While Paixhans claimed that
steam power offered important advantages to France, the English
writer reached the gratifying conclusion that the change which steam
would effect in naval affairs might be rendered favourable to this
country. For coast defence alone steam vessels would be invaluable. The
colonies would be safer from piracy. Passages, at present difficult
or dangerous, would be made with speed and safety. Incidentally, an
entirely new system of tactics would be evolved by the coming of steam;
each ship-of-the-line would be escorted by a steam vessel, to tow her
into position, and concentration of force would be obtained by such
means as, harnessing two steamers to one sailing ship, so as to tow one
half of the fleet to a position of vantage over the enemy. After the
main action the steamers would themselves attack each other; and so on.
Both French and English writers agreed that there would be a reversion
to the ancient warfare of the galleys; the steamer, whose paddlewheels
lent themselves readily to a pivot gun armament and to great powers of
manœuvring, would always attack like a bull, facing the enemy, its bows
presenting one or more large and well-protected cannon. Sir John Ross
regarded the steamer, however, essentially as an auxiliary. M. Paixhans
took a more sanguine view. “At this moment,” he wrote in May, ’22,
“the English admiralty are building two steam vessels, each of thirty
horsepower, one at Portsmouth and one at Plymouth, for tugging sailing
ships held up by contrary winds. They commence by being the servitors
of the ships-of-the-line; but it is their destiny to become their
masters.”[143]
But the views of Sir John Ross did not find favour at the Admiralty.
In the presence of the revolution the authorities continued to steer
a policy of passive resistance to all changes and methods which might
have the effect of depreciating existing naval material; and Lord
Melville himself penned, as a reply to the Colonial Office to a request
for a steam mail service between two Mediterranean ports, the principle
which guided the Board. They felt it their bounden duty (he wrote in
1828) to discourage, to the utmost of their ability, the employment
of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam
was calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the
Empire.[144][145]
So far, then, new methods of propulsion had not been greeted with
enthusiasm. Yet to the First Lord himself was due the utilization of
steam for minor purposes in the navy. In spite of the non-success
of Lord Stanhope’s experimental “ambi-navigator” ship in 1795, Lord
Melville in 1815 caused the three-masted schooner _Congo_, designed
for a surveying expedition to the river of that name, to be fitted
with paddlewheels and machinery by Boulton and Watt, expressly to
try it in a ship-of-war. This machinery was so large and ponderous
that, not only did it usurp one-third of the space aboard the ship,
but brought her down so deep as only to give four knots through the
water. It was all removed again before she sailed, and sent to Chatham
for use in the dockyard. In the following year we find Mr. Brunel in
correspondence with his lordship on the question of steam navigation.
Brunel wrote quoting evidence to the effect that paddlewheels could be
made of sufficient strength and stiffness to withstand the violence of
seas and gales; to which Lord Melville replied that the Board deemed
it unnecessary to enter, at that time, into the question of steam
navigation generally, but desired his views on the application of steam
to the towing of ships-of-war out of harbour against contrary winds
and tides: which would be a matter of great advantage to his Majesty’s
service. Brunel answered recommending that the steamer _Regent_, plying
between Margate and London, be chartered during the winter and employed
on this work, as a particular experiment.
“From this period may be dated the introduction of steam navigation
into the English navy. Lord Melville was now so fully convinced of the
great utility which the naval service would derive from it, that he
ordered a small vessel to be built at Deptford, by Mr. Oliver Lang, to
be called the _Comet_, of the burthen of 238 tons, and to have engines
of 80 horse-power. She was built accordingly and ready for sea in
1822.”[146] As a matter of fact, the first steamer actually brought
into H.M. service was the _Monkey_, built at Rotherhithe in 1821; and
she was followed by the more powerful _Sprightly_, built at Blackwall
by Messrs. Wigram and Green in ’23. Gradually the use of these
paddlewheel tugs extended, their tonnage and horse-power increased, and
the Surveyor of the Navy and his master shipwrights began to divert
their talents to a consideration of the small steamers.
For the reason stated by Lord Melville, steamers were at this time
tolerated only for towing and other subsidiary duties; authority poured
cold water on the idea of utilizing them as ships-of-war; and if steam
could have been dispensed with altogether, everyone would have been the
better pleased.
Even at this period the idea of using manual labour, applied in an
effective manner, for towing and bringing into position sailing
warships had not been altogether abandoned. In 1802 the transport
_Doncaster_ had been propelled at a slow speed in Malta harbour by the
invention of a Mr. Shorter: a screw propeller rigged over the stern.
In 1820 experiments were made at Portsmouth with paddlewheels manually
worked, and in ’29 Captain C. Napier took his ship _Galatea_ out of
Portsmouth Harbour by use of paddlewheels geared to winches which
were worked by the crew. One hundred and thirty men were able to give
her a speed of 2½ knots, while the full crew of a hundred and ninety
produced a speed of three. After this doubtful success another trial
was held--a race between the _Galatea_, propelled by paddles, and
the _Briton_, towed by boats--which _Galatea_ won. Captain Napier’s
paddlewheels afterwards did good work for his ship in other quarters
of the world.[147] Nothing resulted, however, from his initiative
in this connection; only was emphasized the enormous superiority of
steam-propelled vessels as tugs, in which capacity they had already
made their appearance, and from which they were destined to evolve, in
the next decade, into fighting vessels of considerable force.
By 1830 steam navigation had made significant strides along the
lines of commercial development. In that year a service of steam
mail boats started to run at regular intervals between Falmouth and
Corfu, covering the distance in about one-fourth of the time which
had been taken by the sailing packets; a Dutch government steamer,
the _Curaçoa_, built in England, had since ’27 been running between
Holland and the East Indies; and already the Indian Government had
built an armed steamer, designed as the forerunner of others which were
to connect Bombay with Suez and thus to place India in more direct
communication with England.
The navy was still represented only by paddle-tugs. With a change
of administration, however, came a change in Admiralty policy. The
new Board took a distinctly progressive view. It was agreed that,
if foreign powers initiated the building of steam war-vessels, this
country must build as well, and not only as well but better: a policy
tersely summed up by Admiral Sir T. M. Hardy in his saying, “Happen
what will, England must take the lead.” Certain objections to steam
vessels as naval units which had hitherto held a vogue were now seen
to be ill-founded or baseless. In particular it was discovered, not
without surprise to many, that steamers could be manœuvred without
difficulty. A paddlewheel steamer, the _Medea_, gained her commander
considerable credit from the skill with which she was navigated from
the Thames into the basin at Woolwich dockyard, which proved that
steamers could be steered and manœuvred better than sailing ships.
In ’33 the construction of steamers was placed in the hands of the
Surveyor.[148]
But small progress was made. One reason alleged was that the shape of
hull which the Surveyor had made peculiarly his own was ill-adapted for
steam machinery. “Nothing more unpropitious,” observed a later writer,
“for Sir William Symond’s mode of construction than the introduction of
steam can be conceived. His sharp bottoms were the very worst possible
for the reception of engines; his broad beam and short length the most
unfavourable qualities that could be devised for steam propulsion. As
much as he could, he adhered to his principles.... Rather than yield
to the demands of the new power, he sacrificed the armaments of his
vessels, kept down the size of their engines, and recklessly exposed
the machinery to shot should they go into action.”[149] There doubtless
was something in this criticism. And yet, as we have seen, experience
in America led to a form of hull for paddle steamers in many respects
approaching that condemned as being favoured by the Surveyor!
Another and more valid reason for the slow progress made lay in the
inherent unsuitability of the paddlewheel steamer as a substitute
for the large sailing warship. Not only did the paddlewheels offer a
large and vulnerable surface to destruction by enemy shot, but the
wheels and their machinery could not be embodied in a ship design
without interference with its sails and sailing qualities and, still
more, without serious sacrifice of broadside armament. The machinery
monopolized a large section of the midship space, the huge wheels
covered the sides and interfered with the training of those guns for
which room remained. The problem of arming steam-vessels was novel and
difficult of solution. The guns must be few and therefore powerful.
Hence it appeared that paddlewheel steamers, notwithstanding the
advantages they possessed of speed and certainty of motion, could only
sustain a small concentrated armament, consisting of the heaviest
and most powerful ordnance: guns of large calibre, which possessed
large power of offence at ranges where the broadside cannon would be
deprived of much of their efficiency. Hence in ’31 a 10-inch shell gun
of 84 hundredweight was expressly designed and cast for this purpose;
and all the classes of steamers in early use in the navy were armed
with it until, in ’41, it was displaced by the 68-pounder pivot gun,
which then became the principal pivot gun of the service. Thus the
development of paddlewheel machinery reacted on the development of
artillery. The steamer was a stimulus to the development of large
ordnance worked on the pivot system. And this form of armament in
turn influenced the form of the ship. The main weights--those of the
propelling machinery--were already concentrated in the waist of the
vessel, and it was now possible so to place the few pivot guns that the
ends of the vessel were left very lightly loaded. Thus it was possible
to give unprecedentedly fine lines to the new steamers, a sharp and
lengthened bow and a well-tapered run: an improved form of body by
the use of which high speeds were obtained. In the case of commercial
steamships the advantages of fine lines had already been recognized,
and their designers had been free to give them a form which would allow
of a high speed being attained; but in the case of war vessels designed
to carry a broadside armament the limitations imposed by the heavily
weighted ends had hitherto prevented other than bluff bows and sterns
being given them. But now the subject of ship form came under general
consideration, and the new conditions led to a more serious study of
the laws governing the motion of bodies through water.
Year after year the size of steamers grew.[150] And as with size the
cost of construction and maintenance increased, the question pressed
itself more and more clearly--what was the naval utility of such
expensive and lightly armed vessels? Numerous attempts were made to
produce a form of paddlewheel steamer which would carry a broadside
armament comparable with that which a sailing vessel of the same
burthen would bear. In 1843 the _Penelope_, 46 guns, was cut in
halves at Chatham and lengthened by the addition of about 65 feet, in
which space engines of 650 horse-power were installed. But the extra
displacement failed to compensate for the weight of the machinery;
the altered vessel drew more water than had been anticipated and,
though various alterations were made to minimize the effects of this,
the experiment was not a success and was not repeated. In ’45 a steam
frigate called the _Odin_ was built by order of the Board. “The results
aimed at in constructing this ship were--capability of carrying
broadside armament; diminished rolling, in comparison with any war
steamers then built; and less draught of water in relation to the size.
These objects were accomplished; but as the position of the machinery
and boilers is partially above the water-line, and the propellers
are exposed to danger in broadside fighting, the ship is necessarily
imperfect in these two conditions, as well as in the position of the
sails; for in this case the proper place of the mainmast was occupied
by the boilers, and consequently the centre of effort of the wind on
the sails is in a wrong place.”[151] In the same year the _Sidon_ was
laid down, the design being on the lines of the _Odin_ but modified in
accordance with the ideas of Sir Charles Napier: with greater depth of
hold and with machinery below the water-line. Iron tanks were placed in
the hold for carrying the coals; by filling these with water when empty
the steamer was kept at a more or less constant draught, a matter of
considerable importance to the efficient working of the paddlewheels.
In other respects, however, the _Sidon_ was unsatisfactory. She was so
crank that the addition of ballast and a modification of her armament
were necessary. Her engines were cramped, her boilers of insufficient
power and of unsuitable design, and her coal capacity too small to give
her a useful radius of action. For the attainment of all the properties
specified it was subsequently calculated and shown that a much larger
displacement was necessary. Just as Fitch had discovered and Fulton
had discerned, increase in scale reduced many of the difficulties
encountered in designing heavily weighted steam vessels. Hence the
success of the _Terrible_. In the case of the _Terrible_, a large
paddlewheel frigate of 1,850 tons and 800 horse-power built in 1845, it
was clear that an increase of size had given a partial solution to the
problem of designing a war-vessel with heavy and spacious propelling
machinery, with adequate armament, and with full sail-power and all the
properties of a sailing ship.
Still the steam war-vessel was not satisfactory. Her machinery usurped
the weight and space required for armament, her cumbrous paddlewheels
were far too exposed to damage by shot or shell. And how to surmount
these difficulties and reconcile the conflicting requirements of
artillery and motive power, was a problem which cost the country years
of unsuccessful experiments and millions of money. “It was,” said
Dahlgren, “the riddle of the day.”
§
The problem was solved by the adoption of the screw propeller.
Since Archimedes’ day the screw had been known in the form of a pump,
and in two familiar objects--the smoke-jack and the windmill--the
principle of the driven screw had been for centuries widely employed.
In connection with ship propulsion the screw appears to have been tried
at an early date, like the Marquis of Worcester’s water-wheel, in the
form of a mill. Among the machines and inventions approved by the
Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris between the years 1727 and 1731 is
one described as a screw, suspended in a framework between two boats,
which when acted upon by the current was intended to warp the vessels
upstream, the motion of the screw being transmitted to a winch barrel
on which a tow-rope was wound. But so far as is known no attempt had
been made at this date to use the screw directly as a propeller. In
1768 its use in this form was suggested in a work entitled _Théorie de
la Vis d’Archimede_.[152] And shortly after, as we have already seen,
Bramah in England and Bushnell in America had patented, and the latter
had actually put into use, the screw as a means of propelling vessels
through water. We have seen, too, that Fulton successfully adapted
the screw propeller, on a small scale, in one of his experimental
steamboats. Sporadic attempts were made in the early days of the
nineteenth century both in this country and in America to drive ships
by means of screws, both manually and by the medium of steam, some of
which were attended with a certain measure of success.[153] Yet some
time was to elapse before screw propulsion gained recognition. Doubt
as to the efficiency of a screw’s action, ignorance as to the shape
of the vessel required and as to the best position for the propeller,
difficulty in accommodating the early long-stroke steam engine to drive
direct an under-water propeller shaft; inertia, prejudice and vested
interest, all seem to have played a part in delaying the adoption of
what, when it did come, was acknowledged to be the only suitable form
of steam propulsion for war vessels.
[Illustration: PETTIT SMITH’S PROPELLER]
In 1825 a premium was offered by the Admiralty for the best plan
of propelling vessels without paddlewheels; and a plan proposed by
Commander S. Brown, R.N., was deemed sufficiently promising for trial:
a two-bladed screw propeller placed at the bow of a vessel and actuated
by a 12-horsepower engine. But though exhibiting advantages this form
of the invention did not survive.
The history of the screw-propeller may be said to date from 1836. In
that year two capable inventors obtained patents: Mr. Francis Pettit
Smith and Captain Ericsson. So little attention had, up to that time,
been given to the subject that the two proposals “were presented to the
public in the character of novelties, and as such they were regarded
by the few who had curiosity enough to look at them.” Smith’s patents
were for the application of the screw to propel steam vessels by
fixing it in a recess or open space formed in the deadwood; and, says
Fincham, “the striking and peculiar merit of Mr. Smith’s plan appears
to consist, _chiefly_, in his having chosen the right position for it
to work in.” Trials were carried out with Smith’s propeller in a 6-ton
boat on the City and Paddington canal, and then between Blackwall and
Folkestone, with encouraging success; the boat, encountering heavy
weather off the Foreland, demonstrated the advantage derived from
the absence of paddlewheels, and showed the new form of propelling
machinery to place no limitations on her qualities as a sailing vessel.
She returned to Blackwall, having run over 400 miles at a mean speed of
8 knots.
Captain Ericsson, a Swedish army officer who had come to London and
established himself as a civil engineer, had a contemporary success
with a boat fitted with two large-bladed propellers each 5 feet 3
inches in diameter. So successful was he, indeed, that he invited the
Board of Admiralty to take a trip in tow of his novel craft; a trip
which had important and unexpected results on the subsequent progress
of steam navigation. One summer day in ’37 the Admiralty barge, in
which were the Surveyor and three other members of the Board, was towed
by Ericsson’s screw steamer from Somerset House to Limehouse and back
at a speed of 10 knots. The demonstration was a complete success, and
the inventor anticipated some further patronage of his invention. But
to his chagrin nothing was asked of him, and to his amazement he was
subsequently informed that the proposal to propel warships by means
of a screw had been pronounced impracticable. Never, perhaps, in the
whole history of mechanical progress has so signally wrong a decision
been made, never has expert opinion been so mistaken. Engineers and
shipbuilders all failed to realize the possibilities of the screw.
The naval authorities who, in the face of their personal experience,
dismissed the project as impracticable (owing to some anticipated
difficulties in steering ships fitted with screws) merely expressed the
unanimous opinion of the time. “The engineering corps of the empire
were arrayed in opposition to it, alleging that it was constructed on
erroneous principles, and full of practical defects, and regarding
its failure as too certain to authorize any speculations even of
its success. The plan was specially submitted to many distinguished
engineers, and was publicly discussed in the scientific journals; and
there was no one but the inventor who refused to acquiesce in the truth
of the numerous demonstrations, proving the vast loss of mechanical
power which must attend this proposed substitute for the old-fashioned
paddlewheel.”[154] Yet in five years’ time steamers designed for
paddlewheels were being converted to carry screws, and a great
screw-propelled liner, the _Great Britain_, had been launched for the
Atlantic traffic!
It was in America, we have seen, that progress in steam navigation
was of the greatest interest to the public, and it was by Americans
that the disabilities of the paddlewheel were most keenly appreciated.
Two witnesses of the trial of Ericsson’s boat saw and admitted the
advantages of the new method: Mr. Ogden, an engineer who had been U.S.
consul at Liverpool for some years, and Captain Stockton, U.S.N. The
latter appreciated the military advantages of screw propulsion and was
soon its enthusiastic advocate. Under his influence and encouragement
Ericsson threw up his engagements in London and went to America. “We’ll
make your name ring on the Delaware,” said Captain Stockton to him at a
dinner in his honour given at Greenwich. The prediction was fulfilled.
In the course of time Ericsson saw his propeller applied on a large
scale, not only to mercantile craft but in the American navy. Early in
’37 Captain Stockton had ordered an iron vessel to be built by Messrs.
Laird, of Birkenhead, and fitted with a screw. In the following year
she was launched, and in the spring of ’40, after giving demonstration
on the Thames of the great towing power of her propeller, she left for
America for service as a tug on the big rivers. On this work one of the
great advantages of the screw was realized: the immunity with which the
screw vessel could work in drift ice, when paddlewheel steamers were
perforce laid up.
In the meantime, fortunately, Pettit Smith’s successes had not been
without their effect on opinion in this country. A company was formed
to exploit the screw, and a vessel, the _Archimedes_, was built amid
a strange chorus of detraction, opposition and ridicule. She made her
trials in October, ’39. Her propeller was at first in the form of a
complete convolution of a helical screw of 8-foot pitch and of 5 foot 9
inches diameter; but subsequently this blade was replaced by two, each
of which formed half a convolution, with the two halves set at right
angles to one another. Comparative trials were ordered by the Admiralty
in the following year to test the merits of the _Archimedes’_ screw as
compared with the ordinary paddlewheels applied to her Majesty’s mail
packets on the Dover station. The results were inconclusive.[155] But
a subsequent voyage round the coasts of Great Britain, during which
the machinery of the _Archimedes_ was laid open to the inspection of
the general public, and a later voyage from Plymouth to Oporto which
recreated a new record for a steam passage, went far to establish in
public estimation the merits of the new propeller. But generally the
invention was discouraged. Prejudice and vested interests, rather than
a reasoned conservation, seem to have operated to oppose its progress.
“A striking instance of prevailing disinclination to the screw
propeller was shown on the issue of a new edition of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, in which the article on steam navigation contained no
notice whatever of the subject.”
But in spite of all prepossessions against it the screw had won a
decisive victory over its rival. So striking were the results recorded
by the _Archimedes_, that a decision was made in December, 1840, to
change the _Great Britain_, an Atlantic liner then under construction,
from paddlewheel to screw propulsion. In two ways she was a gigantic
experiment: she was the first large ship to be built of iron, and it
was now proposed to fit her with a screw. Mr. Brunel took all the
responsibility for advising the adoption of both these revolutionary
features; the result was a splendid testimony to his scientific
judgment, boldness of enterprise, and “confident reliance on deductions
from facts ascertained on a small scale.”
Before the completion of the _Great Britain_ the Admiralty had
initiated experiments which were to furnish important information as
to the power and efficiency of the screw propeller in its various
forms, and to settle beyond cavil the question of its superiority over
the paddlewheel for the propulsion of warships. The sloop _Rattler_,
888 tons and 200 horsepower, was fitted with screw machinery. Several
forms of screw were tried during the winter of 1843-4. First the
screw as used in the _Archimedes_ was fitted: a screw of 9-foot
diameter, 11-foot pitch, and of 5½ feet length, consisting of two
half-convolutions of a blade upon its axis. Then a screw was tried
of the same diameter and pitch but of only 4-foot length; and then
the length was again reduced to 3 feet. The effect of cutting down
the length was to give an increase of efficiency.[156] The screw was
again shortened by 2 feet, and finally to 1 foot 3 inches; with each
reduction in length the slip diminished and the propulsive efficiency
increased. Various other forms of screws were tried, and it was shown
that Pettit Smith’s short two-bladed propeller was on the whole the
most efficient.
The best form of screw having been determined, it still remained to
compare the screw propeller with the paddlewheel. Accordingly the
_Alecto_, a paddlewheel sloop of similar lines to the _Rattler_, was
selected as the protagonist of the older form of propulsion, while
the _Rattler_ herself represented the screw. Naval opinion was still
completely divided on the great question, while in the competing sloops
the utmost emulation existed, each captain advocating his own type of
propeller. The speed trials took place, and showed the _Rattler_ to
have an undoubted advantage. The paddlewheel, however, laid claim to
a superiority in towing power. So a further competition was ordered,
as realistic as any, perhaps, in the history of applied science:
nothing less than a tug-of-war between Paddle and Screw, those two
contending forms of steam propulsion! Lashed stern to stern and both
steaming ahead full power, one evening in the spring of ’45 the two
steamers struggled for mastery. And as _Rattler_ slowly but surely
pulled over _Alecto_, the question which had been for years so hotly
debated was settled; the superiority of the screw was demonstrated.
With the adoption of the screw the problem of disposing the armament
was settled. The broadsides and the spaces between decks were once
more free to the guns along the entire length; moreover the action of
the screw was in complete harmony with that of the sails. With the
screw as an auxiliary to sail power, and subsequently with the screw
as sole means of propulsion, a change came over the character of the
pivot armament. Whereas with the paddlewheel the pivot gun was the
chief means of offence, when the screw was introduced the broadside
was restored, and though the heavy pivot guns were retained (steam and
the pivot gun had become associated ideas), yet by their comparatively
limited numbers they became a subordinate element in the total armament.
[Illustration: _RATTLER_ VERSUS _ALECTO_
From an aquatint in the South Kensington Museum]
External affairs now lent a spur to screw propulsion. In ’44 the
French navy came under the reforming power of the ambitious Prince de
Joinville, and from this year onwards the attitude of France to this
country became increasingly hostile and menacing. The thoughts of
the French were turned toward their navy. No sooner had de Joinville
been placed in command than schemes of invasion were bruited in this
country; and the public viewed with some alarm the altered problems of
defence imposed on our fleets by the presence in the enemy’s ports of a
steam-propelled navy. Sanguine French patriots sought to profit by the
advent of the new power. A pamphlet appeared in Paris claiming to prove
that the establishment of steam navigation afforded France the very
means by which she could regain her former level of naval strength. The
writer, using the same arguments as Colonel Paixhans had used in ’22,
reviewed the effect of steam power on the rival navies, and pointed to
the Duke of Wellington’s warnings in parliament of the defencelessness
of the English coasts and to his statement that if Napoleon had
possessed steam power he would have achieved invasion. These cries of
alarm, said the writer, should trace for France her line of policy. She
should emulate the wise development of steam propulsion as practised
by Great Britain. “We think, England acts; we discuss theories, she
pursues application. She creates with activity a redoubtable steam
force and reduces the number of her sailing ships, whose impotence
she recognizes.... Sailing vessels have lost their main power; the
employment of steamers has reduced them to the subaltern position
of the siege artillery in a land army.” The writer praised English
policy in the matter of steam development: its wise caution, its
reasoned continuity. There had admittedly been some costly deceptions.
Nevertheless the method was to be commended, and France should proceed
in a similar manner: by a succession of sample units while steam was
still in the experimental stage, by far-sighted single strides, and
then by bold and rapid construction of a steam navy which would compete
on more even terms with that of her hereditary rival.[157]
Faced with the probability that our rivals would pursue some such
progressive and challenging policy as outlined by the pamphleteer, the
Admiralty acted rapidly. Before the _Rattler_ trials were complete a
decision was made favourable to the screw propeller, and an order was
made for its wide application to warships built and building. It was
resolved, on the advice of Sir Charles Napier, that the screw should
be regarded solely as an auxiliary to, and in no way as in competition
with, sail power. The _Arrogant_ was laid down, the first frigate
built for auxiliary steam power; and screws driven by engines of small
horse-power were subsequently fitted to other ships with varying
degrees of success.
Two important features were specified for all: the machinery was
required to be wholly below the water-line, and the screw had to
be unshippable. Engines were now required for Block Ships and for
sea-going vessels. So the principal engineers of the country were
called together and were asked to produce engines in accordance with
the bare requirements given them. A variety of designs resulted. From
the experience obtained with this machinery two important conclusions
were quickly drawn: firstly, that gearing might be altogether dispensed
with; secondly, that no complex contrivance was necessary for altering
the pitch to enable engines to work advantageously under varying
conditions, the efficiency of the screw varying very little whether
part of the ship’s velocity were due to sail power or whether it were
wholly due to the screw.[158]
And here it may not be amiss to note, in relation to a nation’s
fighting power, the significant position assumed by naval material.
In land warfare a rude measure of force could always be obtained by
a mere counting of heads. At sea man was in future to act, almost
entirely, through the medium of the machine.
However we may have deserved the eulogy of the French writer in
respect of developing the paddlewheel war steamer, the development
of screw propulsion in the next decade was marked by a succession of
failures and a large outlay of money on useless conversions and on new
construction of poor fighting value, most of which could have been
avoided. Had our methods been less tentative and more truly scientific
the gain would have been undoubtedly very great; we should have laid
our plans on a firmer basis and arrived at our end, full screw power,
by a far less circuitous route than that actually taken. In this
respect France had the advantage of us.
Although a decision had been made to maintain the full sail power of
our ships and install screw machinery only as an auxiliary motive
power, attempts were naturally made to augment so far as possible the
power exerted by the screw; and within a short time new ships were
being fitted with machinery of high power, in an endeavour to make the
screw a primary means of propulsion. The results were disappointing. As
the power increased difficulties thickened. The weight of the machinery
grew to be excessive, the economy of the comparatively fast-running and
short-stroke engines proved to be low, and the propulsive efficiency of
the screws themselves grew unaccountably smaller and smaller. So poor
were the results obtained, indeed, that in the case of a certain ship
it was demonstrated that, by taking out the high-power machinery and
substituting smaller engines an actual gain in speed was obtained, with
the reduced displacement. The first screw ship in which an attempt was
made to obtain full power with the screw was the _Dauntless_, of 1846.
Although a frigate of beautiful lines she was considered a comparative
failure. It was agreed that, equipped with paddlewheels and armed with
guns of larger calibre, she would have constituted a faster and more
powerful warship than, with her 580-horse-power engines, her 10 knots
of speed, and her 32-pounder guns, she actually was.
Part of the trouble was due to the unsuitability of our ships’ lines
for screw propulsion. It has already been noted that, owing to the
carriage of heavy weights at their extremities, war vessels were always
given very full bows and sterns. In the case of the _Rattler_, whose
records served as a criterion for later designs of screw ships, the
lines of the stern were unusually fine: partly, no doubt, in imitation
of the _Archimedes_. Also, since it had been necessary to allow
space enough for a long screw to be carried (a screw of a complete
convolution was thought possible) the _Rattler’s_ short screw as
finally adopted worked at some distance aft of the deadwood, and thus
suffered no retarding influence from it when under way. But in the case
of later ships these advantages did not obtain. They were built with
the usual “square tuck,” a bluff form of stern which prevented a free
flow of water into the space ahead of the propeller and thus detracted
from its efficiency. It was not appreciated at this time that, for
efficient action, the screw propeller demands to be supplied with a
body of unbroken, non-eddying water for it to act upon, which with the
square-cut stern is not obtained. At low speeds, and in the ship to
which the screw was fitted as an auxiliary, the effect of the square
tuck was not marked. But as power and speed increased its effect became
more and more evident; the increase in power gave no proportionate
increase in speed; and many, ignorant of the cause, surmised that there
was a limit to the power which could be transmitted by a screw and that
this limit had already been reached. The inefficiency of the square
tuck was exposed by trials carried out in H.M.S. _Dwarf_ at Chatham. As
a result of these, future new and converted ships were given as fine a
stern as possible.
For several years, however, the policy of the Admiralty remained the
same: the screw was regarded solely as an auxiliary. The French, on the
other hand, took a less compromising line of action. After waiting for
some time and watching our long series of experiments, they convened
in 1849 a grand _Enquête Parliamentaire_: a commission which, primed
with the latest information as to British naval material, was to
decide on what basis of size, number, armament and means of propulsion
future French warships should be built. For two years the commission
sat sifting evidence. And then it recommended screw propulsion of the
highest power for all new ships, as well as the conversion of some
existing classes to auxiliary screw power. England had fitted her
ships with screws capable of giving them small speed; France must fit
hers with screws of greater power. Speed, said the commission, is
an element of power. Superior speed is the only means by which the
English can be fought with a good chance of success. Sails must be
secondary, therefore, and full reliance must be placed on the screw.
The recommendations of the commission were duly realized. In the
following years a powerful force of fast screw battleships, frigates,
transports, and despatch boats was constructed which by ’58 had brought
the aggregate of the horse-power of the French fleet almost to a level
with that of England.
When the Crimean War brought the two navies together as allies in
’54 the full effect of the new policy of the French had not yet been
made apparent. Some apprehension existed in this country as to the
adequacy and efficiency of our navy, when compared directly with that
of France. But from then onwards this country became aware of the
increasing hostility of the French public and government; speeches
were made, and letters appeared in the press of both countries, which
tended to fan the flames of fear and suspicion.[159] It was not till
’58, however, that general attention was drawn to the great strides
which the French navy had made in recent years, and to the skilful
way in which its position, relative to that of its great rival, had
been improved. An article entitled “The Navies of England and France”
appeared in the _Conversations Lexicon_ of Leipsic, and caused a great
sensation. Reprinted in book form, with a long analysis and with a
mass of information about the French, English and other navies and
arsenals,[160] this notorious article brought apprehension to a head.
Though written by no friendly critic, it was in most respects an
accurate presentment of the respective navies and of their condition.
The analysis of Hans Busk, while ostensibly exposing its bias and its
inaccuracies, in effect confirmed the main contentions of the German
article; in addition his book gave in spectacular columns a summary of
the units of the rival navies, which gave food for thought. The article
itself professed to show how much France had benefited by the bold
and scientific manner in which she had handled the problem of naval
construction since the coming of steam. Other factors were discussed,
the forms of ships, the Paixhans system of armament, problems of
manning and of education; but the factor which had caused the greatest
accession of strength to France, by her wise divergence from the
English policy, was (according to the critic) steam propulsion. In the
case of paddlewheel steamers England, by her unscientific and ruinous
experiments, had squandered millions of money and produced a series of
crank and inefficient war vessels. In the case of screw ships England’s
waste of exertions and money was even more surprising; the building of
new ships and the conversion of others was carried out at an enormous
cost with many galling disappointments. The French, on the other hand,
took longer to consider the principle of the screw, but then, when
their more scientific constructors had completed their investigations
and analysed the new power, they acted thoroughly and without delay.
From all of which the German critic inferred that England had good
reason to watch with anxious eye the significant development of
strength on the part of her neighbours across the Channel. “We
must pronounce,” he concluded, “that with a nearly equal amount of
_matériel_, the French navy surpasses the English in capacity and in
command of men. France need feel no hesitation in placing herself in
comparison with England.... Never was the policy of England so yielding
and considerate towards France as at the present day. And then, with
respect to the vexed question of the invasion, it is certain that
Napoleon III has the means of effecting it with greater ease and far
greater chance of success than his uncle.”
The means was steam power. But the much-talked-of invasion was never
to be attempted. Other events intervened, other developments took
place, which reduced the tension between the two great naval powers and
removed for an indefinite time the danger, which the Leipsic article
disinterestedly pointed out, of war under novel and unprecedentedly
terrible conditions: with shell guns and wooden unarmoured steam
warships.
CHAPTER X
THE IRONCLAD
The year 1860 marks the most dramatic, swift, and far-reaching change
which has ever befallen war material: the supersession of the wooden
ship-of-the-line by the modern battleship in its earliest form. What
were the causes, suddenly realized or acknowledged, which impelled this
revolutionary change, and what were the circumstances which moulded
the new form of naval construction? This final chapter will attempt to
show. Before descending to a detailed examination of this evolution,
however, let us trace out the most striking features of the transition;
their measure of accuracy can be estimated by the light of the
subsequent narration of progress.
In the first place, then, we remark that, potentially, from the time
when shell-throwing ordnance was introduced into the French, and then
as a counter-measure into our own fleet, unarmoured wooden ships were
doomed. Strange it seems that so long a time elapsed before this fact
was realized; though it is true that with spherical shells and small
explosive charges the destructive effects of shell fire were not
greatly superior to those of solid shot, that fuzes were unreliable,
that trials of artillery against material were rarely resorted to,
and that, moreover, no opportunity occurred between 1822 and the
outbreak of the Crimean War to demonstrate in actual sea-fighting such
superiority as actually existed. Implicit trust was placed in our
fine sailing ships. So long as solid shot were used, indeed, these
timber-built ships were admirably suited for the line of battle;
as size and strength increased and as our methods of construction
improved the ship gained an increasing advantage over the gun, defence
increasingly mastered attack, to such a degree that by the end of the
long wars with France the ship-of-the-line had become almost unsinkable
by gun-fire. But so soon as shell guns were established--even with
spherical shells fired from smooth-bore ordnance--wooden ships
loomed easy targets for destruction. For a long time this disquieting
conclusion was ignored or boldly denied; expert opinion with sagacity
turned a blind eye to the portentous evidence presented to it of the
power of shell. War came, but even then the full possibilities of shell
fire were not developed. Enough proof was given, however, to show that
in the special circumstances of that war unarmoured ships were of small
value against shell fire. Armour was accordingly requisitioned, and,
some few years after the war, was applied to seagoing warships.
Another development now took place. At this period when disruptive and
incendiary shell was proving itself a more powerful agent than solid
shot of equal size, both shell and shot gained an enhanced value from
the application of rifling to ordnance; moreover, ordnance itself was
developing so quickly that each year saw an appreciable increase in
the unit of artillery force. This variation in the unit profoundly
affected naval architecture. No longer was there a unit of standard
and unchanging value, which, when multiplied by a certain number,
conveyed a measure of a ship’s offensive power. No longer was the size
of a ship a rough measure of its fighting strength; by concentrating
power in a few guns, offensive strength could be correspondingly
concentrated, if desired, in a small vessel. On the other hand, in
view of the sudden accession of offensive strength, the defensive
capacities of a ship remaining as before, it was now true that size had
become an element of danger, diminutiveness of safety. Hence warships,
which had for centuries triumphed in the moral and physical effect of
their height and size, suddenly sought to shrink, to render themselves
inconspicuous, to take the first step towards total invisibility.
An effect of the same development--of the increasing size of the unit
gun, and therefore of the decreasing number of units which a ship could
carry--was the mounting of every big gun so as to command as large an
arc of fire as possible.
As the final development we note that the steam engine, in endowing the
warship with motions far more variable, certain and controlled than
those of the sailing ship, called forth tactical ideas quite different,
in many respects, from those which governed sea actions in the canvas
period. The warship itself is the embodiment of tactical ideas. Hence
the design of the steam-propelled warship evolved along a different
line from that of the sailing ship.
By the effect and interaction of these developments a complete
revolution was compassed in naval architecture; by the progress of
artillery and the steam engine, and by the improvement in mechanical
processes in general, an entirely new unit of naval force was evolved
from the old sailing ship: the mastless, turreted ironclad of the late
’sixties, the precursor of the modern battleship.
§
No sooner had the shell gun given proofs of its destructive powers than
experiments on the penetrative power of projectiles began to assume
importance, and as early as 1838 trials were being made at Portsmouth
against a hulk, the result of which, confirming the experiments made
by the French with the _Pacificateur_ some sixteen years previously,
demonstrated the far-reaching effects of explosive shell against a
ship’s side-timbers. Four years later the prime minister was apprised
from New York that the Americans had discovered a suitable and adequate
protection for ships’ sides; iron plates of three-eighths of an inch
in thickness, riveted together to form a compound 6-inch plate, were
alleged to have been found ball-proof. On receipt of which intelligence
the Admiralty instructed Sir Thomas Hastings, captain of the
_Excellent_, to confirm or disprove by actual trial. Trial was made,
but it was reported that no protection was afforded by such plates
against the fire of 8-inch shell or 32-pounder shot, even at 200 yards’
range. No defensive remedy could be devised against shell fire, and the
only counter-measures deemed practical were of an offensive nature,
viz. to mount shell guns as powerful as those of the enemy, and to keep
him at a distance by the employment of large and far-ranging solid-shot
ordnance.
In the meantime iron, which was not acceptable as a protection, had
been accepted as a constructive material for ships. For some years it
had been increasingly used for mercantile shipping with satisfactory
results. The scarcity of timber and its cost, as well as the positive
advantages to be obtained from the use of the much stronger and more
plentiful material, had decided the Admiralty in ’43 to build iron
warships. Some small vessels were built and, in spite of adverse
criticism and alarming prediction, acquitted themselves admirably on
service. In ’46 it was resolved, however, to put iron to the test
of artillery. An iron steamboat, the _Ruby_, was used as a target
by the _Excellent_ gunners, and the results were unfavourable; the
stopping power of the thin metal was small, and the balls which went
clean through the near side wrought extensive damage on the opposite
plates. In ’49 trials were made with stouter plates with more promising
results: a report favourable to iron as a protection for topsides was
made. But in ’51, as the result of elaborate trials made against a
“mock up” of the side of the _Simoon_, the previous conclusions were
reversed. Iron was condemned altogether as unsuitable for ships of war.
“The shot and shell,” reported Captain Chads, “on striking are shivered
into innumerable pieces, passing on as a cloud of langrage with great
velocity,” and working great destruction among the crew. Nor was a
combination of wood and iron any better. In fact the report claimed
that, as regards the suitability or the unsuitability of iron, these
experiments might be deemed to set the question at rest. The experience
of the French had apparently been somewhat similar to our own. In both
countries the use of iron for warships received a sudden check and,
in England at any rate, the idea of unarmoured wood was once again
accepted. In both countries the opinion was widely held that iron was
unsuitable either for construction or protection, and that the view of
General Paixhans, that vessels might be made proof even against shells
by being “cuirassées en fer,” was preposterous and impracticable.[161]
Potentially, as it now seems, wooden sailing ships were so weak in
defensive qualities that the new artillery, if only it could be
adequately protected, had them at its mercy. Actually it required the
rude test of war to establish the unpalatable truth. In November,
1853, such proof was given. At Sinope a squadron of Turkish frigates
armed with solid-shot guns was almost blown out of the water by shell
fire from a powerful Russian squadron; the latter were practically
uninjured, while the Turkish fleet was set on fire and a terrible
mortality inflicted among the crews in a short time. General Paixhans,
who had lived to see his invention fulfil in actual warfare his early
predictions, was able to emphasize, in the columns of the official
_Moniteur_, the arguments against large ships and the advantages which
would accrue to France especially by the subdivision of force and the
substitution of small protected steamers armed with heavy guns for the
existing wooden ships-of-the-line. The concentrated fire of a few such
steamers would overpower the radiating fire of the largest three-decker.
The type of naval warfare imposed on the allies in the Crimean War lent
special force to Paixhans’ arguments. For the attack of fortresses
and coasts whose waters were exceptionally shallow it was at any rate
clear that the orthodox form of warship, unarmoured, of large size
and of deep draught, was of very limited value. Some special form was
necessary; France made a rapid decision. Napoleon III issued an order
for the construction of a flotilla of floating batteries, light-draught
vessels capable of carrying heavy shell guns and of being covered with
iron armour strong enough to resist not only solid shot but the effects
of explosive shell.
The idea of armouring ships was, of course, not novel. Armour of sorts
had been utilized from antiquity; in the days when the shields of the
men-at-arms were ranged along the bulwarks of the war galleys; in
the Tudor days when the waists of ships were protected by high elm
“blinders,” and when Andrea Doria’s carrack was so sheathed with lead
and bolted with brass that “it was impossible to sink her though all
the artillery of a fleet were fired against her.” In the eighteenth
century the French themselves had attempted to clothe floating
batteries with armour, not indeed against shells but against red-hot
shot. In 1782 they had devised, for the attack on Gibraltar, six wooden
floating batteries which, with their armament, were protected by a
belt of sand enclosed in cork and kept moist with sea water. But this
experience had been disastrous. The sand-drenching apparatus failed to
act, and the batteries were almost totally destroyed by fire.
But now, although experiments with iron-plated ships had been the
reverse of satisfactory, data were to hand which showed that, if used
in sufficient thickness, iron plates _were_ capable of withstanding
the disruptive effects of shell. At Vincennes trials had been made,
between 1851 and 1854, with various thicknesses and dispositions of
iron; with plates four to five and a half inches thick, with compound
plates, and with plates supported on a hard wood lining eighteen
inches thick; of all of which the thick simple plates had proved the
most effective. So the five floating batteries ordered for work in the
Crimea were covered with 4-inch iron plates backed by a thick lining.
Sixty-four feet long, 42 feet in beam, drawing about 18 feet of water,
armed with sixteen 56-pounder shell guns and equipped with auxiliary
steam machinery for manœuvring, their construction was hastened with
all possible speed. By October, ’55, three of them, the _Dévastation_,
_Tonnante_, and _Lave_, had joined the allied flags, and on the 17th of
that month they took a principal part in the bombardment of Kinburn.
Their success was complete. Although repeatedly hit their iron plates
were only dented by the Russian shot and shell. “Everything,” reported
the French commander-in-chief, “may be expected from these formidable
engines of war.” Once again the arguments of Paixhans for armoured war
vessels had been justified; the experience gained with iron armour at
Kinburn confirmed that gained with shell guns at Sinope. France at once
proceeded to apply these lessons to the improvement of her navy proper.
In England, on the other hand, no great impression was created either
by shells or by iron protection. A comfortable faith in our fleets of
timber-built ships persisted; and, with regard to policy, as it had
been with shell guns, and with steam propulsion, so it appeared to be
with armour; the national desire was to avoid for as long a time as
possible all change which would have the effect of depreciating the
value of our well-tried material. At the same time it is remarkable
how small an effect was conveyed to expert opinion, both here and in
America, by the events of the Crimean War. In the years immediately
following the war some notable technical works were published:
Dahlgren’s _Shell and Shell Guns_, Read’s _Modifications to Ships of
the Royal Navy_, Grantham’s _Iron Shipbuilding_, Sir Howard Douglas’
_Naval Warfare with Steam_, and Hans Busk’s _Navies of the World_. From
these works and from the press and parliamentary discussions of the day
it is evident that, outside France, the impressions created were vague
and conflicting. The main lesson conveyed was the great tactical value
of steam propulsion. The reports laid no emphasis on shells, and so
scanty was the information concerning them that it was very difficult
to appraise their value. Their effect at Sinope was disguised by the
overwhelming superiority of the Russian force, which rendered the
result of the action a foregone conclusion; on another occasion (at
Sebastopol) shells fired at long range were reported to have failed to
penetrate or embed themselves in a ship’s timbers. Commander Dahlgren
was uncertain, in the absence of fuller information, whether shells had
justified their advocates or not. Nor was Grantham impressed by the
French floating batteries. “One only of these vessels,” he incorrectly
says, “was thus engaged, but then not under circumstances that gave any
good proof of their efficiency, as the fire was distant and not very
heavy.”
So no violent change in our naval material followed as the immediate
result of the war. Only in the matter of light-draught gunboats and
batteries tardy action was forced on the authorities by public opinion.
Although iron had been condemned for warship construction iron ships
had been built in the years preceding the war in considerable numbers
for foreign governments; the firms of Laird and Scott Russell had
built in 1850 powerful light-draught gunboats for Russia, and in the
same year Russia had ordered from a Thames firm an iron gunboat whose
novel design had been brought to the notice of the Admiralty. But these
craft were intended for the defence of shallow waters, and nothing
analogous to them was considered necessary for the British navy. The
exigencies of the war demonstrated in the course of time the value of
these light-draught vessels. Still there was long hesitation; though
the French government pressed on us their advantages, and presented
our minister with the plans of their own floating batteries. The
disappointment of the Baltic expedition, however, and the realization
that the powerful British fleet which in the summer of ’54 had set
out to reduce Cronstadt had done nothing but prove the inherent
unsuitability of large ships-of-the-line for the attack of fortresses
in shallow waters, gave rise to a loud demand in the press that
gunboats should be built. Several were accordingly laid down. The first
of these were found to be too deep, but others of lighter draught
were designed and by the autumn of ’55 sixteen were ready; and these,
together with some dockyard lighters which had been fitted as mortar
vessels, joined a flotilla of French floating batteries in the Baltic
and effectually bombarded Sveaborg. As the war progressed the value of
ironclad gunboats became more fully appreciated. A large number was
ordered, but most of them were only completed in time to fire a grand
salute in honour of the proclamation of peace.[162]
Apart from the building of these gunboats innovation was avoided.
Unarmoured wooden ships, equipped with a mixed armament of shot and
shell guns, continued to be launched and passed into commission,
and it was only after France had constructed, at Toulon in ’58, an
iron-encased frigate, that England unwillingly followed suit, convinced
at last that a reconstruction of her materials could no longer be
averted.
_La Gloire_, the iron-belted frigate, was the direct result of the
lessons gained from the floating batteries in the Russian war. After
Kinburn the French naval authorities took up the study of how to apply
armour to sea-going ships. Was it possible to embody in a fighting unit
sea-going capacity, high speed, great offensive power, in addition to
the defensive qualities possessed by the slow, unwieldy batteries?
Could such a weight as iron armour would entail be embodied in a ship
design without loss of other important qualities? It was concluded
that, while it would be impossible to cover the sides completely, it
would be possible to protect the surfaces near the water-line, under
cover of which all the ships’ vital parts could be secreted. A great
increase in defensive power would thus be obtained. Before developing a
plan in detail it was decided to carry out further armour trials, and
solid iron plates of 4½ inches thickness were fired at with English
68-pounders and French 50-pounders, with solid balls and with charged
shells. The results were satisfactory, so these plates were adopted as
the standard of armour protection. To the design of M. Dupuy de Lôme
the first ironclad frigate was constructed from a fine two-decked ship,
the _Napoleon_, which was cut down, lengthened, and armoured from stem
to stern. The result was the celebrated _Gloire_. She was followed
shortly afterwards by two sister vessels. And then, in order to obtain
a direct comparison between timber-built and iron ships, an armoured
_iron_ frigate, the _Couronne_, was also built. The three wooden ships
were given a complete belt round the water-line of 4½ inches of iron;
the _Couronne_ had compound armour--3-inch and 1½-inch iron plates
separated from each other and from the iron stem-plating by wood lining
6 inches in thickness. The armament of all four frigates consisted of
thirty-six 50-pounder shell guns, carried low. They were given yacht
masts and equipped with propelling machinery designed to give them 12
knots speed.
§
The naval position of England at this time was the reverse of
satisfactory. Comparing the material resources of the two great
maritime rivals, it came to be noted with surprise that France, taking
advantage of the development of steam propulsion during the decade,
had actually drawn level with England in the numbers of steam warships
available and in their aggregate motive horse-power. The French had
submitted to great financial outlay on account of their navy. In this
country a reaction, following the large and partially ineffective
expenditure incurred in the Crimean War, had dried up the sources of
supplies and stunted constructional development; there was little to
show for the money spent on such works as the enlargement of docks
and on the extensive new factories and docks established at Sheerness
and Keyham. Apprehension was widespread when the intelligence of the
building of the iron-sided ships was received, and this apprehension
developed when whispers reached Westminster of a huge prospective
programme meditated by France. To allay the panic a parliamentary
committee was formed to inquire into the relative strength of the two
navies; and their report, published in January, 1859, made bad reading.
Comparing the steam navies--for, the committee reported, sailing ships
could not be opposed to steamships with any chance of success--France
and England each had afloat the same number of line-of-battle ships,
viz. twenty-nine; and as regards frigates France had thirty-four to
England’s twenty-six! This did not include the four _frégates blindées_
laid down by France, which would be substitutes for line-of-battle
ships, which were being built with the scantling of three-deckers,
and which were to be armed with thirty-six heavy guns, most of them
50-pounders throwing an 80-pound hollow percussion shell. “So convinced
do naval men seem to be in France,” note the committee, “of the
irresistible qualities of these ships, that they are of opinion that
no more ships-of-the-line will be laid down, and that in ten years
that class of vessel will have become obsolete.” The position is bad
enough; yet so bewildered are our experts by the radical developments
of the rival navy, so difficult appears the problem of countering the
French designs by any new and well-studied procedure, that all that the
committee can recommend is the accelerated conversion of our remaining
sailing ships to steam. The committee realize that naval architecture,
and still more naval artillery, is in a state of transition, and that
the late invention of Armstrong’s gun “may possibly affect even the
size and structure of ships of war.”
It is not possible, however, for a country desirous of maintaining its
maritime supremacy to wait upon perfection in the manner implied as
the policy of the parliamentary committee. Some drastic and immediate
action was necessary, to redress the advantage accruing to France from
the possession of the _Gloire_ and her sister frigates. Such action was
duly taken; but before proceeding to examine this action it will be
necessary to revert for a moment to a consideration of iron. We have
already sketched the evolution of iron as a protective covering for
warships; we must now glance back and briefly trace its progress as a
constructive material.
Iron vessels had appeared on the canals of England in the latter part
of the eighteenth century. In 1815 a pleasure boat of that material
had sailed on the River Mersey, attracting crowds of people whose
credulity had been severely strained by the statement that an iron ship
would float. Admiral Napier had manifested an early interest in iron
ships; in 1820, in partnership with a Mr. Manby, he had constructed
the first iron steamer, the _Aaron Manby_, and navigated it from
London up the Seine to Paris, where in ’22 it attracted considerable
attention. From this date onwards iron vessels increased in number.
In ’39 the _Nemesis_ and _Phlegethon_ were built by Mr. Laird for the
East India Company, and in the China war of ’42 these gunboats played
a conspicuous and significant part. The grounding of the _Nemesis_ in
’40 on the rocks of Scilly afforded early evidence of the value of
watertight bulkheads (a Chinese invention) when embodied in an iron
hull.
As the size of ships increased, the disabilities attaching to the use
of timber became more and more evident. Though braced internally by
an elaborate system of iron straps, knees, and nutted bolts in iron
or copper, the large timber-built ship, considered as a structure,
was fundamentally weak; in fact the presence of the straps and ties
contributed in no small degree to its inability to withstand continuous
stress. The fastenings did not accord with the materials which they
fastened together, and the wood was relatively so soft that when a
severe strain arose a general yielding took place, the boltheads
sinking into the wood and causing it to give way to the pressure thrown
locally upon it. As tonnage increased the metal fastenings grew more
and more conspicuous, the ship became a composite structure of wood
and iron, with the result that uniformity of elasticity and strength
was lost and the stresses, instead of being distributed throughout
the structure, tended to become localized at certain points. “The
metallic fastenings of a timber-built ship act to accelerate her
destruction so soon as the close connection of the several parts is at
all diminished.” So in 1840 wrote Augustin Creuze, a graduate of the
disbanded school of naval architecture and one of the most gifted and
eminent men of his profession at that day.
Iron ships, on the other hand, were found to be well adapted to
withstand the racking stresses, the localized loads and the vibrations
which were introduced by steam machinery; they were lighter than
wooden ships, more capacious, more easily shaped to give the fine
lines necessary for speed, cheaper and immeasurably stronger. In
course of time the objections to them gradually vanished; by aid of
the scientists the derangement of their compasses was overcome, the
dangers from lightning were obviated, and the extent of the fouling to
which their surfaces were liable was kept within limits. In course of
time, in spite of natural preference and vested interest, and since
the advantages of iron were confirmed by continuous experience, wood
became almost entirely superseded by the metal for large mercantile
construction. But in the case of warships, as we have seen, insuperable
objections seemed to prohibit the change of material. No sooner had a
step been taken by the Admiralty, in the ordering of a group of iron
paddlewheel frigates in ’43, than an outcry arose; the wooden walls
of England were in danger, the opponents of iron declared, and iron
ships were wholly unsuitable for warlike purposes. More were ordered in
’46. Sir Charles Napier, whose opinion naturally carried great weight
with the public, led the opposition, and when, in ’49, the artillery
trial demonstrated the dangerous effects of shot and shell on thin iron
plates, the advocates of iron were fain to admit the error of their
opinions. The iron frigates were struck from the establishment and
transformed--such of them as were completed--into unarmed transports.
As experience with iron ships accumulated, the feeling grew in
certain quarters that the artillery trials, the results of which had
been claimed as being decisive proof of the unsuitability of iron
for warships, might not have been the last word upon the subject.
The events of the Crimean War tended to emphasize the doubt and
uncertainty. A few there were who saw in that war clear proofs of the
superiority of iron over wood; who argued that, though iron had proved
to be dangerous in the form of thin plates in certain circumstances,
yet it had shown itself to be impervious both to shot and shell, and
indeed an indispensable defence in certain circumstances when applied
in sufficient thickness; that thicker plates than those condemned as
dangerous might therefore prove to be a great protection against shell
fire; and that, even as regards thin plates, the splintering effect of
shell against these was small, from all accounts, compared with the
_incendiary_ effect of shell against timber. And in what other respects
were the advantages of iron contested?
But, acting upon expert advice and influence, doubtless, by the
remembrance of the _Birkenhead_ and _Simoon_ fiasco, the government
still felt unable to sanction the use of iron, and it was not until
news of the laying down of the _Gloire_ reached England that a decision
was made to adopt the new material, both as armour and for the hulls of
warships.
The high protagonist of timber-built ships, it was shortly afterwards
revealed, was Sir Howard Douglas: the most strenuous advocate of iron
was John Scott Russell. For years, it appeared, Sir Howard had been
the influential and successful adviser of the government against the
adoption of iron. “I was consulted by Sir Robert Peel,” he wrote
in 1860, “on his accession to the government, as to the use and
efficiency of a certain half-dozen iron frigates, two of which were
finished, and four constructing by contract. I stated in reply that
vessels wholly constructed of iron were utterly unfit for all the
purposes of war, whether armed or as transports for the conveyance of
troops.” In the same paper he stated the arguments on which he had
tendered this advice; and these arguments appeared so fallacious,
and the facts on which they were based so disputable, as to seem to
call for some reply from the builders of iron ships. Sir Howard had
certainly strayed far from science in his unsupported statements
as to the calamitous effects of iron if used for warships; and
unfortunately he had allowed himself to stigmatize the _Great Eastern_,
as representative of iron ships generally, as “an awful roller,” and
as never having attained anything like her calculated speed. Scott
Russell made a violent reply. “After establishing that Sir H. Douglas’s
conclusions are the reverse of the truth,” he began, “I shall proceed
to establish that the future navy of England must be an iron navy. That
its construction must be founded on facts and principles, which Sir H.
Douglas’s writings ignore, and his deductions contradict; and I believe
I shall prove that if iron ships had been introduced at the time
when Sir Howard says he sedulously and systematically opposed their
introduction, the money which has been spent on a wooden fleet about to
become valueless would have given England a fleet greatly more powerful
than the combined navies of the world.”[163]
It may be conceded that in this public argument Scott Russell had the
advantage: the architect of the _Great Eastern_ had little difficulty
in confuting the views of the artillerist. But by this time the
battle between wood and iron had been fought and won. The Board of
Admiralty, influenced by the arguments of Scott Russell and their own
constructors, and in the presence of gigantic achievements in the form
of iron-built liners, felt unable to agree with Sir Howard in his
continued advocacy of timber; Sir John Pakington expressed his personal
doubts to him in a correspondence. Expert opinion, naval officers and
architects, leaned more and more in the direction of the new material,
and, early in 1859, the decision was made to build an armoured frigate
_of iron_. It was a momentous decision. The “wooden walls” had crumbled
at last, and iron had won acceptance as alone able to cope with the
new forces brought into existence by the progress of artillery and
steam machinery. The opponents of iron could not sustain for long their
arguments in favour of timber; experience was accumulating against
them, and it was necessary to accept defeat. Chief among them was Sir
Howard Douglas. There is, surely, something pathetic in the episode of
his long-continued struggle against radical change; something tragic in
the spectacle of this scientist, whose labours had done more, perhaps,
than any other man’s for the efficiency of the nineteenth-century navy,
in his old age casting the great weight of his influence unwittingly
against the navy’s interest? How gamely the old general fought for
his convictions is told us by his biographer, who with a natural
warmth denounced the fierce criticism which Scott Russell had directed
against a veteran of eighty-five winters, devoting his last hours to
the service of his country. “His resistance to armour ships bore him
down, his arguments met with unbelief, or elicited taunts, and ceased
to influence the public. ‘All that I have said about armour ships will
prove correct,’ he remarked, twenty-four hours before his death, toward
the end of ’61. ‘How little do they know of the undeveloped power of
artillery!’”
§
In June, 1859, some months before the launching of the _Gloire_, the
reply was given: the _Warrior_ was laid down. Up to this time the
initiative, in the slow evolution of naval material, had rested mainly
with France. From this moment England, having taken up the challenge,
assumed the initiative and its responsibilities; and from now onwards,
in spite of false moves, failures, and ineffective expenditures of
money and labour, she regained more and more surely the preponderance
in naval strength which she had possessed of old. At last a scientific
era of naval architecture had opened. Up to this time the design and
construction of warships had been treated as a mere craft: a craft
hampered, moreover, by absence of method, reluctance to adopt new
views, limitations as to size, interference and ever-varying decisions
as to such factors as the extent of sail-power or the number of guns
to be carried. By the official acceptance of scientific methods this
was largely changed. By the raising of the old office of Surveyor to
the dignity of Controller of the Navy, by the institution of a new
school of naval architecture to take the place of that suppressed
in 1832 (whose most eminent graduates, fittingly enough, were the
chief witnesses against the debased state and management of naval
construction as it was prior to 1860), by utilizing the services of
men trained in mathematics, the effect on naval architecture soon
became apparent. Originality had scope, forethought and cleverness had
full play; men of considerable technical knowledge were pressed into
service, who proved well able to cope with the new developments.
The outcome of this new orientation was the _Warrior_. It is usual to
think of her as similar to the _Gloire_; like her she was designed to
resist the 68-pounder unit of artillery, like her she carried a belt of
iron armour 4½ inches thick, and was equipped with steam machinery to
give her a high speed. Yet in important respects she differed from her
French rival.
[Illustration: THE _WARRIOR_
From a photograph in the possession of Dr. Oscar Parkes, O.B.E.]
Firstly, her size in relation to her armament caused general surprise.
Admittedly the policy of restricting dimensions, pursued with such
rigour from the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
had operated to the detriment of our naval construction; admittedly
the long and fine-shaped sailing vessels built during recent years
were greatly superior to those of the older models; yet no reason
presented itself for building a ship, of armament equal to that of the
5000-ton French frigate, which would displace over 9000 tons. Were not
cost and tonnage directly related, and was there some real necessity
forcing us to build ships of so large a size? Was it true that the
basins at Portsmouth would require to be enlarged to take such a ship,
and that her draught would be such that she could only be docked
at certain tides? The question was debated vigorously by the Board
itself. Three considerations, according to an authoritative statement
made to parliament, prompted the decision to depart widely from the
design adopted by the French: considerations one or more of which have
influenced all subsequent construction in this country. Firstly, the
world-wide duties of the British navy demanded a type of ship capable
of making long and distant voyages either with steam or sail: in
short, a fully rigged ship, a good sailer, and at the same time one
with sufficient carrying capacity to enable her to keep the seas for
a long time. Secondly, to ensure good sailing qualities and to avoid
a defect which had been experienced in our own ships fitted with
heavy pivot guns, and which was predicted in the case of the _Gloire_,
the extremities must be as lightly loaded as possible, and not weighed
down with heavy armour. Thirdly--and this was more or less special to
the period--since artillery was already in a state of rapid transition
to higher power, any protective armour approved must sooner or later
be insufficient and require to be augmented. These conditions, and the
advantages which increase of length were known to give in reducing
the propeller power necessary to obtain a certain speed, governed the
specifications to which the _Warrior_ was built. She was given a length
of 380 feet, machinery for a speed of nearly 14 knots, full canvas,
telescopic funnels, and waterline armour over her central parts: the
ends being left unarmoured, but subdivided by watertight compartments.
Of her forty-eight smooth-bore guns, twenty-six were behind armour and
twelve were outside of the protective belt; the remaining ten were
mounted on the upper deck, also without protection.
In another respect the _Warrior_ bore witness to the foresight of
the Board. Hidden behind, and altogether disguised by, the shapely
bow with its surmounting figure-head, was a stout iron ram-stem,
worked to the knee and side-plates of the bow: an inconspicuous but
significant feature. Ever since steamers had been established in the
navy the possibilities of ramming had been discussed. The revolution
in tactics resulting from the introduction of steam as motive power
had been examined by authorities such as Bowles and Moorson, Douglas,
Dahlgren and Labrousse, and all of them saw in the new conditions an
opening for the use of the ram. In ’44 Captain Labrousse had suggested
strengthening the bows of wooden ships for this purpose, and in England
Admiral Sartorius had become the advocate of a special type of warship
built expressly to ram. The circumstances of the naval warfare of the
Crimea, in which slow-moving steamers operated in restricted waters,
had displayed to naval men the advantages to be obtained from actual
collision--from the use of their ship itself as a projectile against
the enemy’s hull. In the case of the _Warrior_ an additional argument
was now to hand for providing a ram. The use of iron as armour had
restored the equilibrium between defence and attack which had been
disturbed by the adoption of shell fire; nay more, it had actually
turned the scale against artillery, the 68-pounder being unable to
penetrate the armour of the ship in which it was carried. For this
reason, that for the moment armour had the ascendancy over the gun, a
ram was considered to be necessary as an additional means of offence;
and a ram was accordingly embodied in the _Warrior_, to the strength of
which her converging iron-plate structure aptly contributed.
And now, leaving the _Warrior_ for a moment, it will be convenient to
glance ahead and note the part played by the ram and the value set upon
it in connection with later types of warships.
In 1860 no doubt was felt but that ramming would play a very important
part in future warfare. The experiences of the American Civil War
of ’62 seemed to supply a perfect confirmation of this opinion. “We
fought the _Merrimac_ for more than three hours this forenoon,” wrote
the engineer of the _Monitor_ to John Ericsson, “and sent her back
to Norfolk in a sinking condition. Ironclad against ironclad, we
manœuvred about the bay here (Hampton Roads), and went at each other
with mutual fierceness.... We were struck twenty-two times, the pilot
house twice, the turret nine times, the side armour eight times, deck
three times.... She tried to run us down and sink us, as she did the
_Cumberland_ yesterday, but she got the worst of it. Her bow passed
over our deck, and our sharp upper-edged side cut through the light
iron shoe upon her stem, and well into her oak. She will not try that
again. She gave us a tremendous thump but did not injure us in the
least.... The turret is a splendid structure....”
On the preceding day the iron-covered _Merrimac_ had sunk the wooden
sailing ship _Cumberland_ by ram alone, without the aid of artillery,
the shots from her victim’s guns glancing off her iron casing “like
hailstones off a tin roof.” She had then opened on the wooden
_Congress_ with shell fire, and in a short time the crowded decks of
that ship had been reduced to a shambles. Then she had fought the
inconclusive duel with the armoured _Monitor_. What lessons were at
length driven home by these three single actions! What a novel warfare
did they not foretell! The helplessness of the wooden ship when
attacked by an ironclad was apparent, the terrific effects of shell
fire were once again conclusively proved. The value of thick armour was
once more shown, but, above all, the power of the ram, the new _arme
blanche_ of sea warfare, seemed to be indisputably demonstrated. On
both sides of the Atlantic a revision of values took place: the wooden
navies of the world sank into insignificance, the _Warrior_ and her
type were seen to be the main support and measure of each nation’s
naval power. “The man who goes into action in a wooden ship is a fool,”
Sir John Hay was quoted as saying, “and the man who sends him there
is a villain.” The ocean-sceptre of Britain was broken, thought an
American writer forgetful of the limitations of monitors, by the blow
which crushed the sides of the _Cumberland_ and _Congress_.
Four years later the battle of Lissa, in which the ironclad squadrons
of Austria and Italy were engaged with one another, gave confirmation
that the lessons of Hampton Roads were also applicable to blue-water
actions. “Full speed. Ironclads rush against the enemy and sink him,”
was the signal made by the Austrian admiral, Tegetthof. The ram was
his chief weapon of offence, the gun being a useful auxiliary in
gaining him the victory; gunfire, by disabling the steering gear of the
_Ré d’Italia_, making her an easy prey for the ram of his flagship,
_Ferdinand Max_.
Of all the factors influencing the evolution of naval material, the
experiences and records of actual warfare are naturally considered
to carry the greatest weight in council: they are, indeed, the only
data whose acceptance is indisputable. The claims and achievements
put forward in time of peace, however their excellence may have been
attested by the most realistic experiments, are all referred to
actual war for trial, and are accepted only in so far as they fit
in with war experience. But sea actions between ironclads have been
few and far between. It has been the more difficult, therefore, to
draw from them the true lessons conveyed; the fixed points have been
insufficient in number, so to speak, to allow of the true curve of
progress being traced. Not only has this insufficiency been evident,
but the restriction in the area of war experience has had another
harmful effect, in that undue weight has been given to each individual
experience. Difficult as it always is to strip each experience of its
special circumstances and deduce from it the correct conclusion, errors
have undoubtedly been made; and these errors have had a prominence
which would not have been theirs if the number of experiences had been
greater. On the other hand, an altogether insufficient weight has
commonly been given to the experiences of peace-time.
These remarks find one application in the ram, and in the value placed
upon it in the ’sixties and ’seventies. During this period artillery
was undergoing a continuous and rapid improvement, eventually turning
the scales against defensive armour; steam power was expanding and
the manœuvring capacities of ships were being extended, so as to make
ramming an operation more and more difficult to perform. Yet faith in
the ram grew rather than decreased, influenced almost entirely by the
evidence of the two sea-actions.
What was the actual experience of ramming gained in peace-time? In ’68
Admiral Warden, commanding the Channel Fleet, reported: “So long as
a ship has good way on her, and a good command of steam to increase
her speed at pleasure, that ship cannot be what is called ‘rammed’;
she cannot even be struck to any purpose so long as she has room,
and is properly handled. The use of ships as rams, it appears to me,
will only be called into play after an action has commenced, when
ships, of necessity, are reduced to a low rate of speed--probably
their lowest.” As time progressed the chances of ramming certainly
grew less. Yet Lissa and Hampton Roads continued to influence opinion
to such a degree, as to lead to a glorification of ram tactics; in
the press, and in the technical institutions which had now come into
being, the ram retained a lustre which it no longer deserved. So long
as artillery was feeble and gunnery of low efficiency, and so long as
speeds of ships were slow and manœuvring power restricted, the ram was
of great potential value. As these conditions changed, the value of
the ram declined. But for a time it was actually in question which of
the two forms of power, the steam engine or the gun, would ultimately
exert the greater influence as a weapon in action. The subject of a
Prize Essay for 1872 was, “The Manœuvres and System of Tactics which
Fleets of Ships should adopt, to develop the powers of the Ram, Heavy
Artillery, Torpedoes, etc., in an action in the open sea”; and it was
the opinion of the prize-winner, Commander G. H. Noel, that the ram
was at that time fast supplanting the gun in importance. “The serious
part of a future naval attack,” wrote Captain Colomb, in _Lessons
from Lissa_, “does not appear to be the guns, but the rams.” And the
French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the principal weapon in
naval combats--the _ultima ratio_ of maritime warfare.” “There is a
new warfare,” said Scott Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her
alongside, but, Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.”
And he predicted fleets of high-speed vessels, equipped with powerful
rams and twin-screw engines, in which both guns and armour were merely
of secondary importance. And writers on tactics discerned future
squadrons in action charging each other after the manner of heavy
cavalry.
The evolution of artillery falsified these expectations. With the
growing advantage of artillery over the defence, and with the coming of
the torpedo, fighting ranges increased and the use of the ram declined.
With greater speeds and greater ranges the possibility of ramming
became (as might be deduced mathematically) a diminishing ratio; before
the end of the century it was sufficiently clear, and was confirmed by
actual warfare, that the ram formed but a very secondary factor of a
warship’s offensive power. But for some years ramming, and “bows-on”
fighting in which ramming was intended to play an important part,
influenced to a great extent the designs of warships.
So much for the ram, first fitted in the _Warrior_. In her sister
ship the ram was less pronounced and, before Hampton Roads had drawn
attention to its possibilities, it was even in question to renounce
it altogether. In the case of the _Warrior_ the heavy figure-head
so overhung the ram that many were dubious whether the latter would
seriously damage an enemy; and, moreover, the wisdom of driving a fully
rigged ship against another vessel, and risking the dismantling of
her masts and rigging, was widely doubted. In other respects, except
for her armour belt and for the material of which she was built, that
vessel was not radically different from her predecessors; the first of
iron-built ironclads was a handsome screw frigate not unlike previous
British ships of her type, from whom she was lineally descended.
Although on the whole she was a conspicuous success, it was soon
apparent that the great length of the _Warrior_ tended to make her
difficult to manœuvre: in fact, made her deficient in that very
quality--handiness--which was indispensable to her effective use as
a ram. And this unhandiness was accentuated in the _Minotaur_ class
which was begun in 1861. These ships were given a belt an inch thicker
than that of the _Warrior_, and, partial protection being considered
objectionable, especially as leaving exposed the steering gear and a
portion of the gun armament, the belt was made continuous over the
whole length of the ship. This length, owing to the extra weight of
the armour, was 400 feet: 20 feet greater than that of the _Warrior_
and a hundred greater than that of the longest timber-built ships. At
first, five masts were fitted, in order to obtain a large sail-area
while at the same time keeping the size of each sail within desirable
limits; but these were afterwards reduced to three. Sail power and
steam machinery were seen to be an imperfect combination in so large
a vessel. The _Minotaur_ class proved to be costly, unhandy and
vulnerable ships, and signalled a return to smaller dimensions. It was
found possible to design ships equally fast and equally well armed and
protected, by the use of fuller lines and less length and an increased
engine power. “Increased manœuvring power and reduction in prime cost,”
wrote the designer of the new type, “more than make amends for the
moderate addition to the steam power.”[164]
Here we may briefly note the conversion of the timber-built fleet. In
’57 Captain Moorsom had submitted a scheme of cutting down ships to
a short height above the water-line and using the weight thus gained
to provide an armour belt. Sir Charles Napier had advocated a similar
policy in parliament. As soon as the necessity for armour was accepted
this policy was adopted; not only were the resources of the private
ship-yards bent to the building of a fleet of new iron warships, but
the best of the old navy was metamorphized in the royal dockyards by
the process of the _razee_: the cutting down of two-deckers and their
conversion into iron-belted frigates. By these exertions France was
soon outstripped in the struggle. For a long time she clung to wooden
ships, though in ’62 she adopted iron for upper works; and of such
ships, of wooden bottoms but of iron above the water-line, she built a
fleet “possessing only one possible merit--uniformity; which the new
English construction lacked.” The combination of heavy steam machinery
and wooden hulls was the cause of continuous difficulties; the growth
of artillery rendered the ships obsolete almost before they were built.
§
By the time the _Warrior_ and her sister ships were afloat the great
struggle between armour and artillery was well in progress. It was
a struggle which was to lead to unsuspected developments in naval
architecture.
For the moment, and in the presence of the new iron-built ironclads,
the gun was at its lowest point of effectiveness. But rifling had
conferred new powers on it, and the greatest efforts were being put
forth to improve its position. As it grew rapidly in size and power,
naval experts were faced with a succession of problems of extraordinary
difficulty. Two things were in question: both the type and the
disposition of gun best suited for a warship’s armament.
With regard to type, the adoption of armour inevitably gave a set-back
to the value of the shell gun. Shells, which would rend and set on
fire a wooden ship, would not pierce armour or inflame iron plates; of
which facts Hampton Roads afforded a demonstration. It seemed clear
also from that incident, to experts in this country and in France,
that no extension of the Paixhans principle was likely to compete with
armour in the future. The system of shell fire of General Paixhans,
like the shot system of the inventor of the carronade, had relied on
low muzzle velocities and curved trajectories, to effect its purpose.
His shells were for lodgment rather than penetration, and did not
gain their effect by their kinetic energy; and in view of this their
inventor had himself conceived the use of iron armour as the very means
whereby they might be countered. Nevertheless the Americans had been
strongly attracted by the Paixhans principle, and with their Dahlgrens
and Columbiads had extended it in practice to embrace the use of guns
of the largest calibres. The action between the _Monitor_ and the
_Merrimac_ did nothing to shake their faith in this class of ordnance.
Subsequent experiments appeared to confirm the national predilection;
and one of their writers, in giving credit to the navy chiefs for
adhering to the principle of the large smooth-bore gun, recorded that
the small-bore-and-high-velocity theory had received its quietus by
the utter demolition of a 6-inch plate by a ball from a 15-inch gun at
Washington in February, 1864.[165] In France and England it was held,
and held rightly, that high velocities were necessary for the attack of
armour.
If shell guns were of small value, what was suitable? Were the old
spherical solid shot still capable of beating the defence? A serious
effort was made in this country to bring them to do it. The Armstrong
rifled breech-loading guns recently adopted had been proving defective
and indifferent on service; a return was wisely made to muzzle-loading;
and it was in question also to revert to spherical shot and shell.
Spherical shot of hardest steel were tried by the _Excellent_, in the
hope that they would penetrate 4½-inch plates. Experimental guns were
also made, in 1864, to discharge 100-pound balls with charges of 25
pounds of powder; guns so heavy (6½ tons) that it was doubted at the
time whether they could be efficiently worked on the broadside of a
rolling ship. Should not increased power be obtained by persevering
with rifled guns? The advantages possessed by the rifled gun in ranging
power, accuracy, capacity of shell, were admitted; nevertheless the
navy as a whole favoured the smooth-bore, with its simplicity, rapidity
of fire, strength, and greater initial velocity, and thought that, at
close ranges, the 100-pounder 6½-ton smooth-bore gun was the best and
most suitable weapon for the service. But the rifled gun was advancing
rapidly. “By May, 1864, the 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled shunt gun of
6½ tons had been tried in the _Excellent_, and had a good deal shaken
the position of the smooth-bore. Captain Key reported that it was more
than equal to naval requirements.... It was admirably adapted for the
naval service.”[166] This fired a projectile 115 pounds in weight. By
June of the following year the target of 9-inch plate representing the
side of the _Hercules_ had beaten the latest Armstrong achievement, a
12½-ton 300-pounder. And on this pretext, and judging the defensive
power of the whole ship by the defensive power of the thickest patch of
its armour, a still more powerful gun was demanded for the navy by the
inventor and by the press: a 25-ton 600-pounder.
So rapidly the power of ordnance grew. It has been observed that of
this feverish evolution of armour and artillery the circumstances
were doubly remarkable. Firstly, no foreign pressure existed which
called for such overleaping and experimental advances. The Americans
still clung to their smooth-bore system; the French, who like us had
adopted breech-loading guns, retained the system in their service and
suffered for some years from its continuous inefficiency. Secondly,
the navy was itself “unwillingly dragged into the cul-de-sac of
experimental construction induced by the clamour of public opinion.”
The type, the size of the gun which was to be embodied in our latest
warships, was decided mainly by forces outside the navy, and changed
from year to year. Naval architecture changed with it. The adoption
of the succession of increasingly powerful rifled guns set experts at
their wit’s ends devising warships suitable for carrying them; entailed
continuous alterations both in the armaments of new ships and in the
design of the new ships themselves; but also, as it happened, had the
effect of giving this country a mastery over naval material which it
has never since surrendered.
The type having been decided for each individual vessel, there remained
the question of the disposition of the armament.
Two main considerations guided the evolution of the ironclads of
this period in respect of the disposition of their guns: one mainly
tactical, the other mainly constructive. It appears probable that, from
the date of Trafalgar onward, the limitations of merely broadside fire
had been realized; that the end-on attack, such as had obtained in the
supreme actions fought by Nelson and Rodney, had shown the weakness
of the broadside ship in ahead fire and had made obvious the anomaly
that, in all ships-of-the-line, the course of the ship, the direction
in which the attack was made, was the very direction in which gunfire
was least powerful, if not altogether non-existent. With the coming of
steam and the consequent growth of the ram and ramming tactics, this
anomaly was more and more apparent; and from the _Warrior_ onwards
each new type presented an enhanced effort to provide, particularly,
ahead fire. The growth of the gun materially assisted this effort.
Ahead fire increased, between the years 1860 and 1880, from zero to a
large proportion of the total fire. The broadside ship was for a time
abandoned.
The constructive consideration was the requirement of a protected
armament capable of the maximum effective fire in all directions. In
the first half of the century an increased effectiveness had been
obtained, with the old-fashioned truck guns, by adaptation of the ports
or by use of specially designed carriages, to permit of as large an arc
of training as possible. Even so the arc through which guns could be
fired was small, and in the case of the 68-pounder of the _Warrior_ was
only thirty degrees before and abaft the beam. The demand for greater
utility was emphasized when, with the increase in size of the unit gun,
the number of pieces carried by each ship was diminished.
How, then, having regard to these two considerations, should a
warship’s guns be disposed? Various methods were adopted. In the first
instance, it was seen to be possible to augment the ahead fire of a
ship, and to give a wide sweep of training to some of her guns, by
indenting the sides; by so shaping the ship’s side-plating as to allow
guns mounted in the forward part to fire in the direction of the ship’s
longitudinal axis. At first, slight use was made of this method: with
the fine lines given to iron ships it appeared practicable in only a
small degree. Moreover, it was objected to as causing a “funnelling”
effect to the path of fragments of enemy shell or shot; it was found
that shrapnel shell, fired at indented embrasures at Shoebury, broke
up, and the number of balls which entered the portholes was ten times
the number which entered similar portholes on a straight side. But,
after the _Minotaur_ class, less length and greater beam were given
to ships, and recessed ports and indented sides therefore became more
feasible.
As guns increased in weight and individual importance the advantages
of concentration became apparent. It was now undoubtedly desirable
to protect _all_ the guns; yet, if they had been strung out along
the whole length of the ship, the weight, both of the guns and their
protective armour, would prove to be an excessive burden to the ship.
Hence the advantage of the _central battery_. By concentrating the guns
into a central area, an armoured box amidships, the weight of armour
necessary to protect them could be kept within reasonable limits,
protection was afforded not only to the guns but to the vital parts
of the ship, while at the same time the extremities were left lightly
loaded. The complete water-line belt of armour was retained, but,
both in the French and in the English navy, the system of complete
protection as embodied in the _Gloire_ and _Warrior_ was given up.
This device of the central battery was at first used solely for
broadside guns. But the desire for ahead fire from behind armour soon
caused the adaptation of the battery to allow it. Ports were cut in
the two transverse bulkheads, the ship’s sides were indented, suitable
gun-mountings were provided whereby some of the battery guns could be
shifted from one porthole to another; and in this way it was secured
that a fair proportion of the armament could be fired either on the
beam or parallel with the keel-line of the ship. A power of offence was
given in all directions, and no “point of impunity” existed.
Ingenious were the arrangements resorted to, to obtain the maximum
effect from the new medium-sized artillery which superseded the
original truck-guns of the _Warrior_ and former warships. The armoured
boxes, instead of being made with their sides respectively parallel,
and at right angles, to the sides of the ship, were sometimes set
diagonally, with their sides at forty-five degrees with fore-and-aft.
Sometimes they were octagonal, sometimes with curved bulkheads,
sometimes two batteries were superposed one on the other; but always
the desire was to utilize each gun over as large as possible an arc
of fire, and always the tendency was to augment the ahead fire. The
central battery formed a powerful citadel covering the whole beam
of the ship amidships. The guns of this citadel, by the power of
manœuvring given by the adoption of twin-screw propelling machinery,
could, it was argued, be brought to bear in any direction desired. Of
all directions, “right ahead” was considered to be of the greatest
importance. End-on fighting, it was assumed, would always be resorted
to in future; and it was the power of keeping the ship end-on to the
enemy which was the great military advantage conferred by twin screws.
A further step in the direction of giving to each gun a large arc of
fire was taken in the introduction of the sponson. By means of this
circular platform, projecting from the vessel’s side, a gun could be
carried so as to fire through an arc of 180 degrees. The same system
obtained largely in the French ships of this period; by mounting guns
in overhung circular turntables, one at each corner of the central
battery _en caponière_, a large effective arc was obtained for them.
Only one step more was necessary: that which would allow each gun to
command the whole sweep of the horizon, and to be available for duty
upon either beam and any bearing: the adoption of the _centre-line
turret_. But before tracing the evolution of the turret, let us
recapitulate the typical ships built between 1860 and 1873 which
composed our central-battery fleet.
The germ of the central-battery idea may be seen, perhaps, in the
belted _Minotaur_, in which, in order to allow the chase guns to be
fought from behind armour, a transverse armour bulkhead was worked, at
a distance of some 25 feet aft of the bow. Had foreign influence not
exerted itself it may be supposed with reason that from the _Minotaur_
the central battery would have been evolved. However this may be, the
evolution was hastened by French initiative; for in each of the two
wooden ships _Magenta_ and _Solferino_, laid down in ’59, was found a
complete two-decked central battery whose whole depth was faced with
armour for the protection of fifty-two 5-ton cannon, the rest of the
ship’s water-line being protected by an armour belt much narrower than
that of the _Gloire_. In imitation of this plan our own designs were
prepared; and gradually, and only by a series of steps, we achieved
what our rivals had obtained in a single stride.
In ’63 Sir Edward Reed, at that time Mr. Reed, one of the graduates of
the school which in ’48 had been established at Portsmouth Dockyard,
was appointed to the office of Chief Constructor of the Navy. Possessed
of broad and original views and gifted to an unusual degree in the arts
of exposition and argument, he made himself responsible for designs of
warships differing widely from their large and unwieldy precursors. The
first of these was the _Bellerophon_, a short and easily manœuvred,
fully rigged belt-and-battery ship, carrying ten 12-ton Armstrong guns
for broadside fire in the battery, and two 6-ton guns for ahead fire
in a small armoured battery in the bows. Not only in the disposition
of her armament was the _Bellerophon_ different from all former ships.
She was a radical departure from existing practice in many important
respects. Constructionally, she was built on a new “bracket-frame”
system designed to give great girder strength for small expenditure of
weight, already in vogue for mercantile shipping. The use of watertight
compartments was extended as a defence against an enemy ram, the system
of double bottoms was extended as a consequence of the introduction of
the torpedo. A powerful ram was carried, but the bow took a new form;
a U- instead of a V-section was adopted in order to give buoyancy
and thus minimize the tendency to plunge which was inherent in a
fine-bowed ship; the section near the water-line being fined away so
as to form a cut-water. Steel was largely used instead of iron, with
a consequent saving of weight. A novel trim was given her--six feet
by the stern--to give a deep immersion for the powerful screw and to
assist the ship in turning quickly on her heel under the action of
the balanced rudder; an adjustment which experience showed to have a
detrimental effect on the propulsive efficiency.
Next came the _Enterprise_, a still smaller ship. In the _Bellerophon_,
as we have seen, there was no bow fire possible from the central
battery; in the _Enterprise_ this was obtained by piercing the
athwartship bulkheads of the battery with ports, and substituting
movable for fixed bulwarks. The same arrangement was developed in the
_Pallas_ and _Penelope_, in which ships the arc of fire of the corner
guns of the battery was further extended by the device of indented
sides. Then came the _Hercules_, generally like the _Bellerophon_ but
with indented sides and, as a novelty, alternative ports in the battery
armour by means of which the corner guns could be trained, on revolving
platforms, to fire either on the beam or nearly in line with the keel;
a system which presented an obvious disadvantage in requiring twelve
ports for eight guns. In the _Kaiser_ class, designed by Sir Edward
Reed shortly afterwards for the German government, this disadvantage
was obviated by the expedient of forming ports in facets of the battery
set at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and by muzzle-pivoting
guns.
Both in the _Bellerophon_ and the _Hercules_ axial fire had only been
obtained by the provision of special batteries, at the bow and stern,
of partially protected guns. Now, this accumulation of weight at the
extremities was a feature viewed with disfavour by naval opinion;
moreover, these bow batteries did not meet the ever-growing demand
for a considerable ahead fire. So in the _Sultan_, which carried a
central-battery armament similar to that of the _Hercules_, an upper
deck armoured battery was embodied, superposed on the after end of
the main deck battery and carrying guns which gave both astern and
beam fire; while, for bow fire, two 12-ton guns were mounted in the
forecastle, but without any protection.
The central-battery system had now to sustain the greatest attack that
had yet been made upon it by the advocates of centre-line turrets. The
position of the central-battery school was already somewhat shaken;
ordnance had grown to a weight and power which justified the main
argument of the turret advocates; Lissa had just shown the importance
of being able to concentrate on any one bearing a maximum of offensive
power. Controversy raged hotly on the relative merits of turret and
central battery.
In these circumstances the Admiralty in ’68 determined to consider both
types, with a view to embodying the best arrangement in the new class
of vessels then projected. The principal shipbuilders of the country
were invited to compete, and were presented with specifications for
a first-class warship so widely drawn as to leave them the greatest
latitude in design. Of the seven designs submitted, three were of the
central-battery type, three were turret ships, and one a compound of
the two. After comparison with an Admiralty design produced by Sir
Edward Reed, it was decided to adopt this in preference to those of
the private firms, and to build a whole class of six ships to it. The
result was the _Audacious_ class--of which the best-remembered are
the _Iron Duke_ and the ill-fated _Vanguard_. In this class a strong
all-round fire was obtained by arranging two central batteries of the
same size, one on the main and one on the upper deck. The main deck
battery had only broadside ports for its six 12-ton guns, each gun
training thirty degrees before and abaft the beam; the upper deck
battery had four guns of the same calibre mounted at ports cut in
armour facets at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and training
through ninety degrees. To allow axial fire from these guns the upper
battery was made to project slightly, sponson fashion, over the sides
of the ship, and the bulwarks forward and aft of the battery were set
slightly back toward the centre line to enable the guns to fire past
them.
A final stage in the evolution of the central-battery ship was attained
in the _Alexandra_, laid down in ’72. The type had proved tenacious
of life, and, for masted vessels, still held its own up to this point
against the turret system. The design for the _Alexandra_ gave as
complete an all-round fire as was attainable in a central-battery
ironclad; for the first time, it was said, we really had a masted ship
with satisfactory all-round fire. Generally like the _Audacious_ class,
the _Alexandra_ possessed an advantage in that the two forward guns of
the upper deck battery were 25 ton instead of 18 ton, and in having,
in addition to the six broadside guns of the main deck battery, two
additional 18-ton guns mounted so as to be capable of firing nearly
ahead and on the beam as well. Designed to fulfil the requirements of
“end-on” fighting, she made a heavy sacrifice of broadside fire to
obtain a maximum of bow fire; and at a later date, when a different
valuation had come to be placed on axial fire, this sacrifice was
noted against her. “She could only take her place at a disadvantage in
any form of battle which was suited to the armaments of the ironclads
that had gone before her.”[167] Nevertheless she was a formidable
vessel. Defensively, too, she was pronounced to be conspicuously
successful; her armour belt, which attained a thickness of 12 inches
at the water-line amidships, was carried down at the bow to cover and
strengthen the stem, and to protect the vessel from a raking fire. For
the protection of the stern against a raking fire, an armour bulkhead
was worked across the after part, extending to a depth of 6 feet below
the water-line.
The _Alexandra_ was the last of the purely “central battery”
ships.[168] By the time she was launched experience had set the seal of
approval on another type, to the evolution of which we must now revert.
§
It is difficult to trace to its source the invention of the armoured
gun-turret. The inventive Ericsson is said to have envisaged at an
early age the idea of a protected gun carried on a mobile raft, “an
idea probably inspired by his river-rafts in Sweden”; and it is known
that at a later date he planned in detail a primitive monitor, the
design of which at the outbreak of the Crimean War he offered to
Napoleon III. Perhaps the idea, which M. Paixhans first developed in
public, of applying iron armour to a sea-going ship, induced the idea
of a pivot-gun protected by an armour shield. A protected armament
was found, as we have seen, in the French batteries built for the
assault of Kinburn: the armoured vessel and the armoured gun were first
embodied in the same unit; and though these units were the first to be
tried in actual war, yet some years previously, in 1842 or thereabouts,
a Mr. Stevens of New York had proposed and made an armoured floating
battery. But in neither of these instances was the gun in a turret.
The turret idea, like so many other inventions, had an independent
development in Europe and in America. In each case war supplied the
incentive. In America, in ’62, Ericsson himself produced in a national
emergency the _Monitor_, the low, shallow-draft armoured vessel
carrying two 11-inch Dahlgren guns in a steam-rotated turret which
served to counter the Southern _Merrimac_, the rasée with the fixed
penthouse armour roof over its guns which the Confederates had built by
the light of French experience.
The _Monitor_, both in design and in the circumstances of its
production, was a great achievement; its success gave sanction to the
revolving turret as a form of structure by means of which a big gun
could be carried and trained. Nevertheless it is doubtful whether it
influenced to an appreciable degree the evolution of the sea-going
turret ship on this side of the Atlantic. Already, when the _Monitor_
fought her action with the _Merrimac_, the turret had been adopted in
coast-defence ships ordered for European powers; and, dramatic though
it was, the incident of Hampton Roads afforded merely a confirmation
of the effectiveness of the turret form of gun mounting. It was to an
episode of the Crimean War that the development of the sea-going turret
ship was directly due.
In the Sea of Azov, in the spring of 1855, Commander Cowper Coles, of
H.M. steamer _Stromboli_, constructed in a single night, of barrels,
spars and boards, a raft capable of bearing heavy artillery, which he
named the _Lady Nancy_; by means of which he brought within range and
destroyed by shell fire the Russian stores at Taganrog.
The naval operations of this war had drawn general attention to the
special problems in connection with the navigation of shallow waters by
vessels with a heavy armament, and Commander Coles’ exploit immediately
excited official interest. Models of armed rafts were submitted by him
for Admiralty inspection, and shortly afterwards he was himself ordered
home to give advice upon the requirements of this form of construction:
in connection with which the necessity for armour protection for the
gun or guns was a point early insisted on by him. In that same year he
sketched a design for a belted shallow-draught vessel for the attack of
stationary forts which he equipped with guns of the heaviest pattern,
each working in a fixed hemispherical shield. From the fixed shield
to a revolving turret was a small step. In a short time Commander
Coles made himself the enthusiastic exponent of armour-protected guns,
mounted in cupolas or turrets on or near the centre-line of a ship so
as to give a command over nearly the whole sweep of the horizon. By
such a system, he argued, a vessel could be endowed with a concentrated
offensive power on any bearing unapproachable by broadside armament,
however designed; all guns were effective on almost any bearing without
diverting the ship, their force required no evolution to elicit,
existing as it did when the ship was at anchor, in dry dock or on a
constant course. The height of the turrets gave them a plunging fire,
an effect particularly useful now that ships’ sides were armoured and
their decks alone remained penetrable.
His advocacy of the turret system, aided by the technical assistance
of Mr. Brunel, made a deep impression on a large section of the public
and gained the interest of the Prince Consort. He did not profess the
technical knowledge of a shipbuilder or designer; but in his insistence
on the advantages to be derived from the method of mounting guns on the
centre-line he wielded arguments of great natural force, and enlisted
in his favour the professional sympathies of eminent builders and naval
men. In 1860 he produced before the newly founded Institution of Naval
Architects a plan of a sea-going ship carrying nine turrets, seven on
the centre-line and two off-set so as to allow ahead fire from three
turrets. In the following year he wrote to the Admiralty undertaking
to prove that a vessel could be built on his principle of armament
100 feet shorter than the _Warrior_ and in all military respects her
superior: “I will guarantee to disable and capture her in an hour; she
shall draw four foot less water, require only half the crew, and cost
the country for building at least £100,000 less. I am ready to stand or
fall on these assertions.”
Such a pronouncement could not be lightly passed over. Moreover,
coast-defence vessels embodying the turret system--light-draught
vessels characterized by small tonnage, small cost and indifferent
sea-going qualities, in combination with massive protection and a large
offensive armament--were already being built by the private firms of
this country for various foreign powers. In ’61, for instance, Denmark
had ordered the _Rolf Krake_, a turret gunboat carrying a 4½-inch belt
and four 68-pounder guns, a pair in each of two armoured turrets; which
three years later proved her value in action against a nominally
superior force. Prussia had ordered her first ironclad, a turret
ship. Holland, Italy, Brazil, Russia--all were known to be purchasing
coast-defence vessels of the turret type. And two sea-going turret
ships which had been ordered by the American Confederates, and which
were building in this country--the _Wyvern_ and _Scorpion_--had been
seized and purchased by our government.
In these circumstances the Admiralty, though there was a preponderance
of official opinion against the idea, resolved to countenance the
turret system and give it a trial. The _Royal Sovereign_ was cut down
from a three-decker of 120 guns, armoured with a 5½-inch belt and a
1-inch deck, and equipped with four turrets carrying a total of five
12½-ton guns--two in the foremost and one in the remaining turrets. At
the same time the _Prince Albert_, also a four-turret ship, was laid
down by the firm of Samuda to an Admiralty order. These ships were
a distinct success so far as the armament was concerned. They were
certainly not ocean-going ships. There were many faults and undesirable
features to be found in them. But the disposition of the armament was
found satisfactory, and the captain of the _Royal Sovereign_ reported
most favourably of his ship, describing her as the most formidable
man-of-war; “her handiness, speed, weight of broadside, and the small
target she offers, increase tenfold her powers of assault and retreat.”
Time, and the progress of artillery, were on the side of Captain Cowper
Coles. He saw, and the Admiralty advisers felt, that although it was
possible to work existing guns on the broadside, yet increase in the
size and weight of guns would sooner or later necessitate the mounting
of them on accurately balanced turntables secured by central pivots
on the centre-line. Only by such a method could the largest gun be
worked and the full weight of metal be poured, as required, on either
broadside. In fact the turret, the original object of which was purely
defensive, was now regarded from a quite different point of view: as a
convenient device by which guns of the highest calibre could be carried
and worked. Was complicated machinery objected to? The common winch,
the rack and pinion, were in constant use on every railway turntable,
nor had the American turrets ever failed in action or caused a loss
of confidence in their reliability. Reliance upon a central pivot was
disliked? Yet the pivot was already in use for holding the broadside
guns of our ironclads--a mere bolt 4 inches in diameter and itself
exposed to gunfire.[169]
The Admiralty constructors were insistent on the practical difficulties
which lay in the way of designing a satisfactory sea-going turret ship.
The advantages which had been claimed for turrets were obvious, said
Sir Edward Reed; the larger and heavier the individual gun, the greater
the gain of mounting it in a turret. But enthusiastic advocates of
this method lost sight of the fact that turrets were incompatible with
masts and sails, and with the forecastle and high freeboard necessary
for good sea-going qualities. At that time, 1865, it was possible to
protect and work eight of the largest guns, mounted on the broadside,
with as little expenditure of weight as would be required to mount four
of the guns two in a turret on the centre-line; while in the latter
case they could only fire in two different directions at the same time,
whereas in the former they could fire in eight.
In order to allow both sides in the controversy to come to grips with
the practical difficulties, a committee was formed at the Admiralty in
May, ’65, and Captain Coles was asked to produce a turret-ship design
by the aid of a draughtsman and with the drawings of the _Pallas_ for
guidance. His design, a vessel showing two 600-pounders each mounted
in a centre-line cupola, was not considered suitable. So the Board
resolved to build a ship to Sir Edward Reed’s design--a fully rigged
and masted, high-freeboard ship, with an armour belt and protected bow
and stern batteries, and with two centre-line turrets amidships mounted
over a central battery, each carrying two 25-ton 600-pounder guns. This
was the _Monarch_. She was the first truly ocean-going turret ship,
and her performances at sea in ’69 in company with central-battery
ships like the _Bellerophon_ and _Hercules_ proved her to be a valuable
and efficient unit; by this experiment it was demonstrated, said Mr.
Brassey, “that it was practicable to design a thoroughly seaworthy
turret ship, although for sea-going purposes a central battery presents
great advantages over the turret system.”
In the meantime Captain Coles had protested vigorously against the
design of the _Monarch_ as representative of his system. The plan was
not his; the turrets were mounted so high that there was a large area
to protect and the ship, unlike the low-freeboard ships of his own
design, presented a large target. But his chief objection was, that
the presence of a forecastle and an armoured bow battery annihilated
the whole advantage of turret guns by preventing ahead fire from them.
After protracted negotiations he obtained Admiralty permission to have
a ship built to satisfy his own views and independently of criticism
from Admiralty officials. In ’69 the _Captain_, built by Messrs. Laird
to his drawings, was launched at Birkenhead. The _Captain_, although
generally similar to the _Monarch_ (the growth of artillery limited
the number of the turrets to two), differed from her in one important
respect: her designed freeboard was only 8 feet as compared with 14;
and, by some error in calculation, this dimension proved to be only
6 feet when the vessel was in sea-going trim. This low freeboard,
in conjunction with her large sail-area, produced a condition of
instability at large angles of heel which led to disaster and sealed
the doom of the fully rigged turret ship.
Even in the _Captain_ ahead fire was not found possible. In the
original plans she had the low freeboard favoured by her designer;
but in the later plans poops and forecastles were added to give the
necessary sea-going qualities, and ahead fire was thereby sacrificed.
Complete mastage was given her: iron masts in the form of tripods
to avoid the use of shrouds and to give as clear an arc of fire as
possible. The rigging was all stopped short at, and worked from, a
narrow flying deck which was built above the turrets. This flying deck
provided a working space for the crew, who in a moderately rough sea
would not be able to make use of the low upper deck.
[Illustration: THE _MONARCH_
From a photograph by Symonds, Portsmouth]
On the night of September 6th, 1870, the _Captain_ capsized in a heavy
sea off C. Finisterre. In St. Paul’s Cathedral the memorial brass,
erected in commemoration of this disaster, records that the _Captain_
was built in deference to public opinion expressed in parliament and
through other channels, and in opposition to the views and opinions of
the Controller and his department; and that the evidence all tended to
show that they generally disapproved of her construction.
§
The difficulty of combining the turret system with a full rig of masts
and sails had for a long time been recognized. Some eighteen months
before the loss of the _Captain_, the Admiralty, in the presence of the
increasing efficiency of steam machinery, had decided to construct a
mastless sea-going turret ship.
American experience greatly influenced this decision. In America, where
the principle of machinery for propulsion and for working the guns had
been accepted with a greater readiness than in Europe, the line of
development had been more direct. From the original _Monitor_ a whole
series of derivatives had been produced, and from coast-defence vessels
of a single turret advance had been made to ocean-going mastless
turret ships of low freeboard, carrying the largest smooth-bore guns.
These ocean monitors, lacking though they did some features which were
considered indispensable in British warships, yet exerted an undoubted
influence upon our own construction. Weakly designed in many respects,
with small fuel capacity, and unsteady as gun platforms, they were
regarded by some writers as the true progenitors of the class of
warship which now superseded the masted vessels of the ’sixties.
The problem of the naval architect henceforth was greatly simplified.
Masts and sails, which had in the past proved such an embarrassment,
were now frankly abandoned, with the result that a thousand
difficulties which had beset the designer of the turret ship were swept
away. No longer had the stability curve to conform to the conflicting
requirements of the sailing vessel and the gun platform. The large
weight gained by dispensing with masts and sails could be embodied as
an addition to the armament or to the fuel carried. The single screw,
which in the case of a ship intended to use sails had been almost a
necessity, could be replaced by twin screws of greater power; and the
change would remove the liability of complete disablement, and give a
number of constructive advantages which it is unnecessary to enumerate.
Indeed, it may be said conversely, that the adoption of twin screws
so improved the reliability of the propelling machinery as to make
practicable the abandonment of masts and sails.
In April, 1869, the _Devastation_ was commenced. Designed by Sir
Edward Reed, she “forestalled, rather than profited by, the dreadful
lesson of the _Captain_ and by her success gave proof of the judgment
and initiative of the Board and their adviser.” Sir Edward Reed had
recognized, more fully than his critics, the conflicting elements
inherent in the rigged turret ship. And it is significant that, just
at a time when the assured success of the _Monarch_ must have been a
gratification to her designer, he should record: “My clear and strong
conviction at the moment of writing these lines [March 31st, 1869] is
that no satisfactorily designed turret ship with rigging has yet been
built, or even laid down.”
The _Devastation_ design was a development of those of some previous
mastless turret ships, the _Cerberus_, the _Hotspur_, and the
_Glatton_ class, which had embodied Sir Edward Reed’s ideas as to the
requirements of coast-service vessels. At first given four 25-ton
guns, the _Devastation_ was ultimately armed with four M.L. guns each
weighing 35 tons and carried in turrets on the centre-line, one at
each end of a central breastwork, 150 feet in length, built round the
funnels.
This central breastwork, raised above the upper deck and armoured along
its sides with 10-inch steel, supported the two turrets and enabled
the guns to be carried at a desirable height above the water-line. The
upper deck itself was low. The sides, up to its level, were protected
by a complete belt of armour 8 inches in thickness.
The abolition of masts and rigging had a striking effect on the design.
Compared with the _Monarch_, of nearly the same tonnage, she carried
heavier guns, double the weight of armour, double the amount of fuel,
and required little more than half the crew to work her.
The loss of the _Captain_, confirming the doubts which experts had
expressed as to the seaworthiness of rigged turret ships, caused an
alarm for the safety of all turret ships, built and building. In
the public mind, in consequence of the reported shortcomings of the
American monitors and the known deficiencies of our coast-defence
vessels, the belief was growing that the turret system was inherently
unsafe. It was believed, also, that mastless ships, having no spread of
sail to steady their motion, would be liable to excessive and dangerous
rolling. To allay the uneasiness as to the safety of the _Devastation_
and her type a Committee on Designs was formed. The Committee, composed
of some of the most eminent of naval architects and officers, made a
report in the spring of ’71 which, though it met with considerable
opposition from one school, nevertheless “formed the groundwork upon
which the English Admiralty determined to construct their policy for
the future.” The Committee pronounced altogether against fully rigged
ships for the line of battle; it was impossible, in their opinion, to
combine in the same vessel great offensive and defensive power and
a full spread of canvas. They considered the _Devastation_ class as
the most suitable type of armoured ship for future service, and found
them to have sufficient stability for safety and to be in almost all
respects a satisfactory design of warship. As regards the _Devastation_
herself they recommended some minor alterations, the effect of
which was to improve the stability of the ship and to give greater
accommodation for the crew. The main alteration consisted in the
carrying up of the ship’s sides amidships to the level of the central
breastwork, and in continuing the breastwork deck outward to the sides,
to form unarmoured side superstructures.
Besides the _Devastation_, two others of the type were laid down
shortly afterwards, the _Thunderer_ and the _Dreadnought_. The three
ships differed from each other slightly in dimensions, but embodied
the same characteristic features. Of chief interest is the transition
of the unarmoured side superstructures, in the _Devastation_, to
an armoured central battery of the same width as the ship, in
the _Dreadnought_. The influence of Sir Edward Reed, who had now
given place to Mr. Nathaniel Barnaby as Chief Constructor at the
Admiralty, was apparent in this evolution. In ’73 he stated publicly
his objections to the carrying up of the _Devastation’s_ sides, and
pictured a shell entering the unarmoured superstructure and blowing
up all the light iron structure in front of the guns. The result
was seen in the _Dreadnought_, in which the breastwork was made a
continuation of the ship’s side and armoured. More freeboard was also
given to the forecastle and the after deck than was found in the
_Devastation_ and _Thunderer_, with the desire to make the vessel drier
and more comfortable; and, owing to the height at which the turrets
were carried, this was found possible without restricting the arcs
of fire of the guns. The movement from the monitor type toward the
modern battleship in respect of freeboard is clearly traced in these
three ships of the _Devastation_ class. Low freeboard, in spite of its
effect in rendering inconspicuous the ship in which it was embodied,
was gradually being abandoned. High freeboard was foreshadowed for
future ships. The loss of the _Captain_ had led to a serious study, by
naval architects and mathematicians, of the stability of warships at
large angles of rolling, and the advantages of high freeboard were by
this time widely appreciated. High freeboard not only made a ship more
habitable; by the form of stability curve it gave it allowed a vessel’s
beam to be reduced with safety, and thereby contributed to a steadier
and more easily propelled ship than would have been obtained without it.
In other respects these three ships show the lines along which progress
was being made. In the turrets of the _Devastation_ the twin 35-ton
guns had been loaded and worked by hand; but in the forward turret
of the _Thunderer_ the new hydraulic system of Messrs. Armstrong was
applied with success to two 38-ton 12-inch guns; and this system was
adopted for both turrets of the _Dreadnought_. The guns were loaded
externally, the turrets being revolved by steam, after firing, till
the guns were on the requisite bearing; they were then depressed by
hydraulic power, and the 700-pound projectiles were rammed into their
muzzles by a telescopic hydraulic rammer. In 1879 an accident occurred
in the _Thunderer_ which helped, it is said, to hasten the return to
breech-loading guns. Simultaneous firing was being carried out; one
of the guns missed fire without anyone either inside or outside the
turret being aware of it. The guns were loaded again, and, on being
discharged, one of them burst. Such double-loading, it was clearly
seen, would not have obtained with breech-loading guns.
The _Devastation_ had twin screws driven by independent engines, but
these were non-compound engines of the trunk type working with a
maximum steam pressure of 30 lbs. per square inch. In the _Dreadnought_
an advance had been made to compound the three-cylinder vertical
engines, working with 60 lbs. per square inch in engine-rooms divided
by a longitudinal watertight bulkhead.
§
The evolution of the battleship was being forced along at a hot pace
by the evolution of artillery. No sooner had the mastless turret ship
received the sanction of the Committee on Designs as the standard
type for warfare of the immediate future, than a sudden increase in
the power of guns necessitated the consideration of new principles and
brought into being a new type.
So far, defence had managed to compete fairly successfully with
offence; the naval architect, by devoting as much as 25 per cent of the
total of a ship’s weight to protective armour, had been able to keep
level with the artillerist. But it was clear that he could not follow
much further, by the existing methods. Armour could not be thickened
indefinitely. Penetrable armour was no better than none; worse, in
fact, since it was a superfluity, and in a ship a superfluity was
doubly wasteful, implying a loss of strength in some other direction.
Armour might have to go altogether? It seemed that, after all, the
predictions of Sir Howard Douglas might well come true; that, just as
gunpowder had forced the foot soldier, after burdening him with an
ever-increasing weight, to dispense altogether with body-armour, so
rifled artillery would render ship armour increasingly ineffectual and,
eventually, an altogether useless encumbrance.
The advance in artillery took place in connection with Italian
construction. In 1872 Italy laid down the _Duilio_, and a year later
the _Dandolo_, two mastless turret ships of a novel class, engined by
Penn and Maudsley, and equipped with two diagonally placed turrets each
designed to carry two 60-ton Armstrong guns; guns which were afterwards
changed to 100-ton guns of 17¾ inches bore. In the same ships the
Italians introduced a solution of the armour difficulty. They abandoned
vertical armour altogether, except for a very thick belt over the
central portion of each vessel which was to protect the vital machinery
and the gun turrets.
The reply to these was the _Inflexible_, laid down in ’74.
We have already seen how, in the last of the _Devastation_ class,
the central armoured breastwork was widened to the full beam of the
ship. It had been proposed by Mr. Barnaby to take advantage of this
arrangement to off-set the two turrets of the _Dreadnought_ at a
distance each side of the centre line of the ship, so as to allow
a powerful ahead fire. Although not then approved, this suggestion
was embodied in the _Inflexible_ as her most distinctive feature. In
this, however, she was forestalled by the Italians. Her two turrets,
each weighing 750 tons, were carried diagonally on a central armoured
citadel plated with compound armour of a maximum thickness of 24
inches. Forward and aft of this citadel the unarmoured ends were
built flush with it, and along the centre line was built, the whole
length of the ship, a narrow superstructure. This superstructure did
not contribute anything to her stability; nor was such contribution
needed in view of the comparatively high freeboard. But it rendered
unnecessary a flying deck such as had been fitted in the _Devastation_
class, and provided accommodation for the crew, without restricting to
any appreciable degree the arcs of fire of the big guns.
The _Inflexible_ was of over 11,000 tons displacement, the heaviest
and most powerful warship that had ever been built. She was 320 feet
in length and 75 feet broad at the water-line; this unprecedented beam
being required, in spite of the high freeboard, on account of the
height at which the turrets were carried. Nevertheless, so improved
was her propulsive efficiency as compared with that of former ships,
so great the gain resulting from Mr. Froude’s historic researches on
ship form and the action of propellers, that a speed of 15 knots was
obtained at a relatively small expense in horse-power.
The idea of sails was not yet altogether dead. In deference to a strong
naval opinion she was originally designed to carry two pole masts,
with sails for steadying her motion in a seaway and as a standby in
the event of her propelling machinery being disabled. But this scheme
was modified owing to the possibility of falling masts and rigging
interfering with the working of guns and screw in action. It was
decided that she should be brig-rigged for peace service; and that,
on an anticipation of war, she should be docked to allow the cruising
masts to be removed and replaced by two short iron masts without yards
for signalling and for carrying crows’ nests.
But it was in the bold abandonment of armour for the ends of the ship
and its concentration on the sides of the citadel that the _Inflexible_
design was most freely criticized. Armour, except in the form of an
under-water protective deck, was not used at all forward and aft of the
citadel. The ends of the ship were left unprotected, but subdivided;
the compartments near the water-line formed watertight tanks filled
with coals, stores, or--next to the side of the ship--cork. This
criticism was directed from two directions.
To many naval men the attempt to beat the gun by adding to the
thickness of the armour was a game no longer worth the candle. The
point of view, moreover, that the defensive power of a ship was
accurately represented by the defensive power of an armour patch upon
its side was condemned as altogether too partial and theoretical. The
same fallacy was abroad in respect of guns. “Men were apt to think
and speak as if the mounting of a single excessively heavy gun in a
ship would make her exceptionally powerful, no matter what number of
powerful, but still less powerful, guns were displaced to make room for
it. The targets and guns at Shoeburyness were held to be real measures
of the defensive and offensive powers of ships.”[170]
On the other hand, experience was at this time bringing to light the
inefficiency of heavy naval artillery. In ’71 a paper by Captain Colomb
attracted attention, in which he analysed the effective gun power of
the _Monarch_, and showed, by the light of experiments carried out by
her against a rock off Vigo in company with _Captain_ and _Hercules_,
that “in six minutes from the opening of her fire on the sister ship at
1000 yards, she will have fired twelve shot, of which one will have hit
and another may have glanced, and it remains an even chance whether the
single hit will have penetrated the enemy’s armour.” In the following
summer Mr. Barnaby was himself impressed with the difficulty which the
_Hotspur_ experienced in hitting the turret of the _Glatton_ at a range
of 200 yards in the smooth water of Portland Harbour: an experiment
which, while confirming confidence in the reliability of a turret and
its power to withstand shock, led him to question whether we were wise
to put so much weight into the protection of turrets, and whether it
might not be a better plan to stint armour on guns in order to add to
their number and power.
From another direction the criticism was more directly effective.
In ’75 Sir Edward Reed, now a private member of parliament, made a
pronouncement on his return from a visit to Italy in the following
words: “The Italian ships _Duilio_ and _Dandolo_ are exposed, in my
opinion, beyond all doubt or question, to speedy destruction. I fear
I can only express my apprehension that the Italians are pursuing a
totally wrong course, and one which is likely to result in disaster.”
The Italian Minister of Marine indignantly refuted the assertion,
based as it must have been (he said) on incomplete information; and
the construction of the _Duilio_ and the _Dandolo_ proceeded. But the
remarks of the ex-Chief Constructor applied with equal force to the
_Inflexible_; and in the following session he stated as much in the
House of Commons. It was possible, he insisted, that in an action the
cork and stores which filled the unarmoured ends of the _Inflexible_
might be shot away, and the ends riddled and water-logged; and that in
such an event the citadel, though intact, would not have sufficient
stability to save the ship from capsizing.
The reply of the Admiralty was to the effect that Sir Edward Reed had
assumed an extreme case, and that such a complete destruction as he
had envisaged was, even if possible, never likely to occur in a naval
action.
The effect of both statements was to cause widespread anxiety in the
public mind, and a lamentable loss of confidence in the projected
warship. A decision was therefore made to appoint another Committee, of
unquestioned eminence and freedom from bias, to investigate and report
on the _Inflexible_ design. In due course the Committee reported. They
confirmed in a long statement the Admiralty point of view that the
complete penetration and water-logging of the unarmoured ends of the
ship, and the blowing out of the whole of the stores and the cork by
the action of shell fire, was a very highly improbable contingency;
they found that the ship, if reduced to the extremest limit of
instability likely to occur, viz. with her ends completely riddled
and water-logged, but with the stores and cork remaining and adding
buoyancy, would still possess a sufficient reserve both of buoyancy and
of stability; and, balancing the vulnerability of the citadel with its
24-inch armour and the destructibility of the unarmoured ends, they
came to the conclusion that the unarmoured ends were as well able as
the armoured citadel to bear the part assigned to them in encountering
the risks of naval warfare, and that therefore a just balance had been
maintained in the design, so that out of a given set of conditions a
good result had been obtained. Except that a recommendation was made
that the system of cork chambers should be extended, no structural
alteration from the existing design was proposed.
The _Inflexible_ was followed by its smaller derivatives, the _Ajax_
and _Agamemnon_, _Colossus_ and _Edinburgh_, and by the _Conqueror_, an
improved _Rupert_, with a single turret. Movement was in the direction
of smaller displacements and less armour; construction was influenced
at this time more by Italian than by French practice.
§
All through this transitional decade, 1870-80, experience and various
new developments were imperceptibly causing a gradual change of
opinion as to what constituted the best type of battleship. At no
period, perhaps, was the warship more obviously a compromise, at no
time were the limitations of size and weight more keenly felt. So many
considerations interacted with one another, so conflicting were the
claims made of the naval architect, that it appeared indeed almost
impossible to embody them in a satisfactory design. (And yet nothing is
more remarkable than the unanimity with which designers, given certain
conditions, arrived at the same final result: the _Duilio_ and the
_Inflexible_ are a case in point.) Whatever the design might be, it
was open to powerful criticism. And the chief part of this criticism
was directed, as we have seen, against the use and disposition of the
armour.
In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had questioned the wisdom of expending a large
weight in the protection of turrets. Three years later Commander Noel,
in a Prize Essay, was advocating unarmoured batteries, with a view
to multiplying the number of battery guns, utilizing for offence the
weight thus saved. In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had argued that the stinting of
armour on the hull in order to thicken it on the battery would drive
the enemy to multiply his light and medium machine-guns. Within a few
years warships were bristling with Gatling and Gardner, Nordenfelt and
Hotchkiss guns, which by their presence gave a new value to armour,
however thin. Mr. Froude, too, in his experiments in connection with
the _Inflexible_, brought into prominence the advantage which thin
armour on a ship’s ends conferred on her stability. The idea of
substituting cellular construction for armour was proving attractive.
While the French continued to favour the complete water-line belt,
the Italians went to the limit in the _Italia_ and _Lepanto_, in
which the water-line was left entirely unprotected by side armour.
Such armour as was carried was embodied in the form of a protective
deck, a feature found above water and in conjunction with a side belt
in our _Devastation_ class, and under water and without side armour
in the _Inflexible_ and smaller contemporary ships. The protective
deck, which covered the vitals of a ship and deflected shot and shell
from its surface, was a device which found increasing favour with
naval architects. It was advocated by the Committee on Designs in
’71 as possessing important advantages over a similar weight of side
armour. If placed at some distance below water it formed the roof of
a submerged hull structure which was immune from damage by gun-fire,
the sides of this hull being protected sufficiently by sea-water. If,
as was subsequently done, the protective deck were placed at a small
distance above water, and if the sides of it were bent down so as to
meet the ship’s sides at a distance below water beyond which a shot was
unlikely to penetrate, the deck offered other advantages: the vital
machinery, though now partly above water, was still protected, the
sloping parts of the deck being able to deflect shots which would have
penetrated a much thicker vertical plate; moreover, if the ship’s sides
were riddled in action, the protective deck still preserved a large
portion of the water-line area intact, and thereby secured her lateral
stability.
The ram was still in favour, but opinion was slowly changing as to the
necessity for bow-fire. “It is my impression,” wrote Commander Noel in
’76, “that too great a value was attached by some of the authorities,
two or three years ago, to bow-fire; and that the manœuvring of a fleet
in action will be more for the purpose of using the ram effectually,
and the guns in broadsides on passing the enemy.” The firing of the
heavy guns in the approach to ram was considered undesirable, owing
to the obscuring of the scene by smoke. In short, bow-fire was not of
primary importance, and the disposition of armament which sought to
obtain a concentration of bow-fire at the expense of broadside fire was
based on a false principle. Commander Noel advocated a broadside ship,
of moderate tonnage, with an unarmoured battery of moderate-size guns,
with an armour belt round her water-line of 10-inch armour tapering
to 5 inches forward and aft, and backed by wood and coal. Watertight
subdivisions he proposed as a defence against the ram and the torpedo.
As the decade progressed the navy and naval affairs were less and less
a subject of public interest. The design of warships continued to be
discussed by a small circle, but the Board, alive to the transitional
nature of the citadel ships, and under the influence of a national
movement for retrenchment and economy, had almost ceased to build. In
the three years ’76, ’77, and ’78 England laid down only two armoured
battleships, while France laid down a dozen. In ’78 four foreign ships
building in this country were hastily purchased on a Vote of Credit.
But by 1880 the French armoured navy was once more equal in strength to
that of England.
The gun, by its rapid evolution, was blocking design. The long debates
over sails and steam had been settled; it was now the achievement of
powerful breech-loading guns of large and small calibre which threw
all existing ideas of warship design into the melting-pot. It became
known that the French at last possessed efficient breech-loading
guns; and artillerists showed that, in spite of the inconvenience of
long-barrelled guns in ships, long barrels and slow-burning powder
were necessary if greater powers were to be developed, and that our
short-barrelled muzzle-loaders were already becoming obsolete. In the
summer of ’79 public interest was aroused by the arrival at Spithead of
some Chinese gunboats built by the firm of Armstrong. These gunboats
each carried two 12-ton breech-loading guns mounted on centre pivots,
one forward and one aft: guns so powerful and efficient compared with
any mounted in the Royal Navy, that the possibilities of the diminutive
craft were instantly appreciated. The contest between B.L. and M.L.
was approaching a climax. The 100-ton M.L. gun was undergoing proof at
Woolwich. In August a committee of naval officers visited Germany to
witness and report upon the trials of Krupp’s new breech-loaders, and
these trials, and those of Armstrong in this country, confirmed the
formidable character of the new ordnance. Armour was also improving
its power; compound armour (of combined steel and iron) was found to
possess unexpected powers of resistance to penetration.
The torpedo, moreover, in its growing efficiency was now beginning
to have an effect, not only on the details of ship design, but on
the whole nature of naval warfare. The influence of the torpedo in
its various forms had been appreciated in the early days of the
decade.[171] The catastrophic but, happily, fictitious Battle of
Dorking, fought in the pages of _Blackwood’s Magazine_ in 1871, had
been preceded by a naval action in which all but one of our fine
ironclads had been sunk by torpedoes in attempting to ram the French
fleet. The moral was obvious. From that time onwards the potential
effect of the torpedo was seen to be very great. The ram seemed at last
to have found a check. And it appeared that, in combating the ram, the
torpedo had once more given the primacy to the fast-improving gun.
Broadside actions of the old type, carried on at high range and speed,
were predicted.[172]
In 1880 a new type of battleship was evolved of sufficient permanence
to form the basis of whole classes of future ships.
An intimate account of the genesis of the _Collingwood_ design is given
us by the biographer of Sir Cooper Key, to illustrate the manner in
which that prescient administrator succeeded in forecasting the trend
of future construction. In ’66, he says, Captain Key had put on paper a
résumé of his ideas on warship design which was clearly several years
in advance of current opinion. Briefly, he had maintained that the
specifications for our first-class battleships of the future should be
drawn to cover the following features so far as possible:--moderate
speed, small length and great handiness; perfect protection for vital
parts and a complete water-line belt, rather than protection for
personnel and above-water structure; a main-deck armament of broadside
guns of medium calibre amidships, and of lighter calibre towards the
ends, in combination with an upper-deck armament of four large guns
in two unarmoured barbettes, one mounted before the foremast and
one abaft the mizzen-mast; no sails. But for some years no approach
was made to this ideal ship of Captain Key’s; the ideas it embodied
were antagonistic to those held by the great majority of his brother
officers.
“In 1878 there had been laid down by the French, at Toulon, a ship
called the _Caiman_. She was 278 feet long, and had a speed of 14½
knots. She carried a single 42-cm. breech-loading rifled gun at the
bow, and another at the stern, each mounted _en barbette_, and she
further carried on each broadside, between the barbettes, two 10-cm.
guns, besides machine-guns. She was heavily armoured by a water-line
belt 19½ inches thick amidships, and tapering in thickness towards bow
and stern. The middle part of the ship, between the barbettes, was
further protected by a steel deck 2·8 inches thick. Evidently, there
was in this ship some approach to that general ideal which had been
in Sir Cooper Key’s mind in 1866--not, however, more than this. She
gave a sort of hint to the constructors at the Admiralty, and, before
Sir Cooper Key joined the Board, a new design, based indeed on the
_Caiman’s_ hint, but yet differing widely from her, and, by as much as
she differed, approaching more nearly to Sir Cooper Key’s ideal, was in
process of completion there. The ship was the _Collingwood_.”
The _Collingwood_ was of 9150 tons displacement, 325 feet in length, 68
feet in breadth, and 15·7 knots speed. There was in her, for the first
time in the navy, that particular disposition of guns which Captain Key
had recommended in ’66: two guns at bow, two at stern, on turntables,
and a strong broadside armament between them. In the end the adoption
of a breech-loading system led to a larger barbette and a smaller
battery armament: to 43-ton guns at bow and stern and only 6-inch guns
on the broadsides; and in this way the final design differed more than
did the original from the ’66 ideal. “The bow and stern guns were
protected by barbette and other armour, but Key had required that
some protection should be given to the turntables and the machinery
for working them. Hydraulics had greatly increased the quantity and
importance of this machinery, and as by its means the crews of the
guns were very much diminished, we can imagine the admiral concurring
in the change as a natural development of his principle. So we can
understand him as now definitely concurring in the abandonment of sail
power for first-class battleships.” In ’78 he had flown his flag in the
_Thunderer_ at sea, and he had then experienced the reliability of the
gun machinery and the difficulties attendant on the manœuvring of a
modern fleet under sail.
Both in armament and in disposition of armour the _Collingwood_ was a
great but a natural advance on the citadel ships of the _Inflexible_
type. The symmetrical placing of the big gun turntables, one forward
and one aft, proclaimed the advent of new tactical ideas--the
recognition of the battleship as a unit which must take its place in
the line with others, and the rejection of “end-on” methods of fighting
which involved a concentration of bow-fire. The provision of the
powerful secondary armament was a tribute to the growing efficiency
of French torpedo craft, while at the same time serving, offensively,
to force an enemy to protect himself against it: to spread his armour
over as large a surface as possible in the attempt to preserve his
stability in a protracted action. The concentration of armour on the
fixed barbettes and on a partial belt over the central portion of the
ship was in accordance with the _Inflexible_ arrangement. But, in
consequence of the strictures which had been passed on that vessel
and on the exposure of her large unprotected ends, the _Collingwood_
was given a longer belt, though not so thick. Fifty-four per cent of
her length was covered with 18-inch compound armour, as compared with
42 per cent, and 24-inch armour, in the former ship. Although this
longer belt appeared to confer greater longitudinal stability on the
ship, its narrowness was such that it was of doubtful efficacy, as Sir
Edward Reed was not slow to point out. So narrow was this belt, so big
still remained the unarmoured ends, that the slight sinkage caused by
their filling would bring the whole of the armour belt, he said, under
water. Thus all the advantage arising from a longer citadel was more
than destroyed by this lowering of the armour, and, so great was the
consequent danger of the vessel capsizing, that he hesitated to regard
the _Collingwood_ as an armoured ship.
The _Collingwood_ was laid down in July, 1880. But what was there to
show that her design would be in any degree permanent? Was it safe to
consider it sufficiently satisfactory to form the master-pattern for a
number of new ships, urgently required?
For a short time there was uncertainty. “The French type, where there
were isolated armoured barbette towers generally containing single
heavy guns placed at the ends and sides of the ships upon the upper
deck, with broadside batteries of lighter guns, entirely unprotected
by armour, upon the deck below, did not commend itself to the English
naval mind, yet, in the sort of despair which possessed us, the new
Board turned somewhat towards the French system. The _Warspite_ and
_Impérieuse_ were laid down in 1881, and were again a new departure in
British design.... It was intended to adhere to sail power in these
new types, and it was only after they were approaching completion that
the utter incongruity of the proposal was realized, and sail power was
given up in the last of the armoured ships to which it was attempted to
apply it.”
But the Admiralty still wished, without alarming the public, to regain
as soon as possible a safe balance of armoured construction over that
of France. “There was no design before the Board which was more likely
to perpetuate itself than that of the unlaunched _Collingwood_. Suppose
a bold policy were adopted? Suppose it were assumed that the time had
come when diversities of type were to cease, would it be made less
likely by the frank abandonment of sail power?”
The bold step was taken. Four more ships to the _Collingwood_ design
were laid down in ’82, the five being thereafter spoken of as the
“Admiral” class. “At the time, little note was taken of this very
great step in advance. Even at this day it is scarcely remembered
that this is the step which made possible, and led up to, our
present great battle fleet, and that never before had so many as
five first-class ironclads of a definite type been on the stocks
together.... In the Admiral class there was the definite parting with
sail power, the rejection of the tactical ideas brought to a climax
in the _Inflexible_, and, above all, the definite adoption of the
long-barrelled breech-loading rifled gun. Without question, we must say
that we owe the Admiral class, and all that has followed, in great part
to the enterprising and yet well-balanced mind that then governed the
naval part of the Council at Whitehall.”
§
At this point in the evolution of the ironclad it is convenient to
bring our survey to an end. The _Collingwood_ marks the final return
(with one or two notorious exceptions) to the truly broadside ship,
the ship with armament symmetrically disposed fore and aft, intended
to fight with others in the line. From the Admiral class onwards the
modern battleship evolved for years along a continuous and clearly
defined curve of progression. It only remains to close this brief and
necessarily superficial historical sketch with a few remarks upon the
classification of warships.
In tracing the types of ironclads which superseded each other in direct
succession, no mention has been made of other than those which formed
in their time the chief units of naval force. Other war-vessels there
were, of course, subsidiary to the main fighting force, whose value and
functions we now briefly indicate.
So long as sails remained the sole motive power, warships retained the
same classification as they had received in the seventeenth century.
“Up to the time of the Dutch Wars,” says Admiral Colomb, “ships were
both ‘royal’ and of private contribution; of all sorts and sizes
and ‘rates.’ Fighting was therefore promiscuous. Fleets sailed in
the form of half-moons, or all heaped together and, except for the
struggle to get the weather gage, there were no tactics. Actions were
general.” Then, in order to protect their fleets from the fire ship,
the Dutch first introduced the Line of Battle: “in which formation
it was easy for a fleet to leeward to open out so as to let a fire
ship drift harmlessly through.” And so the efficacy of the fire ship
was destroyed. “But now, with a Line, each ship had a definite place
which she could not quit. Hence the diversities in sizes began to be
eliminated. The weakest ships, which might find themselves opposite
the strongest, were dropped for ships ‘fit to lie in the line,’ i.e.
for what were afterwards called ‘line-of-battle ships.’ These ships
would be individually as powerful as possible, only subject to the
objection of putting too many eggs in one basket. Uniformity would thus
be attained. The fleet of line ships, however, required look-outs or
scouts, which could keep the seas and attend, yet out-sail, the fleet.
Hence the heavy frigate. Lastly, there was the much lighter attendant
on commerce (either by way of attack or defence), the light cruiser.”
Although this differentiation of types was based ostensibly upon
displacement or tonnage, in reality it was formed on a more scientific
basis. Admiral Sir George Elliot demonstrated, in 1867, that the real
basis was not a rule of size, but a _law of safety_, similar to that
which operates in the natural world; a law so important that it should
under no circumstances be disregarded. He showed that sailing ships
conformed to this law. He showed that the reduction of a vessel’s
size, for instance, endowed her with smaller draught and an increased
speed; that the dispensing with one quality automatically gave another
in compensation; and that thus the weakly armed vessel always possessed
the means, if not to fight, to escape from capture.[173]
With the coming of steam and armour, all this was changed. Size had
now no inherent disability; on the contrary, the larger the ship the
greater the horse-power which could be carried in her, the greater her
probable speed and sea endurance. The small ship had no advantages.
The old classification had clearly broken down. The first ironclads,
the _Warrior_ and her successors, although of frigate form, belonged
to no particular class; they were of a special type intended to cope
with the most powerful ships afloat or projected; and subsequent ships
were designed with the same end in view. These ships being faster as
well as more powerful than those of a smaller size, there was no object
in attempting to build others of a frigate class for the purpose of
outsailing them.
As material developed, and as the warship became more and more
obviously a compromise between conflicting qualities, differentiation
of types was once more seen to be necessary. Attempts were made to
classify on the bases of displacement, material, defensive and motive
power, service, system of armament. In the end British construction
divided itself into two categories: armoured and unarmoured vessels.
And each of these categories was subdivided into classes of ships
analogous to those of the old sailing ships.
But, during the transitional period 1860 to 1880, when armour and
iron ships, steam engines, rifled guns, and fish torpedoes, were all
in their infancy and subject to the most rapid development, no such
classification was recognized. The circumstances of the Crimean War,
with the adoption of armour and the sudden and enormous growth in the
unit of artillery force which took place soon afterwards, led to the
first differentiation of ironclads, into ocean-going and coast-defence
vessels. We have already noted this fact. We have seen how, especially
to the lesser Powers, the turreted monitor appeared to offer an
economical and effective form of naval force; and we have noted how, in
America, the evolution proceeded in the opposite direction, viz. from
coast-defence monitor to ocean-going turret ship. This differentiation
prevailed for many years. It prevailed even in the British navy, in
spite of its being in full opposition to the offensive principle on
which that navy had always based its policy.
Later, although convinced that in any war involving this country and
its colonies the chief combats must be fought in European waters, naval
opinion saw the necessity for a type of ship designed primarily for the
defence and attack of commerce: a speedy, lightly armed and protected
type capable of overhauling and injuring a weaker, or of escaping from
a more powerful enemy. The American War of ’62, in which no general sea
action was fought, gave the impulse to the construction of the type
which eventually became known as the _cruiser_. Vessels were built in
’63 expressly to overtake Confederate vessels and drive from the seas
the Southern mercantile marine. These vessels were to annihilate the
enemy’s commerce without being drawn themselves to take part in an
engagement, unless in very favourable circumstances. Several such ships
were built. The first, the _Idaho_, was a complete failure; the next
attempt was little more successful; and those subsequently constructed,
the _Wampanoag_ class, the finest ships of the type which existed at
the close of the war, which were designed for 17 knots and to carry
sixteen 10- or 11-inch smooth-bore cast-iron guns on the broadside and
a revolving 60-pounder rifle in the bows, suffered from miscalculations
in design and from the weakness peculiar to long and heavily weighted
timber-built ships. “These pioneers of the type,” says Brassey, “were
followed, both in England and in France, by vessels believed by the
builders of their respective countries to be better adapted for the
work for which they were designed.”
At first England and France had built and appropriated small ironclads
to this secondary service; in France the _Belliqueuse_, in England
the _Pallas_, were designed to this end. But in ’66 the first ship of
the cruiser type was built for the British navy: the _Inconstant_,
of Sir Edward Reed’s design, an iron-built, fine-lined vessel with a
speed of 16 knots and a large coal capacity. She was followed by the
corvettes _Active_ and _Volage_, and then, in ’73, by the _Shah_ and
_Raleigh_. Experience with the early cruisers showed the advantages
of large displacement. “The greater number of the American corvettes
had now been launched. A trial of one of them showed that the high
hopes which had been entertained of their performance were fallacious.
It now appeared no longer necessary that the English corvettes
should possess such extraordinary power and speed, qualities which
necessarily required very large displacements. The Admiralty, however,
still believing in the wisdom of the policy which they had previously
adopted, decided to follow a totally different course from that which
all other navies had been compelled by financial considerations to
follow. So far from diminishing the size of their ships, increased
displacement was given to the new designs.”[174] Full sail power was
still required, for the high-power steam engine used by the cruiser for
fighting purposes was most uneconomical. The _Raleigh_, for instance,
burned her six hundred tons of coal in less than 36 hours, at full
speed.
But after the _Raleigh_ came a slight reaction. With a view to economy
a smaller type of vessel was designed, the smallest possible vessel
which could be contrived which would possess a covered-in gun deck
in combination with other features considered essential in a frigate
class; the result was the _Boadicea_ or the _Bacchante_ class. In the
late ’seventies size again increased, and the _Iris_ and _Mercury_,
unsheathed vessels of steel, with coal-protection for their water-line
and extended watertight subdivision of the hull, were laid down.
From the unarmoured, unprotected cruiser was in time evolved, by the
competition of units, the armoured cruiser. Russia led the way. Her
_General-Admiral_, the first belted cruiser, was built to compete with
the _Raleigh_ and _Boadicea_. Then England designed the _Shannon_,
partially belted and with protective deck and coal protection, to
outmatch her. Eventually the cleavage came, and the cruisers were
themselves divided into two or more classes, in accordance with their
duties, size and fitness for the line of battle.
* * * * *
Of the development of torpedo craft this is not the place to write;
although the torpedo was fast growing in efficiency and importance, it
had not, before 1880, become the centre and cause of a special craft
and a special system for its employment in action. But after that
date the creation of torpedo flotillas began to exercise a marked and
continuous effect upon the evolution of the ironclad. The fish-torpedo,
improving at a phenomenal rate in the first years of its development,
and at first esteemed as of defensive value and as a counter to the
ram, became, after 1880, an offensive weapon of the first importance.
The ram, already suspected of being placed too high in popular
estimation, suffered a decline; the danger of its use in action was
emphasized by naval officers, whose opinion alone was decisive: its
use, as an eminent tactician explained, reduced the chances of battle
to a mere toss-up, since there was “only half a ship’s length between
ramming and being rammed.” The gun developed in power, in range, and
accuracy; but not (up to the end of the century) at so great a rate
as its rival, the torpedo. The steam engine affected all weapons
by its continuous development. It depressed the ram, enhanced the
importance of the gun, and endowed the torpedo with a large accession
of potential value in placing it, in its special fast sea-going craft,
within reach of the battleship; moreover, it enabled the cruiser to
regain its old supremacy of speed over the line-of-battle unit. Armour,
quick-firing guns, secondary armament, watertight construction, net
defence, all influenced the development of the various types. But it
was the torpedo, borne into action by the high-speed steam engine,
which had the greatest effect on naval types in the last two decades of
the century, and which at one time bid fair to cause a constructional
revolution as great as that of 1860. The torpedo, according to a
school of French enthusiasts, had destroyed the ironclad battleship
and dealt a heavy blow at English sea power by paving the way for an
inexpensive navy designed for a _guerre de course_. The ironclad was
dead, they cried, and might as well be placed in the Louvre museum
along with the old three-deckers! In Italy and Germany, too, the
logic of facts seemed to point to a vast depreciation in the power of
existing navies: the fate of the expensive ironclad seemed assured, in
the presence of small, fast, sea going torpedo-boats. Still, it was
noticed, England laid down battleships. True; this was quite in keeping
with her machiavellian policy. Had she not resisted--“not blindly, but
with a profound clairvoyance”--all the inventions of the century? Had
she not successfully baulked the development of Fulton’s mines, steam
navigation, the shell gun, and the ironclad itself? And, now that steam
had made the blockade impossible and the torpedo had attacked the
ironclad effectually, making sea-supremacy an empty term, could not
the British Empire be destroyed by taking the choice of weapons out of
England’s hands?
The prospect was alluring. Yet the ironclad survived the menace
and remained the standard unit of naval power. Expensive, designed
with several aims and essentially complex,--a compromise, like man
himself,--it could not be replaced by a number of small, cheap,
uni-functional vessels, each constructed for one sole and special
purpose, without loss of efficiency and concentration of power.
Nor could it be supplanted by a type which, like the sea-going
torpedo-boat, could only count on an ascendancy over it in certain
moments of its own choosing--for example, at night-time or in a fog. To
every novel species of attack the ironclad proved superior, calling to
its aid the appropriate defensive measures.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Sir Harry Nicolas: _History of the Royal Navy_.
[2] The greatest authoritative works on ancient and medieval shipping,
it should be mentioned, are the _Archéologie Navale_ and the _Glossaire
Nautique_ of M. Jal, published in 1840 and 1848 respectively.
[3] Corbett: _Drake and the Tudor Navy_.
[4] Corbett.
[5] Oppenheim.
[6] Corbett.
[7] Navy Records Soc.: Edited by Sir John Laughton.
[8] Cases were known where ships, unfit for sea, completed their voyage
in safety, to fall to pieces immediately on being taken into dock and
deprived of that continual support which they derived from the water
when afloat (_Charnock_).
[9] Chief-constructor D. W. Taylor, U.S.N.
[10] Creuze: _Shipbuilding_.
[11] Manwayring.
[12] Navy Records Soc.: 1918. _Edited by_ W. G. Perrin, Esq., O.B.E.
[13] Captain John Smith’s _Sea Man’s Grammar_ also appeared in the
early part of this century.
[14] Sir J. Knowles, F.R.S.
[15] Willett: _Memoirs on Naval Architecture_.
[16] It has been suggested that the restricted draught given to the
Dutch ships, owing to the shallowness of their coast waters, had the
result of necessitating a generous breadth, and therefore made them
generally stiffer than vessels of English construction.
[17] Derrick in his Memoirs refers to this ship us having been built of
burnt instead of kilned timber, and as having special arrangements for
circulating air in all its parts.
[18] Charnock.
[19] Colomb: _Sea Warfare_.
[20] Creuze: _Papers on Naval Architecture_.
[21] Even the scientific Sir William Petty cast a veil of mystery
over his processes. “I only affirm,” he writes, “that the perfection
of sailing lies in my principle, _finde it out who can!_” (See Pepys’
Diary for 31st July, 1663.)
[22] Creuze: _Shipbuilding, Encycl. Brit._, 7th Edition, 1841. It
should be mentioned that the work of Dr. Colin McLaurin, of Edinburgh,
in giving a mathematical solution for the angles at which a ship’s
sails should be set, had received considerable attention on the
Continent.
[23] See a paper by Mr. Johns, R.C.N.C., in _Trans. I.N.A._ 1910.
[24] Willett: _Memoirs on Naval Architecture_.
[25] At the beginning of the eighteenth century the English first
rates carried 100 guns. The second rate comprised two classes: (1) a
three-decker of 90; (2) a two-decker of 80. Ships of these rates were
few in number and very expensive. The bulk of our fleets consisted of
third rates: two-deckers of 70 guns in war and 62 in peace time and on
foreign stations (_Charnock_).
[26] Sir C. Knowles: _Observations on Shipbuilding_.
[27] _Letters of Sir Byam Martin_: N.R. Soc.
[28] Sir C. Knowles: _Observations on Shipbuilding_.
[29] In 1784 Thomas Gordon published a treatise entitled _Principles
of Naval Architecture_, drawing attention to the work of the French
scientists and advocating increased length and breadth, finer lines,
and a more systematic disposition of materials, for improving the
strength and seaworthiness of our royal ships. No notice was taken of
his communications to Lord Sandwich, but there is no evidence that his
predicted fate overtook him: “to be traduced as an innovator theorist,
and visionary projector, as has been the fate of most authors of useful
discoveries in modern times, particularly in Britain.”
“The bigotry of old practice,” recorded Mr. Willett in 1793, “opposes
everything that looks like innovation.”
[30] Fincham says their armament was established as, thirty 32-pounders
on the lower deck, thirty 24-pounders on the middle deck, thirty-two
18-pounders on the upper deck, and on the quarter-deck and forecastle
eighteen 12-pounders.
[31] James: _Naval History_.
[32] _Letters of Sir Byam Martin_: N.R. Soc.
[33] Sharp: _Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Sir W. Symonds_.
[34] Hannay: _Ships and Men_. This formula was known before, for
Bushnell mentions it in his _Compleat Shipwright_ of 1678.
[35] Sharp: _Memoirs of Admiral Sir W. Symonds_.
[36] E. J. Reed: _On the Modifications to Ships of the Royal Navy_.
[37] _Ibid._
[38] Lieut.-Col. H. W. L. Hime: _The Origin of Artillery_.
[39] In the _Histoire d’Artillerie_ of MM. Reinaud and Favé long
excerpts from Bacon are examined, from which it appears that he
suggested the use of gunpowder in military operations. Gibbon says:
“That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients,
saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of
mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own
discovery.”
[40] Lieut. H. Brackenbury, R.A.: _Ancient Cannon in Europe_. Vol. IV
and V of Proc. R.A.I.
[41] Schmidt: _Armes à feu portatives_.
[42] Sir Harry Nicolas, in his _History of the Royal Navy_, attributes
the documents to the reign of Edward III: an error of more than seventy
years. The mistake is exposed by a writer in Vol. XXVI of _The English
Historical Review_, in an article on “Firearms in England in the
Fourteenth Century.” The writer also gives the English records relating
to the use of firearms at Cressy.
[43] Brackenbury.
[44] The secrecy of the early writers of Italy on gunnery and kindred
subjects has been remarked on by Maurice Cockle in his _Bibliography of
Military Books_. He attributes it to two motives: fear that the Infidel
(the Turk) might profit by the knowledge otherwise gained, and a desire
to keep the secrets of the craft in the hands of their countrymen,
whose knowledge and assistance the foreigner would then be forced to
purchase.
[45] _The Great Cannon of Muhammad II_: Brig.-Gen. J. H. Lefroy, R.A.,
F.R.S. Vol. VI of Proc. R.A.I.
[46] Ascribing the deliverance of Constantinople from the Saracens in
the two sieges of A.D. 668 and 716 to the novelty, the terrors, and
the real efficacy of Greek fire, Gibbon says: “The important secret
of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by
Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the
service of the caliph to that of the emperor. The skill of a chemist
and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies.”
For the story of the manner in which its mystery was guarded at
Constantinople, of its theft by the Infidel, and of the use he made of
it against the Christian chivalry at the crusades, see Chapter LII of
_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.
[47] Grose: _Military Antiquities_.
[48] Hayley’s MSS.: quoted by M. A. Lower.
[49] Oppenheim.
[50] Oppenheim.
[51] Corned powder was graded in France in the year 1540 into three
sizes by means of sieves which varied with the types of guns for which
they were intended (see Hime: _Origin of Artillery_). By the end of the
century the manufacture had evidently improved in this country. “Some
do make excellent good corn powder, so fine, that the corns thereof are
like thime seed,” wrote Thos. Smith in his _Art of Gunnery_, A.D. 1600.
[52] Oppenheim.
[53] Bourne: _The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance_, 1587.
[54] Sir J. K. Laughton: _Armada Papers, N.R.S._
[55] Smith demolished, to his own satisfaction, a theory current
that some molecular movement of the metal took place at the moment
of gunfire. “I asked the opinion of a soldier, who for a trespass
committed was enjoined to ride the canon, who confidently affirmed, he
could perceive no quivering of the metal of the piece, but that the air
which issued out of the mouth and touch-hole of the piece did somewhat
astonish and shake him.”
[56] The advantages of large calibres had been appreciated in the
previous century. Sir Richard Hawkins, in his _Observations_, printed
in 1593, compares the armament of his own ships with that of his
Spanish opponents, and says: “Although their artillery were larger,
weightier, and many more than ours, and in truth did pierce with
greater violence; yet ours being of greater bore, and carrying a
weightier and greater shot, was of more importance and of better effect
for sinking and spoiling.”
[57] Oppenheim.
[58] A significant view of the attitude of these professionals toward
any innovation in gunnery material is afforded by the entry of Mr.
Pepys in his diary for the 17th April, 1669.
[59] An anonymous writer in the _Pall Mall Gazette_.
[60] Le Sieur Malthus, gentil-homme Anglois, Commissaire Général des
Feux et Artifices de l’Artillerie de France, Capitaine General des
Sappes et Mines d’icelle & Ingeniéur és Armées du Roy, published his
_Pratique de la Guerre_ in 1668. This notable but almost-forgotten
artillerist introduced the use of mortars and bombs into France, in
1637. He was killed by a musket ball at the siege of Gravelines, as he
elevated himself above the rampart of a trench in order to watch the
effect of a bomb (St. Remy: _Mémoires_).
[61] This account is taken from _Historical Notes on Woolwich_, Lieut.
Grover, R.E. (Proc. R.A.I., Vol. VI).
[62] Le Blond: _Traité de l’Artillerie_, 1743.
[63] Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Congreve, Bart., was, as Captain Congreve,
appointed in 1783 to the control of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich.
Sent in ’79 to Plymouth, to examine the gunpowders of H.M. ships in
consequence of the complaints of Admiral Barington, he found only
four serviceable barrels in the whole fleet. The gross frauds then
brought to light led to the formation of the Government establishment
at Waltham Abbey. His son was the inventor of the Congreve sight and
rocket.
[64] Gen. Sir Thomas Blomefield, Bart., who started his service
career as a midshipman, commanded a bomb vessel under Rodney at the
bombardment of Havre in 1759, and was present at Quiberon. After varied
service abroad he was appointed, in 1780, Inspector of Artillery and
of the Brass Foundry. “Never was the need of military supervision
over military manufactures more apparent than at this period. The
guns supplied to the naval and military forces had degenerated to the
lowest point in quality. Bursts were of frequent occurrence, and would
doubtless have been much more frequent if the roguery of contractors in
gunpowder had not kept pace with the roguery of contractors in guns....
From this period dates the high character of British cast iron and
brass ordnance.”
[65] Favé.
[66] The author of the _Études sur l’Artillerie_ places emphasis on
the importance of the substitution of cast iron for stone projectiles,
as augmenting the power of artillery. Stone balls broke to pieces on
impact with masonry, and were of small destructive power except when
in large mass, as projected from the largest bombards. He claims the
introduction of iron shot, the use of trunnions for elevating, and the
standardization of calibres, for the French artillery of Charles VIII,
who in 1495 descended on Italy.
[67] Favé.
[68] Lieut.-Col. Hime, R.A.: _The Progress of Field Artillery_.
[69] Owen: _Lectures on Artillery_.
[70] Whewell: _History of the Inductive Sciences_.
[71] _Encycl. Brit._, 11th Edition.
[72] This project, however, is mentioned of an engine called by him “a
semi-omnipotent engine,” the subject of the 98th invention: “an engine
so contrived, that working the _Primum mobile_ forward or backward,
upward or downward, circularly or cornerwise, to and fro, straight,
upright or downright, yet the pretended operation continueth and
advanceth, none of the motions above-mentioned hindering, much less
stopping the other.”
This engine is obviously not the same as that described as the
sixty-eighth invention.
[73] A well-known story, quoted at length in the Memoirs of Sir John
Barrow, connected de Caus with the Marquis of Worcester in dramatic
fashion. The Marquis was being conducted through the prison of the
Bicêtre in Paris when his attention was attracted by the screams of
an old madman who had made a wonderful discovery of the power of
steam, and who had so importuned Cardinal Richelieu that he had been
incarcerated as a nuisance.
“This person,” said the insolvent Lord Worcester after conversing with
him, “is no madman; and in my country, instead of shutting him up, they
would heap riches upon him. In this prison you have buried the greatest
genius of your age.”
The fable, and its exposure by a French writer, M. Figuier, are
described in Dirck’s book.
[74] Millington: _Natural Philosophy_.
[75] Sir E. D. Lawrence: _Steam in Relation to Cornwall_.
[76] Enouf: _Papin, sa vie et son œuvre_.
[77] On the evidence of a picture purporting to represent the first
Newcomen engine, in which mechanisms are shown for operating the cocks
automatically, an attempt has been made to prove that the manipulated
cocks were a figment and the story of Humphrey Potter a myth. The
iconoclast has not been successful. The evidence that the first engines
were hand-controlled is very general (see Galloway’s _Steam Engine and
Its Inventors_).
[78] At this time the corpuscular theory of heat still held the field.
“Caloric,” or the matter of heat, was supposed to be a substance which
could be imparted to or abstracted from a body, which had the property
of augmenting its bulk, but not its weight, by setting its particles at
a greater or less distance from one another.
[79] _Encycl. Brit._, Eleventh Edition.
[80] A text-book published a few years before Robins’ birth (Binnings’
_Light to the Art of Gunnery_, 1689) told how a certain profane and
godless gunner, Cornelius Slime, was carried off by the devil before
the eyes of the astonished onlookers!
[81] Whewell: _Hist. of the Inductive Sciences_.
[82] Dr. Halley: _Phil. Trans._, 1686.
[83] How strange and almost incredible this phenomenon appeared to
people long after Robins’ time, may be seen from the manner in which
Ezekiel Baker, one of the principal London gunmakers and the contractor
who supplied the rifles with which the Rifle Brigade was equipped in
the year 1800, poured gentle sarcasm on the account of this experiment.
In his book on _Rifle Guns_, published in 1825, he can only assign the
cause of the deflection to “some peculiar enchantment in the air.”
“Or,” he continues, “with all my practice I have yet much to learn in
guns, and the effects of powder and wind upon the ball in its flight.”
[84] Of the superstitious awe with which an iron field-piece was
regarded by the highlanders in ’45, and of its small material value in
the field, a note will be found in the appendices to Scott’s _Waverley_.
[85] Mr. Patrick Miller, who is mentioned in a later chapter as
builder of the first successful steam-propelled vessel, was also an
enthusiastic artillerist. In a memorandum to the Select Committee of
the House of Commons, appointed in 1824 to consider the claims of
various inventors of steam-vessels, a Mr. Taylor gave the following
evidence: “I found him (Mr. Miller) a gentleman of great patriotism,
generosity, and philanthropy; and at the same time of a very
speculative turn of mind. Before I knew him (1785) he had gone through
a very long and expensive course of experiments upon artillery of which
the carronade was the result.”
[86] On April 20th, 1669, Mr. Pepys recorded in his diary a
visit to “the Old Artillery-ground near the Spitalfields” to see
a new gun “which, from the shortness and bigness, they do call
Punchinello.” Tried against a gun of double its own length, weight,
and powder-charge, Punchinello shot truer to a mark and was easier
to manage and had no greater recoil--to the great regret of the old
gunners and officers of the ordnance that were there.
The gallant inventor offered Mr. Pepys a share in the profits; there
seemed great promise that the king would favour it for naval use.
“And,” adds Pepys, “no doubt but it will be of profit to merchantmen
and others to have guns of the same form at half the charge.”
[87] James: _Naval History_.
[88] The carrying of _sham_ guns among their armament was not unknown
in the case of vessels which boasted a reputation for their superior
speed and sailing qualities (vide _Bentham Papers_).
[89] Captain Simmons, R.A.
[90] The carriage thus formed out of a baulk or trunk appears to have
been known as a trunk carriage. Norton describes the cannon-periers as
being mounted on “trunk carriages provided with four trucks.”
[91] Oppenheim.
[92] It was evidently a practice at this period to vary the diameter
of the trucks to suit the ship’s structure and the height of the
gun-ports. “Be careful,” says Bourne in 1587, “that the trucks be not
too high, for if the trucks be too high, then it will keep the carriage
that it will not go close against the ship’s side.... And the truck
being very high, it is not a small thing under a truck that will stay
it, etc. etc. And also, if that the truck be too high, it will cause
the piece to have the greater reverse or recoil. Therefore, the lower
that the trucks be, it is the better.”
Bourne also mentions, in the same book, the _Art of Shooting in Great
Ordnance_, as a curious invention of a “high Dutchman” a gun mounting
so devised as to allow the piece to rotate through 180° about its
trunnions for loading.
[93] Manwayring: _Sea-Man’s Dictionary_.
[94] Oppenheim.
[95] Hutchinson: _Naval Architecture_.
[96] In the margin of the copy of _The Art of Gunnery_, Thos. Smith,
A.D. 1600, in the library of the R.U.S.I. in Whitehall, is the
following note, written in legible seventeenth-century script: “Some
make a device to discharge at a distance by a long string, fixed to a
device like a cock for a gun with a flint or like a musket cock with a
match.”
In the same work are instructions as to firing in a wind, when the
train of powder might be blown from the vent before the linstock could
be applied. The gunner was to form a clay rampart, a sort of tinker’s
dam, on the metal of the piece on the windward side of the touch-hole.
[97] On this Sir John Laughton remarked: “The exercise, so born,
continued as long as the old men-of-war and the old guns--‘Ships
passing on opposite tacks; three rounds of quick firing’” (_Barham
Papers_, N.R. Soc.).
[98] A form of sight for use with ordnance was described by Nathaniel
Nye, in his _Art of Gunnery_, of 1674. It consisted of a lute-string
and a movable bead, with a scale opposite the latter graduated in
degrees and inches.
[99] In Lloyd and Hadcock’s _Artillery_ an extract from a letter
written in 1801 by Lord Nelson relative to a proposal to use gun-sights
at sea is given. The letter is unfavourable to the invention on the
ground that, as ships should always be at such close quarters with
their enemies that missing becomes impossible, such appliances would be
superfluous. But in this connection the observation is made that, with
the degree of accuracy of guns up to the nineteenth century a rough
“line of metal” aim was probably all that was justified, in the matter
of sighting. In other words, with one element of the system (the gun)
so very inaccurate, nothing was to be gained by increasing the accuracy
of another element (the sight) to a disproportionate degree. With
increasing accuracy of the gun, increasing accuracy of sight was called
for.
[100] In Vol. IV of the _Proceedings of the Royal Artillery
Institution_, in an article by General Lefroy, an order is quoted
showing that trials were made of firing shells horizontally by the
Royal Artillery in Canada in 1776. The author also shows that the
trials made by the French in 1784-6 were brought to the notice of Lord
Nelson.
In Vol. V is the following extract: “Experiments were made on
Acton Common in 1760, to fire coehorn and royal shells from 12-and
24-pounders, in order to be applied to the sea service; but as the
shells were found frequently to burst in the guns, it was thought too
hazardous to introduce them on board ships of war.”
[101] The first public demonstration was given by Lieut. Shrapnel,
R.A., before the G.O.C., Gibraltar, in the year 1787.
[102] Simmons: _Effect of Heavy Ordnance_, 1837.
[103] James: _Naval History_.
[104] A short review of both books is given in the _Papers on Naval
Architecture_, edited by Morgan and Creuze, 1829.
[105] See Hugo’s _Toilers of the Sea_.
[106] “As for guns,” wrote Fuller in his _Worthies of England_,
comparing the relative merits of the inventions of printing and
gunpowder, “it cannot be denied, that though most behold them as
instruments of cruelty; partly, because subjecting valour to chance;
partly, because guns give no quarter (which the sword sometimes doth);
yet it will appear that, since their invention, Victory hath not stood
so long a neuter, and hath been determined with the loss of fewer
lives.”
[107] At a later date this reduction in number of types of ordnance was
extended to cover land artillery. In ’62 the French brought down the
number of different calibres to four: one for the field, one for the
siege, and two (the 30-and 50-pounders) for the navy.
[108] Dahlgren: _Shells and Shell-Guns_, 1856.
[109] By this time Denmark, Holland, Russia and Sweden had all
recognized the possibilities of shell guns, and had adopted them in
greater or less degree. By this time, too, France actually possessed
more steam war-vessels than we had ourselves.
[110] Simmons: _Effects of Heavy Ordnance_.
[111] The crossbow was looked upon as a weapon unworthy of a brave
man; a prejudice which afterwards prevailed with respect to fire-arms
(Hallam: _Middle Ages_).
[112] The Hon. T. F. Fremantle: _The Book of the Rifle_.
[113] _Le Développement des Armes à Feu_, 1870.
[114] In this aspect of the origin of the grooves there is a curious
analogy between the rifle-barrel and the drill used in machine tools.
In the primitive drill the shank is appreciably less in diameter than
the hole cut by the drill, so that the drillings can easily work their
way out of the hole. When, however, it was desired to make the shank
almost of the same diameter as the hole, so as to form a guide, it was
necessary to flute it with two grooves or more to allow the drillings
to get away. In the course of its evolution these grooves became spiral.
[115] Quoted in _The Book of the Rifle_ from Schmidt’s _Armes à Feu
Portatives_, 1889.
[116] Delvigne: _Notice historique des armes rayées_.
[117] Beaufoy: _Scloppetaria_.
[118] A paragraph in Beaufoy’s _Scloppetaria_ (1808) shows the complete
misconception under which its author laboured as to the function of
rifling. Just as the air turns a windmill or a shuttlecock (he says),
so, after an indented ball quits its rifled barrel the air, forced
spirally along its grooves, will cause the ball to turn. In short, he
regarded the spiral grooves of a barrel as being of no further utility,
with respect to the generating of the rotary motion, than as an easy
way of giving the ball the requisite indentations.
[119] Fremantle: _The Book of the Rifle_.
[120] Captain A. Walker: _The Rifle_, 1864.
[121] At the beginning of the century Ezekiel Baker had noted that “a
wadding in the shape of an acorn cup placed on the powder, and the ball
put on the top of the cup, will expand the cup and fill the bore--and
of course the windage will be much diminished.”
[122] Mention must be made of an important prior development of the
elongated bullet which had been carried out by General Jacob in India,
quite independently of French research. General Jacob conducted, in an
altogether scientific manner, experiments the successful results of
which were communicated by him to the home government on more than one
occasion. The importance of his discoveries remained unrecognized, and
the value of his improvements was lost to this country.
[123] In military circles the possibilities of the invasion of this
country had for some time been under discussion, in view of the
increasingly aggressive temper of the French. Interest in national
defence became general with the warning letter of the Duke of
Wellington which appeared in _The Times_ on the 9th January, 1847. In
’51 was held the Great Exhibition, and for a time opinion was less
agitated. The Exhibition, it was thought and hoped by numbers of
people, would inaugurate the millennium.
[124] This advantage of the rifled gun hod been fully appreciated
by Captain Norton. As early as 1832 he had conducted trials with
one-pounder rifled cannon, to confirm his belief that the projectile
would maintain its rotation during flight and hit the target
point-first (_Journal of R.U.S.I._, 1837).
[125] Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.: _Journal of R.U.S.I._, Vol. VI,
1862.
[126] Tennant: _The Story of the Guns_. This book gives in detail the
controversy which arose between the advocates of the Armstrong and the
Whitworth systems.
[127] _Edinburgh Review_, 1859. Quoted by Sir E. Tennant.
[128] The sudden and extraordinary development of rifled ordnance
which now took place had a revolutionary effect not only on naval
architecture and gunnery but on land fortification. In ’59 Sir William
Armstrong, giving evidence before a committee appointed by the War
Secretary, stated that he could attain with a specially constructed
gun a range of five miles. The statement made a sensation; for in the
presence of such a gun most of the existing defences of our dockyards
and depots were almost useless. A Commission on National Defence
was formed. It reported that new fortifications were necessary for
our principal arsenals, the fleet alone being insufficient for the
defence of ports. “The introduction of steam,” stated the report, “may
operate to our disadvantage in diminishing to some extent the value of
superior seamanship; the practice of firing shells horizontally, and
the enormous extent to which the power and accuracy of aim of artillery
have been increased, lead to the conclusion that after an action even
a victorious fleet would be more seriously crippled and therefore a
longer time unfit for service.” Thus the command of the Channel might
be temporarily lost. As steam facilitated invasion, the immediate
fortification of vital points on the South Coast was considered
necessary. In short, faith in the mobile fleet was temporarily
abandoned.
The recommendations of the Commission were carried out almost in their
entirety. In the case of Portsmouth, for instance, the reinforcement of
the Hilsea Lines, decided on only two years previously, was suspended
in favour of a defence of far greater radius--a circle of forts some of
which were designed to prevent an enemy from gaining possession, from
the land side, of Portsdown Hill, a ridge less than five miles from the
Dockyard and therefore a position from which, with the new artillery,
the Dockyard could be bombarded. A similar girdle of defences was given
to Plymouth.
[129] Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.
[130] Lloyd and Hadcock.
[131] Woodcroft: _Steam Navigation_, 1848.
[132] de la Roncière: _La Marine Française_.
[133] Woodcroft: _Steam Navigation_.
[134] Rigaud: _Early Proposals for Steam Navigation_.
[135] Enouf: Papin; _Sa Vie et Son Œuvre_.
[136] Quoted in Fincham’s _Naval Architecture_.
[137] Mr. Taylor’s evidence to Select Committee, 1824. Quoted in
Woodcroft’s _Steam Navigation_.
[138] Miller is said to have approached the Admiralty twice upon the
subject, and certainly he was keenly interested in naval affairs. A
generous tribute has been paid him by a friend whose name is honoured
in our naval annals: “I was unwearied,” says John Clerk of Eldin in
the preface of his Essay on Naval Tactics, published in 1804, “in
my attention to the many valuable experiments of the ingenious and
liberal-minded Mr. Patrick Miller of Dalswinton; to whom, whether in
shipbuilding or in constructing artillery, both musketry and great
guns, his country is more indebted than has hitherto been properly
acknowledged.”
[139] Dickinson: _Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist_.
[140] Colden: _Life of Fulton_.
[141] _M. Marestier’s Report on Steam Navigation in the U.S.A._ (Morgan
and Creuze, 1826).
[142] _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1848.
[143] In his book _On Naval Warfare with Steam_, published thirty
years later, Sir Howard Douglas set out more clearly the case for
the strenuous development of steam navigation by this country, and
exposed one of the chief flaws in M. Paixhans’ argument. At that date
it was still the all-but-universal opinion in foreign countries that
the introduction of steam had rendered superiority in seamanship
of comparatively little importance in naval warfare. Sir Howard
Douglas showed that English superiority had spread to machine design,
construction and manipulation, and that if this country chose to exert
itself it could maintain its lead.
It is curious to note that not one of these three writers emphasises
the main disability under which France has actually suffered, viz. the
unsuitability of French coal as warship fuel and the distance of her
iron and coal mines from her chief shipbuilding centres.
[144] Briggs: _Naval Administrations_.
[145] A steam paddle-boat, named the _Lord Melville_ in honour of the
descendant of Charlotte Dundas, was then plying regularly between
London Bridge and Calais.
[146] _Memoirs of Sir John Barrow, Bart._
[147] Williams: _Life of Sir Charles Napier_.
[148] In 1835 a new department, of Royal Naval Engineers, was formed:
to consist of technically trained men to manage the machinery of steam
vessels. A uniform button was designed for them, and they were given
the rank of Warrant Officers. Up to this time the machinery had been
in charge of men who, for the most part, were “mere labourers”; and,
commanding officers being ignorant of mechanical engineering, extensive
fraud and waste had been practised, especially in connection with the
refitting of vessels by contractors (Otway: _Steam Navigation_).
[149] Reed: _On the Modifications to H.M. Ships in the XIXth century_.
[150] The strategic value of steam power in warfare was first
demonstrated by Lord John Hay in ’30. In the operations on the North
Coast of Spain “the opportune arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen
hundred fresh troops from Santander, by one steamer alone, despatched
the previous day from San Sebastian, a distance of a hundred miles,
for that express purpose, gave a decisive and important turn to the
transactions of that day” (Otway: _Steam Navigation_).
[151] Fincham.
[152] The author of this work, M. Paucton, in addition to discussing
the possibility of replacing the oar by the screw, threw out the
suggestion of its use for aerial flight. “Je sçais qu’on ne peut guère
manquer de faire rire, en voulant donner des aîles à un homme. Je sçais
que plusieurs personnes, qui out osé prendre l’effor dans les airs,
n’ont pas eu un meilleur succès que l’imprudent Icare.” Nevertheless,
it is incontestable that a man can lift more than his weight. And if he
were to employ his full force on a machine which could act on air as
does the screw, it would lift him by its aid through the air as it will
propel him through the water.
M. Paucton hastened to calm the incredulous reader by assuring him with
an affectation of levity that he was not really serious. “Il est permis
de s’égayer quelquefois.”
[153] A full account of these is given in Bourne’s _Treatise on the
Screw Propeller_.
[154] Weale: _Papers on Engineering_.
[155] The _Archimedes_, with a 3-foot stroke engine which worked at
27 strokes per minute, was run against the _Widgeon_, the fastest
paddlewheel steamer on the Dover station. Two points of importance
were noted by the Admiralty representatives with reference to the
propelling machinery of the _Archimedes_: the objectionable noise made
by the spur-wheels, and their liability to damage and derangement. As,
however, Mr. Smith proposed to obviate this objection “by substituting
spiral gearing in lieu of the cogs” the representatives did not lay
stress on these disadvantages.
[156] A similar paradox was accidentally revealed in the case of the
paddlewheel. It was at first thought that, the broader the floats the
greater would be the pull. A certain steam vessel, however, being found
to have too much beam to allow her to pass into a lock, was altered by
having her floats and paddle-boxes made narrower. It was found that her
speed had thereby been improved (Otway).
[157] Note sur l’État des Forces Navales de la France, 1844.
[158] Parliamentary Report on Screw Propulsion in H.M. Navy, 1850.
[159] Sir Howard Douglas was instrumental in bringing to the notice
of the Government the aggressive aims implied by the _Enquête
Parlementaire_: His notes were printed confidentially in ’53 at the
press of the Foreign Office. Vide his _Defence of England_, published
in 1860.
[160] _The Navies of the World._ Hans Busk, M.A., 1859.
[161] The details of these trials against iron plate will be found in
Sir Howard Douglas’ _Naval Gunnery_, third and subsequent editions.
[162] The rapid construction of over two hundred gunboats and
their steam machinery revealed the enormous industrial capacity of
this country, and constituted a feat of which the whole nation was
rightly proud. For instance of successful organization, Messrs. Penn
of Greenwich contracted to build eighty sets of main engines in
three months--a proposition ridiculed as impossible. By the rapid
distribution of duplicate patterns throughout the country the resources
of all the greatest firms were utilized, and the contract was fulfilled
almost to the day!
Some seven or eight years later, when the building of ironclads was
being debated in parliament, the government was able to recall this
achievement as an argument for not building too many ships of a new and
probably transitional type. If we liked, it was said, we could soon
produce a fleet of ironclads far greater than all the other Powers of
Europe besides.
[163] J. Scott Russell: _The Fleet of the Future: Iron or Wood?_ 1861.
[164] Reed: _Our Ironclad Ships_.
[165] Boynton: _The Navies of England, France, America, and Russia._
New York, ’65.
[166] Colomb: _Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key_.
[167] Colomb: _Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key_.
[168] In parenthesis, for she is of no special interest as a type, we
may note here the _Temeraire_, built at Chatham and completed in 1877:
a compromise between the central-battery and the turret ship. Generally
like the _Alexandra_ in disposition of armament, she carried in
addition, in order to give all-round fire, two open barbettes, one at
each end of the upper deck, each containing a 25-ton gun hydraulically
operated.
[169] The freedom of the _Royal Sovereign’s_ turrets from any liability
to jam was demonstrated at Portsmouth by subjecting them to the impact
of projectiles fired from the 12-ton guns of the _Bellerophon_.
[170] Colomb: _Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key_.
[171] Hitherto the torpedo had been used in warfare only in the form
of a stationary mine, or motion had been given to it either by letting
it drift on a tide or by attaching it rigidly to the bow of a vessel.
After the American Civil War, in which conflict three-fourths of the
ships disabled or destroyed were so disposed of by torpedoes, efforts
were made to give motion to it, either by towing or by self-propulsion.
In ’69 Commander Harvey, R.N., brought to the notice of the Admiralty
his invention of a torpedo or sea kite which was so shaped that, when
launched from the deck of a steamer and towed by a wire, it diverged
from the steamer’s track and stood away at an angle of 45°. It could be
exploded either electrically or by contact. The possibilities of this
weapon were illustrated in a volume published in ’71, one picture of
which showed luridly “an ironclad fleet surprised at sea by a squadron
of torpedo craft armed with Harvey’s sea torpedoes.”
The towed torpedo was overshadowed by the fish or self-propelled
torpedo. In ’70 Mr. Whitehead came to England and, prosecuting
experiments under the eyes of naval officers, with a 16-inch torpedo
successfully sank an old corvette anchored in the Medway at 136 yards’
range. The result was the purchase by the Admiralty of his secret and
sole rights. In ’77 the first torpedo-boat was ordered.
[172] Colomb: _Attack and Defence of Fleets_.
[173] Vice-Admiral Sir G. Elliot: _On the Classification of Ships of
War_.
[174] Brassey: _The British Navy_.
INDEX
_Active_, the, 298
_Agamemnon_, the, 288
_Ajax_, the, 288
_Alarm_, the, 44
_Alecto_, the, 239
_Alexandra_, the, 274
Anderson, Robert, 167
Anson, Lord, 43, 121, 151
Archimedes, 95, 115, 234
_Archimedes_, the, 238
_Argyle_, the, 225
Armada, the Spanish, 9, 77, 79
Armstrong, Lord, 200
Armstrong gun, the, 201, 255, 268
Atwood, 40
_Audacious_, the, 274
Bacon, Lord, 34, 93, 96
Bacon, Roger, 62
Baker, Ezekiel, 119, 189
Baker, James, 15
Baker, Matthew, 15
Balchen, Admiral, 147
Barnaby, Sir N., 50, 283, 289
Barrow, Sir J., 98, 229
Battery, central, ships, 270
Bawd, Peter, 72
Beaufoy, Colonel, 40
Beaufoy, Corporal, 190
Belleisle, siege of, 83
_Bellerophon_, the, 272
Bentham, Sir S., 55, 136, 162
Berghen-op-Zoom, siege of, 120
Bernouilli, Daniel, 37, 216
Bernouilli, John, 37, 115
Berthold the Friar, 62
_Birkenhead_, the, 257
Blake, 42
Blomefield, General, 85
Board of Ordnance, 145
Bold, Charles the, 87
Bonaparte, 165
Borda, the Chevalier, 37
Bossut, Abbé, 38
Bouguer, 37, 216
Boulton, 108, 222
Bourne, Robert, 143, 212
Boyle, 96
Boynton, 267
Brackenbury, General, 62
Bramah, 222, 234
Bridgewater, the Duke of, 218
Briggs, Sir J., 228
Broke, Sir P., 154
Brown Bess, rifle, 192
Brown, Commander, 235
Brunel, 228, 238, 277
Brunswick, rifle, 190
Buckhurst, Lord, 79
Burrell, Andrew, 23
Bushnell, 213
Busk, Hans, 184, 244
Byng, Admiral, 42
Cabots, the, 5
_Caiman_, the, 293
_Caledonia_, the, 49, 226
_Captain_, the, 280
Caus, Solomon, 95-98
Cawley, 103
_Cerberus_, the, 282
Chads, Captain, 249
Chapman, 39, 149
Charles I, King, 23
Charles II, King, 29, 96
Charles V, Emperor, 88
_Charlotte Dundas_, the, 219
Charterhouse, garden, 119
Chatfield, 59
_Chesapeake_, the, 156
Chinese gunboats, 291
Clerk of Eldin, 219
_Clermont_, the, 223
Cloyne, Bishop of, 116
Cockle, Maurice, 65
_Collingwood_, the, 292
Colomb, Admiral, 264, 287
_Colossus_, the, 288
Columbus, 5
_Comet_, the, 225, 229
_Commerce de Marseille_, the, 46
Compass, discovery of, 3
Condorcet, 38
_Congo_, the, 238
_Congress_, the, 263
Congreve, General, 85
Congreve, Sir W., 85, 91, 147, 158
_Conqueror_, the, 288
Consort, Prince, 277
Constantinople, siege of, 66
Corbett, Sir Julian, 1, 6, 7, 8, 9
_Couronne_, the, 254
Cowper Coles, Captain, 276
Creuze, Augustin, 59, 256
Cruiser, type, 298
Cumberland, Earl of, 20
_Curaçoa_, the, 230
Dahlgren, 139, 234, 261
_Dandolo_, the, 285
_Dauntless_, the, 242
Deane, Sir A., 28
Delvigne, 187, 194
_Demologos_, the, 225
Denny, Messrs., 226
Derrick, 28, 31
Desaguliers, Dr., 101
Desblancs, 217
_Devastation_, the, 281
Dirck, 98
_Doncaster_, the, 229
Douglas, Sir C., 151
Douglas, Sir H., 86, 173, 228, 257, 261
_Dreadnought_, the, 283
Duckworth, Sir J., 67
_Duilio_, the, 285
_Duke_, the, 130, 152
Dundas, Lord, 218
Dunkirk privateers, 23
Dupuy de Lôme, 253
Dutch ships, characteristics of, 27
_Dwarf_, the, 243
Elliot, Admiral, 246
Enfield rifle, 197
_Enterprise_, the, 273
Ericsson, 236
_Essex_, the, 137
Euler, 37, 216
_Excellent_, the, 158
_Ferdinand Max_, the, 263
Fincham, 1, 48, 53, 233
Finsbury Field, 82
Fitch, 220
Forbin, Count, 40
_Formidable_, the, 134, 153
Fortifications, land, 204
Fournier, Abbé, 144
Frederick the Great, 90
Fremantle, Hon. T. F., 184
Frigate, origin of, 23
Froissart, 64
Froude, 286
Fuller, 27, 171
Fulton, 221
Furring of ships, 17
_Galatea_, the, 229
Galileo, 95, 116
Galleasse, 4, 211
Galleon, 4, 7
Galley, 2, 71, 210
Gama, Vasco di, 5
Garoy, Blasco de, 212
Gautier, 216
Genoese, the, 4
Gibbon, 66, 69
Gibraltar, siege of, 250
Girdling of ships, 29
_Glatton_, the, 135, 282
_Gloire_, the, 205, 253
Gordon, Thomas, 48
_Grace à Dieu_, the, 76
_Great Britain_, the, 238
_Great Eastern_, the, 258
Greek fire, 61
Greener, 193
Gribeauval, 90
Gunpowder, 3, 70, 76, 99
Gustavus Adolphus, 90
Haddock, Sir R., 29
Halley, 117
Hampton Roads, battle of, 262
Hannay, 57
Hardy, Sir T. M., 159, 230
Harvey torpedo, 291
_Harwich_, the, 31
Hastings, Captain, 174
Hastings, Sir T., 248
Hautefeuille, J. de, 99
Hawke, Admiral, 43, 122, 151
Hawkins, Sir J., 8
Hawkins, Sir R., 9, 80
Hay, Lord John, 232
_Hébé_, the, 134
Henri II, King, 75, 89
Henry VIII, King, 6, 72
Henry, Prince, 19
_Hercules_, the, 273
Hero of Alexandria, 94
_Hibernia_, the, 48
Hime, Colonel, 61, 77
Hogue, battle of La, 32
Honourable Artillery Co., 82
Horse artillery, 91
Hoste, 37
_Hotspur_, the, 282, 287
Howard, Lord, 9, 77
Hugo, Victor, 147
Hulls, Jonathan, 215
Hutton, 122, 129, 132
Huyghens, 37, 96, 99
_Impérieuse_, the, 295
_Inconstant_, the, 298
India, East, Company, 45, 135
_Inflexible_, the, 285
Inman, Dr., 57
_Invincible_, the, 44
_Iron Duke_, the, 274
_Italia_, the, 289
Jacob, General, 196
Jal, 5
James I, King, 15
James II, King, 33
James, the historian, 49, 132
Joinville, Prince de, 240
Jouffroi, 217
Juan, Don G., 37
Kaltoff, Caspar, 97
Kempenfelt, Captain, 123
Keppel, Lord, 48
Key, Admiral Cooper, 268
Keyham, 254
Kinburn, 251
Knowles, Sir C., 45, 46
Krupp, 208
Kuper, Admiral, 206
_Lady Nancy_, the, 276
Laird, Messrs., 252, 280
Laputa, 34
Laughton, Sir J. K., 1, 9, 77, 153
Lepanto, battle of, 72, 78
_Lepanto_, the, 289
Lefroy, General, 67
Leibnitz, 214
Leipsic lexicon, 244
Lissa, battle of, 263
Livingstone, 222
Louis XI, King, 87
_Magenta_, the, 272
Malthus, 82
Manby, Aaron, 255
Manwayring, Sir H., 13, 143
Marestier, 224
_Mars_, the, 121
Marshall gun carriage, 158
Marsilly gun carriage, 158
_Mary Rose_, the, 74
Massé, Colonel, 86
Maudsley, Messrs., 285
_Maure_, the, 41
McLaurin, Colin, 39
_Medea_, the, 230
Melville, General, 127
Melville, Lord, 228
Mercier, Captain, 163
_Merrimac_, the, 262
Metacentre, discovery of, 37
Middleton, Sir C., 46, 123
Miller, Patrick, 127, 217
Minié, rifle, 195
_Minotaur_, the, 265
_Monarch_, the, 279
_Monitor_, the, 262
_Monkey_, the, 229
Monro, Colonel, 173
Mons Meg, 65
Moore, Sir Jonas, 98, 143
Moorfields, 82
Moorsom, Captain, 261, 266
Morland, Sir S., 29, 99
Muller, 84, 88
Murray, Mungo, 39
_Nancy Dawson_, the, 58
Napier, Sir C., 230, 233, 241, 255, 266
Napoleon III, 75, 87, 199, 250
Navarino, battle of, 156
Nelson, 45, 154, 269
_Nemesis_, the, 255
Newcomen, 102-106
Newton, 35, 96, 117, 214
Nicolas, Sir H., 3, 63
Noble, Captain, 207
Noel, Commander, 264, 289
Normans as shipbuilders, 5
Norton, Captain, 193, 199
Norton, Robert, 76, 78, 142
Nye, Nathaniel, 98
Oak, English, 27
_Odin_, the, 233
Oppenheim, 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 73, 75, 77, 81
_Orient_, the, 164
Otway, Commander, 110, 231
_Pacificateur_, the, 172, 248
Paixhans, 166, 227
Pakington, Sir J., 258
_Pallas_, the, 279
Palliser, Major, 205
Papin, 102, 213
Pardies, 36
Pascal, 95
Peake, Sir H., 56
Pechell, Captain, 157
Peel, 257
_Pembroke_, the, 41
_Penelope_, the, 233
Penn, Messrs., 253
Pennington, Sir J., 23
Pepys, 27, 33, 81, 96, 130
Perrin, 15
Pett, Peter, 23
Pett, Phineas, 15, 18
Petty, Sir W., 35
_Phœbe_, the, 138
_Phœnix_, the, 26, 175
Pickard, 108, 217
Pitt, 49
Plat, Sir H., 186
Point-blank defined, 114
Porta, della, 95
Potter, Humphrey, 105
Prevesa, battle of, 72
_Prince Albert_, the, 278
_Prince Royal_, the, 19
_Princessa_, the, 43
Proof of guns, 81
Punchinello, 130
_Rainbow_, the, 134
Raleigh, Sir W., 16, 24, 79
_Raleigh_, the, 298
Ram tactics, 263, 290
Ramelli, 212
_Rattler_, the, 239
_Ré d’Italia_, the, 263
Reed, Sir E., 59, 274, 279
Richelieu, 24, 212
Riders in ships, 11
_Rob Roy_, the, 226
Robins, Benjamin, 112-124, 129, 187
Robison, 106
Rodney, 134, 153
_Rolf Krake_, the, 277
Romme, 38
Roncière, de la, 212
Ross, Sir J., 227
_Royal George_, the, 43, 83
_Royal Katherine_, the, 35
Royal Society, foundation of, 96
_Royal Sovereign_, the, 278
_Royal William_, the, 28
_Ruby_, the, 249
Rumsey, 220
_Rupert_, the, 288
Rupert, Prince, 214
Russell, Scott, 252, 257, 264
Samuda, Messrs., 278
Sartorius, Admiral, 261
_Savannah_, the, 226
Savery, 100, 215
Schalk, 83
Scharnhorst, 88
Schmidt, 184
Scloppetaria, 184
Scott, Commander, 200
_Scourge of Malice_, the, 20
Seppings, Sir R., 46, 51
Sewell, 39
_Shah_, the, 298
_Shannon_, the, 154, 299
Sheathing, introduction of, 18
Sheerness, 254
Shish, 29, 35
Shovell, Admiral, 81
Shrapnel, Lieutenant, 91, 163
_Sidon_, the, 233
Simmons, Captain, 164, 176
_Simoon_, the, 249
Sinope, battle of, 162, 249
Slingsby, Sir R., 145
Smith, Pettit, 236
Snodgrass, 47
_Solferino_, the, 272
_Sovereign of the Seas_, the, 24
Spitalfields, 81, 130
_Sprightly_, the, 229
Stanhope, Lord, 221, 228
Stevinus, 95
Stockton, Captain, 237
_Stromboli_, the, 276
_Sultan_, the, 273
Surveyors, abilities of, 55
Sussex, iron mines, 69, 78
Sutherland, T., 35
Sveaborg, bombardment of, 252
Symington, 218
Symonds, Admiral, 57
Tactics, 2, 8, 30, 33, 77, 131, 153, 210, 263
Tartaglia, 89, 116
Taylor, 218
Tegetthof, Admiral, 263
_Temeraire_, the, 275
Tennant, Sir E., 200
_Terrible_, the, 233
_Thames_, the, 225
“Thieves, Forty,” the, 56
Thouvenin, Colonel, 195
_Thunderer_, the, 283
Torelli, 212
Torpedo, evolution of, 291
Torricelli, 95
Touchard, Admiral, 264
_Trades Increase_, the, 21
Trafalgar, battle of, 45, 49, 53, 269
Treuille de Beaulieu, 199
Trim, definition of, 13
Trinity House, 24
Trollope, Captain, 135
Tromp, 31
Trunnions, evolution of, 86
Truss frames, 52
Tunnage, 5, 49, 56
Turgot, 38
Turret, the evolution of, 271, 275
Types, differentiation of, 296
Upnor Castle, 81
_Vanguard_, the, 274
Vauban, Marshal, 160
Ventilation, study of, 44
_Victory_, the, 45, 53, 147
Villani, 64
Vincennes, 194, 250
_Volage_, the, 298
Walker, Captain, 193
Wallis, 35, 96
Walter, 120
Waltham Abbey, 85
_Warrior_, the, 205, 260
_Warspite_, the, 295
Watt, 93, 105-110, 217
Waymouth, Captain, 17
Wellington, 240
_Whelps_, the, 23
Whitehead, 292
Whitworth, Sir J., 197
Willett, 43, 48
Woodcraft, 212
Woolwich, 82
Worcester, Marquis of, 93, 97, 213
Wynter, Sir R., 145
Zöllner, 184
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Archaic spellings have not been changed; the spelling of non-English
words has not been changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
Pages with Plate-illustrations included printer’s information regarding
the pages the plates should face. That information has been removed in
this eBook, as those illustrations are positioned as close as possible
to those pages.
The spelling and grammar of French text has been reproduced here as it
was printed in the original book.
The publication information of a few citations was italicized, but as
that is not the style in most of the book, those words and dates are
shown here unitalicized.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been collected and
placed just before the Index of this eBook.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
Page 5: “tunnage” was printed that way and is in the Index, but the
other pages to which the Index entry refers spell the word as “tonnage”.
Page 23: “remonstance” was printed that way.
Page 47: “to their rates, And” was printed that way.
Page 72: “the King’s feedmen” was printed that way, probably should be
“freedmen”.
Page 265: “Give her the stem” was printed that way.
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