The Admiralty which ordered their construction may possibly be able to state why it

built them, but even that is not at all certain. One of the evil results of mean
economies in national enterprises in ordinary times is extravagant and aimless
expenditure in times of necessity.

[36]

A later example of this kind of expenditure under very similar circumstances was
furnished during Lord Beaconsfield’s administration, when war with Russia seemed
likely to occur. Again the insufficiency of the navy was strongly felt, and again
public money to the extent of two millions sterling or more was expended upon the
acquisition of such ships as could be most readily acquired, regardless of cost. At
this time the Neptune (of 9170 tons displacement), the Superb (of 9100 tons), and
the Belleisle and Orion (each of 4830 tons), were purchased into the service, and
having been built for other navies, and under very peculiar circumstances in some
cases, required large dockyard expenditure to convert them to their new uses in the
British navy.

It only remains, in so far as existing armored, or rather “partly armored,” ships

are concerned, to advert to the Impérieuse and Warspite, two cruisers building for
distant service. These ships are three hundred and fifteen feet long, and to them
has been allowed, by the extraordinary generosity of the Admiralty, as much as one
hundred and forty feet of length of armored belt. If this had been extended by only
twenty feet, these British cruisers, which Lord Brassey—whether grandiloquently or
satirically it is hard to say—calls “armored cruisers,” would have actually had
one-half of their length protected by armor-plating at the water-line. In what
spirit and with what object is not known, but Lord Brassey, in his outline sketch
of these ships, writes the word “coals” in conspicuous letters before and abaft the
belt. Can it be possible that he, undoubtedly a sensible man of business, and one
who laboriously endeavors to bring up the knowledge and sense of his fellow-
countrymen to a level with his own, and who was once Secretary to the British
Admiralty—can it be possible that he considers coal a trustworthy substitute for
armor, either before or after it has been consumed as fuel?

It is very distressing to have to write in these terms, and put these questions
about Admiralty representatives and Admiralty ships; but what is to be done? Here
are two ships which are together to cost nearly half a million of money, which are
expressly built to chase and capture our enemies in distant seas, which are
vauntingly described as “armored cruisers,” which cannot be expected always by
their mere appearance to frighten the enemy into submission, like painted Chinese
forts, which must be presumed sometimes to encounter a fighting foe, or at least to
be fired at a few times by the stern guns of a vessel that is running away, and yet
some eighty or ninety feet of the bows of these ships, and as much of their sterns,
are deliberately deprived of the protection[37] of armor, so that any shell from
any gun may pierce them, let in the sea, and reduce their speed indefinitely; and
in apparent justification of this perfectly ridiculous arrangement—perfectly
ridiculous in a ship which is primarily bound to sustain her speed when chasing—a
late Secretary to the Admiralty tells us that she is to carry in the unprotected
bow some coals! May my hope formerly expressed in Harper’s Magazine find its
fruition by giving to the British Admiralty a piece of information of which it only
can be possibly ignorant, viz., that even while coal is unconsumed, it differs
largely from steel armor-plates in the measure of resistance which it offers to
shot and shell; and further, that coal is put on board war-ships that it may be
consumed in the generation of steam? It is very desirable that this information
should somehow be conveyed to Whitehall in an impressive manner, and possibly, if
the combined intelligence of the two great nations to which Harpers’ publications
chiefly appeal be invoked in its favor, it may at length be understood and attended
to even by the Admiralty, and one may hear no more of the protection of her
Majesty’s ships by means of their “coal.”
War-ship under sail at sea
THE “WARSPITE.”
Drawing showing the side armor and decks
TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE “MERSEY.”

Edward Simpson

Contributor: J. D. Jerrold Kelley

Release date: June 22, 2024 [eBook #73887]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Harper & Brothers, 1887

Credits: deaurider, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN SHIPS OF WAR ***

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

[32]
War-ship at sea
THE “TÉMÉRAIRE.”

[33]

Before passing from the armored ships of the navy—or, rather, as we must now say,
in view of some of the ships just described and illustrated, before passing from
the ships which have some armor—it is desirable to take note of a few exceptional
vessels which cannot be classed either with the pretentious and so-called line-of-
battle ships or with the rigged iron-clads generally. Among these will be found two
comparatively small ships, designed by the writer many years ago to serve primarily
as rams, but to carry also some guns. These were the Hotspur and Rupert. The water-
line of the Hotspur was protected with very thick armor for her day (11-inch),
extending from stem to stern, dipping down forward to greatly strengthen the
projecting ram. She carried (besides a few smaller guns) the largest gun of the
period, one of twenty-five tons, mounted on a turn-table, but protected by a fixed
tower pierced with four ports.[5] This fixed tower was years afterwards replaced by
a revolving turret, similar to that which the writer gave in the first instance to
the Rupert, designed soon after the Hotspur. Both the armor and the armament of the
second vessel were heavier than those of the first, but the ram, as before, was the
chief feature of the ship.

It is needless here to describe some of the very early turret-ships, such as the
Prince Albert, Scorpion, Wyvern, and Royal Sovereign, all of which embodied the
early (though not by any means the earliest) views of that able, energetic, and
lamented officer, the late Captain Cowper Coles, R.N., who was lost at sea by the
capsizing of his own ship, the Captain, her low sides failing to furnish the
necessary stability for enabling her to resist, when under her canvas, the force of
a moderate gale of wind. Had he been able to foresee the coming abandonment of
sail-power in rigged ships, and had he been placed, as the writer advised, in[34]
charge of the revolving turrets of the navy, leaving ship-designing to those who
understood it, he might have been alive to this day, to witness the very general
adoption in the British navy of that turret system to which he for some years
devoted and eventually sacrificed his life.
War-ship at sea
THE “HOTSPUR.”

The first real sea-going and successful ship designed and built to carry the
revolving turret of Coles was, by universal consent, the Monarch, whose sea-going
qualities secured for her the distinction of transporting to the shores of America—
as a mark of England’s good-will to the people of the United States, and of her
admiration of a great and good citizen—the body of the late Mr. George Peabody.
“The performances of the Monarch at sea,” says Brassey’s “British Navy,” “were in
the highest degree satisfactory;” and nothing could exceed the frank and liberal
praises bestowed upon her for her performances during the voyage to New York by the
officers of the United States man-of-war which accompanied her as a complimentary
escort.

A great deal has been written and said at different times about four other turret-
ships of the British navy, viz., the Cyclops, Gorgon, Hecate, and Hydra—far less
terrible vessels than these formidable names would seem to import. Whether these
four comparatively small turret-ships possess the necessary sea-going qualities for
coast defence (as distinguished from harbor service) is a question which has been
much discussed, and is not yet settled. The truth is that the defence of the coasts
of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland is a service in which the sea-going
qualities of vessels may be called into requisition as largely as in[35] any
service in the world. There are some (this writer among them) who much prefer the
mid-Atlantic in a heavy gale of wind to many parts of these coasts, more especially
if there be any doubt about the perfect obedience of the ship to her steam-power
and her helm. The worst weather the writer has ever experienced at sea was met with
in the English Channel, and the only merchant-ship which he ever even in part
possessed was mastered by a Channel storm, had to cast anchor outside of Plymouth
Breakwater, was blown clean over it, and sank inside of it, with her cables
stretched across that fine engineering work. It is therefore difficult, and has
always been difficult, not to say impossible, for him to regard a “coast-defence
ship,” which certainly ought to be able to defend the coast, and to proceed from
one part of it to another, as a vessel which may be made less sea-worthy than other
vessels. Only in one respect, viz., that of coal supply, may such a ship be safely
made inferior to sea-going ships.

But whether the four vessels under notice be fit for coast defence or not, it ought
to be known that they were not designed for it. They were hastily ordered in 1870,
when the Franco-German war was breaking out, under the impression that Great
Britain might get involved in that war. The British Admiralty knew then (as it
knows now, and as it has known for years past) that the navy had not been
maintained in sufficient strength, and it consequently seized the first design for
a small and cheap ship that it could lay hands on, and ordered the construction,
with all despatch, of four such vessels. The design which it happened to take, or
which seemed to it most suitable, was that of the Cerberus—a breastwork Monitor
designed by the writer for special service in inland colonial waters, and made as
powerful as was then possible on 3300 tons of displacement, both offensively and
defensively, but with no necessity for, and no pretensions whatever to, sea-going
qualities. It is scarcely to be supposed that four vessels having such an origin
could be expected to take their place as sea-going ships of the British navy; nor
could they, either, for reasons already suggested, be expected to possess any high
qualities as vessels for the defence of
“That land ’