Chapter XXII: From Wooden Walls to Floating Engines

Great reduction of the navy, as well as of the army, between the
Napoleonic wars and the Queen's accession. But silently a reaction
soon set in. First beginnings of new policy. Reform in the training of
sailors in gunnery; later developments of naval education for officers
and men; the existing course compared with the past. Successive stages
in the replacement of sails by steam power. A navy transformed by
Steam and Iron. Lessons of contemporary experience gradually applied
to the English navy, especially those learnt from the American Civil
War and the Austro-Italian War.

After the Napoleonic wars the British navy, like the British army, was greatly reduced. In the Navy List of 1837, 132 vessels are named. Sixty years later they had increased to 461. Now the naval policy of successive Administrations seems to have acquired the same continuity as belongs traditionally to foreign policy. It is a first principle to-day with all parties in the State that the iron walls which, as our first line of defence, have replaced the walls of wood, should not be reduced to a point at which they need fear the combined opposition, if not of Europe, still of the two or three most powerful of European fleets. At the moment when the great reductions in our fleet were contemplated, Napoleon at St Helena, in the course of the conversations recorded by O'Meara,[71] said: 'It was bad policy to encourage the military mania instead of sticking to your marine, which is the real force of your country.' In 1832 the naval vote had been 4-1/4 millions. Two years later, it was reduced to 3 millions. The fleet reductions did not, however, reach their limit until the year before the Queen's accession. Then the naval vote was reduced to 2-3/4 millions, with the dwindling of our squadrons already noted. Contrast with this the 1896-97 estimate of L22,774,318, providing for the services of a total, every branch included, of 93,750 officers and men, inclusive of the 461 ships already named.

The history of the naval transformations through which during the Victorian age we have passed, may be described as a succession of periodical scares, a steadily progressive instruction by science in its latest application to maritime affairs, and by the lessons contained in the experience of other countries. The English operations by sea during the Crimean War; in a still greater degree perhaps the improvements in naval construction, attack and defence, shown in the hostilities between the Federal and Confederate navies in the civil war on the other side of the Atlantic; later again the lessons taught by the engagements between Italian and Austrian squadrons, notably at Lissa;--these are the incidents that have gradually taught us, as well as our European neighbours, to bring our naval arrangements and appliances up to the latest mark of mechanical perfection.

Even during the time when the security brought by relief after long war was causing England to neglect her navy, some of those movements which in Victorian days have given us our present race of seamen were in progress.

Seven years before the Queen's accession, the 'Excellent,' as a gunnery school for sailors, had been established. Soon after its establishment, it was gradually enlarged and improved till it has become to-day the chief source from which our ships are manned. Before that institution, naval gunnery was taught, or not taught, at the discretion of the captains in command. From being, as at the beginning of the present age it was, always precarious and generally insufficient, the supply of sailors has become fairly adequate and regular. Weeks and months used to be wasted before a crew could be put together. The social haunts of seamen were visited by officers; thus eventually by promises or threats men were induced to join the ship. When the commission of the ship came to an end, the sailors were thrown adrift, usually returning to their civil vocations until a new job was offered. By the time of the Crimean War all this had been changed. Apart from the inducements of prize money sailors flocked in animated by a real enthusiasm. Thus though in France the naval conscription had existed since the time of Colbert the manning of the English fleet proceeded more quickly in Crimean days than that of the French. The continuous service for ten years certain, with the choice of prolonging that term and receiving a pension, has transformed the condition of our navy. Other reforms have given us in time of war a reserve of 20,000 sailors of the mercantile marine, the equivalents of our rifle volunteers on land. These are annually subject to gun and small arm drill on our coasts, and, in the opinion of an expert like Captain Eardley Wilmot, will prove adequate to any demand.[72]

There have been later reforms than this in the professional education of our sailors. Till between forty and fifty years ago men and boys entered the navy without any previous training. In, or about 1855, all sailors entered the service as boys chiefly from fifteen to sixteen and a half years old. They now begin by passing from twelve to eighteen months on board the training ship. Here they are instructed in seamanship and gunnery. They thus bring with them to sea a practical knowledge of their duties. The system which has given us a new race of naval officers dates from nearly the same time as that which began to produce a fresh generation of seamen. Before 1857, no regular system of training midshipmen existed. All their knowledge was actually acquired afloat, exactly as Captain Marryat describes. The large ships only were furnished with regular naval instructors. Since the 'Britannia' was instituted in 1857, all midshipmen receive from fifteen months to two years education in naval subjects and in mathematics. The educational term is not over when the professional career begins. The course of study necessary before the examination for Lieutenant can be passed has been greatly expanded. Formerly acting mates were supposed to satisfy all educational tests for Lieutenant in about three months. Now a year is occupied with these studies; the qualifying standard for the pass examination is pitched far higher than was ever known before.

The transformation undergone by our navy which strikes the eye most forcibly is of course the replacement of the wooden walls by the floating ironclad and the substitution of steam for wind-filled sails as the propelling power of our fleet. A naval officer, Sir William Symonds, instead of a member of the School of Naval Architecture, was appointed Surveyor of the Navy; the first step towards improving ship construction was taken. Almost on the eve of the Queen's accession, certainly during all the earlier thirties, steamers 5 of which in all existed, were only used to tow ships of the line in and out of harbour; or at the utmost for a trip to Gibraltar or Malta. When Captain Charles Napier predicted that steam would soon become to the navy what cavalry is to the army, and have the post of honour, the prediction seemed impossible. The adoption of steam was a very gradual and tentative process. First the 'Active,' a 46-gun frigate was fitted with paddles, but not as yet engines. The result was progress at a maximum of from 2 to 3 knots an hour. Captain Napier carried the experiment a little further; but in no case was steam yet exclusively relied on for working the paddles. When Queen Victoria came to the throne the navy included 5 steam paddle vessels. Each of them had three masts furnished with sails. All were generically known as steam sloops. The largest was 830 tons; the maximum of speed from 8 to 10 knots. Larger steamers called steam frigates, from 1,200 to 1,800 tons were introduced soon after the reign began. They were first actively employed at the bombardment of Acre in 1840, and notwithstanding their old lines of construction, proved the usefulness of armed ships at sea against forts on land. The Acre operations seem to have been important, as showing for the first time the skill of Victorian seamen in gunnery and in the management of the machinery of steam ships. Similarly, long before this only the skill with which English ships were handled had overcome, in their encounters with French, the faults of their design. The weight of metal thrown by the largest guns on board these earlier craft, _e.g._ the 'Nelson,' was 2,750 lbs. Further steam progress was marked when, eight years after the reign began, the 'Erebus' and 'Terror' in which Sir John Franklin's expedition sailed for the Pole, were fitted with the screw.

As yet iron had not been employed on the present scale in ship construction. Both in 1857 and 1858 larger ships than had yet been known, the 'Niagara' first, the 'Orlando,' the 'Mersey,' afterwards, were built, all, however, of wood. Long after steam was partially employed, sails were retained. Even during our Black Sea and Baltic operations in Crimean days, screw and paddle were still combined with canvas. Such success as our fleet secured at this time was not promoted by the excellence of our naval organization which according to Captain Eardley Wilmot, was not much better than our military.[73] The first lesson as to the new mode of motion by sea learnt from the naval operations in Crimean waters was recognized by Kinglake and is confirmed by Captain Eardley Wilmot as being that 'in regions where land and sea much intertwine, steam is stronger for attack than for defence.'

The iron ships now almost as essential to the idea of a navy as steam itself, had been tried for different purposes long before our Admiralty adopted them; the material had been used, first in 1812 for canal barges, secondly, a little later, for the mercantile marine. Iron was not employed for our navy till the last days of William IV. The tragic fate of the first iron ship, the 'Birkenhead,' may well have prejudiced both the Department and the public against the new material.

The iron-plated ship of the modern type appears to have been a French idea, first tried by Colonel Paixhaus in 1825. The floating batteries employed in the Crimean War in which Napoleon III. was specially interested, marked a fresh advance in this direction. Nor does it seem easy to overrate the value of the lessons in scientific seamanship derived from the French and English operations on the Black Sea, 1854-5. The result was the invitation by the Admiralty of designs from all quarters, the ordering of the 'Warrior,' designed by Mr Scott Russell, in 1859, completed in 1861.[74] This vessel was equipped with a battery extending her whole length. Before the fifties were out, the naval and the national mind had been familiarized with the idea of mastless ships, long repulsive to the national sense of the picturesque at sea. The 'Warrior,' however, was furnished with sails in addition to steam and marked an epoch in the development not only of the English navy, but of the navies of the world, as the first absolutely complete iron ship ever built.

The French ships, earlier in point of time were not equally perfect as regards material. They were, in fact, wooden ships cut down and plated with iron. Thus with literal truth referring to the launch of 'Warrior' could our Naval Minister of the day, Sir John Pakington, describe the whole world as interested in the bold experiment. Other ships of the same kind soon followed, and of even larger proportions. It is to the credit of English workmanship that the building of these vessels at Chatham was performed by shipwrights who had hitherto worked only on wood; and that the craftmanship shown by them in the new material was pronounced by experts to be excellent. Timber having been definitely superseded by metal, there followed the long and technical controversy about the relative merits of turret and broadside armaments. The concentration of guns into a single citadel on board ship was first in England powerfully advocated by Sir E. Reed. Since then, the naval warfare between Federals and Confederates on the other side of the Atlantic, followed by the exciting manoeuvres off Cherbourg between the 'Alabama' and the 'Keersage,' and in Europe the naval portions of the Austro-Italian war of 1866 have taught lessons the full results of which are not, perhaps even yet, perfectly realized. So long is the experimental stage which has to be traversed before the newest system of maritime defence and attack with its complicated machinery can be said entirely to have reached what is alone to be called properly the scientific stage.[75]