Chapter X: The Ironclad (3)

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.