The Pre-Dreadnought Revolution E-Book

Warren Berry

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 399

Beschreibung

The late nineteenth century saw an unparalleled revolution in warship development as the Victorian navy found itself grappling with intense technical change to ensure its survival in the modern theatre. From the wooden battleships of the 1800s, naval architecture underwent great change to produce a very different form of capital ship, which would have a huge impact and change naval design forever. The pre-dreadnought was constructed of steel, wholly driven by steam power and carried its rifled ordnance in armoured turrets operated by hydraulics. Electrics, mechanical computers, mines and torpedo weapons were also utilised to create an immensely powerful fighting ship the likes of which had never been seen before. This well-illustrated and fascinating history reveals the process involved in that most rapid development, which in such a short time totally altered the naval forces of Britain and ensured that the British Navy remained the most powerful in the world.

Leseprobe

For Ffion and Seren

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

1 Sailing Ships and Sea Power

2 From Sail to Steam Assist

3 The Black Battle Fleet

4 Of Rams and Turrets

5 Beyond the Fleet of Samples

6 The Pre-Dreadnought Emerges

7 The Great Arms Race

8 Fortresses of Steel

9 Thunder of the Guns

10 To Pierce the Armoured Walls

11 Of Boilers, Engines, and Steam

12 Tested in Battle

13 The Coming of the Dreadnought

Appendix 1 Diagrams Showing Form and Structure of Typical Ram Bows

Appendix 2 Schematic of the 1898 Jubilee Review at Spithead

Appendix 3 Profiles and Deck Plans Showing Distribution of Armour and General Layout of Main Armament

Appendix 4 Drawings of Different Forms of Ordnance Installation

Appendix 5 Drawings of Typical Engines and Boilers

References

Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is based on a dissertation the author prepared for the award of a Master of Arts degree in naval history at Exeter University in 2002, and much of the textual primary and secondary information used then has been incorporated into this present volume, although in some instances enlarged by further research. The advice and assistance provided by Exeter University staff where that earlier volume is concerned is still fully appreciated, as is the help given by the Librarian and staff of the Naval Library at Portsmouth and the Curator and Curatorial staff of the National Maritime Museum’s documents section, together with staff at Bath, Bristol, and Trowbridge reference libraries.

Where all the textual information used in this book is concerned, detailed and specific reference to individual sources has been made in the appropriate section, and a comprehensive bibliography has also been included. In the case of photographic illustrations, most have been used with the kind permission of the Curator of Photographs at the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth. The small numbers of photographic images not so owned are from the author’s collection.

A number of drawings have been included in the various appendices provided, and these in most instances have been sourced from nineteenth and early twentieth century publications that are long out of print. Very few drawings exactly like these appear to exist in later publications, and because of this it was felt that in celebration of what are in essence illustrations of contemporary engineering design and function, and in deference to their originators, who used them to illustrate certain concepts and aspects they were describing at the time, these drawings could be usefully included in this volume. By so doing it was hoped that readers would be assisted in appreciating more readily some of the descriptive narrative included in the book, and notes and source information for all these drawings are mentioned as appropriate in the section on sources.

Finally my special thanks go to my wife for her ongoing encouragement and practical assistance in a number of areas, including those associated with numerous textual issues and the organisation and presentation of many of the images I have used.

It should be noted also that where copyright might have been unintentionally infringed, the author will be happy to acknowledge associated sources and copyright ownership in future editions of the book.

1

SAILING SHIPS AND SEA POWER

In 1814, after more than twenty long years, the wars that Great Britain and other European nations had fought, firstly with Revolutionary and then with Napoleonic France, came to an end. Where Britain was concerned its navy had been a major participant in those wars as indeed it had been in the associated war with America that had taken place in 1812, and which had resulted in that country winning its independence. During the French wars the officers and men of Britain’s navy had built a reputation for their ability to exert command of the sea when this proved necessary, and to fully protect their island nation from any other naval forces that might be directed against it. This enviable position had for the most part been made possible by the stoutness and sea-keeping ability of the British ships, and by sound seamanship and a tradition of victory based on the navy’s disciplined fighting ability using the smooth-bore cast-iron guns that formed the armament of the wooden hulled ships in the nation’s sailing battle fleet. The apparently unassailable position that Britain thus found herself in was clearly of advantage militarily but, in addition, the resulting control of many of the world’s shipping routes meant that the ability to freely trade with her colonies, as well as other countries, rapidly increased both Britain’s wealth and her standing as a world trading power.

At the end of hostilities with France the British battle fleet consisted of some 218 line-of-battle ships and around 560 frigates and smaller vessels.1 In practice though, some of these ships had either been in continuous commission for a long time or had been hastily built during the war years, and were now in need of major repairs. Irrespective of this Britain’s six naval dockyards were unable to provide on-demand refitting and repair facilities to the extent that was required, and big backlogs of such work often occurred. There were numerous reasons for this, including poor accessibility to many of the dockyards from the sea, a lack of suitable dry docks and building slipways, a general shortage of storage and undercover working space, and highly labour intensive work processes that were very traditional and often unresponsive to new ideas and technologies. The effect of this was high costs, and repair work that had to be carried out over an extended period, with the result that only a proportion of the fleet could effectively be kept in service at any one time.

But with the ending of the Napoleonic wars the position rapidly changed, for although warships were still required to control trade routes, counter piracy, hunt down slavers, and protect British interests throughout the world, the need for a large and costly battle fleet in the post-war navy no longer existed. The British economy had been sorely affected by the extended war years, which had resulted in a national debt of around £900 million,2 and Parliament was soon calling for the adverse affects of this to be countered by savings in public spending. As a consequence the Admiralty agreed to maintain a much-reduced peacetime fleet of 100 ships of the line with 160 smaller vessels being retained for use as cruisers and on other support duties. Such a force it was believed would be adequate in use, and in any case would still be superior to the combined forces of the next two largest naval powers,3 which at this time were Imperial Russia and post-Napoleonic France, a country which on the ending of hostilities still retained many of the ships of its wartime battle fleet. The unwanted British ships were either scrapped or sold, with a proportion of those retained being mothballed and laid up in ’ordinary’ rather than being commissioned on active service. The existence of this reserve meant that for the first thirty years of peace very few new ships were built within the British naval establishment. The effect of these savings on the navy’s manpower strength was to drastically reduce it over a period of three years from 145,000 to 19,000,4 a saving of close on 87 per cent.

Three-decked 100-gun ship of the line Victory photographed in her old age, long after her active career had ended, but with her lower masts, topmasts, topgallant masts, and associated yards all in position. Probably taken circa 1920 when she was moored near Gosport in Hampshire. (Author’s collection)

The line-of-battle ship of the early nineteenth century and the frigates, brigs, schooners, and other smaller warships that together formed the fleet, had changed little in form, construction, and function from those that configured the British navy of a hundred or more years before, and this was true of the naval forces of every nation in the world irrespective of their size, importance, or economic position. Built of wood with masts and sails for motive power and with their muzzle-loading smooth-bore guns all arranged on the broadside, these ships were of near uniform design across all navies in the western hemisphere. There was, however, some variation in classes, with the larger ships having three gun decks and three square-rigged masts that additionally carried some fore and aft sails, whilst intermediate and smaller sizes were provided with one or two decks of guns and relatively fewer masts depending on the size and type of ship. The very smallest vessels were normally rigged with fore and aft sails only, although some square sails were still carried for use, for example when running before the wind.

Ships were rated according to the number of guns they carried, from the large 100-gun and above first rates like HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, through five more classes to the sixth rates of around 20 guns. The biggest size of guns carried were 42-pounders, that is each gun was capable of firing solid shot which individually weighed 42lb.5 As a result of their great weight and bulk these massive pieces could only be carried on the lower gun decks of the largest ships, and as they were cumbersome and slow to operate, lighter but longer pieces that fired a 32lb shot at a higher muzzle velocity rapidly superseded them as the main armament of line-of-battle ships. In common with all other large guns in use at the time, 32-pounders were each served by up to twelve men who cleaned, loaded (by ramming powder charges and shot down the muzzle), aimed, fired, and controlled the bulky cast-iron pieces on their wood and iron gun carriages or trucks. Although solid round shot was by far the most common projectile used for penetrating a ship’s hull, canvas bags of smaller shot known as grape were also used as anti-personnel weapons to clear decks. Double-headed shot consisting of two balls connected by bars or chains were utilised to smash rigging and break masts and spars.

Serving the guns in action was an extremely hazardous and difficult task, especially in the dark, restricted, and claustrophobic space of the lower gun decks of a heaving and rolling sailing warship under battle conditions, where enemy round shot might at any time burst through the near 2ft thick6 combination of oak planking and frames of the ship’s side, flattening all before it and sending a storm of lethal wooden and metal splinters and debris in all directions.

Sailing battle fleets were fought in line ahead, arranged in such a way that ships in the opposing lines sailed close-hauled on opposite tacks with their guns firing on the side nearest their opponents. In this way around half of all the broadside guns could be brought to bear on the opposing ships. Only the largest and most powerful ships were allowed to ’stand in the line’, as smaller vessels were unlikely to survive being pounded by an incessant storm of round shot fired at close quarters. This dictum meant that ships with less than 74 guns were precluded from the line and could only act in a support capacity, or else in actions where single or small groups of evenly matched ships opposed each other. Fleet tactics developed over a long period, and although the British sailing battle fleet only fought six decisive battles including Trafalgar in the twenty years of war with France, by the time peace was declared, rigid line-of-battle arrangements had been laid down in Admiralty fighting instructions, and ships’ officers were expected to slavishly follow these without showing much in the way of individual initiative,7 although Nelson and a handful of other commanders appeared to flout such rules on occasion. Whilst tactical ‘by the book’ control of this type was invariably commonplace in multi-ship actions where the line of battle was used, the captains of frigates and other small ships that often had roving commissions were allowed more individuality, and this was especially the case when such ships were tasked with attacking enemy merchant shipping and engaging any escorts or enemy cruisers that might appear.

Quarterdeck of sailing warship (possibly Victory) showing three of her starboard side, muzzle-loading cannon on their carriages and with rear trucks in position. It was normal to carry the smallest size of guns on the quarterdeck but those shown in the photograph appear to be larger than that. (Author’s collection)

In terms of sizes of warships and their associated armaments, there was little to choose between the fleets of Britain and France, although for most of the French wars the British fleet was superior in numbers of ships. By contrast, however, the basic approaches of British and French navies when in action were very different. France often tended to follow a defensive strategy, which involved trying to disable enemy ships by firing at their masts, rigging, and sails, then breaking off action if they felt they could not board the immobilised ship, or were in danger of being overwhelmed themselves. In this fashion French captains sought to preserve their ships in a fighting condition for commerce raiding or for use in further fleet or individual ship actions. The British Navy, on the other hand, took an offensive approach that was highly aggressive and focused on sinking or totally disabling enemy ships by superior gunnery, including heavier broadsides at close quarters, and a more rapid rate of fire. A contemporary French naval historian defined the effect of this approach by noting that it was: ‘to this superiority in gunnery that we must attribute most of our defeats since 1793, it is to this hail of cannonballs that England owes her absolute mastery of the seas … they strew our decks with corpses.’8

Although not occurring in every case, such winning actions were made possible by forthright, if sometimes brutal, leadership based on strict discipline, superior drilling and training of seamen, and the generally higher motivation and competitive spirit of the British gun crews, who would eventually share in the not insubstantial prize money that could accrue if an enemy ship was taken or sunk. In Britain legislation and associated administrative processes allowed enemy ships to be captured and sold as prizes as soon as hostilities commenced. The prize money received by the capturing ship as a result was divided in certain set proportions such that the captain received half, the officers and warrant officers received 25 per cent and the crew and marines received the remaining 25 per cent divided equally amongst them. An amount for any admiral on station, and the costs of prize courts and prize agents was met from the captain’s share, sometimes significantly reducing it. This apart, an active frigate captain, for example, who often had great autonomy when cruising areas that enemy merchant ships frequented, could, over an extended period, amass a small fortune in prize money as a result of such actions. This did not of course apply in the case of individual sailors, as they all shared their proportion of the prize money with hundreds of others, but even in their case it was quite possible to increase annual wages by at least 50 per cent.

Merchant vessels with saleable cargoes when taken as prizes usually attracted more prize money than captured warships, especially if they were significantly damaged. However, the additional income that arose was still welcomed, and even if the enemy warship was sunk, a proportion of prize money was in many cases still paid, and this was based on the number of crew members originally carried by that class of ship. In the main though, warships taken as prizes were taken into the victor’s fleet, and when crewed and provisioned were used against their former owners. In this way frigates in particular sometimes changed hands on more than one occasion, and British officers and crews often prized captured French ships for their speed and manoeuvrability. In most instances though this was not due to French ships being better designed and built, but purely to the fact that British warships tended to be heavier and more strongly constructed than their French counterparts, with a sturdier build and heavier scantlings in their hulls. This was because British ships were built for global service and had to be able to stand up to the worst weather and sea conditions and still survive, whereas the generally faster but more lightly built French ships tended to have more limited roles, being mainly used in coastal and Mediterranean waters.

With the ending of the long wars with France, the British people began to look forward to a period of peace and stability. As a consequence of her actions during the war years, Britain already held a pre-eminent position in Europe, and in addition to her superior naval forces had also been able to build up a strong mercantile marine. Using this position as a base, the British Government soon decided that national interests could best be served in the wider context by developing policies of free trade with each and every one of the world’s main trading nations. In doing this it was reasoned that Britain’s naval superiority was such that clashes of interest brought about by trying to achieve a trading monopoly at the expense of other countries, as had happened in the past, were not now necessary and would, in fact, be counterproductive. Great Britain would, for the foreseeable future, be at peace with all nations willing to trade with her.9

The achievement of this so-called period of Pax Britannica was not only due to superior naval power wielded with restraint by the self-appointed policeman of the world’s sea lanes, but was also the result of Britain’s increasing commercial and industrial development. This enabled her to take advantage of the ready markets that existed within a growing British Empire, both for her own goods and services as well as those of her erstwhile rivals. If due to Britain’s superior position, naval and maritime power was not currently possible for other nations, the growth of free trade meant that they could at least share the economic benefits that the new arrangements made possible.10 A further advantage, of course, was that costly and resource-consuming military conflicts could now be more readily avoided, although in practice a number of skirmishes and wars of limited objective did occur in the decades that followed the end of hostilities with France. Some of these involved Britain in both military and diplomatic capacities.

In addition to the occasional military adventure and to their trade related policing role, the ships and men of Britain’s sailing navy at this juncture were involved in the suppression of piracy and slave trading on a worldwide basis, as well as occasionally being tasked with charting the oceans and coastlines of the world, and with carrying out expeditions and transporting scientific researchers to polar, and other previously unexplored, regions.

Even though such changes in the navy’s role were taking place, the day-to-day life of seamen in the early nineteenth century British Navy was still exceptionally hard, having undergone little improvement over the years, and irrespective of the navy’s so-called ‘habit of victory’. Harsh discipline, brutal treatment, and poor working and living conditions were still all too common maladies that affected the service and the way it operated. Changing attitudes and expectations within both the officer class and the navy’s rank and file, as well as within the Admiralty itself, were taking place, however, and these closely mirrored what was happening within a wider society that the long years of the French wars had significantly altered, and which was ready to take advantage of the opportunities and challenges that a new commercialism, and the fledgling Industrial Revolution, was creating.

Within this environment the need to extend the operational capabilities and range of British warships at sea was increasingly being seen as important by a naval administration that had slowly grown to believe that an ongoing dominance of naval sea power worldwide could best be achieved by ensuring that its seamen, as well as its ships, were better looked after. This policy, it was reasoned, could best be accomplished by making sure that ships’ crews were well nourished and healthy, and the Admiralty organisation responsible for the often difficult job of feeding the fleet, initially known as the Victualling Board, was duly tasked with ensuring that this happened.11 The Victualling Board was in fact generally looked on with derision within the service because of the frequent poor quality of naval provisions, and because of suspected corrupt practices by some of its commissioners and officials. In line with gradually enlightened Admiralty policy, however, the Victualling Board, which in 1832 was merged with the Admiralty Board, did introduce some important innovations and improvements, including the use of canned food.12 As a consequence, and over an extended period, actions developed in line with such policies together with other improvements, such as better and more hygienic living conditions, curtailing the practice of flogging, and the ending of capital punishment for a whole range of relatively minor offences, improved working and other conditions within the naval service, and became the norm.

The Industrial Revolution had gathered force during the Great Wars with France, and as the nineteenth century progressed it was evident to all that Britain was the world leader where industry, commerce, financial matters, and shipping were concerned. It was also clear that no other power was able to sufficiently develop its industrial and other resources to offer Britain any serious competition. Pax Britannica thus represented a position where Britain’s largely overwhelming naval forces could utilise worldwide harbour, dockyard, and other support facilities within its large Empire to protect an ever-increasing global trade. Naturally the various locations that constituted the British Empire rapidly became a focus for that trade, and provided essential raw materials and markets for a British economy bolstered by a growing Industrial Revolution, that poured its manufactured and other products into the rest of the world. It was an exceptionally strong framework for national and world power, and one that could remain effective, provided no unbalancing and undermining weaknesses occurred to cause or even threaten an eventual collapse.13

However it wasn’t only the framework of Pax Britannica that enabled Britain to enjoy a period of apparently effortless naval supremacy after 1815, it was also because the governments of other nations made little effort, either individually or collectively, to mount any effective challenge. To a significant extent, therefore, Britain’s monopoly position was made even stronger because her rivals were not prepared to spend the time and energy necessary to oppose and counter it.14 Irrespective of this, worldwide winds of change were starting to blow, and around the middle of the century many European nations, in the light of their own progressive industrialisation and growing economic strength, began to follow Britain’s lead and further develop and extend their own iron foundries, factory systems, and mechanical, civil, and marine engineering expertise. As a consequence competition became much stronger, and the period of Pax Britannica was gradually brought to an end.15

Apart from areas such as hygiene and other gradual shipboard changes, the British Navy, always highly traditional in its outlook and a firm believer in things needing to be tried and tested, especially where its ships were concerned, was at this time having to deal with, and absorb the effects of, fundamental changes in the way its wooden warships were being constructed. The existence of a reserve of ships that had been laid down during the French Wars had tended to curtail new construction work, with most dockyard resources being focused on repairs. Irrespective of this, new warship building was starting to be sanctioned, and a few hulls were being laid down in the dockyards, although there was little funding available to develop new ideas.

Suitable shipbuilding timber was, however, becoming more difficult to obtain, and it was also true that decades of bungling policies and mismanagement of the nation’s home-grown timber resources, had more than once meant that a lack of this basic essential had left the dockyards in a condition where a defeat at sea might have led to disaster,16 since repairs to damaged ships could not have been carried out due to the lack of suitable timber. To place timber supply issues in perspective, it should be noted that apart from the large volume of suitable and correctly seasoned timber that the dockyards required for repair work, over 3,800 fully matured oak trees might well be consumed in the construction of a single large ship of the line.17 Timber, especially oak, in large quantities, was thus a basic requirement for Great Britain’s wooden-hulled sailing navy, and in an attempt to alleviate some of the supply and other problems, Sir Robert Seppings, master shipwright at Chatham dockyard, who in 1813 became Surveyor of the Navy, had started critically reviewing the way ships were being built.18 This task was far from simple or straightforward, especially in view of the long timeframes, high costs, and traditional, often near sacrosanct, building methods that over many years had evolved within the British dockyard system, and which had sometimes been given a legitimacy that was unwarranted in respect of economy and effectiveness.

But a general inertia and opposition to change, together with a lack of funds, and of course the critical timber supply problems, were not the only difficulties that Seppings faced and hoped to overcome with his reforms, and these revolved around matters associated with ship construction. It had been known for some years that wooden ships consistently involved in wartime blockade and similar duties were not always strong enough to bear the strains they were continually subjected to in heavy seas, and that the timbers in their wooden hulls ‘worked’, or moved, to such an extent that bows and stern could well droop. This condition was known as hogging, and excessive leaking and significant weakening of the ship’s structure might well result unless remedial action was taken. This was a dangerous state for a sailing ship to be in, and leaking in particular had an added adverse effect in that it helped create an environment where both wet and dry rot could occur in and around the ends of frames and other structural timbers, with disastrous consequences if not discovered in time.

The method normally used to overcome such problems was to fit additional wooden or iron knees between beams and side timbers, iron standards on and between decks, and in some cases additional rider timbers in the ship’s topsides, between decks, and in way of the hold. Any rotten timber found would be cut out if it could be reached, and new pieces fitted as replacements, using scarf joints. The value of these modifications was nonetheless temporary, as they only served to strengthen the ship’s hull until the next time she was subjected to excessively heavy strains,19 when further damage might well occur, and the whole process would need to be repeated all over again.

Wooden warship hulls were basically constructed by laying massive transverse frames across equally massive keel timbers to which they were fixed, before being topped with further large strengthening timbers, known as keelsons. The frames would then be covered with longitudinal planks inside and out, and strengthened and stiffened with beams, and other timbers. Seppings described the structure so formed as being like a five-bar gate without the diagonal members, as although the resulting hull was very strong there was very little in its structure to stop distortion such as hogging or ‘breaking the sheer’, as it was also called.20 Over a period Seppings examined all these problems in detail, and was ultimately able to develop a new system of shipbuilding that included the use of shorter and more readily available timber for hull construction, diagonal bracing between all frames, filling between all the bottom timbers of the hull, and continuous shelf pieces instead of knees. He also redesigned the vulnerable bows and sterns of line-of-battle ships to strengthen them against gunfire.21

Further major changes in wooden ship design and construction were introduced some years later after Seppings had resigned, and Sir William Symonds had been appointed Surveyor of the Navy. The principle on which Symonds worked was to move away from the old established rules that dictated that a ship’s beam, or width at the water line, should have a fixed relationship with its water-line length, such as for example three beams to the length where a ship with a 30ft beam would have a 90ft length. Instead he attempted to increase a ship’s stability by increasing its beam, altering its hull form, and reducing the amount of ballast carried. In practice, however, ships designed in this way tended to roll very heavily, making gunnery difficult and creating rapid wear to the rigging.22 Although significant, the changes that Symonds introduced were not universally supported, and his ability as a designer was limited by his lack of numeracy. This personal defect, which he was unable or unwilling to try and overcome, together with a total lack of interest in the technological changes that the Industrial Revolution was fast making possible, lost Symonds the confidence of the Admiralty, and in 1847 after much prompting, he tendered his resignation.

Warship design and construction had dramatically changed and improved under the influence of first Seppings and then Symonds, but was also due to the work carried out by the many talented dockyard naval architects and shipwrights who worked with these two men and designed, built, and modified Britain’s wooden warships. The wooden warship of this era was much stronger than its predecessors and had been subjected to more change over a short period of tens of years, than had affected earlier ships over many hundreds. Additionally it was now possible to build bigger ships that were capable of carrying more guns of higher calibre, and of accommodating the larger crews that these changes necessitated.

A constant supply of good quality timber, especially oak, was still difficult to find, albeit that supplies were now procured from sources as far afield as Northern Europe and North America. But suitable oak was still difficult to source in the quantities required, so other timber such as pine was tried for building frigates and other smaller vessels. In practice, though, ships that were constructed of pine soon deteriorated in use, although vessels built in India from local teak were much more successful and longer lasting. Irrespective of all this, however, wooden ship construction remained a slow and laborious process, as ships had to be left in frame, sometimes for years, to allow their structural members to season properly.

It was also by this time widely accepted that the limit of wood as a building material had been reached, and that wooden ships that were larger than those that currently existed could not be constructed without creating major and perhaps unsolvable structural problems in the finished vessels. However, fundamental and far reaching change in the way ships would be built, the materials they would be built from, the way they would be powered, and the size and effectiveness of the armament they would carry, were just around the corner. Indeed the changes associated with this had in fact already started, having their roots in the work of Seppings and Symonds, although being far from fully recognised as such at the time, and in any case probably barely understood. This change process, that to those it affected might well have appeared to accelerate on nearly a monthly basis, forms the subject matter of the rest of this book. The reader should note, however, that the text mainly focuses on capital ship development during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Consequently the associated history of cruisers and smaller vessels during the same period is not covered, and is only incidentally referred to as and when it impinges on the development of larger ships in the British battle fleet.

2

FROM SAIL TO STEAM ASSIST

With the ending of Pax Britannica, simmering national rivalries on the continent of Europe had gradually become more intensive as the nineteenth century progressed, and each great power both there and to a lesser extent in the Americas, faced the problem of confronting Britain over issues that had once been associated with prestige, but were now more about national existence. In so doing each national government encountered the problem of how to oppose this, the greatest of naval powers, with the inferior naval forces they commanded. Solutions to this problem could no longer be considered a luxury, for by now they had become a necessity where all Great Britain’s potential rivals were concerned, and in the case of France in particular, the effort to find solutions dominated the history of its navy for the remainder of the century.1

During the first half of the nineteenth century the changes outlined in the previous chapter had altered the whole nature of the Royal Navy as a fighting force. Pressed to economise whilst at the same time being asked to take on fresh worldwide responsibilities, the Admiralty had no alternative but to repeatedly reduce the strength of a home fleet that had traditionally been seen as the main bastion of Britain’s defences,2 on the waters that surrounded the island nation. The somewhat weakened condition that this policy created for the navy, together with the emergence of other industrial powers and new rivalries in Europe, was seen as a real threat by both the British Government and the naval administration, as well as by numerous individuals within British society. These concerns became even more focused when in 1844 and again in 1852 the sabre-rattling and warship building activities of a resurgent France were viewed as possible precursors to invasion. Other invasion scares were to follow and the increasing nervousness in political and other circles generated a view that the navy was not now strong enough to defend Britain’s shores.

France all the while had been providing the most advanced scientific training for both its naval officers and naval constructors, and was doubling its efforts to attain superior technical efficiency in all its naval resources. The French Navy counted modern science as one of its major weapons and under its new ruler, Louis Napoleon, followed what he perceived as being the three principles for successfully countering the Royal Navy, namely: near equity in numbers of warships, superior fighting efficiency, and the bold adoption of every new technical step forward,3 and this included advancing the new technology of steam propulsion for French ships. On receiving news of these developments, Lord Palmerston, the then British Foreign Secretary, began to cry panic in the parliamentary debates that followed, and the Duke of Wellington, who by then was an MP, and never a great supporter of the navy, added to the scare in 1847, with the pronouncement that ‘steam has bridged the English Channel to the detriment of Britain’s security’.4

Steam engines had been in existence since the eighteenth century and were progressively used to provide power in factories, mills and mines, and for powering early locomotives. It was only in the last two decades of that century, however, that the practicality of using steam engines in river and canal boats was demonstrated, and this appeared to have happened simultaneously in France, Britain, and America.5 Further development of those early marine engine and boiler arrangements took place in many countries over the next thirty years or so, with a number of private inventors and designers improving the construction and technical efficiency of ‘those infernal machines’.

By 1830 Great Britain was starting to use steam power both commercially in its large merchant navy, where it was used in an auxiliary capacity to drive paddle wheels in what were essentially still sailing ships, and in the Royal Navy, where steam engines were installed in a few paddle tugs and other small craft. Mainly used for harbour and dispatch duties, these vessels could scarcely be classed as warships, at least not initially. In the next ten years a further seventy small steam vessels were added to the navy list, all of which had paddle wheels driven by slow-moving side-lever engines, that were based on those used ashore in mills, and as pumping engines in mines and quarries and on numerous canals.

The majority of these ships were provided with basic low-pressure flue boilers that delivered steam at a pressure of 4lb/per sq. in and which were individually built to fit the internal shape of each ship they were fitted in. Few of these vessels carried any significant armament, although two or three 6-pounder guns were sometimes installed. By around 1850 tubular boilers had been introduced, and these dispensed with the long winding flue, necessary to convey heated furnace gasses, that had been a feature of flue boilers. These new boilers were also more compact, so savings in weight and space were possible, and steam pressures could now be increased from 10 to 15lb/sq. in, with resulting increases in efficiency. Space for machinery, or the lack of it, was still an issue in these small wooden-hulled paddle ships, few of which exceeded 1,200 tons in weight, and the side-lever engines were eventually replaced by steam-powered oscillating engines that rotated the paddle wheels directly instead of via the cumbersome side-lever beams.6

Wooden-hulled paddle-wheel ships were not at first seen as independent fighting units, although they were often utilised to tow ships of the line in and out of harbour, or to help them move up into the wind, a position where normal sailing was impossible. In Britain funding for new construction was still scarce, although development work had been progressing for some years to produce a paddle warship that was large enough to carry a more effective armament, and take on more onerous duties. Initially this was achieved in 1843 by converting a 43-gun sailing frigate into a paddle steamer. This experiment was successful, although the frigate’s broadside guns could not be retained, having been sacrificed to make way for the paddle wheels. In subsequent years other similar conversions followed, all of which involved cutting each ship in half and lengthening it by about 65ft to provide space in the middle for engines and boilers to be housed, and for paddle wheels in their boxes to be installed. The paddle frigates so formed were significantly larger than their predecessors, weighing around 1,600–1,700 tons.7

A number of new paddle-wheel frigates and corvettes were built in British dockyards during the following years, and were soon being employed in the normal reconnaissance, general cruising and other ‘eyes of the fleet’ work of a nineteenth-century ship of this type, that is everything but standing in the line of battle. By 1852, a total of seventy-two of these steam frigates had been built, as well as seventy-seven smaller paddle wheelers for dispatch and harbour work.8 Those classed as frigates were normally rigged as three-masted barques, whilst the remainder were two-masted, and rigged as brigs, schooners, or sloops. Although rather ungainly, these, what were by now little warships, sailed reasonably well, irrespective of paddle wheels and surrounding structure, a distinct advantage in a vessel where powered propulsion was still considered secondary to that provided by sails.

At this juncture the majority of new-build paddle warships were constructed of wood but with double skins of planking up to 7in thick. Substantial frames were provided and under the Seppings System, wooden and iron diagonal straps were added to strengthen a hull structure that had to carry the weight of engines, boilers auxiliary machinery, and the great wooden-and-iron paddle wheels in their boxes, or sponsons.9 Wrought iron for use as a constructional material had been around for some years, and its original poor quality was gradually improved as better methods of manufacture evolved, and importantly the technology necessary to roll iron sheets of dimensions suitable for ship construction, were developed. Records indicate though that by 1852 only seventeen iron-hulled paddle warships had been built,10 possibly reflecting some reluctance on the part of the British Admiralty to heavily invest in metallurgical technologies and products that at that stage were yet to be fully proved.

Paddle warships had their armament arranged on the upper or spar deck, which in fact was the only through deck available. Once their military potential was established, these ships were fitted with four to six 18-pounder guns. Later on the frigate classes were fitted with up to four muzzle-loading smooth-bore 32-pounders on the beam, together with a long 32lb pivot gun that pointed forward, but which could also be used on either quarter.

Nelson class three-decked 120-gun ship of the line St Vincent probably during the period when her rig had been reduced and she was acting either as the flagship of the port admiral at Portsmouth, or in the capacity of a training ship at that port. Although at least one of her sister ships was converted to steam, St Vincent was not, and in the photograph she is shown being manoeuvred by two paddle tugs, one on either side. Even though she has been cut down, the complexity of her remaining rigging can still be clearly seen. (Author’s collection)

Much of the ship’s broadside was taken up by paddle wheels and sponsons and this severely limited the number of guns paddle warships could carry. In an attempt to counter this deficiency these vessels were sometimes fitted with large 8in or 10in shell guns11 that fired spherical thin-walled shells. Each shell was filled with an explosive charge, detonated by way of a fuse that had to be lit before the gun was fired, so that detonation occurred as the shell closed on its target. The success of this action rested in the hands of the gun captain, who had to estimate target range and ensure that the fuse was cut to the right length to enable detonation to take place at the right distance. Due to the presence of large guns, all the standing rigging and sail handling gear, and on-deck coal storage facilities, the main deck of a paddle frigate was limited in terms of space. As all warships of necessity needed to carry launches, cutters, and other small boats, limited deck space could pose a significant problem where convenient storage of these for rapid use was concerned. This was overcome in paddle ships in a novel way by fitting specially constructed box boats that fitted upside down on the top of the paddle boxes that the boats were shaped to fit. These boats were launched as required using davits that had been specially adapted for that use.12

In response to the steam factory facilities that France had built in Cherbourg and at certain other of her dockyards, the British Admiralty established a steam factory at Woolwich, which became operational in 1843.13 Similar establishments were subsequently provided at the other British dockyards. Whilst paddle warships were normally designed and built in the dockyards, the engines, boilers, and associated equipment were developed and built by private contractors that included Maudslay, Penn, Seaward, Rennie, and others. The dockyard steam factories, by comparison, were normally used for maintenance work only.

Having lengths of up to 220ft, paddle frigates, corvettes, and tugs were relatively small and rarely exceeded 1,500 tons in weight, as measured by what was known as builders’ measurement or builders’ old measurement, both of which were estimates of size based on volume. More accurate measures based on a ship’s displacement were eventually introduced instead, and were soon universally utilised in all the world’s navies. Although extensively used both in the merchant marine and in the navies of most seagoing nations, paddle-wheel propulsion possessed many practical disadvantages, and these limited its further development. For example, as the coal supply and stores were consumed during a voyage, the ship’s draught was altered and the paddle wheels increasingly became less efficient as their working surfaces became higher in the water, creating a marked resistance to the ship’s progress. For warships about to engage an enemy, paddle wheels were especially unsuitable, as they were in great danger of being rapidly damaged by shot and shell, as indeed was the paddle shaft and associated machinery. Furthermore the paddle boxes and associated structures interfered with the training and working of the guns to such an extent that the ship’s fighting ability was adversely affected.14

These aspects, and especially the fact that sufficiently large paddle wheels would take up much of the space normally utilised by broadside guns, made paddle wheels most unsuitable for fitting to the navy’s largest capital units, the mighty sailing line-of-battle ship. Consequently no ship of this type was ever built with paddles, the resulting reduction in broadside fire alone being enough to render the idea impossible.15 In addition to the development and construction work associated with paddle frigates and corvettes, dockyard naval architects had for some years been making efforts to further improve the design and performance of the sailing fleet. However, although experimental vessels were sometimes built to incorporate and test new ideas, the only gains in practice were in the large amount of comparative data from trials that subsequently became available. It was true that the changes instigated by Seppings and Symonds, together with the latter’s assistant John Eyde, had enabled cheaper, stronger, and slightly larger wooden broadside battleships to be built, but with the unsuitability of the paddle wheel, and in the absence of any suitable alternative power source, the vagaries of wind and tide still very much dictated the way that sailing battleships were moved and used.

First-class paddle frigate Terrible of 1845. At 3,189 tons displacement she was the largest, and because of her massive wooden framing the most strongly built, paddle frigate in the British or indeed any other navy. Terrible was relatively heavily armed, with sixteen large calibre broadside guns. (National Museum of the Royal Navy)

Outside the confines of the British dockyard system, numerous engineers and inventors in Britain, America, France and elsewhere continued to work on alternative forms of water-based propulsion, and during the first part of the nineteenth century, some ninety-eight patents were taken out, or reports prepared in this respect.16 Usually employing steam as an initial power source, by far the most popular focus of these patents was some form of screw propeller, although in practice very few of the patentees were determined and fortunate enough to turn their dreams into reality.

Where the Royal Navy was concerned it was John Ericsson who first demonstrated a screw propeller invention to the British Board of Admiralty. It was Francis Pettit Smith, however, who, after showing his own propeller to the Board during a number of demonstrations carried out over the space of two years, was in 1840 appointed to consult on the fitting of his design to a prototype naval screw steamer. Named Rattler, this prototype was of 888-tons displacement and ran her first trials in 1843. Between that date and 1845 Rattler was used for an extensive series of experiments in which screw propellers of various forms were tested in different conditions of sea and wind. So satisfactory were these experiments that the Admiralty ordered twenty vessels to be fitted with one form of Pettit Smith’s screw, with the inventor himself being employed to superintend the process. In all cases the screw propellers used were double threaded and set in the deadwood of each host ship.17