Heresies of Sea Power/Part 3/Chapter 4

In a previous chapter reference has been made to the tendency of navies to evolve themselves in cycles. A similar tendency is to be found in warships besides their eternal tendency to increase in dimensions. It is the cycle tendency which retards that increase in dimensions which would otherwise probably be swifter than it is.

Old-time navies are not of much interest in this connection: the principle involved is also better to be seen in the warships of the last forty years or so.

The first warship that belonged distinctly to the present era was the American Monitor. She embodied an absolutely new principle: the employment of a few of the heaviest possible guns against a larger number of lesser pieces. She also embodied an attempt at invulnerability as opposed to partial armour protection. Another integral idea may be said to have been the employment of all the guns on either side instead of having only half the guns available for use against any one target at any given moment.

​Here it may be observed that all the old wooden battleships were in a sense 'armoured.' Specially thick sides were employed for the specific purpose of keeping out projectiles, and it was rare for harm to be done save by shots that entered portholes. The Crimean floating batteries and the early broadside ironclads like the Gloire and Warrior were lineal descendants of the steam line of battleships that preceded them. They were built of iron instead of wood

and so had iron instead of wood armour (their armour being nothing but an increased thickness of the side, with wood backing).

The Monitor was not in any way a lineal evolution of past efforts. She was not a new idea in the matter of years, because so far back as the Crimean War, Ericsson, her inventor, had submitted plans of her to the French Emperor. At the same period Captain Cowper Coles of the British Navy actually produced a raft which carried on it a species of turret, and in 1860 he had lectured at the Royal United Service ​Institution upon a proposed 'cupola ship.' This ship was to carry no less than nine turrets each with a pair of guns in them. Ericsson's idea was not made public till a year later.

Each has been accused of plagiarising the other, and Coles especially has been so attacked; but probably each was working ignorant of the other. A quite novel idea, it has been noticed, usually occurs to two or three different people about the same time. Not, however, that the turret, except qua turret, was an absolutely novel notion, because the 'swivel gun' and the 'pivot gun' were existing ideas; and so long ago as the sixteenth century something of the nature of a turret had been proposed. Coles and Ericsson were, however, the first to build turret ships. The American Civil War gave Ericsson the benefit of a battle test and the resulting advertisement.

The Monitor quickly developed into the double turret ship with four heavy guns and there—so far as America was concerned—progress ceased. Improvements in detail were effected, but no further advance was made in the direction of evolution of the original idea.

The British at the time of the Monitor were building broadside ironclads armed with medium guns of only 12½ tons, but large numbers of these guns in each ship. At the same time, however, there was evolved a vessel which in many ways was nearly forty years ahead of her time.

​This was the Royal Sovereign completed in 1864, an old three decker turned into a turret ship. Being a comparatively small and experimental vessel she only carried guns of 12½ tons, but none the less one general idea embodied in her was not touched again till the Dreadnought was designed in 1904-05.

The Royal Sovereign had no less than four turrets, all in the centre line. The foremost turret carried two

guns, the others only carried a single gun; so she was a long way behind Captain Coles's ideal of 1860; but still the 'ideal' remained an ideal, whereas here was a ship actually built able to use all her guns on either broadside, in other words representing the ideal maximum of broadside power for the power available. It was always obvious that all her guns could be paired. About the same time the four-turreted Prince Albert was built. From the 1860–64 Royal Sovereign design to the 1904–05 Dreadnought design is not a very great ​step. An evolved Royal Sovereign would have produced something very akin to the Dreadnought in quite a few years.

The idea, however, was not evolved for forty years. The Monarch and Captain, masted turret ships, were produced, and finally the Devastation, which was the original Monitor idealised to the full. No vessel so perfectly adapted to the battle conditions of the day had ever been conceived.

Meanwhile, everywhere the masted broadside battle-ship, the evolution of the old wooden ships, continued to be built. In some, as in the Sultan and the later Alexandra, two decks of guns were frankly adopted and probably only a change in fashion prevented three decks from coming in,^[1] once that the central box-battery of limited extent became the custom. The question as to whether it were better to build ships carrying a few of the heaviest available guns or ships carrying a larger number of lesser pieces was left quite undetermined by the construction of both types.

The principal naval powers of the period 1870-1880 were England, France, Turkey, Spain, Russia and to a mild extent Germany.

Of these France displayed the most originality. She never attempted any imitation of the British Devastation, but evolved a way of carrying the heaviest ​guns in broadside ships. The heavy gun stood for everything in those days. In the Amiral Baudin and Devastation types France mounted heavy guns in small barbettes, carried high up for the express purpose of being used in all weathers and for a plunging fire on to the decks of ships of lesser freeboard. She also mounted in the Baudin a number of small guns, for no more definite reason apparently than that space chanced to be available for them, because at the date of her design, 1872 or before, there were none of those ships with huge unarmoured areas such as became so conspicuous later on.

Turkey purchased broadside or box-battery iron-clads in England, so also did Germany. Originality was only to be found in Russia, where the amateur spirit of imitation led to the building of some coast defenders with three turrets, and then, towards the end of the period were designed some distinct improvements upon past efforts in the Tchesma class, with six heavy guns as the main armament. These vessels took so long to build and were begun so long after their conception that they never attracted the attention that they deserved. The earliest of them was not commenced till 1883, but the design is believed to date from 1880 or before.

Italy took to the turret ship, and vied with England in building vessels which, while nominally improvements upon the Devastation, really fell away from that ideal except for their more powerful guns.

​It was the day of big guns: Italy ran to 100 tons, England to 81 tons, and France to 75—all pieces of 16 to 17 inch calibre.

The situation was thus:—

(1) France mounting a number of small guns in addition to the heavy pieces, in high freeboard ships.

(2) England and Italy concentrating armour amidships in low freeboard vessels with unarmoured ends after France had adopted the secondary battery.

(3) Russia, the amateur of all naval constructing nations, evolving a type that foreshadowed the Dreadnought of 1904-5.

(4) Other nations marking time or copying more or less obsolete plans.

Then, suddenly, Italy startled the world with the Italia, designed about 1877-78, an enormous vessel without any side armour whatever, with the four most powerful guns in existence and speed as a tactical feature of the design—a cruiser with a battleship's armament.

No nation followed up the idea, though England in the Collingwood has been accused of exaggerating its defects without securing its advantages.

The ease with which the Italia's unarmoured sides could be attacked by small guns was so obvious that the small gun immediately began to have a universal vogue. Though British design reverted to the Devastation idea in the Victoria and Trafalgar, both designs had small guns as a feature and the cult of the quick ​firer of six inches or thereabouts was supreme for the rest of the century.

France in 1889 laid down the Brennus which was really a Trafalgar of higher freeboard; and Germany in 1890, as the 'blundering amateur,' laid down four Brandenburgs, ships with six big guns and no secondary armament worth the mention. Both types were regarded unfavourably, and the Brandenburg with her six heavy guns was more or less an object of derision—so derided that Germany followed with a type of ship in which everything was sacrificed to a huge quick-firing armament. England alive to the dangers of low freeboard evolved the present Royal Sovereign type about 1889—ships which when all is said and done were nothing but large Devastations, more built up and carrying ten secondary guns for which the Devastation's armoured ends were sacrificed.

The Majesties differed by embodying a wide belt of medium thickness amidships instead of a narrow thick one. More protection was introduced for the quick-firers, which were advanced to a dozen, and right away on to the Queen, Majesties were built without any radical change beyond the introduction of a mild belt forward.

Every nation copied the 1889 Royal Sovereign idea in its own way. France did so by keeping the belt complete, but otherwise adhered to the idea of a couple of heavy guns fore and aft and small secondary guns in between.

​The United States, just beginning to build sea-going ships, did at first succeed in evolving a novelty in the Indiana, an effort after carrying something better than the four heavy and many light guns. Intermediate guns were mounted, but the idea was not developed and subsequently American versions of the Majestic were built. Germany like America preferred a continuous battery to casemates for the secondary guns, but the likeness between the Majestic, Wittelsbach, Alabama and Maine is very clear. France after some experiments with guns mounted singly in lozenge formation reverted to that Brennus idea which fore-shadowed the Majestic, and the Suffren is little but the Majestic with a complete waterline belt. In every ship it is only the Devastation with higher sides and a number of little guns added, and as a rule the less the likeness to the Devastation the poorer the ship.

At the end of the century the 6-inch gun was paramount; and Yalu, in the Chino-Japanese war, was proved (as all battles usually are) to indicate the excellence of current ideas. Only the more or less amateur designs of America showed a hankering for some secondary gun superior to the 6-inch. The 8-inch returned to American ships and Italy copied in the Benedetto Brin the idea of three calibres. So did the British in the King Edward, which as originally designed was intended to carry four 12-inch, eight 7.5-and ten 6-inch. The 7.5 were to be paired in turrets ​replacing the upper deck casemates of the Majestic, though at a later stage of construction a 9.2 was put in place of each pair of 7.5. Italy and Germany evolved ships with something heavier than the 6-inch as secondary gun, while France reverted to her early ideas and in the Republique produced a ship with all guns high up as the main feature.

When the King Edward was laid down the 6-inch fetish was well under suspicion, and the Lord Nelson type was evolved as a King Edward without any 6-inch and with more 9.2 on the deck above.

The conception of a ship with nothing but 12-inch guns belongs to Colonel Cuniberti, the distinguished Italian naval architect, who in 1903 aroused a certain amount of derision and a good deal of suspicion as to flightiness by his 'Ideal Battleship for the British Navy'—published in 'Fighting Ships' of 1903. This ship was of 17,000 tons, carried twelve 12-inch guns, had a 12-inch belt and 24-knot speed. She was an enlarged Vittor Emanuele. The following year (1904) some Italian officer writing in the 'Bivista Marittima' discussed the idea and suggested that to be fully efficient the ship should abandon the old idea of some guns firing on one side only. The Cuniberti ship bore seven 12-inch of her twelve on the broadside. The Italian officer suggested four turrets in the line of keel—the old Royal Sovereign and Prince Albert idea. He put two guns in each, and—to keep the turrets small—placed one gun on top of another, it being apparently ​impossible to squeeze the four turrets in in any other way.

Early in 1904 came the Russo-Japanese war and the swift discovery that only big guns were of much use in war. All nations at once abandoned the small gun idea (it is to be noted that they had begun to do so before the war began). The first new type warship to be laid down was the British Dreadnought—practically the old Russian idea of the Tchesma with a couple of extra big gun positions fore and aft in place of the Tchesma's secondary pieces. A bit of the Brandenburg may also be found in her.

The Dreadnought era marks the first real step (except isolated efforts) since the Devastation. Naval architects beyond taking advantage of improved guns, armour and speed had been working back while seeming to go forward, or rather they have now returned to the main line from which they had been diverted.

At the end of 1905 all nations were preparing to lay down Dreadnoughts, ships easily able to sweep the seas of earlier models.

Eventually no doubt the Dreadnoughts will pass before some type of ship (probably a Devastation) carrying infinitely heavier guns than obtain to-day and therefore fewer of them. And then, presently, by dint of increases in dimensions the old cycle will be worked out again.