Man on the Ocean, Robert Michael Ballantyne [best classic novels txt] 📗

was still our "wooden walls" which carried the flag of England on from triumph to triumph. At the battle of Trafalgar the _Victory_ and the French ship the _Redoubtable_ were brought up close alongside of each other, and in this position poured volley after volley upon each other's bulwarks, until water had to be thrown over the ships' sides to prevent them igniting. The _Victory_ was a grand ship in her time, yet she was not more than two thousand tons burden, and her guns were but one hundred and two in number.

But at last the day arrived when it became manifest that the glory of our "wooden walls" had set. In the prime of his intellectual and physical strength, the Emperor Louis Napoleon was a man of active and subtle brain, and it was to his ingenious invention that the first ironclad ship of war owed its birth. Floating batteries protected with iron plates were first employed during the Crimean War. It was becoming manifest that the great strides which were being made in the manufacture of cannon must necessitate an improved system of defensive armour for ships of war. No wooden vessel that could be constructed could be proof against the new guns that were now coming rapidly into use.

The French, as has been just indicated, were the first in the field with the new style of war-ships. _La Gloire_ was built, and was quickly followed by our own _Warrior_. The frame of _La Gloire_ was constructed of wood, but covered with an iron plating four and a half inches in thickness. The _Warrior_ was built on an iron frame, and her armour-plating is of the same thickness as that of _La Gloire_; the lining is of solid teak eighteen inches thick, which is again backed by an inner coating of iron. The length of the _Warrior_ is three hundred and eighty feet, but only about two-thirds of this is iron-plated.

At this time--the early days of ironclads--the heaviest shot that could be thrown by any gun was a sixty-eight pounder. Guns of this calibre the _Warrior_ and her class were proof against. But the guns increased rapidly in size and power, and the thickness of the armour with which the ships were protected had to be increased in proportion. The class of war-vessels which succeeded the _Warrior_ were entirely cased with iron plates, whose thickness has from time to time been increased. Since the first ironclad was built, then, a contest--for only such it can be called--has been going on between the cannon-maker and the ship-builder, the one striving to construct a gun which shall pierce the thickest armour which the ship can carry, the other adding inch upon inch to his armour plates, to the end that they may be shot-proof; and this contest may be said to be going on at this hour.

Will there ever be the same romance about the warships of the present day,--what those of the future will be like we do not care to speculate,--and the old "wooden walls" whose prowess on the high seas founded England's maritime glory? Will a Dibdin ever arise to sing a _Devastation_ or a _Glatton_? Can a _Devastation_ or a _Glatton_ ever inspire poetic thoughts and images? One would say that the singer must be endowed in no ordinary degree with the sacred fire whom such a theme as a modern ironclad turret-ship should move to lyric utterance. It has been said that all the romance of the road died out with the old coaching days; and certainly a locomotive engine, with its long black train of practical-looking cars, makes hardly so picturesque a feature in the landscape as one of the old stage-coaches with its red-coated driver, horn-blowing guard, and team of mettled greys; but a railway train is an embodiment of poetry compared with a turret-ship. But if it be true that poetry and romance must more and more cease to be associated with our navy, we must just accept the fact, for nothing is more certain than that, whatever the warships of the future _may_ be, we can never again return to the days of the old wooden ships.

Several opposing difficulties have now to be met in the construction of ironclads. Invulnerability as regards the enemy's guns, protection to the men on board, speed, and the quality of being easily managed at sea,--all these points have to be carefully considered; and the difficulty is that one quality wars against another. A ship might be built which was proof against any guns that could be devised, and then might be found utterly unmanageable and unsafe at sea. A balance of qualities has therefore to be struck, and this perfect equipoise has by no means been as yet attained. Every year--we might say every month-- witnesses the birth of some new type of armour-plated war-ship, built in every case at an enormous cost. The new sea-monster looks formidable enough in all conscience; but the question that arises the instant she quits the dock is, Is she sea-worthy? And with the fate of the _Captain_ and the _Vanguard_ in our memories, the question may well arise. The story of modern war-ships has, up to this, been one of mingled success and failure. Does not the epigram on our war-ships--our "sub-marine fleet"--owe its point and sting, in a measure, to its truth?

Of the various types of modern war-vessels, the most formidable yet devised are undoubtedly the _steam-rams_ and _turret-ships_. The steam-ram is armed with a strong steel beak, with which it charges an enemy in much the same way as the war-galleys of ancient times charged a foe, or as a sword-fish attacks its adversary. The turret-ship carries one or more shot-proof circular turrets, in which one or more guns are worked by the crew, the guns being capable of being turned and pointed in any direction. Both turret-ships and steam-rams are, of course, iron plated.

Vessels of this description were first employed by the Americans in the great civil war. The careers of the _Merrimac_ and _Monitor_ may be said to have become a part of American national history. The _Merrimac_ was the first iron-plated steam-ram. She was originally a wooden frigate; was cut down, coated with iron, and furnished with a ram. In her famous encounter with the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_, two wooden frigates of the Federals, she steamed alongside the former, delivered a raking fire, and then, turning upon the _Cumberland_, attacked that vessel with her ram. Of the _Cumberland_ she made quick work; for having torn a gaping rent in her side, she poured a damaging fire into the gap, hanging on by the sharp iron beak with which steam-rams are furnished.

Then withdrawing to a short distance, she again charged her adversary, and delivered a second terrible fire, until the _Cumberland_ finally sank. The Merrimac then turned her attention to the _Congress_, whose fate she sealed in about half an hour. The first shot caused fearful destruction, killing every man at one of the guns, blowing away the bulk-heads, strewing the deck with a carnage too horrible to dwell upon, and finally setting the ship on fire. The _Congress_ at last struck her colours, but during the night she blew up.

This formidable vessel had subsequently to haul down her colours before the _Monitor_--in a figurative sense, that is, for she did not actually surrender, but retreated after a contest of some hours. In this notable struggle the _Merrimac_ sustained much damage, without succeeding in inflicting on her enemy anything like the same amount of injury; in fact, the _Monitor_ came out of the action scathless.

The changes that are taking place in the construction of war-ships are so various and so rapid, that we cannot attempt to do more here than take note of a few of the principal; and even what are mentioned as novelties now, before these pages appear may have ceased to be novelties.

Iron is now employed in almost every part of a war-ship, the masts themselves being in many cases of iron--hollow tubes through which the running rigging may be let down when there is danger of its being damaged by the enemy's fire. The majority of modern ironclads are built in compartments, with this advantage that, if damage is sustained in one part of the vessel, and the water rush in through the gap made by shot or any other cause, the ship will still float until the water can be let out again.

The American ironclad turret-ship _Monitor_ has given her name to a whole class of vessels built within recent years for the English navy; but in many respects our vessels are superior to their American prototype. All these ships--which are characterised by low free-boards and absence of masts and sails--fight their guns from turrets. They are sometimes known as "coast-defence ships," from the circumstance that they were constructed mainly for home service.

Of these "English monitors," four--the _Cyclops_, _Gorgon_, _Hecate_, and _Hydra_--are built on identically similar principles. In appearance they may be best compared to a raft with a battery on top of it, from which fortress or battery rise various funnels and a flag-staff. The deck is but three feet and a half above the level of the sea. While the ships are in port the deck is roofed in with an awning and railed round; but both awning and railing are removed when the vessels put to sea.

The battery or fortress is in the centre of the ship, and fills up about one-third of her length and three-fourths of her breadth. The surrounding deck is flush, its surface being broken only by the skylights, which are three in number. The skylights allow but a scant and dim light to penetrate to the officers' and seamen's quarters below; but even this is wanting in time of action, when a shot-proof shield takes the place of the glass windows.

The deck of the dass of war-ships we are describing is composed of twin-layers of iron plating half an inch each in thickness, supported on iron beams, and of two layers of solid teak lining four inches thick. The sides of the ships are protected by iron plating of eight-inch thickness amidships, which is an inch more of iron than the armour possessed by the majority of our masted sea-going ironclads, many of which are twice or thrice the size of the _Cyclops_ and her sister-ships. It will thus be seen that these turret-ships are practically stronger in defensive equipment than any other class of ironclad cruisers.

The battery of these vessels is surrounded by a breastwork six feet in height, plated with nine-inch armour. Entrance is gained to the turrets themselves from inside this breastwork. In the centre of the turret there are two cylinders, the one fitting over the other in a manner which keeps the whole steady even in rough weather. Small steam-engines placed inside the breastwork serve to turn the turrets, which, however, can also be worked by manual labour should necessity demand it.

The ports present a striking contrast to those in the old wooden ships, by reason of their greatly diminished size. They just admit of the muzzle of the gun peeping through, and no more, being oval in shape, and about three feet in diameter lengthways. There can be little doubt that these small ports are an advantage, since they must afford greater protection to the gunners during action. When it is desired to alter the direction of