| Introduction |
|
H.M.S. Warrior. Tinted Lithograph, 1872.
© National Maritime Museum, London.
|
|
| The Ironclad Age, in the brief space of fifty years, saw the instruments
of naval power progress in three crucial areas - hull design, propulsion
and armament - at an unprecedented rate. Put briefly, it was a case of
wood and sail and cannonballs to steel and steam and shells. It is scarcely
any wonder therefore that discussion of the naval power of the period,
both at the time and later, was and is dominated by materiel. |
|
| There were countercurrents of course. Theoreticians, led by Colomb, Mahan
and later Corbett, attempted to extract eternal verities from their studies
of the role of sea power in history. But those studies were based, as they
had to be, on the way the technology of the past was used, and the more
perceptive publicists - including Mahan - were ready to admit that material
developments could modify, if not upset, the strategic theories they had
generated. |
|
| The mainstream - and it was a stream whose course led through popular as
well as informed and academic discussion - was awash with details of hull
form and material, armour, main and auxiliary machinery, guns and later
torpedoes1. Figures often acquired their own momentum and reputation.
Competition both within nations and internationally was intense. |
1 Both broadsheets and
periodicals carried extensive coverage; see particularly The Times
and Illustrated London News, passim. Navalists concentrated on material
matters; the campaign in the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1880s carried
great material detail, and Brassey’s Naval Annual and the works
of Fred T.Jane, including The British Battle-Fleet (1912, republished
by Conway, 1998) were avowedly materiel-based.
2 See A.D.Lambert, ‘The Shield of Empire’, in J.R.Hill ed.,
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (OUP, 1995), pp.184-189.
|
| Apart from the fascination of continuous and often dramatic development
of materiel, there were other good reasons for its primacy in the discussion
of naval power. |
| In the global context, the numerical preponderance of the Royal Navy meant
that other powers had the greatest difficulty in formulating any strategic
or operational concept to cope with it. The Jeune Ecole in France
deployed the most radical logic, but it was not matched by performance.
For their part, the British saw no need to publicise their own strategic
plans although, as Andrew Lambert’s recent work has shown2,
these were more highly developed than earlier commentators gave credit
for. |
| Then again, there were no major wars to test any operational or tactical
plans that could be formulated. Such wars as there were might be intensively
studied and indeed there is evidence that the more thoughtful senior officers,
ship designers, politicians and publicists did so study them. But there
were always three lurking caveats. |
| First, few of these conflicts directly involved the main force of the Royal
Navy. In the whole of that 50 years only a few bombardments - of Kinburn
in 1855, Japanese targets in 1863, and Alexandria in 1882 - entailed the
firing of a British fleet’s heavy guns in anger. True, there was a
host of amphibious or riverine operations, in the Ashanti, Zulu, Boer,
Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian and Sudanese Wars3; but these were
scarcely typical of the work the main fleets were meant to do. |
3 See W.L.Clowes,
The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to 1900 (Chatham,
1997), Volume VII, pp. 91-561 for an exhaustive account. |
| That led into the second caveat. All wars are unique, but those of the
Ironclad Age were more unique than most. They took place mostly in very
special environments - estuaries, bays, rivers, semi-enclosed seas - which
had a marked effect on their conduct and on the provision and use of materiel.
Moreover, in the eyes of Victorians they tended to be conducted by funny
little foreign fellows who either had antiquated equipment, or did not
know how to maintain or use the modern equipment they had. |
|
| In turn, that linked with the third caveat. Britain might not lead the
world in technical innovation, and later in this paper examples will be
given of some notable instances of caution, even foot-dragging. But Britain’s
industrial capacity and institutional framework were such that she could
move with ease, once a decision was made to adopt any technical development,
to outstrip any rival. Consequently the lessons of other people’s
wars, and of Britain’s own limited conflicts, were always subject
to the reservation that, to most problems that had come to light, a new
technical solution was already in the pipeline; or, alternatively, a new
material development was around the corner which would radically modify
the assessment of success or failure in a particular incident of a war
just ended. |
|
| All these considerations conspired to give a profoundly material, and markedly
insular, emphasis to every discussion of naval power. British superiority
in related fields - in particular, the increasingly admired quality of
the British sailor4 - was taken for granted, but her preponderance
in material had to be worked for and maintained, and that was the half-century’s
main preoccupation. |
4 John Winton,
‘Life and Education in a Technically Evolving Navy’, loc. cit.
n.2, p.271.
See also the same author’s Hurrah for the Life of a Sailor!
(London, 1977). |
This paper will, therefore, base itself too in material matters: not simply
because of the theme of the Conference to which it was addressed, but because
it is the only appropriate way to approach the period it covers. In doing
so, it will be divided broadly into the three areas with which the subject
was introduced: wood to steel, sail to steam, shot to shell, or in other
words Hull Design, Propulsion and Armament. Of course they interacted;
that was and is one of the fascinations of the topic. And of course all
had their operational effects. Some enhanced the application of sea power,
others tended to limit it. That dialectic, accelerator and brake, will
be analysed as far as space and time allow.
|
|
Hull Design
The author of this paper is not a naval architect and is very conscious
of treading on dangerous ground in this section. The technical detail of
warship construction was exhaustively described, and argued about, at the
time and the process has gone on ever since; those interested in going
beyond this paper’s lay language are referred to the footnotes for
further reading. |
|
| The first development in hull design of the Ironclad Age was, unsurprisingly,
the cladding of warships with iron armour plate. This had first appeared
in operational craft during the Russian War at the bombardment of Kinburn
in 18555. Here, at the mouth of the Dneiper, the French - stealing
a march on the British who were developing similar craft - deployed three
‘floating batteries’ which, protected by iron armour, were able
to move in close to the Russian shore works and take a major part in battering
them to pieces. They were able to do this at minimal cost in damage or
casualties although repeatedly hit; the Russian projectiles bounced off
or exploded harmlessly. |
5 H.W.Wilson,
Ironclads in Action (Sampson Low, 1896), Introduction; the same
author’s Battleships in Action (Sampson Low, 1926) has an abbreviated
account at p.3.
See also Clowes, op. cit. n.3, Vol. VI, pp.469-474. |
| Soon afterwards the French Navy, urged on by Napoleon III to challenge
Britain’s supremacy at sea6, embarked on its first large-scale
ironclad, the Gloire, designed by the great naval architect Dupuy
de Lôme. But the British, egged on by visionaries like John Scott
Russell7, were already preparing something bigger and better:
the Warrior. |
6 Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy
1871-1904
(Tri-Service Press, US Naval Institute, 1987) p.7.
7 Captain John Wells RN, The Immortal Warrior (Kenneth Mason, 1987)
pp. 16-17. |
| This magnificent vessel, still happily afloat and superbly presented in
the Heritage area at Portsmouth, was when completed in 1861 comfortably
superior in fighting terms to anything else afloat. Iron-framed, her sides
clad in 4 1/2 inch iron armour backed by two layers of teak, she was a
monument to her chief designer Isaac Watts and her builders, Thames Ironworks
at Blackwall8. Here at once can be seen the main pattern of
warship design and construction in this period: Watts was an Admiralty
employee, designated the Chief Constructor, but the builders were a private
firm and engines and services were also from contractors. Later in the
period the Royal Yards built a substantial number of ships but the proportion
of any class so built was never more than half. |
| 8 David K.Brown RCNC,
Warrior to Dreadnought (Chatham, 1997) p.12. |
| The Warrior proved to be seaworthy, fast under power and indeed
sail, though not too handy under sail alone9. She was followed
through the early 1860s by a distinguished line of major warships on essentially
the same plan, which perpetuated the end-to-end gundeck and full sail plan
that were characteristic of the first half of the century. But already,
under the new Chief Constructor Edward Reed, design was moving on and the
centre-battery ship was evolved10. This concentrated the main
guns, still on the broadside, towards the central section of the ship where
they received maximum protection from the increasingly thick armour. |
9 Wells, n.7, p.225.
10 Brown, n.8, pp.26-40; Admiral G.A.Ballard, The Black Battlefleet
(Nautical Publications Co. and Society for Nautical Research, 1980) pp.62-75,
172-190 and 229-236. |
| Reed also addressed a problem that had surfaced as soon as iron-hulled
ships were conceived: if holed, they would sink much more readily than
an all wooden vessel. For iron ships, watertight subdivison was clearly
the answer, and Reed from the Bellerophon (1866) onwards increasingly
concentrated on this aspect11. |
11 Brown, n.8, p.30. |
| He was right to do so, as events proved. The reason was not so much one
of damage by the enemy - as we know, there was little enough of that -
as by one’s friends; and the underlying reason for what we would now
call blue-on-blue was a characteristic of hull design that is one of the
most curious aspects of the ironclad period. |
|
| This was the ram. From about 1870 onwards the majority of major warships,
of all nationalities, were designed with ram bows. Only at the Battle of
Lissa, between Austria and Italy in 1866, did a ram actually sink a major
war vessel of the enemy12; yet it was persistently advocated
by naval officers13 and influential members of the public, many
of whom habitually referred to battleships as ‘rams’14. |
12 Wilson, n.5, Battleships,
p.53. Ramming was a predetermined tactic of both sides in that battle,
and several attempts were made, but the sinking of the Re d’Italia
was the only positive outcome.
13 Particularly Sir George Rose Sartorius: see Clowes, n.3, p.40.
14 For example H.G.Wells, in The War of the Worlds, where the Earth’s
naval forces, steaming bravely towards the Martian war machines, are pulverised. |
| The reasoning was quite respectable. For the first time since the heyday
of the galley, a warship was controllable independently of the wind and
its adversary was vulnerable to being holed under water. Moreover, the
alternative means of defeating an opponent - battering with gunfire - might
well be ineffective against armour. Therefore, the ram. |
| That was the theory. In action it did not work. During the American Civil
War attempted rammings occurred over and over again, but most of them were
ineffective because the ramming ships were neither fast nor manoeuvrable
enough to press their attack home15. The Re d’Italia
at Lissa was conveniently stopped and broadside-on when rammed by the Ferdinand
Max. All other sinkings were blue-on-blue. |
15 Wilson, n.5, Ironclads, pp.28, 55, 69; Dana M.Wegner, ‘The
Union Navy, 1861-5’ in Kenneth J.Hagan ed., In Peace and War
(Greenwood Press, Westport, 1978) p.116; Frank J.Merli, ‘The Confederate
Navy,
1861-1865’ in the same, pp.128, 134. |
| The first was that of the Vanguard by Iron Duke in the Irish
Sea on 1 September 1872. A sudden fog had come down; neither ship acted
with due caution or sea-sense; and Vanguard was almost broadside-on
when struck16. In spite of her 6-8 inch armour and watertight
subdivision, she sank in relatively shallow water, all the crew being saved.
A second and much more high-profile disaster was the sinking of the Victoria
by the Camperdown on 22 June 1893 during a self-evidently dangerous
manoeuvre17 ordered by the Commander in Chief Sir George Tryon,
who lost his life in the accident. |
16 Ballard, n.10, p.184.
17 Andrew Gordon,
The Rules of the Game (John Murray, 1996)
pp. 243-249. |
| A feature of the Vanguard and Victoria sinkings was that
both victims were struck in a singularly vulnerable place, at the junction
of a transverse bulkhead18. That might be thought bad luck;
it was probably more germane that damage control on both occasions was
defective. This may have been a legacy of the good old days of wooden warships,
when watertight subdivision was not a feature; old habits die hard. In
any event, the disasters were evidence of one operational penalty of ironclad
vessels: they could sink. |
|
| 18 Jane, The British
Battle-Fleet , n.1, p.201; Brown, n.8, p.101. |
| That characteristic was not confined to ramming incidents. The introduction
of turret-ships was another precursor of disaster. Defects in design and
construction eventually - after her excellent introduction to battle in
Hampton Roads - accounted for the American Monitor, which foundered
in a seaway19. Her freeboard was minimal. So was Captain Cowper
Coles’s fully-rigged Captain, a chapter of design faults with
a vanishing angle of under 50 degrees, which turned over in a Bay of Biscay
gale on 6 September 187020. |
19 Brown, n.8, p.56.
20 Brown, n.8, pp.50-51;
Jane, n.1, p.197. |
| Better turret ships soon emerged. Even the fully-rigged Monarch
was stable and seaworthy, though she did not handle well under sail alone.
With the Devastation (1871) masts and sails were relinquished, though
some later battleship designs continued to feature increasingly redundant
sailing rigs. But the Devastation exhibited to a marked degree one
of those notable characteristics of the mid-Victorian fleet: extremely
low freeboard forward and aft. |
|
| This was a direct result of the immense weight penalty imposed by armour
that was still made of iron, compounded by the fact that machinery was
still heavy and inefficient, and often rationalised by the argument that
a low-lying vessel presented a more difficult target to opposing gunfire21.
It meant that battleships in particular were not much use as gun platforms
in most open-ocean conditions; particularly with the sea ahead or on the
bow, the forward barbettes or turrets were impossible to fight and the
after ones not much better. |
21 General discussions
of these problems are contained in Clowes, n.3, Vol VII, pp.25-28; Jane,
n.1, pp. 209-214; Brown, n.8, pp.60-65.
|
| This persisted through the 1870s and 1880s, the ‘Admiral’ class
being noticeably unsuccessful in solving this part of the design problem22.
But too much blame should not be imputed to Barnaby their designer. He
was grappling with transitional problems of every sort. Steel was beginning
to supersede iron but the compound armour that resulted was still suspect
and subject to stringent testing. It was in fact the height of the armour-versus-armament
battle in ship design, and controversy was made no less acute by strongly-expressed
differences of opinion amongst naval architects, including previous and
future Chief Constructors. To cap it all, money was tight23. |
22 David K.Brown, ‘Wood,
Sail and Cannonballs to Steel, Steam and Shells’ in J.R.Hill ed.,
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (OUP, 1995) p.219.
See also Brassey’s Naval Annual 1888-89, p.51.
23 Jon T.Sumida,
In Defence of Naval Supremacy (Unwin Hyman, 1989) p.11. |
| No country was any more successful than Britain in solving the problems
of the seventies and eighties. France was taking an average of nine years
to complete a battleship24 and Russia and the United States
were scarcely building at all. It is no surprise that operational capabilities
went almost entirely untested throughout these decades; had they been,
in an ocean environment particularly, the results could have been embarrassing
to all concerned. One significant action that did occur, between the British
cruiser Shah and the rebel Peruvian turret ship Huascar in
1877, ended with both ships still afloat and largely undamaged25.
It may have been war in microcosm, but was still war, and ineffective in
its outcome. |
24 Brown, n.8, p.96.
25 Clowes, n.3, Vol.VII, pp.287-288. |
| Change was on the way. Steel for all sorts of marine fabrication, but particularly
for armour, was becoming more readily available. The Harvey and Krupp face-hardening
processes greatly increased the protection available for a given weight.
The work of Froude was bearing fruit in many aspects of ship stability
and hull form. Turret design and auxiliary machinery were more advanced
as the nineties approached, and electric power plants were installed. The
path was open for the advent of William White, who became Director of Naval
Construction in 1886. |
|
| White has been called ‘the greatest warship designer of all time’26.
As has been suggested, he caught technology at the flood, and as he came
into office the navalism begun by W.T.Stead in 188427 was gathering
momentum that became unstoppable with the Naval Act of 1889. But it must
be recalled that White was deputy to Barnaby in the difficult years of
the late 70s and early to mid-80s; he had learnt in a hard school. |
26 Brown, n.8, p.123.
27 Lambert, n.2, p.194. |
| The warships of the White era, which lasted almost to the end of the ironclad
age, look right. Their freeboard is higher than that of previous classes,
there is a proportion and balance about them, they are notably homogeneous,
and their evident solidity suggests that if called upon to do battle they
would have given a good account of themselves. Significantly, the only
force with comparable looks by 1904 was the Japanese fleet that won the
Battle of Tsushima. |
|
So hull design, by the beginning of the Dreadnought age in 1905, had solved
most of the problems connected with material, stability and the utilisation
of space. But it had been a difficult three decades between 1860 and 1890,
and some of the hulls of that era must have behaved as oddly as they looked.
|
|
Propulsion
HMS Warrior steamed at 14 ½ knots. This was a step-change;
previously, admirals had been accustomed to think of fleet speeds of advance
of perhaps five or six knots, and if the wind was foul even that would
be a struggle and only for the period that fuel stocks allowed. Now the
possibility opened up of naval forces moving towards their objectives at
up to ten knots. It would not happen overnight, but it was a reasonable
prospect. |
|
| But as the broadside ironclads - Black Prince, Defence, Resistance,
Hector, Valiant, Achilles, Minotaur, Agincourt, Northumberland - slid
down the ways in the early to mid 1860s, they were still considered by
many as sailing ships with auxiliary power. All carried full sailing rigs;
indeed the Agincourt at one time had five masts, the most ever mounted
in a warship28. Most had hoistable screws, to enhance manoeuvrability
under sail alone. Little by little, however, captains and admirals were
coming to rely on their machinery to keep them moving in the desired direction. |
28 Ballard, n.10, p.24. |
| This trend continued in the centre-battery ships, Bellerophon (1865)
and her successors. The midships grouping of the main armament enabled
Reed, her designer, to produce a shorter, handier ship than the ‘Achilles’
type29; the penalty was an increased power:weight ratio and
somewhat slower speed under sail alone. But she still carried three masts
and a full rig, and was clearly designed to fight under sail if need be. |
29 Brown, n.8, p.29. |
| Even the advent of turret-ships, Monarch and the ill-fated Captain,
did not immediately wean the Admiralty away from a perceived necessity
for sail. Both carried full sailing rigs and it was of course sail that
aided the Captain’s capsize, even though her fundamental instability
and lack of freeboard were the primary causes30. At this point
in the design of warships the waning efficacy of sail and the penalties
involved in continuing to provide for it became apparent. The masts of
the Monarch, necessarily bulky and heavily stayed, were impediments
to all-round fire and particularly to end-on fire, thought to be an important
component of ramming tactics31. In the Captain it was
sought to overcome this difficulty by fitting tripod masts, but these carried
their own disadvantages. |
30 ibid., p.51.
31 Even Jacky Fisher, when a young Commander in 1871, set out the line
abreast for ‘ram or be rammed’ situations as one of the two basic
tactical formations. See Arthur J. Marder, Fear God and Dread Nought
(Jonathan Cape, 1952) p.80. |
| The solution was to bite the bullet and admit that turrets and full sailing
rig were incompatible. It was much to the credit of Barnaby the designer,
and Spencer Robinson the Controller, that the first ‘mastless’
battleship, Devastation, was in service by 1871. Henceforth sail
in battleships, if fitted at all, was an auxiliary to steam power and not
the other way about32 . |
32 This certainly applied
to the battle fleet. It was less clear-cut for cruisers. Lord Chatfield,
a midshipman in the Cleopatra in 1888, records in The Navy and
Defence (Heinemann, 1942), p.6, that the ship was ‘nearly always
under sail’.
33 Wells, n.7, pp.220-222. |
| One of the developments that made this possible was the increasing efficiency
of boilers and engines. The Warrior was fitted with a Penn two-cylinder
single-expansion trunk engine33. Steam was supplied normally
at 15 lb/sq in by up to ten smoke tube boilers. At 11 knots she consumed
3½ tons of coal per hour; at 14½ knots this figure rose to
9. Her total bunker capacity was specified by the Admiralty tender as 1000
tons but as built the ship carried a maximum of 853 tons. Even at economical
speed, therefore, the Warrior would be hard put to get across the
Atlantic under steam alone. |
| Over the next three decades efficiencies steadily improved in all aspects
of steam propulsion. Two important non-technical governing factors must
be recalled. First, engine and boiler design and manufacture were in the
hands not of the Admiralty but of private firms of which Penn, Maudslay,
Napier, Humphrys and Ravenhill were prominent. These competed eagerly for
Admiralty contracts, and all aspects of performance - particularly standards
of workmanship, reliability and timely delivery - were under scrutiny.
Secondly, although many innovations were introduced by these firms, the
Admiralty was unlikely to be first in the field to install them in new
ships or classes. There is evidence in the Naval Estimates of the period34
that a great many trials were carried out under naval auspices, but the
Admiralty much preferred that major claimed advances should first be tested
in the intensely competitive merchant marine before they were incorporated
in the fleet.35. |
34 Bound copies in the
Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth for 1876-77, 1888-89 and 1898-99 have been
consulted.
35 David K.Brown RCNC, ‘Marine Engineering in the RN, 1860-1905 -
I’ in Journal of Naval Engineering, Vol.34 No 2 (June 1993),
pp.398-9. |
| Advances there certainly were. In the field of steam engines, the cylinder-and-piston
reciprocating engine experienced two major transformations, both involving
the more efficient use of the steam supplied to it by the boilers. The
first, the compound engine which superseded the single-expansion trunk
engines, was a two-stage affair with high-pressure and low-pressure cylinders.
The principle had been well understood since early in the nineteenth century
and its theoretical advantages - fuel economy and less crankshaft wear
- known, but only after about 1855 were installations made in the merchant
fleet. The Admiralty conducted a trial in 1865 with results which, though
less than conclusive, indicated greater efficiency in the compound engine,
and by the early 1870s compounds were being installed in battleships, Dreadnought
(1875) and Alexandra being the earliest36. |
36 Brown, n.8, p.67. |
| The second great advance in steam reciprocating engines was an extension
of the first - the addition of a third stage of steam utilisation to form
a triple-expansion unit. Such engines were introduced in the merchant marine
around 1880 and the Navy’s first installation was in the torpedo gunboat
Rattlesnake in 188537. The first battleships to be so
fitted were Victoria and Sans Pareil in 1889. It is worth
noting that these were the fastest battleships so far built, at 17½
knots designed speed, but that was not the most important aspect of triple
expansion, which was fuel economy, closely followed by reliability, durability
and relative freedom from vibration. It is no coincidence that triple expansion
engines were fitted in the Atlantic workhorses of the Second World War,
the ‘Flower’ class corvettes and ‘Loch’, ‘Bay’
and ‘Castle’ class frigates. |
37 ibid., p.99. |
| A graphic example of the advantages of triple expansion is given by the
figures for the Thunderer, built in 1872 and modernised in 1889-90.
On a measured run to Madeira - which seems to have been a favoured racetrack
for such trials - the modernised ship consumed a little less than half
the fuel she would previously have used38. Moreover, it was
claimed that her original engines, even when new, would never have stood
the strain of such a sustained run. |
38 Brown, loc. cit. n.35,
Part II in Vol 34 No 3, p.657. |
| A final steam-engine innovation, though it comes only just within the timeframe
of this paper, must be mentioned here. The steam turbine, invented by Parsons
in the mid-1880s, was a working proposition by 1895 and in 1897 the experimental
vessel Turbinia raced up and down the lines of the fleets assembled
for the Diamond Jubilee Review at Spithead. It has been suggested that
Sir John Durston the Engineer-in-Chief of the Royal Navy, far from being
scandalised, had done much to encourage Parsons and was privy to the demonstration39.
Turbine propulsion was quickly fitted thereafter to several classes of
destroyer and its adoption for the Dreadnought (1905) sealed the
package for all fast steam-driven ships for many generations. |
39 Brown, n.8, p.183. |
| None of these advances could have been made without the development of
boilers producing ever higher steam pressures and steadily improving steam
quality. At the beginning of the period they were fire- or smoke-tube boilers;
heat was transmitted from the furnaces via tubes led through the water
in a box or cylinder, in order to produce steam which was then led to the
engine. The basic feed was sea water, but the water in the boiler was in
fact brackish; as it produced steam it became more and more briny and every
few hours some of it would have to be blown down - with a consequent loss
of boiler pressure - and replaced with condensate, pure water condensed
from exhaust steam from the engine. |
|
| Boiler technology improved steadily through the 1860s to the 1880s, allowing
increased steam pressures (Warrior 15 lb/sq in, Alexandra
(1875) 60 lb/sq in, Thunderer (modernised 1889) 145 lb/sq in)40.
It was helped not only by sophistication of design (particularly the cylindrical
‘Scotch boiler’) but by the increasing use of steel in boiler
construction and the general introduction of the surface condenser which,
by reconstituting exhaust steam more efficiently into pure water, allowed
a pure boiler feed and obviated the need for frequent blowing down. |
40 Wells, n.7, p.221
and Brown, loc. cit. n.35, pp. 648 and 657. |
| A boost to boiler power was provided by forced draught. This was a system
whereby the stokehold was closed and air supplied by fans increased the
atmospheric pressure, thus feeding the grate area and making the coal burn
quicker with a consequent increase in steam pressure. Between 1880 and
1895 forced draught was a generally fitted feature41. It was
not intended for routine use but for action or emergency conditions. In
general the use of forced draught gave the ship an extra knot of maximum
speed, at the expense of higher fuel consumption and more or less frenzied
labour, in worse environmental conditions than under natural draught, for
the stokers. There was some suspicion about forced draught throughout the
naval community. Many voices suggested it was straining after a gnat. |
41 Brassey’s
Naval Annual 1888-9, p.57. |
| Fortunately relief was at hand in the watertube boiler. This was a reversal
of the fire tube method; the principle had been proposed by Lord Cochrane,
no less, in the 1840s but technical and material problems had held it up
at that time. By 1880, however, Belleville in France had developed a working
boiler, and this was fitted in all Messageries Maritimes vessels
and adopted by the French Navy in 188942. The British were impressed
and ordered 48 Bellevilles each for the massive fast cruisers Powerful
and Terrible in 1892. |
42 Brown, loc. cit. n.35,
Part III, Vol. 35 No 1, p.96 ff.; Jane, n.1, p.278 ff. |
| These boilers delivered steam at 260 lb/sq in, a very marked advance on
all previous installations. It was not achieved without a reliability cost.
Technology was scarcely ready for such a high pressure system, and leaks
leading to dramatic reduction in designed efficiency were widespread. The
so-called Battle of the Boilers, in which the Bellevilles in particular
and watertube boilers in general were criticised, lasted from 1901 to 1904.
It has been contended by David K.Brown43 that the Belleville
was unfairly dealt with, its shortcomings being due mainly to the proper
procedures - developed by the French - being neglected. At all events,
the Admiralty settled eventually on the Babcock and Wilcox and Yarrow as
suitable watertube boilers for the Royal Navy, and the Yarrow was developed
into the Admiralty Three Drum Boiler so well known to naval engineers between
the two world wars. |
43 Brown, n.8, p.165. |
| But for all the increases of efficiency in steam production and machinery
during the Ironclad Age there was one enduring, pervasive factor: coal.
It had two profound effects on strategic concepts, fleet operations and
ethos: the first obvious, the second much less so. |
|
| The obvious effect was on endurance. For sure, a warship propelled entirely
or primarily by sail could not sustain unlimited sea voyaging; the governing
factors were fresh water, fuel for cooking, and provisions, usually in
that order. It is noticeable that in ships’ logs on prolonged voyages
in the days of sail, the fresh water state is the one most carefully and
systematically recorded. But a well stored and organised ship could manage
several months at sea without calling for shore supply, although diet and
living conditions would deteriorate and if the opportunity to replenish
was offered, it would generally be taken. |
|
| It was quite different for a warship whose primary means of propulsion
was by steam. A battleship’s endurance even at economical speed was
of the order of 6000 miles in the 1890s44. After that it must
replenish with coal. The expense of coal was not a great problem; the wind
was free, but coal was cheap. It cost less than £1 a ton in home
waters, £1 10s in the Mediterranean. The total coal bill for the
Navy in 1867 was £109,000, in 1888 £144,000, and it was only
in the latter year that it outstripped ‘textile articles’ which
included hemp and cordage45. |
44 An average taken from
Jane, n.1, Chapter XIII.
45 Naval Estimates for those years, Vote 10 Subheads C and D. |
| The problem lay much more in where the coal was, or was not. The Navy had
since the introduction of steam power set up coal depots not only in home
waters but abroad; in 1867 there were 26 depots, in 1888 29, of which 21
were outside the United Kingdom and included stocks at Shanghai and Nagasaki46.
It is thus incorrect to say that coaling stations were simply an outgrowth
of the navalism of the 1885-1900 period; they were a feature almost from
the start of the ironclad age. |
46 ibid. |
| What is undoubtedly true, however, is the way the perception of the limitations
of coal supply was increased in the navalist era. It was then that purpose-built
coaling stations were actively sought and acquired, under British rule,
in such places as the Falkland Islands. The fleet, and in particular its
scattered outliers the cruisers, could no longer bring itself to rely on
coal stocks that might be vulnerable to foreign control. |
|
| It was of course these considerations, and the limitation imposed by the
paucity of overseas stocks before the network of stations was complete,
that led to the retention of sail particularly in the smaller cruisers
up to and including the 1890s. Contemporary accounts47 make
it clear that many of these ships regarded themselves, and indeed were,
sailing ships with auxiliary steam power rather than the reverse. How they
would have acquitted themselves in battle, particularly against local forces
operating close to their own ports and therefore with full mobility, is
problematical. |
47 Chatfield. n.34, pp.5-14;
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, Adventures Ashore and Afloat
(Harrap, 1939) Chapters II-VIII. |
| It was the battle fleets that appeared to be most restricted in operations.
The Mediterranean’s relatively small distances, like its usually benign
weather, suited the fleets of the 80s and 90s, and home waters, the Channel
and North Sea offered few problems, but in distant oceanic operations the
battleships of those days would have had serious difficulties of endurance,
seakeeping and maintenance. |
|
| Replenishment at sea was not regarded as an option48. That was
probably correct. Even a modern Fleet Auxiliary with a full array of transfer
equipment would be hard put to conduct an underway replenishment of 1000
tons of solids (the average capacity of a 1890s battleship’s bunkers).
The experience of the Russian Baltic Squadron, on its doomed voyage that
ended at Tsushima in 1905, was indicative. They did sometimes have to replenish
in open water, and so harrowing and infrequent was the occurrence that
they carried as much additional coal as they could in every odd corner,
including the upper deck, with disastrous effects on morale49. |
48 Though on one celebrated
occasion the commander of the weaker fleet in the annual manoeuvres took
his force to the Canaries and coaled at sea there. He was widely thought
to have cheated. See Gordon, n.17, p.253.
49 Richard Hough, The Fleet that Had to Die (Hamish Hamilton, 1958)
p.75. |
| And that leads to the second, less obvious, limitation that coal imposed
on the operational fleet. It was dirty. |
|
| It is hard for us in the late twentieth century to gauge exactly the effect
this had. The Navy of the Napoleonic Wars had been, if not fanatical, at
least rigorous in its pursuit of cleanliness. Scrubbed decks, good ventilation,
frequently washed clothes and bedding were features of every ship’s
routine as reflected in their standing orders50. The practice
had been continued into the long peace; indeed it probably had received
added emphasis, not only because the incentives of fighting the enemy (and
prize money) had disappeared and some other objective needed to be put
in their place, but because in more remote areas such as the notorious
West Africa Station, health and indeed life were thought, with some justification,
to depend on it. |
|
| 50 B.Lavery ed., Shipboard
Life and Organisation 1731-1815 (Navy Records Society, 1998) pp.59-203.. |
| Therefore, the advent of coal struck a shrewd blow at cherished naval practice
and custom. Admirals were heard to mutter that since its introduction they
had never seen a decently dressed or clean officer, let alone sailor. As
for the ships, whenever steam was up they were constantly covered with
smuts and after coaling they were filthy. |
|
| The reaction was predictable. The challenge was met head-on, by an insistence
on cleanliness that became almost an obsession. It probably reached its
zenith (or nadir, if one follows the opposite persuasion) in the Mediterranean
Fleet in the 1890s51, but was prevalent everywhere, not least
in the suspicion with which exponents of the new arts - those of the destroyer
man and the submariner - were viewed. These people simply could not keep
themselves or their craft clean, however hard they tried, and many of them
no doubt were regarded with the engineers as ‘rude mechanicals’. |
51 Gordon, n.17, pp.175
and 304. |
There can be no question, in the view of this writer, that a fleet obsessed
with outside appearances must have serious operational shortcomings. The
famous (and highly insubordinate) signal of Rear Admiral Percy Scott to
his squadron ‘Since paintwork seems to be more important than gunnery
…’ dates from 1907 and is indicative of the new, operationally-based
thinking at the beginning of the Dreadnought era; but the change was long
overdue, and it is anyone’s guess how the main fleets might have performed
in action at the height of the spit-and-polish phase of the 1890s and early
1900s. All that can be said is that their likely opponents were probably
equally fed up with the general nastiness of coal, and their operational
efficiency was no higher than that of the Royal Navy even if their brightwork
gleamed rather less.
|
|
Armament
The Warrior, when first commissioned, was armed on the main deck
with thirty 68-pdr muzzle-loading smooth-bore cannon and eight 110-pdr
Armstrong breech-loaders52. In addition she had upper-deck armament
ranging from 110-pdr breech-loaders to 6-pdr cannon. |
52 Data in this and the
next three paragraphs is taken from Wells, n.7, Appendix 6. |
| This heavy and varied armament could deploy a very wide range of ammunition
types. The 68-pdrs had the option of three sorts of shot - the traditional
solid, case or canister, and grape - and three of shell - time fuzed powder
or shrapnel, and Martin’s incendiary. The 110-pdrs were almost as
versatile, with two shot and two shell options. |
|
| Effective range and rate of fire had however changed little since the days
of Nelson. A crack ship of the line of that era could manage three broadsides
in five minutes. The Warrior, with large guns’ crews trained
in the school that had been run in HMS Excellent since 1830, could
manage one a minute, with the Armstrongs firing a fraction faster. As for
effective range, the smooth-bores were little use outside a mile, while
the Armstrongs could fire to a maximum of 4500 yards. |
|
| All in all, then, the Warrior’s was a formidable and innovative
battery, and combined with her armour and mobility it made her more than
a match for anything else afloat. Pride, however, and there was plenty,
was always tempered with caution, and it was caution that soon got the
upper hand so far as arming the fleet was concerned. |
|
| The main problem concerned the breech-loading guns. These were extensively
tested during Warrior’s first commission and the general report
was favourable, particularly on range and accuracy. But warnings were sounded
about the dangers of premature explosion and accidents with the firing
mechanism, and the Select Committee on Ordnance took note of them. Their
fears were confirmed when at the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863, 28 accidents
were reported in a total of 365 rounds fired by 21 breech-loading guns53.
These were, of course, from a number of different ships, none of them so
well worked-up, nor manned with such picked crews, as the Warrior. |
53 Brown, n.8, p.25. |
| But it was enough. The breech-loader, in its then form of a fully-screwed
breech with vent tube firing, was suspect. In the Royal Navy for almost
the next twenty years, the muzzle-loader resumed its dominance. |
|
| For most of the period, it must be said, it was a much improved muzzle-loader.
Rifling was introduced as early as 1865, studs in the shot or shell engaging
in grooves in the barrel54. Iron rather than wooden carriages
increased durability. Hydraulic machinery was introduced to absorb recoil
and aid run-out, and to assist in loading. |
54 Clowes, n.3, Vol VII,
pp.45-46. |
| Towards the end of its reign the rifled muzzle-loader (RML) was in fact
quite a sophisticated piece of kit. It could be accommodated in a barbette
(a kind of armoured revetment with an open top, the guns turning inside
it) or a turret (the now more familiar battleship mounting, roofed and
trainable as a whole). In each case the loading arrangements were elaborate,
usually entailing bringing the guns to full depression and often training
them fore and aft as well. In drawings in the Illustrated London News
it looked splendid and indeed, as the solution to a self-imposed problem,
it was. |
|
| But the RML had inherent limitations. Its effective range, firing from
its necessarily short barrel, could never be very great. In the 1882 bombardment
of Alexandria, conducted almost entirely by muzzle-loaders, the mean range
was of the order of 1200 yards and even then the effect of the shells -
many of which did not explode - was much less than had been expected55,
even though accuracy was high - as indeed it should have been at that range.
Moreover, the RML was not well adapted to the new and more powerful propellants
that were being introduced at the start of the 1880s; a fatal explosion
in the Thunderer, due to double-loading, showed that the RML could
be more dangerous than the BL; its rate of fire, however ingenious the
loading arrangements might be, was never going to approach the potential
of the BL; and finally and decisively, other nations and particularly the
French had been using breech-loaders for come years and the British were
lagging behind56. |
55 Brown, n.8, p.72.
56 Ropp, n.6, pp.102-4. |
| As was usual in this period, once the British had decided to catch up they
did so with impressive speed. The 12 inch and 13.5 inch breech-loaders
introduced during the 1880s were successful designs (the 16.25, in the
Benbow only, was not) and could be produced in considerable quantity,
so that by the 1890s the British were comprehensively outbuilding, outarming
and outnumbering the French and Russians. |
|
| Some aberrations persisted. There was, as it would seem to us today, an
absurd obsession with end-on fire57. This was partly due to
a simplistic emphasis on the offensive, but was rationalised by residual
reliance on the ram as a weapon. If you were going for your enemy’s
soft underbelly, you needed to shoot at him on the way in. In the later
centre-battery ships this had entailed recessed ports for some of the guns
which thereby, in theory, could fire right ahead. In fact, as in the Alexandra,
these guns were so wet in any sort of head sea that they could be fired
only with the greatest difficulty58. In turret and barbette
ships, shorn of any sailing rig, right-ahead fire was designed in - but
only at the expense of a low forecastle which in turn meant washing down
in a head sea, which in turn made firing and loading difficult. The attractions
of the ram had much to answer for. |
57 Jane, n.1,
Chapters X-XIII passim.
58 Brown, n.8, p.36. |
| Ammunition, and its handling and stowage, was always a worry and became
more so as propellants and shell fillings were increasingly powerful and
volatile. At the bombardment of Alexandria the Gunner of the Alexandra
earned a VC for dowsing an incoming shell in a bucket of water59;
in doing so he probably saved the ship, since the shell had landed in the
long ammunition path between the magazine and the central-battery guns.
In later designs, particularly the barbette and turret ships, the layout
was more logical, with magazines and shellrooms situated beneath the mountings
and under armour, but the problems were never entirely solved as the losses
at Jutland - and several harbour accidents before and after - showed. They
were not confined to the Royal Navy; the French Iena was similarly
lost in the 1890s and many historians contend that USS Maine, whose
explosion in Havana started the Spanish-American War in 1898, blew up from
the same cause. |
59 Clowes, n.3, Vol VII,
p.331. |
| The gun armament situation was complicated from about 1880 onwards by the
increasing tendency to fit a comprehensive secondary armament. This ranged
from 9.2 inch guns supplementing the 12 inch in some battleships, to Nordenfelt
and Maxim 0.45 inch machine-guns, and including a gamut of calibres and
designs most of which could be designated as quick-firers. |
|
| A principal reason for this proliferation of above-water weaponry - which
was not confined to battleships but was a characteristic of cruiser types
as well - was the advent of a new menace to ships that had previously worked
on the principle that like fought like: the torpedo. |
|
| ‘Torpedo’ was at first the generic name for any underwater weapon.
The mine, contact or controlled; the spar torpedo, carried on the bows
of a suicidally-inclined small boat; the towed torpedo, pulled equally
suicidally across the path of an advancing vessel; and the locomotive torpedo,
perfected by Whitehead at his factory in Fiume, all made their appearance
between 1855 and 187060. Only the first and last-mentioned survived
as viable weapons. |
60 Rear Admiral E.N.Poland,
The Torpedomen (Kenneth Mason, 1993) pp.11-14. |
| The mine, as is well known, proved in the twentieth century to be a highly
effective inhibitor of seaborne traffic in ports and coastal waters. In
the nineteenth, its value in this role was recognised only spasmodically;
mines both crude and sophisticated were laid during the American Civil
War61, but it was not until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5
that they were used systematically on a large scale62. In the
Royal Navy, neither mining nor mine countermeasures occupied a prominent
place in planning or thinking. Indeed, the technology of the Hertz horned
mine was common knowledge for 40 years before it was developed in Britain63;
and the passage of the Dardanelles in 1878 and the bombardment of Alexandria
appeared untrammelled by any consideration of a mine threat. It was perhaps
fortunate for Britain that her ‘Cherbourg Strategy’ of the 1870s
was never put to the test; but maybe in any case it would have worked,
because the French seemed to be as little interested in mines as the British.
The Russians, on the other hand, were known to be better provided, and
the one British exercise with a serious mine threat incorporated - Berehaven
in 1885 - was in a Kronstadt setting64. |
61 Wilson, n.5, Ironclads,
p.104, assesses that 32 Northern ships were sunk by mines during the war,
as against three by ramming (one blue-on-blue).
62 Wilson, n.5, Battleships, pp.195-200.
63 Poland, n.59, pp.59-60.
64 Brown, n.8, pp.84-5. |
| By contrast, interest in the locomotive torpedo was intense. Opinions differ
on whether Whitehead, an Englishman, could have been encouraged to return
to Britain in the late 1860s from Fiume; he had after all worked on the
continent for some years. What is certain is that he first offered his
design to the Austrians65; when they were reluctant the British
took it up and paid £15,000 for the non-exclusive rights to manufacture
on Whitehead’s principles. The French made a similar purchase a year
later, in 1873. |
65 Poland, n.59, pp.14-19. |
| Both nations embraced the new weapon with enthusiasm, but it was the French
to whom it gave greater leverage. As the weaker naval power, they saw a
twin requirement to protect their bases and attack enemy commerce, and
both these missions, it was thought, would be helped by torpedo craft.
All kinds of idea were tried: battleships fitted with torpedoes as supplements
to the ram, mother-ships fitted to carry torpedo craft to remote areas,
and of course numerous torpedo craft to deploy their weapons in the harbour
defence role. |
|
| The British, soon manufacturing torpedoes in the ordnance factory at Woolwich
as well as buying them from Fiume66, adopted many similar ideas.
Driven by the advocacy of Jacky Fisher, in charge of torpedo development
at Excellent from 1872-6 and then hiving off to set up a separate
school at Vernon67, the Royal Navy fitted torpedoes in
both standard and specialised vessels. |
66 Brown, n.8, p.86.
67 Captain John G.Wells, Whaley (HMS Excellent, 1980), p.27. |
| The first of the latter was the Lightning, a prime example of collaboration
between Admiralty and private industry, built and engined by Thornycroft
in 187668. She was followed by a generation of boats which,
while suitable for sheltered waters, were inadequate in a seaway. Size
inevitably increased, but so did the scale of the countermeasures. These
were in two main forms: the diversity of secondary armaments in major units,
and the evolution of gun-armed smaller vessels to catch and destroy torpedo-boats
- the destroyers, which were themselves soon armed with torpedoes as well. |
68 Brown, n.8, p.85. |
It is in this class of ship, building from 1892 onwards, that can most
clearly be seen the effects of intense competition between a large number
of firms as moderated and modified by the Constructor’s department
in the Admiralty. Designs were diverse amongst the builders involved and
so were armaments, propulsion units and accommodation, but some commonality
was achieved through the efforts of Henry Deadman, Assistant Director of
Naval Construction69. There was constant striving after speed,
often to the detriment of structural strength, machinery reliability and
seakeeping. How effective these early destroyers would have been in a fleet
action under ocean conditions is uncertain. What is sure is that they fostered
in their officers and ratings an élan that the late Victorian
Navy needed70.
|
69 Brown, n.8, pp.138-141.
See also David Lyon, The First Destroyers, passim.
70 Keyes, n.47, pp.145-335.
|
Test Beds
The half-century under discussion was a great age for inventors. The application
of previously discovered scientific principles was in full swing. Inventors
generally worked in very small units; for projects promising success they
either formed larger companies themselves or sold their techniques to engineering
or construction firms. |
|
| The Admiralty’s part, under the Controller of the Navy, was to encourage,
test and co-ordinate; the end-product being whole-ship design under Admiralty
control. Apart from one or two isolated units such as Froude’s testing
tank71, there was no state-sponsored research and development
establishment. Information exchange was liberal; there were remarkably
few secrets either state or commercial. This system, loose indeed by the
standards of post-1945 Britain, enabled rapid progress to be made once
innovation had been decided upon. As has been shown, such decisions were
taken with caution; often in hindsight the caution was excessive, but the
system mitigated its worst effects. And several kinds of test bed were
available. |
71 Brown, n.8, p.70. |
| The first was the experience of foreign navies. It has been claimed that
the French were first in the field of armoured warships; steel fabrication;
breech loading guns; fast torpedo craft; and water tube boilers72.
The Americans were first in general use of the ram and operational application
of the turret principle. |
72 Ropp, n.6, pp.64-8. |
| These claims are, by and large, correct. Sometimes the priority gained
by foreigners was due to advanced technology as in the case of steel production,
sometimes forced on them by necessity as in the American Civil War, sometimes
through excessive caution by the Admiralty as in the case of the breech-loader.
But in every instance, except arguably that of the Belleville boiler, the
Admiralty and industry learnt from the experience of foreigners and the
Royal Navy benefited from the rapid introduction of the, to them, new technologies
that resulted. |
|
| The second test bed was the British shipbuilding industry. This was probably
the most competitive industry in the world, arguably (though it is hard
to measure) the most competitive there has ever been. There was constant
striving for more speed and efficiency; mail steamers, cargo ships, windjammers
and private yachts were alike subject to unrelenting development in machinery,
construction and hull form. All this formed the stuff of regular discussion
amongst naval architects and engineers, and the Navy benefited particularly
in its propulsion units. |
|
| It should be remembered that British firms built a great many ships for
foreign navies from the keel up. An American commentator in 1878 said ‘Nearly
every considerable naval power, except the US and France, has employed
English designers, English ship builders, engineers and gun manufacturers’73.
And in 1905 the Japanese fleet, homogeneous and balanced, had been built
very largely in Britain. The cross-fertilisation between British industry,
its foreign clients and the Royal Navy benefited all three. |
73 Chief Engineer King,
USN, The War-Ships of Europe (Griffin, Portsmouth, 1878), p.1.
|
| The third test bed was the Controller’s Department itself. Under its
sponsorship vast numbers of trials were conducted74. The most
dramatic were of projectiles against armour. Stringently-controlled trials
took place at Shoeburyness75, at set ranges against carefully-constructed
replications of existing or planned armour and backing. Others were conducted
against waterborne hulks, and on some celebrated occasions took the form
almost of international competitions. They were minutely reported in the
popular press76 and discussed in technical fora77. |
74 See eg the Naval Estimates
for 1888-9: well over 50 trials are listed.
75 Brown, n.8, passim; see particularly his quotation from Barnaby,
p.79.
76 See eg The Illustrated London News, 30 June 1866, 13 July 1872.
77 Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, 1866, pp.13-14. |
| Not far behind were trials of torpedoes, which began as soon as the weapon
was developed. They embraced not only the lethality of the torpedo in its
various versions (including the mine)78, but defences against
it; the evolution of the torpedo net, for good or ill, emerged from such
tests. The torpedo department was also responsible for electrical devices
of all sorts, and these too were subject to a whole gamut of sea trials79. |
78 Poland, n.59, pp.18-25.
79 Estimates, n.74. |
Speed trials were of course conducted on all new-construction ships. These
showed the reverse side of the competition coin. Striving by the builders
for the designed speed, or for an extra half-knot over it, led to all kinds
of unrealistic shifts that had no relation to operational conditions80.
They might mislead the public but were unlikely to deceive the Admiralty.
Nevertheless they were a kind of yardstick; if everybody cheats, the playing
field is arguably even.
|
80 See Jane, n.1,
Chapters XII and XIII.
Jane distinguishes clearly between performance on trials and subsequent
success as ‘good steamers’ in service.
|
Concluding remarks
Of the five decades covered by this paper, the first four were marked by
technological turmoil in the fields of warships’ hull design, propulsion
and armament. Often progress resembled the fabled frog’s climb up
the well: three jumps forward, two slips back. In the final decade, to
conclude the analogy, the last three jumps took the frog out of the well
and landed it on the (fairly) level grass of the White era. It then had
to work out how best to manage its new environment, a job it took ten years
even partly to solve.
The Royal Navy remained dominant in the world mainly through its numerical
superiority, its demonstrated confidence, and the ability of British industry
to respond to its demands for new construction. British design was not
always in the forefront of innovation, British equipment even less so,
but once a decision had been made the incorporation of new methods and
devices was rapid.
Nevertheless, the operational shortcomings of the main fleet during the
1860s, and even more in the 1870s and 80s, were such that it was fortunate
to go untested by war. Ocean-fighting capacity in particular was highly
suspect. That other navies were even less capable, in both design and numbers,
might have been of little significance; the most likely outcome of an ocean
campaign would have been indecisive and spasmodic encounters, and an ineffective
use of seapower. It is ironic that during this period, the dogma of the
decisive sea battle emerged as the centre of seapower theory.
Where the new technologies did help decisively was in the operations it
is now fashionable to decry, that led for good or ill to the extension
of the British Empire into the Middle East, Africa and East Asia. Here
a multitude of amphibious and riverine expeditions could scarcely have
taken place without the mobility conferred by steam propulsion, the protection
given by (often improvised) armour, and the superiority of firepower.
The confidence, resourcefulness and energy displayed by the Navy (and the
Royal Marines and Army) in these operations may suggest that, if subjected
to the test of full-scale war, the battle-fleet would have been quickly
brought to a state of much higher fighting efficiency than it seemed to
show in peace. After all, there were not two navies, main fleet and expeditionary,
but one; officers and men moved freely from gunboats to battleships. Nevertheless,
the material shortcomings of the larger ships, for their primary ocean-going
role, must cast doubt on the battle-fleet’s effectiveness if called
upon.
The Navy’s organisation for procurement of materiel was at least as
efficient as those of its continental rivals. The formation of professional
bodies - the Institution of Marine Architects in 1860, the Royal School
of Naval Architecture in 1864, the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors in
1884 and the Institute of Marine Engineers in 1889 - made the exchange
of ideas easy and the spirit of the age ensured it was vigorous. The Controller’s
ability to place contracts was aided by the large number of firms able
to tender in a highly competitive market.
The synergy of the system was a prime example of the robust structures
described by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery.
In hindsight, as Barnett and Kennedy himself have pointed out, Britain
was already faltering and overstretched, and other industrialised or industrialising
powers were poised to overtake. But it was not apparent at the time. Britannia
ruled. |
|
Text © J.R.Hill, 1999
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|