The Inflexible Solution
© Brian Patterson The year of 1876 was one of great importance. Samuel Plimsoll MP, after eight years, finally established his shipping safety measures, namely the famous plimsoll mark on the water line of ships. Queen Victoria became Empress of India, and the British fleet was ordered to the Dardanelles in a war crisis with Turkey. Egypt was declared bankrupt, causing France and Britain to set up dual control over Egypt's finances. W.G. Grace scored 1209 runs during the month of August, including three centuries, and greyhound racing with an artificial hare was staged experimentally at Hendon. In Portsmouth, that year saw the return of HMS Challenger from a voyage of exploration around the world. She had been away since December 1872. The two survey ships Alert and Discovery had returned from the polar regions, having travelled further north than had yet been possible. In July a boiler explosion on board HMS Thunderer at Spithead killed over 40 men. It was one of the worst boiler-room accidents to occur in the Royal Navy and over £5000 was raised in the town for the sufferers. However, the greatest of the year's events were in the Dockyard.
On 27 April 1876, Princess Louise 3pened the great Dockyard extension, this event coinciding with the launch of HMS Inflexible. She was perhaps the most graceless ship ever to be launched at Portsmouth. It was said that, the day before the launch, the town was filled with visitors and it was impossible to obtain accommodation. Many complained of the extravagant prices demanded for lodgings. The next morning, excursions by rail and water brought in hundreds more, who, when alighting, headed straight for the Dockyard. So great was the crowd that the Main Gate had to be opened early to ease the congestion at the Hard. Soon every foot of vantage ground was filled around the slipway, while the harbour scene was filled with ships dressed overall and a multitude of smaller craft dotted around the north corner of the yard, waiting for the great ship to leave No.5 slipway, the cradle of her creation. The crowd was further swelled when, at half past eleven, Dockyard employees were allowed to leave work and join the assembly. The tedium of waiting for the VIPs to arrive was alleviated by the band of the 52 Regiment and that of the Royal Marine Artillery, who played popular selections. Just after twelve noon the guns of the Duke of Wellington, the St. Vincent and the Garrison Battery boomed out in a 21-gun royal salute announcing the arrival of Princess Louise, who had travelled from London by special train. The royal stand was packed with senior dignitaries, but it was the Mayor of Portsmouth, Mr William Pink, and the chief constructor, Mr W B Robinson, who had the honour of being presented to Princess Louise. Mr Robinson had the duty of explaining the mechanism for the launch to the Princess.
The Inflexible was the first ship to be launched by electricity. The mechanism for the launch was a simple touch button. When the Princess touched the button a charge was set up between two carbon rods that fused the wire holding a bottle of wine, which, when released, crashed against the bows of the mighty vessel. The Princess then touched the button again to release two 8cwt weights suspended l0ft above the dogshores that were holding the ship on the slipway. When the button was pressed, the galvanic circuit that activated the two magnets holding the weights was cut and the two weights crashed down onto the dogshores, releasing the ship. There was a silence upon the assembly, for the ship did not move. An intense silence prevailed as a dozen men threw themselves onto the hydraulic rams and, with bulging muscles, heaved at the levers of the rams. But still she did not move. With bated breath the crowd stood and then she quivered, just the slightest movement. But she moved, slowly at first, every second gaining speed. "She's off' was the cry as hundreds of voices filled the air and 4000 tons of British iron and expectation slid majestically towards her native element, the sea. Hundreds of hats were flying in the air as the bands struck up 'Hearts of Oak Are Our Men' and the cheering filled the building shed that covered the slipways, on which the pride of the British fleets
were created. At the end of the slipway the bluish-green waters of the harbour frothed into a milky white mixture as the stern of the Inflexible tore a pathway into the harbour, coming to rest as the wind gently caught her, slightly swinging her bow to point to the harbour mouth, as if like an excited child wanting to be away on her exploration of her new-found element. But she was restrained by the older and wiser tugs that gently pulled her to the jetty, where she would have to wait a few hours for the Princess to officially open the complex of docks and basins known as the Great Extension.
At the steps of the North Wall jetty waited the Royal Yacht, Alberta, and it was here that the Princess and other dignitaries embarked for the trip across the tidal basin and into the North Lock, known today as B Lock. They then travelled across the repairing basin to the eastern side, where the royal party disembarked and boarded a train pulling five carriages which took them to the head of No.13 dry dock. Here the Princess inspected the structure of the dock in which the Inflexible would soon be safely secured out of her new-found element. With this simple ceremony the great complex was opened. The party then boarded the train to complete the journey through a series of triumphal arches to the Iron Foundry, where they then disembarked and boarded carriages that took them past Long Row to Admiralty House where a luncheon had been spread for 80 guests. The leading men who had built the Inflexible were suitably dined in a separate hall tastefully decorated with palms and evergreens, where the speeches and festivities lasted into the late afternoon. In the town a hundred Metropolitan Policemen were on duty to assist with the huge traffic of people caused by the day's events, which the papers were to report "will long be remembered". There was much to be done to the Inflexible before she would face the waters of the Channel. It would not be until 18 October 1881 that she was finally completed.
HMS Inflexible at Spithead for the 1887 Naval Review. The Hampshire Telegraph described the ship as the most formidable engine of war afloat. She was a remarkable vessel and one that stood out as a milestone in the development of the battleship. The story of her conception shows an obsession that dominated naval thinking of that period. With the introduction of armour into the world's fighting ships, the maritime nations set themselves a game that could have no winner, the game of armour versus the big gun. During the 1870s a dream developed in Naval thinking, the dream of single knock-out blows by a monster gun, the impossible dream, and one which has never been attained against an armoured ship in Naval warfare. Knockout blows could be achieved from well-controlled salvos but not from a monster gun firing spasmodic shots.
During this period Armstrong and Whitworth announced they were prepared to supply guns far bigger than any previously built. This was made possible by the introduction of the built-up gun barrel. Up until the introduction of this type of construction, cannon had been cast in iron or bronze. The largest service canon was the 68 pdr of 112 cwt introduced by Dundas in 1841. The Armstrong system of construction was one of wrought iron rings and tubes shrunk onto the main tube that became the bore of the gun and in theory there was no limit to the size of gun that could be made. The Admiralty, who were content to maintain the status quo, saw no need for bigger guns which would hasten the obsolescence of our fleets. The Board of Ordnance had developed the 12 inch gun, which suited the British needs as the largest gun that sea warfare demanded.
It was the Italians who broke the lull of the coming storm. They saw their long vulnerable coastline at the mercy of a growing French maritime power in the Mediterranean, a threat that, like the British a few years before, they were to take very seriously. Their great constructor, Benedetto Brin, introduced a Naval policy of a limited number of the largest ships afloat with the biggest guns, rather than a large number of less powerful ships. These new monsters were to be armed with the latest Armstrong 15 inch guns weighing 50 tons each, and far exceeding the British 12 inch supplied by the Board of Ordnance.
The very thought of these new monsters sailing the Mediterranean, where the British were the predominant Naval power, prompted the Admiralty into responding with the building of the Inflexible. She was laid down at Portsmouth on 24 February 1874 and was to be one of the milestones in British battleship design. One key element was a central armoured citadel and she was the first capital ship to have an armoured deck below the waterline in place of vertical armour along the waterline, a feature that was to be the standard component of battleship design throughout the world. The Inflexible was a complete departure from previous designs, in armour layout and thickness, gun power and the disposition of armament, and the introduction of electricity. She was the ultimate fighting machine, initiating a string of new military values.
If the Italians were going to have 50 ton guns, the British Navy would have 60 ton guns. But the 60 ton guns were never put into production. In 1875, a year after the keel of the Inflexible had been laid, the first 80 ton guns were ready for trial with a calibre of 14.5 inches. After a series of experiments, the bore was opened to 15 inches and, having been well-tested, the gun was bored out again to 16 inches, which became the final calibre. So, in accordance with the biggest gun possible policy, they were ordered for the Inflexible. Happily for the ship, there was sufficient margin in her design to accommodate the new guns, but it increased her displacement by 800 tons, which made her 12 inches deeper in the water. The Italians, not to be trumped by the Admiralty, ordered Armstrong's to deliver the new 17.7 inch guns of 100 tons. Unfortunately there was not sufficient reserve stability in the Italian design to accommodate the new guns and so the precious armour had to be reduced and, in some places of the new ship's design, had to be abandoned altogether. To maintain the status quo in the Mediterranean, in 1878 the Board of Ordnance ordered four of the monster 100 ton guns from Elswick for emplacement in shore batteries in Malta and Gibraltar.
To understand the complexity of Inflexible's design, one should imagine the hull as three separate parts.
- The central citadel measuring 1 lOft x 75ft and rising to 9.5ft above the waterline and 6ft below, with the turrets at opposite corners of the citadel, each containing the hydraulic loading gear, magazines etc. The citadel was protected by armour of two thicknesses, 20 inch iron armour backed by 24 inches of teak above the waterline, 24 inches of iron armour backed by 17 inches of teak at the waterline and 16 inches of iron armour backed by 25 inches of teak below the waterline.
- The rise of the underwater portion of the hull was limited to the 3 inch armoured deck which ran from the forward ram to the stern. Below the armoured deck were the engines and boilers with other compartments being divided up into watertight sections.
- The hull above the 3 inch armoured deck served only to maintain stability and provide accommodation. It was designed for this unarmoured portion of the ship to be severely damaged and waterlogged without affecting the ship's stability.
The armoured raft, citadel and unarmoured superstructure. Above the armoured deck and outside of the citadel were the coal bunkers and 400 tons of coal were kept below the armoured deck for use in action. The space between the coal bunkers and ship's side was made up of compartments 4ft wide filled with cork and internal to this were coffer dams, 2ft wide, packed with canvas and oakum, which also extended across the ship at the ends of the coal bunkers. Experiments had been carried out on iron boxes filled with cork soaked in calcium chloride, which, when perforated by 68 pdr cannon shot had not caught fire and had stopped flooding, while those filled with canvas and oakum tended to help plug the hole when the shot was driven in.
In 1875 the Chief Constructor, E J Reed, had the opportunity to visit the Italian shipyards building the Duillo and Danolo, the new Italian super-ships. On returning home he published a report declaring them unsafe and unfit for battle. This threw the whole question of the design of the Inflexible once again into the debating chambers. In order to settle the controversy, the Admiralty appointed a board of senior naval architects, engineers and naval officers to investigate the charges made against the ship's design. Work stopped on the construction of the ship at Portsmouth for a year and did not resume until after 4 December 1877, when the committee delivered its findings. They declared the ship was of sound stability but made several recommendations that were adopted in future classes of armoured ships.
The whole balance of her stability had been worked out to keep the ship in a fighting state with many of her compartments above the armoured deck in a damaged and flooded condition. The increase in her main armament from 60 tons to 80 tons had previously reduced this reserve of stability. When completed, there was speculation in the press as to her ability to stay the right way up. Many said that she would roll excessively and be useless as a gun platform, so to counter these fears she was fitted with anti-rolling tanks forward and aft. These were tanks at each side of the ship connected by pipes through which the water flow from one tank into the other when the ship was rolling, although it is reported that these were in the end used for stores. The ship proved all the doubters wrong and was found to be steadier at sea than anticipated.
The two great turrets were at that time the largest mounted in the Royal Navy, being 33ft 10 inches in diameter. The armour was in layers of 9 inches outer skin and a 7 inch inner skin backed and separated by a total of 18 inches of teak. When complete they each weighed 750 tons. To rotate the turret, Rendel's hydraulic system was used in preference to steam. A complete rotation could be achieved in just one minute. The guns were muzzle-loading, which had to be done outside of the turrets. The armoured deck was raised in one position to form a glacis. When the barrel was depressed, it came below the level of the glacis and, from here, the hydraulic rammers rammed home the charge and the giant 16 inch projectile. The projectile weighed 1684 lb and had a muzzle velocity of 1590 ft/sec. With full charge the projectile was capable of piercing 23 inches of iron at 1000 yards and the rate of fire per gun was one round every two minutes.
Cross section of the turret with the 16 inch gun in the loading position Steam was generated by twelve boilers that worked to a maximum pressure of 60 lbs/sq ins, feeding two three-cylinder inverted compound engines, which in turn drove two twin-bladed 20ft diameter propellers of 65 revolutions per minute to give her a top speed of 14.75 knots. On her first speed trials over the Stokes Bay measured mile, she was fitted with four-bladed propellers, but these were judged to be overmatched for her engines and consequently changed for two-bladed propellers. The engine room became unbearable during the speed trials due to inadequate ventilation and additional air supplies had to be installed, which necessitated the Dockyard cutting through the armoured deck. When built, the Inflexible was fitted with a brig sailing rig, although it was not intended that she should use the rig to fight, merely as a training aid for the crew to participate in evolutions aloft with the rest of the fleet. By 1885 her yards and masts had given way to pole masts with circular fighting tops and light yards for signalling.
The Inflexible was commissioned at Portsmouth on 5 July 1881 and completed in October, before joining the Mediterranean Fleet. She was at Alexandria, where her broadsides made impressive viewing, firing some 88 of her 16 inch shells against Ras-el-Tin, Mex, Ada and Pharos forts, although accurate firing did not produce the destruction anticipated. She sustained the most damage of all the British ships present. One hit, a 10 inch shell, struck below the waterline outside of the armour and glanced upwards, perforating the deck and killing two of the crew in the superstructure. It is said that most of the damage to the superstructure and boats was caused by the blast from her own broadsides. She returned to Portsmouth in 1885 and, after a refit, was placed in reserve. She was commissioned for the fleet review of 1887 and for fleet manoeuvres in 1888 and 1889. In July 1890 she went to the Gibraltar Straits, where she remained until November 1893, and returned to Portsmouth to become the Port Guard ship for four years. She was reduced to fleet reserve in 1897 and to Dockyard reserve in November 1901, being sold out of service for £20,100 in September 1903.
When the Inflexible was finally commissioned her size and gun power caught the public imagination, causing as much fanciful speculation as the Dreadnought did some thirty years later. The question remains would she have been any good in a battle and would she have stood up to the damage as her designers claimed? In Dr Oscar Parks's British Battleships, he claimed that a comparison can be made with the Chinese turret ships, Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen. These were central citadel ships with soft ends, similar to the Inflexible and in fact they were modified Inflexible designs. At the Battle of Yalu in 1894, both ships were exposed to the full concentrated fire of the Japanese ships. The Ting Yen was hit 200 times and the former nearly as many, but in neither case were the unarmoured ends of the ship blown to pieces. The 1877 committee claimed the Inflexible would take 300 hits and survive, and based on the example of the Chinese ships, which were sitting and helpless targets, it is most probable that the Inflexible would have withstood a similar barrage and proved worthy of her designers' claims; a true credit to the Royal Navy.
Bibliography
Douglas A Treatise of Naval Gunnery, 1855.
B.H. Patterson Portsmouth Guns.
H. Silverston Dictionary of the World's Capital Ships.
0. Parks British Battleships, 1860-1950.
M. Lewis The Navy of Britain.
P. Palmer Chronology of British History.
Conway History of the Ship (ed.)
The Manufacture of Rifled Ordnance, 1878.
Owen's History of Modern Artillery, 1873.
City of Portsmouth Corporation Records, 1835-1927.
Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust Records.
