EXPERIMENTAL IRONCLADS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16889, 29 December 1916, Page 8

EXPERIMENTAL IRONCLADS

WARSHIPS THAT WERE OBSOLETE BEFORE THEY WERE LAUNCHED.

Coincidences arising out of the Jutland sea light have been fairly common, but ono of the most interesting seems so far to have escaped notice. This concerns the loss of tho sister ships Warrior and Black Prince.

Two predecessors bearing these historic names v/cre the first ironclad vessels added to the British navy, while the Warrior, completed in 1862, was the first warship in the world specially built to receive protective plates. The naval wonder of her' day, she remained on the active list for over 40 years, though actually rendered obsolete and practically useless for fighting purposes before she left tho stocks. It was the beginning of the struggle between armour and ammunition which, to the irnmenso cost of every naval nation, has continued ever since. The story of that struggle, shown by the latest results to bo more keen than ever, should be specially interesting to follow. — Only Sixty Years Ago.—

Considering the immense strides made in iron and steel shipbuilding, it is not a little- surprising that the earliest departures from wood, and even then only in part, should have been made under 60 years ago. True, experiments had been tried a decade or so earlier in thinly plating ordinary wooden ships, one of the first to be so treated being the ill-fated troopship Birkenhtnd; but gunnery tests subsequently convinced naval experts of those days that for war purposes ironcovered hulls were hopeless, and much too dangerous to adopt. As has more than once happened since, circumstances brought a change of mind. During tho Crimean war our French Allies introduced for use against Sebastopol some " floating batteries " protected with iron plating. This country followed suit, and likewise adopted similar means to protect some of the bombarding warships. Though found highly dangerous to navigate and manoeuvre, the stiffened hulls showed gratifying resistance to shell effects, and once more attention was turned to iron constructive possibilities. — The French La Gloire.— It was left to the French, however, to make tho first move. After peace had bean declared our neighbours cut down a wooden double-decker, and fixed an iron belt round the remainder of the hull. Rechristened La Gloire, the strengthened vessel was hailed as the most powerful warship then afloat. In the same year, however, 1860, Great Britain laid down the Warrior, to be an entirely new and not a merely reconstructed "iron" vessel. In Teality she was a wooden frigate, with an armouTplating 4-£ in thick fastened over the centre of her sides, her bow and stern, including the steering gear, being left entirely unprotected. Apparently naval opinion in those days placed most importance on engines and magazines, and considered wheels and rudders, without which the ship would become unmanageable, of secondary consequence. These defects, however, were remedied in later experiments.

Though only of 6100 tons burthen, such were the difficulties of this new departure in naval construction that it took nearly two years to complete the Warrior. Meanwhile, as already stated, improvements in destructive weapons rendered her obsolete. Rifled guns had come into being, and. experiments made with these showed it possible to penetrate iron protection even stronger than that placed upon the as yet unlaunched Warrior. Notwithstanding, she and her .sister ship, the Black Prince, were completed according to programme, and acclaimed with much jubilation as the most powerful ships float. Doubts as to this came from a very unexpected quarter. During the American Civil war there was fought the famous action between the Merrimac and Monitor. Both were protected vessels, but whereas the Merrimac was armed with 10 broadside guns, the Monitor, built on the entirely new turret system, carried only two revolving guns, which could be trained at will on any part of an enemy ship. Lving low in the water, hostile shot, unless fired from a distance, passed harmlessly over the hull of the Monitor type, while her own powerful guns played havoc with the high decks of an opponent. Added to this was the resistance to shot offered by the gun turrets, which more than anything else drew the attention of naval architects to the new system. — Captain Coles'a Experiments.—

In Great Britain experiments were initiated chiefly owing to the energy of a Captain Coles. The first practical result was a turret ship which bore for name his rank as an officer. One of the greatest disappointments ever associated with our navy, she turned turtle and foundered on her maiden voyage. The disaster was a.scribed to faulty design, a rather disconcerting matter in a vessel which on completion had been officially described _as a match, single-handed, for any • entire foreign fleet that could be brought against her. The persons responsible for the eulogy were likewise responsible for the vessel's failure and fate. [ Though steam navigation had been known for 80 years, nothing would induce the Admiralty officials of the late 'sixties to rely solely on this meana of propulsion for their warships: consequently, in an evil moment they persuaded Cok-s to fit the Captain with masts and sailing gear, thus altering her original design without allowing any material compensation in hull specifications. In result the vessel proved top-heavy, and foundered when unable to right herself after heeling over in a storm. — Patrick Miller's Pioneer Ship.— This leads to two interesting reflections. Something has been already said on the tardiness with which naval authorities adopted vessels constructed of iron, and we have just .seen how persistently they clung to sailing craft; yet, according to the most competent authorities, the very first vessel to be propelled by steam was built of iron. This was a boat invented by Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, which made her trial trip on October 14, 1788. Among those on board are said to have been Burns, the poet, and Alexander Nasmyth, painter of the famous portrait of the bard. Nasmyth also drew up the plans for the projected boat, and left a, drawing of her when complete. The engines which propelled the vessel were subsequently acquired by the South Kensington Museum.

Following Miller came Fulton and Bell, nnd long before the latter produced his famous Comet, a no less celebrity than Admiral Lord Nelson urged the British Government to take up and encourage his schemes for steam navigation. Tho appeal was disregarded, and the same reluctance to experiment with "hot water," as with " iron tanks," maintained almost to our own day. But for this prejudice it is hard to" say how much farther ahead of the world we might have been.