Ironclad cruiser

“ The weakest class of all is composed of the unprotected cruisers, which have neither armour-belt nor protective deck, and carry only light batteries of rapid-fire guns. When these vessels are slow, like the Detroit, they are intended for long voyages and for duty in foreign countries, and are of little use in a sea fight. The very fast unprotected cruiser, like the American line steamers, St. Paul and St. Louis, attach little importance to their armament, and rely for protection upon stowing the coal behind the place occupied by the armour belt in other vessels. ”

“ Cruisers proper in our navy are now officially classed in three main divisions—"battle-cruisers", "cruisers", and "light cruisers", though a very short time ago they were subdivided into "armoured cruisers", "first-class protected cruisers", "second-class protected cruisers", "third-class protected cruisers", "unarmoured cruisers", "lightly-armoured cruisers", and "scouts".
The battle-cruiser is a hybrid and, as this war has proved, a most useful war-vessel. She is not so heavily armed or armoured as a battleship of equivalent age, but has much greater speed. ”

“ Flashes break from their sides also, and the noise of the firing swells into a steady roll of sound rising and falling on the wind. We again increase speed. Black smoke billows from our funnels, the bow wave rises higher, and now and again a cloud of spray swishes over our decks. Then "Cra—ash!" The fore-turret has spoken. The ship trembles from stem to stern. We are striking in to the assistance of our scouting cruiser. Through the glasses appears what looks like an iceberg towering over the enemy's nearest cruiser. ”

“ The cruiser Invincible, launched by Armstrongs at Elswick in April 1907, is a first-class armoured cruiser 530 feet in length and of 17,250 tons displacement, and has turbine engines of an equivalent horse-power of 40,000 and a speed of 25 knots. ”

“ But as we hauled down our colors at sunset, which had been hoisted to let the fellow know who we were, down came his also. Then there we both lay looking at each other. He knew by instinctive experience that we were the American corvette ‘Scourge,’ mounting eighteen twenty-four-pounder carronades and two long eighteens in the bow ports; for the brigantine had once or twice determined their exact calibres, and that we were the fastest cruiser, with the wind a point or two free, that had been seen in the West Indies for twenty years. ”

“ Crash!—and a tremendous shock shook the cruiser from stem to stern as its prow tore through the upheld metal cage, ripping it from its supporting pillar and sending it crashing to the ground. Our cruiser spun, hovered for a moment as though to whirl down to destruction, then steadied, while we at the window gazed downward, shouting.
For beneath us the blinding radiance of the massed hemispheres had suddenly snapped out! Around and above us the great battle had died, the last of the cones tumbling to the ground beneath the rays of the mighty fleet, and now we turned swiftly to the telechart. ”

“ It is of the utmost importance that his message should not be delivered; the British fleet 108is not quite ready to strike, and it does not wish the enemy to know this. Onward steams the cruiser, the fastest vessel of her class in the world. It is broad daylight, and she can be seen by our own cruisers who, unhappily, are half a knot slower than she is. British destroyers have attempted to torpedo her as she steams quickly by, but her quick-firing guns and her attendant torpedo craft have so far foiled their purpose and the daylight is against them. ”

“ Not a Russian or Japanese battleship has been sunk by a torpedo boat, or by gunfire, while among the less protected ships, cruiser after cruiser has been destroyed whenever the hostile squadrons have gotten within range of one another’s weapons. There will always be a large field of usefulness for cruisers, especially of the more formidable type. We need to increase the number of torpedo-boat destroyers, paying less heed to their having a knot or two extra speed than to their capacity to keep the seas for weeks and, if necessary, for months at a time. ”

“ High speed, wide radius of action and great battery strength are the characteristics of this type; and to meet these requirements the battle cruiser is planned of a size considerably larger than the battleship.
The protected cruiser is a later development of naval construction. Its distinguishing features are certain modifications in the distribution of the mass of protective armor of the ship.
Light cruisers are vessels of from 1,500 to 7,500 tons, used in scouting, as commerce destroyers, etc. They are outside the armored class. ”

“ The largest type are to be 5500 tons, with a 9-in. bow arid stern chaser gun, and eight 6-in. guns on the broadside. They will have a steel protective deck and a speed of 20. knots. The 'Irene,' the first fast cruiser completed, is of 4300 tons, armed with fourteen 6-in. guns, and has a speed of 18 knots. Others are in course of construction. Germany has paid much attention to the organisation of an efficient defence by torpedo boats, and carries out continuous exercise with them in the Baltic and North Sea. ”

“ THE 'IMPERIEUSE.'
22-ton guns and thicker armour than any of the early ironclads. It is more the service on which they are to be employed than any special form of construction which has put them in the cruiser category. No more ships of this type have been built. In this country the further development of the cruiser has been in the direction of giving up external armour, and devoting all weight we can give to protection to a steel deck for the whole length of the ship, varying in thickness according to her size. ”

“ All desirable features cannot be concentrated in any one ship; the special duty for which the vessel is to be used controls the selection. The sea-going armored cruiser is expected to keep the sea for a lengthened period: she must have large coal endurance. She may be called on to sustain more than one engagement: her supply of ammunition must be large. Her speed must equal that of the fastest sea-going vessels of similar type to enable her to pursue an equal or to avoid a superior force: hence much space and displacement must be assigned to engines and boilers. ”

“ Every nation has its own classification of warships, and the varieties of modern warships are so numerous, and the estimates of their effectiveness so much at variance, that it is little wonder the descriptions assigned to the vessels do not agree. Thus the American Maine, sunk at Havana, was described with equal accuracy as a cruiser and as a second-class battleship. But the nations have, for the most part, adopted the British classification of cruisers, though they have not failed to modify it to suit their own views. ”

“ As this class of vessel is not able to cope with the armoured cruiser, it must be faster, for the general principle holds good that the weaker the vessel becomes in point of offensive weapons or defensive [pg 374] armour, the greater the necessity that she should be able to run away. The best types of the protected cruiser in the navy may be found in the Columbia and Minneapolis, which have a speed of about twenty-seven miles an hour. ”

“ Now for the present, sufficient cruisers, first class, do not exist to meet the requirements of supplying ships to take the place of smaller obsolete ones, and also for reserve purposes.
For the present a large proportion of cruisers, second class, must be retained, but it is hoped that these will in time be replaced by cruisers, first class, in the proportion of one cruiser, first class, to three cruisers, second or third class. No one can argue that one first class cruiser is not a superior fighting unit to three cruisers second or third class. ”

“ The Surcoup and Forbin illustrate another favorite type of cruiser. They are 311 feet 7 inches long, have 30 feet 6 inches beam, and on a mean draught of 13 feet 11 inches displace 1848 tons. The hull weighs 817 tons, and the engines (with boilers filled) 544 tons; the coal capacity is 200 tons, and the endurance 2400 miles at 10 knots. The engines are expected, with forced draft, to develop 6000 indicated horse-power and 19.5 knots. They have a four-masted schooner rig, spread 7255.5 square feet of canvas, and carry a complement of one hundred and fifty officers and men. ”

“ Yelling, shouting, and crying, the pirates rushed for the boats, their officers leading the way. There was no one to give orders to the engine-room, and the propellers were still driving ahead, pushing the shattered bows of the cruiser deeper into the fissure caused by the impact in the side of the berg. Those of the engineers and stokers who had been not rendered insensible by the concussion deserted their post, rushed on deck, and, heedless of the sudden change from the heated engine-room and stokeholds to the freezing, fog-laden air, joined their comrades in their mad skelter for the boats. ”

“ The incident was seized upon by those who still favoured the older methods which had done duty for so many hundreds of years, as an argument for the retention of sail power for the ships of the Royal Navy, and the modernists replied that such incidents were few and far between, and with the improvements in mechanism which science was continually making would become virtually impossible.
Naval experts do not always agree as to the differences between a battleship and a cruiser. ”

“ Later, although convinced that in any war involving this country and its colonies the chief combats must be fought in European waters, naval opinion saw the necessity for a type of ship designed primarily for the defence and attack of commerce: a speedy, lightly armed and protected type capable of overhauling and injuring a weaker, or of escaping from a more powerful enemy. The American War of ’62, in which no general sea action was fought, gave the impulse to the construction of the type which eventually became known as the cruiser. ”

“ He considered the essential features of a cruiser to be high speed, protection without the use of side armour, a powerful armament and minimum size and cost; and his views were adopted by the Elswick firm in a large number of cruisers built for foreign Powers down to the introduction of high explosives, when side armour was advocated in place of, or in addition to, the armour deck. The cruisers built for the British navy prior to 1880—of which the principal types were such vessels as the “Inconstant,” of 5780 tons (1866) ; the “Active,” of 3080 tons (1867) ”

“ In addition, there are not a few authorities who maintain that the development of the swift torpedo-cruiser, or the swift protected cruiser, makes the continued use of armor at least questionable, seeing that to attempt to protect ships by thick armor either on decks or sides, and to secure high speeds and heavy armaments, involves the construction of large and expensive vessels, which are necessarily exposed to enormous risks in action from forms of under-water attack, against which their armor is no defence. ”

“ Down in the Impregnable's engine-room men—experienced mechanics—were overhauling the machinery. Only a few weeks before the cruiser had been in commission with a nucleus crew, and, as is usually the case, her engines had lacked proper attention, but in less than a couple of hours the filibusters had succeeded in firing the oil-fuel burners and raising steam. ”

“ I cried. "And our ship is the only battle-cruiser—the rest have no weapons!"
I turned, cried another order, and in obedience to it our own cruiser halted suddenly and then dipped downward, racing straight into the ascending swarm of attacking cones. Down we flashed, down, down, and toward us sprang a score of the metal cylinders, grazing along our sides. And then, from the sides of our own downward-swooping ship there sprang out brilliant shafts of green light, the deadly de-cohesion ray of the ships of the Federation Fleet. ”

“ We pass a magnificent white-clad troop-ship, with a beading of red-coats leisurably looking over the forecastle, and glide under the lee of one of those steam-winged brigands of the deep, a steel-built cruiser, whose towering trim spars, and beautiful lines, excite admiration, but chastened with the reflection of the capabilities for destruction she carries in her enormous propelling power and far-reaching guns. ”

“ Should the new light cruiser be the smallest of the cruisers or the biggest of the destroyers? We had already in existence a few unarmoured light cruisers carrying 4–inch guns called the Blondes. We had also an experimental destroyer of enormous size, nearly 2,000 tons and about 36 knots speed, called the Swift. In between these were eight hybrid vessels called ‘Scouts’ representing weakness and confusion of thought: they had neither speed to run nor guns to fight; they steamed only 24 knots and mounted only a litter of 12–pounders; they carried no armour, but they ate up men and money. ”

“ The German battle-cruisers were now close enough for their hulls to be distinguishable. The outline of each ship stood forth, clear-cut and black, against the sky-line. Each was rushing forward at its topmost speed, bearing down with inevitable precision upon the defenceless cargo ship, which, like an exhausted, hunted animal, strained every bolt, bar and rivet to save herself from unutterable disaster. Suddenly, it became apparent that, in addition to the Dreadnought cruisers, the sea was alive with a host of smaller craft--light cruisers and torpedo-boat-destroyers. ”