Naval armament

“ Sir Richard Hawkins, in his Observations, printed in 1593, compares the armament of his own ships with that of his Spanish opponents, and says: “Although their artillery were larger, weightier, and many more than ours, and in truth did pierce with greater violence; yet ours being of greater bore, and carrying a weightier and greater shot, was of more importance and of better effect for sinking and spoiling.” ”

“ A KRUPP GUN ON A NAVAL CARRIAGE.
The work to be done by an unarmored cruiser must be done from a distance when risking an engagement with an armored enemy. The superiority of armament must compensate for deficiency in defensive power which precludes close quarters. To make these ships effective they must be armed with guns capable of doing an extraordinary amount of work, and yet the size of the vessels will not admit of their carrying guns of immense weight. In order to get this amount of work out of a comparatively light gun, we must secure great initial velocity for the projectile. ”

“ With the expansion of merchant shipping and with the recognition of artillery as the main instrument of naval warfare fighting ships made a corresponding advance in size. The Commission of Reform of 1618, on whose report the subsequent reorganization of the Navy was based, held that the primacy of the big gun had at last been established. ”

“ Secondly, the navy was itself “unwillingly dragged into the cul-de-sac of269 experimental construction induced by the clamour of public opinion.” The type, the size of the gun which was to be embodied in our latest warships, was decided mainly by forces outside the navy, and changed from year to year. Naval architecture changed with it. The adoption of the succession of increasingly powerful rifled guns set experts at their wit’s ends devising warships suitable for carrying them; entailed continuous alterations both in the armaments of new ships and in the design of the new ships themselves ”

“ So long as solid shot were used, indeed, these timber-built ships were admirably suited for the line of battle; as size and strength increased and as our methods of construction improved the ship gained an increasing advantage over the gun, defence increasingly mastered attack, to such a degree that by the end of the long wars with France the ship-of-the-line had become almost unsinkable by gun-fire. But so soon as shell guns were established—even with spherical247 shells fired from smooth-bore ordnance—wooden ships loomed easy targets for destruction. ”

“ The construction of a sufficient number of modern war ships and of their necessary armament should progress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfection in plans and workmanship. The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers and seamen have many times in our history given to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond that of the naval list. ”

“ And on this pretext, and judging the defensive power of the whole ship by the defensive power of the thickest patch of its armour, a still more powerful gun was demanded for the navy by the inventor and by the press: a 25-ton 600-pounder.
So rapidly the power of ordnance grew. It has been observed that of this feverish evolution of armour and artillery the circumstances were doubly remarkable. Firstly, no foreign pressure existed which called for such overleaping and experimental advances. The Americans still clung to their smooth-bore system ”

“ Even so, the results obtained from it were far from satisfactory. “It is a lamentable truth”—we quote Sir William Congreve, writing in 1811—“that numbers of men are constantly maimed, one way or another, by the recoiling of the heavy ordnance used on board ships of war. Most of the damage is done by the random recoil of the carriage which, moving with the gun along no certain path, is much affected by the motion of the vessel and the inequalities of the deck. ”

“ But in this case their distribution was different; the sailing ship, with no recourse to oars for manœuvring, could not always ensure an end-on attack or defence, and had to arm herself against an enemy from any quarter. Her freedom from oars, her height, and the invention of the porthole, enabled the early “great ship” to mount a sufficiently distributed all-round armament. While her sides were pierced for ponderous bombards, her poop and forecastle bristled with the same light secondary armament as figured in the Mediterranean galley.72 This artillery was almost entirely for defence. ”

“ He was an advocate for iron, shorter ships, complete armour belts, and the concentration of the armament into a smaller number of heavier guns in a central battery or citadel. In 1752 a French naval architect had written: 'Il est certain que ce sont toujours les gros canons qui sont les plus avantageux dans un combat, et ainsi il est préférable de mettre sur un vaisseau un petit nombre de gros canons qu'un grand nombre de petits,' and yet in the old wars we had found number not size most influential in deciding a combat. ”

“ And the French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the principal weapon in naval combats—the ultima ratio of maritime warfare.” “There is a new warfare,” said Scott Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her alongside, but, Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.” ”

“ The sixteenth century witnessed the greatest strides in the evolution of sea ordnance. In the Mediterranean the decisive effect of gunfire, proved in the sea fight off Prevesa in the year 1538, was confirmed by the victory of the Christians over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. In the Atlantic England began her long preparation for securing a sea supremacy and, under the masterful eye of King Henry VIII, adapted more and more powerful guns for service in the royal ships. Of the professional interest which the King took in the development of ordnance there is ample evidence. ”

“ It was concluded that, while it would be impossible to cover the sides completely, it would be possible to protect the surfaces near the water-line, under cover of which all the ships’ vital parts could be secreted. A great increase in defensive power would thus be obtained. Before developing a plan in detail it was decided to carry out further armour trials, and solid iron plates of 41⁄2 inches thickness were fired at with English 68-pounders and French 50-pounders, with solid balls and with charged shells. ”

“ During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries smooth-bore weapons firing spherical lead balls were the only kind known and used. But in the early part of the sixteenth century a development took place which was to prove of the first importance to fire-arms ”

“ The many and varied patterns of guns supplied for our defence made a considerable shore establishment necessary, not alone for the guns and mountings, but for ammunition of as many marks as a Geelong wool-bale. In the first stages of our war-harnessing, the supply of guns was limited to what could be spared from battlefield and naval armament. ”

“ Upon the sea, to load great ordnance they never load with a ladle, but make use of cartridges, as well for expedition as security in not firing the powder, which in time of fight is in a continual motion. ”

“ Other nations had already augmented the length and power of their guns. By the adoption of the improved breech-loading ordnance, Great Britain, who for the last few years had been falling behind her rivals, not only drew level with them but definitely took the lead in the power of her heavy ordnance: a lead which from that time to this she has successfully maintained.
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CHAPTER IX
PROPELLING MACHINERY No aspect of old naval warfare is so difficult for the modern reader to visualize, perhaps, as that which displays the essential weakness of the sailing warship: its impotence in a calm. ”

“ These remarks find one application in the ram, and in the value placed upon it in the ’sixties and ’seventies. During264 this period artillery was undergoing a continuous and rapid improvement, eventually turning the scales against defensive armour; steam power was expanding and the manœuvring capacities of ships were being extended, so as to make ramming an operation more and more difficult to perform. ”

“ Her armament was to consist of thirty thirty-two-pounder guns, and two one-hundred-pounder columbiads. A secondary engine was designed to throw (p. 390) floods of water upon the decks and through the port-holes of an enemy. While the vessel was building, reports concerning her reached England; and soon the most ludicrously exaggerated accounts of her power were current in that country. "She mounts forty-four guns," said an English paper, "four of which are one-hundred-pounders, mounted in bomb proofs, and defended by thousands of boarding-pikes and cutlasses wielded by steam ”

“ With the seventeenth century a new age of scientific speculation opened, and, under the personal encouragement of the Stuart kings, the art and mystery of shipbuilding received an illumination which was of great value to the royal armaments. ”

“ The vast growth in naval armaments during the century may be measured from the fact that the personnel of the leading navies of Europe, with those of Japan and the United States, comprised, in the year 1898, 368,028 officers and men, with a total force of 2749 vessels of all types, including torpedo craft. ”

“ In the years which have elapsed since Lord Fisher came to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, two altogether revolutionary changes have been made in naval war.
1. Until 1904 the 12-inch guns of our battleships were weapons that no one would have thought of using beyond the range of 4,000 yards. The identical guns have been used in this war at 11,000, 12,000, and 13,000 yards. The advance in range owes nothing to improvements in the gun. It has been brought about by improvements in sights, in range-finders, and in the organization called fire control. ”

“ Opportunities have been afforded to note the progress made in armor and artillery, and though the smooth-bore shell is still operative against unarmored vessels, the advantages of the rifled gun under all the circumstances of navy experiences have been admitted, and in the transition through which our naval artillery is now passing we are not embarrassed by the presentation of views antagonistic to the principles on which it has been determined our new artillery is to be constructed. ”

“ Not only is the 12-inch gun a weapon incomparably great, compared with the musket, but when placed in a naval ship, it possesses a portability which, while not an attribute of the gun itself, is an attribute of the combination of gun and ship, and a distinct attribute of naval power. ”

“ It was not until after 1880 that our government awoke to the need of a navy on the new lines, and began to take advantage of the lessons that had been learned abroad. It is not our purpose to speak in detail of the results. The steelclad battleship and cruiser, the armor-piercing breech-loader, the quick-firing gun, the machine gun, the submarine torpedo-boat, the anchored mine, the automobile torpedo, and other devices have come to make the naval warfare of our day a wonderfully different thing from that of the past. ”

“ This consideration doubtless led to the building of the Nile and Trafalgar, in which the four big guns were carried in turrets and the secondary armament in an armoured battery amidships. They were extremely well-protected ships and would have given a very good account of any ship of their day. But the tendency was ever for bigger ships, which allowed, generally speaking, for greater speed, greater radius of action, greater seaworthiness, and afforded a steadier gun platform. ”

“ The first group, completed between 1895 and 1898, includes six battleships, all of 14,900 tons displacement, 12,000 horsepower and 2,000 tons coal capacity. The speed is 17.5 knots, the armor belt being from 10 to 14 inches at the big guns and with a mean armor belt of 9 inches. The armament consists of 4 12-inch guns, 12 6-inch rapid fire, 16 3-inch rapid fire, 12 3-pounder rapid fire, 2 light rapid fire and 2 machine guns. They have one torpedo tube above water and two under water. ”

“ At the outset it is important to remark that in the most recent designs of armored ships for all navies, increase in speed, armament, and thickness of armor has been associated with a decrease in the area of the broadside protected by armor. Further, it has been considered important in most cases to distribute the armored positions of the heavy guns in the ships in order to reduce the risks of complete disablement of the principal armament by one or two lucky shots which may happen when the heavy guns are concentrated in a single citadel or battery. ”

“ Enough has been said to prove that when the naval architect undertakes to build a hull that will be proof against the blow, not merely of one but of several of these terrific weapons, he has set himself a task that may well try his ingenuity to the utmost. Protection by heavy armour is out of the question. The weight would be prohibitive and, indeed, all the side armour that he can put upon the ship is needed at the water-line and above it, as a protection against the armour-piercing, high-explosive shells of the enemy. ”

“ Thus three pairs of guns can fire directly ahead, three directly astern, and the whole armament can fire on either broadside; In the “Invincible,” built at Elswick, all the heavy guns are worked by electric power; in the other vessels they are worked by hydraulic power as usual in H.M. Navy. An anti-torpedo boat armament of sixteen 4-in. guns is provided. The 12-in. guns are protected by 8-in. armour, and a broad belt of side armour is fitted 7 in. thick amidships, and 4 in. ”