Protected cruiser

“ 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. ”

“ Not a Russian or Japanese battle ship 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. ”

“ It was an anxious, nerve-racking time; the men at the pirate vessel's quick-firers kept every available gun trained upon one particular place in the side of the Denver, ready at the order to deliver a simultaneous volley that would in all probability deal the protected cruiser a mortal blow. In return the American cruiser's 5 in. guns would be able to deal a devastating blow at comparatively short range, but she hesitated to begin the conflict owing to the hostages upon the pirate's deck. ”

“ The following vessels of the new Navy have been completed and are now ready for service: The double-turreted coast-defense monitor Miantonomoh, the double-turreted coast-defense monitor Monterey, the armored cruiser New York, the protected cruisers Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, San Francisco, Charleston, Atlanta, and Boston, the cruiser Detroit, the gunboats Yorktown, Concord, Bennington, Machias, Castine, and Petrel, the dispatch vessel Dolphin, the practice vessel Bancroft, and the dynamite gunboat Vesuvius. ”

“ The unprotected cruisers have no side armour or other protection worth mentioning, and are mostly used for police duties, such as guarding fisheries, etc. They are lightly built and armed, and of relatively good speed for their size, and the duties they have to perform usually constitute the chief matter for consideration in the design of the several vessels. The protected cruisers have strong steel decks to protect their engines, etc., besides a great number of watertight compartments, and are classified according to their size, armament and speed, and the work for which they are intended. ”

“ The fleet unit, which was suggested and which has been accepted by Australia, and to which the government contributed a certain sum per annum, is to be composed of one armored cruiser of the type of the Indomitable, three protected cruisers, six destroyers and three submarines. Now the fleet which we have agreed to accept is to be composed of four Bristols, one Boadicea, and six destroyers. "A Bristol is a protected cruiser, which means that it has a steel deck which protects all the vital parts of the ship. It has a tonnage of 4,800 tons, with a speed of 25 knots. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the British navy, as might be expected, the demand for vessels to meet the varied and diverse requirements that necessarily arise in a fleet of such magnitude 'has led to the production of a number of types, each adapted to its own special duties. They may be classified as (1) unprotected cruisers; (2) protected cruisers of first, second and third classes; and (3) armoured cruisers. Unprotected cruisers have neither side armour nor other protection against loss of buoyancy from injury by shot and shell. ”

“ In the Pacific, the American squadron—the protected cruisers “Olympia” (flagship of Commodore George Dewey) , “Baltimore,” “Raleigh” and “Boston,” the small unprotected cruiser “Concord,” the gunboat “Petrel,” the armed revenue cutter “Hugh M‘Culloen,” with a purchased collier “Nanshan” and a purchased supply ship “Zafiro”— left Hong-Kong at the request of the governor and went to Mirs Bay, some miles east on the Chinese coast. ”

“ Several of the fine cruisers which Ito had then led to victory were present, many of them remodelled, and all provided with new guns. Then there were a number of small protected cruisers, built in Japanese dockyards since the Chinese war, the heralds of the later time when the Japanese navy would all be home-built. Battleships, armoured cruisers, and protected cruisers were all swifter than the Russian ships. The fleet as a whole could manœuvre at fully fifty per cent greater speed than the enemy, and this meant that it could choose its own position in battle. ”

“ The “Powerful” and her sister the “Terrible” are the largest protected cruisers which have been built. They were begun in 1894. They are of Steel, sheathed with wood and coppered, are of 14,200 tons displacement, 500 ft. length, 71 ft. beam and 27 ft. mean draught, armed with bow and stern 9.2-in. B.L. chasers, and twelve 6-in. Q.F. guns, of which eight are in 6-in. Harveyized casemates on the main deck and four in similar casemates on the upper deck. They have also eighteen 12-pdr. Q.F. guns, twelve 3-pdrs., nine machine guns and four submerged torpedo tubes. ”

“ The engines had been so placed as to be exposed above water-line, which was condemned as a serious mistake in a war-vessel without armor-protection. It was realized, too, that the essential characteristic in an unarmored cruiser is great speed. The function she is expected to perform is to destroy commerce; and if she is slower than the merchant-vessels it is useless for her to go to sea; and if she is slower than the iron-clads, and consequently cannot escape from them, she could not long continue her service. ”

“ With loss of protection a cruiser loses her power of reasonable approach for observation purposes, and if to this be added a loss of reasonable speed her safety is gone. Cruisers without high speed and protection are entirely and absolutely useless.
Every vessel that has not high scouting speed, or the highest defensive and offensive powers, is useless for fighting purposes. ”

“ As our mercantile marine was to be found in nearly every sea, though in greater accumulation in some areas than in others, its defence against the assaults of an enemy could only be ensured by the virtual ubiquity of our cruising force. This, of course, involved the necessity of employing a large number of cruisers, and of arranging the distribution of them in accordance with the relative amount and value of the traffic to be protected from molestation in different parts of the ocean. ”

“ As an inevitable result we find ourselves involved in an effort to restore to the flotilla some of its old cruiser capacity, by endowing it with gun armament, higher sea-keeping power, and facilities for distant communication, all at the [pg 124] cost of specialisation and of greater economic strain. Still judged by past experience, some means of increasing numbers in the cruising types is essential, nor is it clear how it is possible to secure that essential in the ranks of the true cruiser. ”

“ The Glasgow, Carnarvon, and Bristol were of great use in the Falklands fight, the first-named having already fought against the heavy batteries of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off the coast of Chile, while later on she sank the Dresden; while the Sydney won undying fame by defeating and driving on shore the notorious commerce-destroyer Emden.
Another distinctly modern type of cruiser is the "light cruiser", a fast unprotected vessel with light guns of 4-inch calibre, which has proved of immense value in the area of "liveliness" in the North Sea. ”

“ Besides employing these old battleships on convoy, we had also at the end of August sent three others abroad as rallying points for our cruisers in case a German heavy cruiser should break out: thus the Glory was sent to Halifax, the Albion to Gibraltar and the Canopus to the Cape de Verde station. Naval history afforded numerous good examples of the use of a protective battleship to give security and defensive superiority to a cruiser force—to serve, in fact, as a floating fortress round which the faster vessels could manœuvre, and on which they could fall back. ”

“ In the case of coast-defence vessels the conditions are changed, enabling in them the full development of both offensive and defensive properties. These vessels are assigned to duty on the coast: they must be as fit to keep the sea as are the armored cruisers, and they must be able to fight their guns in all weathers that the armored cruiser can fight; but as they do not require the coal endurance nor the speed of the ship that is to keep the sea for lengthened periods, the weight saved in coal and machinery can be utilized in battery and armor. ”

“ Action taken with the U.S. authorities for the introduction of a system by which the trade from that country in neutral shipping was controlled enabled the ships of the 10th Cruiser Squadron to be gradually withdrawn from blockade duties and utilized as ocean convoy cruisers. ”

“ The defence of a line of communication ought to be arranged on the same plan as that adopted for the defence of a trade route, viz. making unceasing efforts to attack the intending assailant. Within the last few years a good deal has been written about the employment of cruisers. The favourite idea seems to be that peace-time preparation for the cruiser operations of war ought to take the form of scouting and attendance on fleets. The history of naval warfare does not corroborate this view. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, there are services upon which it is necessary to employ armed ships, but which do not demand the use of armored or protected vessels. Unarmored vessels, with some of their more vital contents protected, suffice for such services. Moreover, even where it would be very desirable indeed to have the hull protected by armor to a sufficient extent to preserve the ship’s buoyancy and stability from ready destruction by gun-fire, it is often impracticable to give the ship that protection. ”

“ A very remarkable feature of German policy has been the persistency with which cruisers have been built even at a time when other naval Powers, including Great Britain, were inactive. As a matter of course, during the period when the German Government was content to provide a fleet mainly for the purposes of coast defence, great importance was attached to the efficiency and adequacy of the cruiser squadrons. ”

“ Are they to take hundreds of non-combatants with them on what the stronger naval Power may well treat as a piratical enterprise? Where are they to coal? To say that we have to maintain a large cruiser fleet to deal with this danger appears extravagant in the highest degree. All that is needed is to arm a similar number of British merchant vessels of the right speed and make arrangements to commission these for their own defence and that of other British ships in their neighbourhood and on their route. ”

“ The cruiser of to-day, with its massive sides of metal, its heavy rifled guns with improved projectiles, its rapid fire, its electric lights and signals, its search-lights and range-finders, and other apparatus contributing to celerity and accuracy of work, is more dangerous and destructive, so long as it remains intact, than anything that Hull or Bainbridge, Du Pont or Farragut, ever saw. ”