Ironclad warship
An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by steel or iron armor constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in November 1859, narrowly preempting the British Royal Navy. However, Britain built the first completely iron-hulled warships.
They were first used in warfare in 1862 during the American Civil War, when ironclads operated against wooden ships and, in a historic confrontation, against each other at the Battle of Hampton Roads in Virginia. Their performance demonstrated that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored ship of the line as the most powerful warship afloat. Ironclad gunboats became very successful in the American Civil War.
Ironclads were designed for several uses, including as high-seas
The quick pace of change meant that many ships were obsolete almost as soon as they were finished and that naval tactics were in a state of flux. Many ironclads were built to make use of the naval ram, the torpedo, or sometimes both (as in the case with smaller ships and later torpedo boats), which several naval designers considered the important weapons of naval combat. There is no clear end to the ironclad period, but toward the end of the 1890s, the term ironclad dropped out of use. New ships were increasingly constructed to a standard pattern and designated as battleships or armored cruisers.
Development
The ironclad became technically feasible and tactically necessary because of developments in shipbuilding in the first half of the 19th century. According to naval historian J. Richard Hill: "The (ironclad) had three chief characteristics: a metal-skinned hull, steam propulsion and a main armament of guns capable of firing explosive shells. It is only when all three characteristics are present that a fighting ship can properly be called an ironclad."[1] Each of these developments was introduced separately in the decade before the first ironclads.
Steam propulsion
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, fleets had relied on two types of major warship, the
Steam-powered screw frigates were built in the mid-1840s, and at the end of the decade the French Navy introduced steam power to its line of battle. Napoleon III's ambition to gain greater influence in Europe required a sustained challenge to the British at sea.[3][4] The first purpose-built steam battleship was the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850.[2] Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph), regardless of the wind conditions: a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement.
The introduction of the steam ship-of-the-line led to a building competition between France and Britain. Eight sister ships to Napoléon were built in France over a period of ten years, but the United Kingdom soon managed to take the lead in production. Altogether, France built ten new wooden steam battleships and converted 28 from older ships of the line, while the United Kingdom built 18 and converted 41.[2]
Explosive shells
The era of the wooden steam ship-of-the-line was brief, because of new, more powerful naval guns. In the 1820s and 1830s, warships began to mount increasingly heavy guns, replacing
It is often held that the power of explosive shells to smash wooden hulls, as demonstrated by the Russian destruction of an Ottoman squadron at the Battle of Sinop, spelled the end of the wooden-hulled warship.[5] The more practical threat to wooden ships was from conventional cannon firing red-hot shot, which could lodge in the hull and cause a fire or ammunition explosion. Some navies even experimented with hollow shot filled with molten metal for extra incendiary power.[6]
Iron armor
The use of
Encouraged by the positive reports of the iron hulls of those ships in combat, the Admiralty ordered a series of experiments to evaluate what happened when thin iron hulls were struck by projectiles, both solid shot and hollow shells, beginning in 1845 and lasting through 1851. Critics like Lieutenant-general Sir Howard Douglas believed that the splinters from the hull were even more dangerous than those from wooden hulls and the tests partially confirmed this belief. What was ignored was that 14 inches (356 mm) of wood backing the iron would stop most of the splinters from penetrating and that relatively thin plates of iron backed by the same thickness of wood would generally cause shells to split open and fail to detonate. One factor in the performance of wrought iron during these tests that was not understood by metallurgists of the day was that wrought iron begins to become brittle at temperatures below 20 °C (68 °F). Many of the tests were conducted at temperatures below this while the battles were fought in tropical climates.
The early experimental results seemed to support the critics and party politics came into play as the
Following the demonstration of the power of explosive shells against wooden ships at the
The French
The batteries have a claim to the title of the first ironclad warships[1] but they were capable of only 4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) under their own power: they operated under their own power at the Battle of Kinburn,[14] but had to be towed for long-range transit.[15] They were also arguably marginal to the work of the navy. The brief success of the floating ironclad batteries convinced France to begin work on armored warships for their battlefleet.[13]
Early ironclad ships and battles
By the end of the 1850s it was clear that France was unable to match British building of steam warships, and to regain the strategic initiative a dramatic change was required. The result was the first ocean-going ironclad,
The Royal Navy had not been keen to sacrifice its advantage in steam ships of the line, but was determined that the first British ironclad would outmatch the French ships in every respect, particularly speed. A fast ship would have the advantage of being able to choose a range of engagement that could make her invulnerable to enemy fire. The British specification was more a large, powerful frigate than a ship-of-the-line. The requirement for speed meant a very long vessel, which had to be built from iron. The result was the construction of two Warrior-class ironclads; HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince. The ships had a successful design, though there were necessarily compromises between 'sea-keeping', strategic range and armor protection. Their weapons were more effective than those of Gloire, and with the largest set of steam engines yet fitted to a ship, they could steam at 14.3 knots (26.5 km/h).[13] Yet the Gloire and her sisters had full iron-armor protection along the waterline and the battery itself.
The British Warrior and Black Prince (but also the smaller Defence and Resistance) were obliged to concentrate their armor in a central "citadel" or "armoured box", leaving many main deck guns and the fore and aft sections of the vessel unprotected. The use of iron in the construction of Warrior also came with some drawbacks; iron hulls required more regular and intensive repairs than wooden hulls, and iron was more susceptible to fouling by marine life.
By 1862, navies across Europe had adopted ironclads. Britain and France each had sixteen either completed or under construction, though the British vessels were larger. Austria, Italy, Russia, and Spain were also building ironclads.[17] However, the first battles using the new ironclad ships took place during the American Civil War, between Union and Confederate ships in 1862. These were markedly different from the broadside-firing, masted designs of Gloire and Warrior. The clash of the Italian and Austrian fleets at the Battle of Lissa (1866), also had an important influence on the development of ironclad design.
First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War
The first use of ironclads in combat came in the U.S. Civil War. The U.S. Navy at the time the war broke out had no ironclads, its most powerful ships being six unarmored steam-powered frigates.[18] Since the bulk of the Navy remained loyal to the Union, the Confederacy sought to gain advantage in the naval conflict by acquiring modern armored ships. In May 1861, the Confederate Congress appropriated $2 million dollars for the purchase of ironclads from overseas, and in July and August 1861 the Confederacy started work on construction and converting wooden ships.[19]
On 12 October 1861,
The first battle between ironclads happened on 9 March 1862, as the armored Monitor was deployed to protect the Union's wooden fleet from the ironclad ram Virginia and other Confederate warships.
The Civil War saw more ironclads built by both sides, and they played an increasing role in the naval war alongside the unarmored warships, commerce raiders and blockade runners. The Union built a large fleet of fifty monitors modeled on their namesake. The Confederacy built ships designed as smaller versions of Virginia, many of which saw action,[23] but their attempts to buy ironclads overseas were frustrated as European nations confiscated ships being built for the Confederacy – especially in Russia, the only country to openly support the Union through the war. Only CSS Stonewall was completed, and she arrived in Cuban waters just in time for the end of the war.[24]
Through the remainder of the war, ironclads saw action in the Union's attacks on Confederate ports. Seven Union monitors, including USS Montauk, as well as two other ironclads, the armored frigate New Ironsides and a light-draft USS Keokuk, participated in the failed attack on Charleston; one was sunk. Two small ironclads, CSS Palmetto State and CSS Chicora participated in the defense of the harbor. For the later attack at Mobile Bay, the Union assembled four monitors as well as 11 wooden ships, facing the CSS Tennessee, the Confederacy's most powerful ironclad, and three gunboats.[25]
On the western front, the Union built a formidable force of river ironclads, beginning with several converted riverboats and then contracting engineer
The Union ironclads played an important role in the Mississippi and tributaries by providing tremendous fire upon Confederate forts, installations and vessels with relative impunity to enemy fire. They were not as heavily armored as the ocean-going monitors of the Union, but they were adequate for their intended use. More Western Flotilla Union ironclads were sunk by
Lissa: first fleet battle
The first fleet battle, and the first ocean battle, involving ironclad warships was the Battle of Lissa in 1866. Waged between the Austrian and Italian navies, the battle pitted combined fleets of wooden frigates and corvettes and ironclad warships on both sides in the largest naval battle between the battles of Navarino and Tsushima.[26]
The Italian fleet consisted of 12 ironclads and a similar number of wooden warships, escorting transports which carried troops intending to land on the Adriatic island of Lissa. Among the Italian ironclads were seven broadside ironclad frigates, four smaller ironclads, and the newly built Affondatore – a double-turreted ram. Opposing them, the Austrian navy had seven ironclad frigates.[26]
The Austrians believed their ships to have less effective guns than their enemy, so decided to engage the Italians at close range and ram them. The Austrian fleet formed into an arrowhead formation with the ironclads in the first line, charging at the Italian ironclad squadron. In the melée which followed both sides were frustrated by the lack of damage inflicted by guns, and by the difficulty of ramming—nonetheless, the effective ramming attack being made by the Austrian flagship against the Italian attracted great attention in following years.[26]
The superior Italian fleet lost its two ironclads,
The battles of the American Civil War and at Lissa were very influential on the designs and tactics of the ironclad fleets that followed. In particular, it taught a generation of naval officers the (ultimately erroneous) lesson that ramming was the best way to sink enemy ironclads.
Armament and tactics
The adoption of iron armor meant that the traditional naval armament of dozens of light cannon became useless, since their shot would bounce off an armored hull. To penetrate armor, increasingly heavy guns were mounted on ships; nevertheless, the view that ramming was the only way to sink an ironclad became widespread. The increasing size and weight of guns also meant a movement away from the ships mounting many guns broadside, in the manner of a ship-of-the-line, towards a handful of guns in turrets for all-round fire.
Ram craze
From the 1860s to the 1880s many naval designers believed that the ram was again a vital weapon in naval warfare. With steam power freeing ships from the wind, iron construction increasing their structural strength, and armor making them invulnerable to shellfire, the ram seemed to offer the opportunity to strike a decisive blow.[27]
The scant damage inflicted by the guns of Monitor and Virginia at Hampton Roads and the spectacular but lucky success of the Austrian flagship SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max sinking the Italian Re d'Italia at Lissa gave strength to the ramming craze.[28] From the early 1870s to early 1880s most British naval officers thought that guns were about to be replaced as the main naval armament by the ram. Those who noted the tiny number of ships that had actually been sunk by ramming struggled to be heard.[29]
The revival of ramming had a significant effect on naval tactics. Since the 17th century the predominant tactic of naval warfare had been the line of battle, where a fleet formed a long line to give it the best fire from its broadside guns. This tactic was totally unsuited to ramming, and the ram threw fleet tactics into disarray. The question of how an ironclad fleet should deploy in battle to make best use of the ram was never tested in battle, and if it had been, combat might have shown that rams could only be used against ships which were already stopped dead in the water.[30]
The ram finally fell out of favor in the 1880s, as the same effect could be achieved with a torpedo, with less vulnerability to quick-firing guns.[31]
The armament of ironclads tended to become concentrated in a small number of powerful guns capable of penetrating the armor of enemy ships at range;
Breech-loading guns seemed to offer important advantages. A breech-loader could be reloaded without moving the gun, a lengthy process particularly if the gun then needed to be re-aimed. Warrior's Armstrong guns also had the virtue of being lighter than an equivalent smoothbore and, because of their rifling, more accurate.[32] Nonetheless, the design was rejected because of problems which plagued breech-loaders for decades.
The weakness of the breech-loader was the obvious problem of sealing the breech. All guns are powered by the explosive conversion of a solid propellant into gas. This explosion propels the shot or shell out of the front of the gun, but also imposes great stresses on the gun-barrel. If the breech—which experiences some of the greatest forces in the gun—is not entirely secure, then there is a risk that either gas will discharge through the breech or that the breech will break. This in turn reduces the muzzle velocity of the weapon and can also endanger the gun crew. Warrior's Armstrong guns suffered from both problems; the shells were unable to penetrate the 4.5-inch (114 mm) armor of Gloire, while sometimes the screw which closed the breech flew backwards out of the gun on firing. Similar problems were experienced with the breech-loading guns which became standard in the French and German navies.[33]
These problems influenced the British to equip ships with muzzle-loading weapons of increasing power until the 1880s. After a brief introduction of the 100-pounder or 9.2-inch (230 mm) smoothbore Somerset Gun, which weighed 6.5 long tons (6.6 t), the Admiralty introduced 7-inch (178 mm) rifled guns, weighing 7 long tons (7 t). These were followed by a series of increasingly mammoth weapons—guns weighing 12 long tons (12 t), 18 long tons (18 t), 25 long tons (25 t), 38 long tons (39 t) and finally 81 long tons (82 t), with caliber increasing from 8 inches (203 mm) to 16 inches (406 mm).
The decision to retain muzzle-loaders until the 1880s has been criticized by historians. However, at least until the late 1870s, the British muzzle-loaders had superior performance in terms of both range and rate of fire than the French and Prussian breech-loaders, which suffered from the same problems as the first Armstrong guns.[34]
From 1875 onwards, the balance between breech- and muzzle-loading changed. Captain
In the Royal Navy, the switch to breech-loaders was finally made in 1879; as well as the significant advantages in terms of performance, opinion was swayed by an explosion on board HMS Thunderer caused by a gun being double-loaded, a problem which could only happen with a muzzle-loading gun.[37]
The caliber and weight of guns could only increase so far. The larger the gun, the slower it would be to load, the greater the stresses on the ship's hull, and the less the stability of the ship. The size of the gun peaked in the 1880s, with some of the heaviest calibers of gun ever used at sea.
Another method of increasing firepower was to vary the projectile fired or the nature of the propellant. Early ironclads used black powder, which expanded rapidly after combustion; this meant cannons had relatively short barrels, to prevent the barrel itself slowing the shell. The sharpness of the black powder explosion also meant that guns were subjected to extreme stress. One important step was to press the powder into pellets, allowing a slower, more controlled explosion and a longer barrel. A further step forward was the introduction of chemically different brown powder which combusted more slowly again. It also put less stress on the insides of the barrel, allowing guns to last longer and to be manufactured to tighter tolerances.[39]
The development of
The nature of the projectiles also changed during the ironclad period. Initially, the best armor-piercing projectile was a solid cast-iron shot. Later, shot of
Positioning of armament
Broadside ironclads
The first British, French and Russian ironclads, in a logical development of warship design from the long preceding era of wooden ships of the line, carried their weapons in a single line along their sides and so were called "broadside ironclads".[40][41] Both Gloire and HMS Warrior were examples of this type. Because their armor was so heavy, they could only carry a single row of guns along the main deck on each side rather than a row on each deck.
A significant number of broadside ironclads were built in the 1860s, principally in Britain and France, but in smaller numbers by other powers including Italy, Austria, Russia and the United States.[41] The advantages of mounting guns on both broadsides was that the ship could engage more than one adversary at a time, and the rigging did not impede the field of fire.[42]
Broadside armament also had disadvantages, which became more serious as ironclad technology developed. Heavier guns to penetrate ever-thicker armor meant that fewer guns could be carried. Furthermore, the adoption of ramming as an important tactic meant the need for ahead and all-round fire.[43] These problems led to broadside designs being superseded by designs that gave greater all-round fire, which included central-battery, turret, and barbette designs.[42]
Turrets, batteries, and barbettes
There were two main design alternatives to the broadside. In one design, the guns were placed in an armored casemate amidships: this arrangement was called the 'box-battery' or 'center-battery'. In the other, the guns could be placed on a rotating platform to give them a broad field of fire; when fully armored, this arrangement was called a turret and when partially armored or unarmored, a barbette.
The centre-battery was the simpler and, during the 1860s and 1870s, the more popular method. Concentrating guns amidships meant the ship could be shorter and handier than a broadside type. The first full-scale center-battery ship was HMS Bellerophon of 1865; the French laid down centre-battery ironclads in 1865 which were not completed until 1870. Centre-battery ships often, but not always, had a recessed freeboard enabling some of their guns to fire directly ahead.[44]
The turret was first used in naval combat on
A lighter alternative to the turret, particularly popular with the French navy, was the barbette. These were fixed armored towers which held a gun on a turntable. The crew was sheltered from direct fire, but vulnerable to plunging fire, for instance from shore emplacements. The barbette was lighter than the turret, needing less machinery and no roof armor—though nevertheless some barbettes were stripped of their armor plate to reduce the top-weight of their ships. The barbette became widely adopted in the 1880s, and with the addition of an armored 'gun-house', transformed into the turrets of the pre-dreadnought battleships.[39]
Torpedoes
The ironclad age saw the development of explosive torpedoes as naval weapons, which helped complicate the design and tactics of ironclad fleets. The first torpedoes were static mines, used extensively in the American Civil War. That conflict also saw the development of the spar torpedo, an explosive charge pushed against the hull of a warship by a small boat. For the first time, a large warship faced a serious threat from a smaller one—and given the relative inefficiency of shellfire against ironclads, the threat from the spar torpedo was taken seriously. The U.S. Navy converted four of its monitors to become turretless armored spar-torpedo vessels while under construction in 1864–1865, but these vessels never saw action.[46] Another proposal, the towed or 'Harvey' torpedo, involved an explosive on a line or outrigger; either to deter a ship from ramming or to make a torpedo attack by a boat less suicidal.
A more practical and influential weapon was the self-propelled or
Armor and construction
The first ironclads were built on wooden or iron hulls, and protected by wrought iron armor backed by thick wooden planking. Ironclads were still being built with wooden hulls into the 1870s.
Hulls: iron, wood, and steel
Using wrought iron construction for warships offered advantages for the engineering of the hull. However, unarmored iron had many military disadvantages, and offered technical problems which kept wooden hulls in use for many years, particularly for long-range cruising warships.
Iron ships had first been proposed for military use in the 1820s. In the 1830s and 1840s, France, Britain and the United States had all experimented with iron-hulled but unarmored gunboats and frigates. However, the iron-hulled frigate was abandoned by the end of the 1840s, because iron hulls were more vulnerable to solid shot; iron was more brittle than wood, and iron frames more likely to fall out of shape than wood.[48]
The unsuitability of unarmored iron for warship hulls meant that iron was only adopted as a building material for battleships when protected by armor. However, iron gave the naval architect many advantages. Iron allowed larger ships and more flexible design, for instance the use of watertight bulkheads on the lower decks. Warrior, built of iron, was longer and faster than the wooden-hulled Gloire. Iron could be produced to order and used immediately, in contrast to the need to give wood a long period of
Wooden hulls continued to be used for long-range and smaller ironclads, because iron nevertheless had a significant disadvantage. Iron hulls suffered quick fouling by marine life, slowing the ships down—manageable for a European battlefleet close to dry docks, but a difficulty for long-range ships. The only solution was to sheath the iron hull first in wood and then in copper, a laborious and expensive process which made wooden construction remain attractive.[50] Iron and wood were to some extent interchangeable: the Japanese Kongō and Hiei ordered in 1875 were sister-ships, but one was built of iron and the other of composite construction.[51]
After 1872, steel started to be introduced as a material for construction. Compared to iron, steel allows for greater structural strength for a lower weight. The French Navy led the way with the use of steel in its fleet, starting with the Redoutable, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876.[52] Redoutable nonetheless had wrought iron armor plate, and part of her exterior hull was iron rather than steel.
Even though Britain led the world in steel production, the Royal Navy was slow to adopt steel warships. The
Armor and protection schemes
Iron-built ships used wood as part of their protection scheme. HMS Warrior was protected by 4.5 in (114 mm) of
Steel was also an obvious material for armor. It was tested in the 1860s, but the steel of the time was too
The first ironclads to have all-steel armor were the two ships of the Duilio class. Though the ships were laid down in 1873 their armor was not purchased from France until 1877. The French navy decided in 1880 to adopt compound armor for its fleet, but found it limited in supply, so from 1884 the French navy was using steel armor.[56] Britain stuck to compound armor until 1889.
The ultimate ironclad armor was
The equivalent strengths of the different armor plates was as follows: 15 in (381 mm) of wrought iron was equivalent to 12 in (305 mm) of either plain steel or compound iron and steel armor, and to 7.75 in (197 mm) of Harvey armor or 5.75 in (146 mm) of Krupp armor.[57]
Ironclad construction also prefigured the later debate in battleship design between tapering and 'all-or-nothing' armor design. Warrior was only semi-armored, and could have been disabled by hits on the bow and stern.[58] As the thickness of armor grew to protect ships from the increasingly heavy guns, the area of the ship which could be fully protected diminished. Inflexible's armor protection was largely limited to the central citadel amidships, protecting boilers and engines, turrets and magazines, and little else. An ingenious arrangement of cork-filled compartments and watertight bulkheads was intended to keep her stable and afloat in the event of damage to her un-armored sections.[59]
Propulsion: steam and sail
The first ocean-going ironclads carried masts and sails like their wooden predecessors, and these features were only gradually abandoned. Early steam engines were inefficient; the wooden steam fleet of the Royal Navy could only carry "5 to 9 days coal",[60] and the situation was similar with the early ironclads. Warrior also illustrates two design features which aided hybrid propulsion; she had retractable screws to reduce drag while under sail (though in practice the steam engine was run at a low throttle), and a telescopic funnel which could be folded down to the deck level.[61]
Ships designed for coastal warfare, like the floating batteries of the Crimea, or USS Monitor and her sisters, dispensed with masts from the beginning. The British HMS Devastation, started in 1869, was the first large, ocean-going ironclad to dispense with masts. Her principal role was for combat in the English Channel and other European waters; while her coal supplies gave her enough range to cross the Atlantic, she would have had little endurance on the other side of the ocean. The Devastation and the similar ships commissioned by the British and Russian navies in the 1870s were the exception rather than the rule. Most ironclads of the 1870s retained masts, and only the Italian navy, which during that decade was focused on short-range operations in the Adriatic,[62] built consistently mastless ironclads.[63]
During the 1860s, steam engines improved with the adoption of double-expansion steam engines, which used 30–40% less coal than earlier models. The Royal Navy decided to switch to the double-expansion engine in 1871, and by 1875 they were widespread. However, this development alone was not enough to herald the end of the mast. Whether this was due to a conservative desire to retain sails, or was a rational response to the operational and strategic situation, is a matter of debate. A steam-only fleet would require a network of coaling stations worldwide, which would need to be fortified at great expense to stop them falling into enemy hands. Just as significantly, because of unsolved problems with the technology of the boilers which provided steam for the engines, the performance of double-expansion engines was rarely as good in practice as it was in theory.[64]
During the 1870s the distinction grew between 'first-class ironclads' or 'battleships' on the one hand, and 'cruising ironclads' designed for long-range work on the other. The demands on first-class ironclads for very heavy armor and armament meant increasing displacement, which reduced speed under sail; and the fashion for turrets and barbettes made a sailing rig increasingly inconvenient. HMS Inflexible, launched in 1876 but not commissioned until 1881, was the last British battleship to carry masts, and these were widely seen as a mistake. The start of the 1880s saw the end of sailing rig on ironclad battleships.[60]
Sails persisted on 'cruising ironclads' for much longer. During the 1860s, the French navy had produced the Alma and La Galissonnière classes as small, long-range ironclads as overseas cruisers[65] and the British had responded with ships like HMS Swiftsure of 1870. The Russian ship General-Admiral, laid down in 1870 and completed in 1875, was a model of a fast, long-range ironclad which was likely to be able to outrun and outfight ships like Swiftsure. Even the later HMS Shannon, often described as the first British armored cruiser, would have been too slow to outrun General-Admiral. While Shannon was the last British ship with a retractable propeller, later armored cruisers of the 1870s retained sailing rig, sacrificing speed under steam in consequence. It took until 1881 for the Royal Navy to lay down a long-range armored warship capable of catching enemy commerce raiders, HMS Warspite, which was completed in 1888.[66] While sailing rigs were obsolescent for all purposes by the end of the 1880s, rigged ships were in service until the early years of the 20th century.
The final evolution of ironclad propulsion was the adoption of the triple-expansion steam engine, a further refinement which was first adopted in
Fleets
While ironclads spread rapidly in navies worldwide, there were few pitched naval battles involving ironclads. Most European nations settled differences on land, and the Royal Navy struggled to maintain a deterrent parity with at least France, while providing suitable protection to Britain's commerce and colonial outposts worldwide. Ironclads remained, for the British Royal Navy, a matter of defending the British Isles first and projecting power abroad second. Those naval engagements of the latter half of the 19th century which involved ironclads normally involved colonial actions or clashes between second-rate naval powers. But these encounters were often enough to convince British policy-makers of the increasing hazards of strictly naval foreign intervention, from Hampton Roads in the American Civil War to the hardening combined defences of naval arsenals such as Kronstadt and Cherbourg.
There were many types of ironclads:[68]
- Seagoing ships intended to "stand in the line of battle"; the precursors of the battleship[Note 2]
- Coastal service and riverine vessels, including 'floating batteries' and 'monitors'
- Vessels intended for "armored cruisers"
The United Kingdom possessed the largest navy in the world for the whole of the ironclad period. The Royal Navy was the second to adopt ironclad warships, and it applied them worldwide in their whole range of roles. In the age of sail, the British strategy for war depended on the Royal Navy mounting a blockade of the ports of the enemy. Because of the limited endurance of steamships, this was no longer possible, so the British at times considered the risk-laden plan of engaging an enemy fleet in harbor as soon as war broke out. To this end, the Royal Navy developed a series of 'coast-defense battleships', starting with the Devastation class. These 'breastwork monitors' were markedly different from the other high-seas ironclads of the period and were an important precursor of the modern battleship.[70] As long-range monitors they could reach Bermuda unescorted, for example. However, they were still armed with only four heavy guns and were as vulnerable to mines and obstructions (and enemy monitors) as the original monitors of the Union Navy proved to be during the Civil War.
The British prepared for an overwhelming mortar bombardment of Kronstadt by the close of the Crimean War, but never considered running the smoke-ridden, shallow-water gauntlet straight to St. Petersburg with ironclads. Likewise, monitors proved acutely unable to 'overwhelm' enemy fortifications single-handed during the American conflict, though their low-profile and heavy armor protection made them ideal for running artillery gauntlets. Mines and obstructions negated these advantages—a problem the British Admiralty frequently acknowledged but never countered throughout the period. The British never laid down enough Devastation-class 'battleships' to instantly overwhelm Cherbourg, Kronstadt or even New York City with gunfire. Although throughout the 1860s and 1870s the Royal Navy was still in many respects superior to its potential rivals, by the early 1880s widespread concern about the threat from France and Germany culminated in the Naval Defence Act, which promulgated the idea of a 'two-power standard', that Britain should possess as many ships as the next two navies combined. This standard provoked aggressive shipbuilding in the 1880s and 1890s.[71]
British ships did not participate in any major wars in the ironclad period. The Royal Navy's ironclads only saw action as part of colonial battles or one-sided engagements like the
The French navy built the first ironclad to try to gain a strategic advantage over the British, but were consistently out-built by the British. Despite taking the lead with a number of innovations like
Russia built a number of ironclads, generally copies of British or French designs. Nonetheless, there were real innovations from Russia; the first true type of ironclad
The US Navy ended the Civil War with about fifty monitor-type coastal ironclads; by the 1870s most of these were laid up in reserve, leaving the United States virtually without an ironclad fleet. Another five large monitors were ordered in the 1870s. The limitations of the monitor type effectively prevented the US from projecting power overseas, and until the 1890s the United States would have come off badly in a conflict with even Spain or the Latin American powers. The 1890s saw the beginning of what became the Great White Fleet, and it was the modern pre-Dreadnoughts and armored cruisers built in the 1890s which defeated the Spanish fleet in the Spanish–American War of 1898. This started a new era of naval warfare.[77]
Ironclads were widely used in South America. Both sides used ironclads in the
Ironclads were also used from the inception of the
End of the ironclad warship
There is no clearly defined end to the ironclad, besides the transition from wood hulls to all-metal. Ironclads continued to be used in World War I. Towards the end of the 19th century, the descriptions 'battleship' and 'armored cruiser' came to replace the term 'ironclad'.[82]
The proliferation of ironclad battleship designs came to an end in the 1890s as navies reached a consensus on the design of battleships, producing the type known as the
Legacy
H. G. Wells coined the term The Land Ironclads in a short story published in 1903, to describe fictional large armored fighting vehicles moving on pedrail wheels.[84]
A number of ironclads have been preserved or reconstructed as museum ships.
- Parts of Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia.
- HMS Warrior is today a fully restored museum ship in Portsmouth, England
- Huáscar is berthed at the port of Talcahuano, Chile, on display for visitors.
- The City-class ironclad USS Cairo is currently on display in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
- Northrop Grumman in Newport News constructed a full-scale replica of USS Monitor. The replica was laid down in February 2005 and completed just two months later.[85]
- The Dutch Ramtorenschip (coastal ram) HNLMS Buffel is currently under display in the Maritime Museum Rotterdam.
- The Dutch Ramtorenschip (coastal ram) HNLMS Schorpioen is a museum ship at Den Helder.
- The complete, recovered wooden hull of CSS Neuse, a casemate ram ironclad, is on view in Kinston, North Carolina, and, in another part of town on the Neuse River, the recreated ship, named CSS Neuse II, is nearly built and can be visited.
- The hull of the casemate ironclad CSS Jackson can be seen in the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
- A replica of the Chinese ironclad Dingyuan was rebuilt in 2003 as a floating museum at Weihai.
- HMVS Cerberus, built 1867, has been partially sunk as a breakwater in Victoria, Australia, but is not preserved and is deteriorating in the elements.
See also
Notes
- ^ The Royal Navy did build 18-inch (457 mm) guns for the light battlecruiser HMS Furious though she was completed as an aircraft carrier and her guns were fitted to the Lord Clive-class monitors, seeing service in World War I.[38]
- ^ This term was still in use in the 1860s and 1870s for what we would now call 'battleships'.[69]
Citations
- ^ a b Hill, p. 17
- ^ a b c Lambert, "The Screw Propellor Warship", pp. 30–44
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 37–41
- ^ Hill, p. 25
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 58
- ^ Lambert, Battleships in Transition, pp. 94–95
- ^ Sandler, Battleships: An Illustrated History of Their Impact, p. 20
- ^ "Mexican paddle steamer 'Guadalupe' (1842)". threedecks.org. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
- ^ Brown 1990, p. 87
- ^ Brown 1990, pp. 92–101
- ^ Baxter, pp. 70, 72
- ^ Baxter, p. 82
- ^ a b c Lambert, "Iron Hulls and Armour Plate", pp. 47–55
- ^ Baxter, p. 84
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 61
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 76
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 77
- ^ Still, "The American Civil War", pp. 70–71
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 78
- ^ Preston, pp. 12–14
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 78–81
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 82
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 85
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 81
- ^ a b c d Sondhaus, pp. 94–96
- ^ Brown, Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Design and Development, 1860–1905, p. 22
- ^ Hill, p. 35
- ^ Beeler, pp. 106–107
- ^ Beeler, p. 107
- ^ Beeler, p. 146
- ^ a b Beeler, p. 71
- ^ Beeler, pp. 72–73
- ^ Beeler, pp. 73–75
- ^ Beeler, pp. 77–78
- ^ Brown, "The Era of Uncertainty", p. 85
- ^ Roberts, "Warships of Steel 1879–1889", p. 98
- ^ Parkes, p. 633
- ^ a b c d e Campbell, pp. 158–169
- ^ Reed, pp. 4, 45–50, 68, 139, 217–221, 224–226, 228, 233
- ^ a b Conways's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905 pp. 7–11, 118–119, 173, 267–268, 286–287, 301, 337–339, 389
- ^ a b Beeler, pp. 91–93
- ^ Noel, et al.
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 87
- ^ Beeler, p. 122
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 83
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 156
- ^ Lambert, Battleships in Transition, p. 19
- ^ Beeler, pp. 30–36
- ^ Beeler, pp. 32–33
- ^ Jenschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 13
- ^ Roberts, "Warships of Steel 1879–1889", p. 96
- ^ Beeler, pp. 37–41
- ^ Hill, p. 39
- ^ Beeler, p. 45
- ^ a b Sondhaus, pp. 164–165
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 166
- ^ Reed, pp. 45–47
- ^ Beeler, pp. 133–134
- ^ a b Beeler, p. 54
- ^ Hill, p. 44
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 111–112
- ^ Beeler, pp. 63–64
- ^ Beeler, pp. 57–62
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 88
- ^ Beeler, p. 194
- ^ Griffiths, pp. 176–178
- ISBN 0-8317-0302-4.
- ^ See Noel, et al.
- ^ Beeler, p. 204
- ^ Kennedy, pp. 178–179
- ^ Hill, p. 185
- ^ Wilson, p. 78; Brook, et al, p. 332
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 101
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 122–126
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 187–191
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 126–128, 173–179
- ^ Historia naval del Perú. Tomo IV, Valdizán Gamio, José.
- ^ Antequera Becerra, Luis (October 2023). "Juan Bautista Antequera y Boadila. El héroe de la Numancia que fundó la Revista General de Marina y previó el desastre del 98". Revista General de Marina: 321–336.
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 97–99, 127–132
- ^ Hill, p. 191
- ^ Beeler, p. 154, states that HMS Edinburgh was the first British capital ship to be routinely called a battleship.
- ^ Hill, p. 18
- ^ War and the Future by H.G. Wells, p. 93
- ^ Northrop Grumman Newport News. "Northrop Grumman Employees Reconstruct History with USS Monitor Replica". Archived from the original on February 19, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-21.
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{{cite book}}
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