'^^UJ. '"Z 'W (nrtt /WZCe^u^A^ /QfQ -^^ THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET -J z z < I o III I H to III z < m D I/] TT H F .BRITISH BATTLE FLEET ITS INCEPTION AND GROWTH THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES TO THE PRESENT DAY BY FRED T. JANE AUTHOB OF " FIGHTING SHIPS," " ALL THE WOKLD's AIRCRAFT, ' " U£BESI£S OF SEA FOWEK," ETC., ETC. With Illustrations in Colour raOM OBIOINAL \frATEB-COLOUB DRAWINGS BY W. L. WYLLIE, R.A. And Numerous Plans and Photographs. Vol. T. iontion ti::U Librarp Iptcsj, LimiteD 1915 TO THOSE WHO rN ALL AGES BUILT THE SHIPS OF THE BRITISH NAVY AlsB TO THE UNKNOWN MEN WHO HAVE WORKED THOSE SHIPS AND SO MADE POSSIBLE THE FAME OF MANY ADMIRALS. PREFACE '' I HIS book is not intended to be a " history " of the -■■ British Navy in the generally accepted sense of the term. For this reason small space is devoted to various strategical and tactical matters of the past which generally bulk largely in more regular " naval histories " — of which a sufficiency already exist. In such histories primary interest naturally attaches to what the admirals did with the ships provided for them. Here I have sought rather to deal with how the ships came to be provided, and how they were developed from the crude warships of the past to the intricate and compli- cated machines of to-day ; and the strictly " history " part of the book is compressed with that idea principally in view. The " live end " of naval construction is necessarily that which directly or indirectly concerns the ships of our own time. The warships of the past are of special interest in so far as they were steps to the warships of to-day ; but, outside that, practical interest seems confined to what led to these " steps " being what they were. Thus regarded, Trafalgar becomes of somewhat secondary interest as regards the tremendous strategical questions involvc^d, but of profound iin])ortance by reason of the sid(;-issue that the Victory's forward bulkhead Vll. viii PREFACE was so slightly built that she sustained an immense number of casualties which would never have occurred had she been designed for the particular purpose that Nelson used her for at Trafalgar. The tactics of Tra- falgar have merely a literary and sentimental interest now, and even the strategies which led to the battle are probably of little utihty to the strategists of our own times. But the Victory'' s thin forward bulkhead profoundly affected, and to some extent still affects, modern British naval construction. Trafalgar, of course, sanctified for many a year " end-on approach," and so eventually concentrated special attention on bulkheads. But previous to Trafalgar, the return of the Victory after it for refit, and Seppings' inspection of her, the subject of end-on protection had been ignored. The cogitations of Seppings helped to make what would have very much influenced history had any similar battle occurred in the years that followed his constructional innovations. Again, at an earher period much naval history turned upon the ventilation of bilges. Improvements in this respect (devised by men never heard of to-day) enabled British ships to keep the seas without their crews being totally disabled by diseases which often overmastered their foes. The skill of the admirals, the courage of the crews, both form more exciting reading. Yet there is every indication to prove that this commonplace matter of bilges was the secret of victory more than once ! Coming back to more recent times, the loss of the Vanguard, which cost no lives, involved greater sub- sequent constructional problems than did the infinitely PREFACE ix more terrible loss of the Captain a few years before. Who shall say on how many seeming constructional failm-es of the past, successes of the yet unborn future may not rest ? A number of other things might be cited, but these suffice to indicate the particular perspective of this book, and to show why, if regarded as an orthodox " history " of the British Navy, it is occasionally in seemingly dis- torted perspective. To say that in the scheme of this book the ship- builder is put in the limelight instead of the ship-user, would in no way be precisely correct, though as a vague generaUsation it may serve well enough. In exact fact each, of course, is and ever has been dependent on the other. Nelson himself was curtailed by the hmitations of the tools provided for him. Had he had the same problems one or two hundred years before he would have been still more limited. Had he had them fifty or a hundred years later — who shall say ? With Seppings' improvements, Trafalgar would have been a well-nigh bloodless victory for the British Fleet. It took Trafalgar, however, to inspire and teach Seppings. Of every great sea-fight something of the same kind may be said. The lead had to be given. Yet those who best laboured to remove the worst disabilities of " the means " of Blake, contributed in that measure to Nelson's successes years and years later on. Their efforts ma}^ surely be deemed worthy of record, for all that between the unknown designer of the Great Harry in the sixteenth century and the designers of Super-Dreadnoughts of to-day there may have been X PREFACE lapses and defects in details. There was never a lapse on account of which the user was unable to defeat any hostile user with whom he came into conflict. The " means " provided served. The creators of warships consistently improved their creations : but they were not improved without care and thought on the part of those who produced them. To those who provided the means and to the rank and file it fell that many an admiral was able to do what he did. These admirals " made history." But ever there were " those others " who made that " history making " possible, and who so made it also. In dealing with the warships of other eras, I have been fortunate in securing the co-operation of Mr. W. L. Wyllie, R.A., who has translated into vivid pictorial obviousness a number of details which old prints of an architectural nature entirely fail to convey. With a view to uniformity, this scheme, though reinforced by diagrams and photographs, has been carried right into our own times. Some things which I might have written I have on that account left unrecorded. There are some things that cold print and the English language cannot describe. These things must be sought for in Mr. Wyllie' s pictures. In conclusion, I would leave the dedication page to explain the rest of what I have striven for in this book. F. T. J. PREFACE TO NEW EDITION THIS book was originally written three years ago. Since it was first published the greatest war ever knoAvn has broken out. To meet that circumstance this particular edition has been revised and brought to date in order to present to the reader the exact state of our Navy when the fighting began. Modern naval warfare differs much from the warfare of the past ; at any rate from the warfare of the Nelson era. But if men and materiel have altered, the general principles of naval war have remained unchanged. Indeed, there is some reason to believe that the wheel of fortune has brought us back to some similitude of those early days when to kill the enemy was the sole idea that obtained, when there were no " rules of civilised war," when it was simply kill and go on killing. To these principles Germany has reverted. The early history of the British Navy indicates that we were able to render a good account of ourselves under such conditions. For that matter we made our Navy under such training. It is hard to imagine that by adopting old time methods the Germans will take from us the Sea Empire which we thus earned in tlu^ past. ISth June, 19ir>. F. T. J. xi. ^ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BIRTH OF BRITISH NAVAL POWER . . 1 II. THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET ERAS . 10 ni. THE TUDOR PERIOD AND BIRTH OF A REGULAR NAVY ...... 35 IV. THE PERIOD OF THE DUTCH WARS . . 59 V. THE EARLY FRENCH WARS ... 88 VI. THE GREAT FRENCH WAR . . . .133 VII. FROM THE PEACE OF AMIENS TO THE FINAL FALL OF NAPOLEON . . . .165 Vni. GENERAL MATTERS IN THE PERIOD OF THE FRENCH WARS . . . . .194 IX. THE BIRTH OF MODERN WARSHIP IDEAS . 211 X. THE COMING OF THE IRONCLAD . . . 229 XI. THE REED ERA ..... 264 xiii. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR FROM PICTURES BY W. L. WYLLIE, R.A. PAOB SUBMARINES IN THE CHANNEL . Frontispiece WARSHIP OF THE TIME OF KING ALFRED . . 3 RICHAUD I. IN ACTION WITH THE SARACEN SHIP . 13 BATTLE OF SLUYS ...... 25 PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR, 1912 .... 31 THE " GRACE DE DIEU," 1515 .... 39 THE SPANISH ARMADA, 1588 .... 51 THE END OF A " GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER " . 66 BLAKE AND TROMP — PERIOD OF THE DUTCH WARS 77 BATTLESHIPS OF THE WHITE ERA AT SEA . .117 THE " FOUDROYANT," ONE OF NELSON's OLD SHIPS 143 BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR, 1805 . . . .173 THE END OF AN OLD WARSHIP . . , .191 A TRAFALGAR ANNIVERSARY .... 205 THK OLD "invincible," 1872 .... 293 XV. XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SHIP PHOTOGRAPHS PAQB " SALAMANDER," PADDLE WARSHIP . 217 OLD SCREW WOODEN LINE-OF-BATTLESHIP " LONDON " .... . 221 " WARRIOR " . . . . . 251 " ACHILLES " (with POUR MASTS ) . 259 " MINOTAUR " (as A FIVE-MASTER) . 261 " bellerophon " . 269 " ROYAL SOVEREIGN " . 273 " WATERWITCH " . 277 " CAPTAIN " . . . . . 289 " VANGUARD " . . 297 " HOTSPUR " AS ORIGINALLY COMPLETED . 309 " DEVASTATION " AS ORIGINALLY COMPLETED . 313 PORTRAITS PHINEAS PETT ...... . 67 SIR ANTHONY DEANE .... • . 93 GENERAL BENTHAM .... • . 155 JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL • . 245 SJ-bif xj* J« jEI£j£jIj • • • • • • . 265 PLANS, DIAGRAMS, ETC. PHINEAS PETT's " ROYAL SOVEREIGN " POSITIONS OF THE FLEETS AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR EARLY BROADSIDE IRONCLADS REED ERA BROADSIDE SHIPS REED ERA TURRET SHIPS . RAMS OF THE REED ERA BREASTWORK MONITORS 71 167 255 281 285 301 305 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. I. THE BIRTH OF BRITISH NAVAL POWER. THE birth of British naval power is involved in considerable obscurity and a good deal of legend. The Phoenicians and the Romans have both been credited with introducing nautical ideas to these islands, but of the Phoenicians there is nothing but legend so far as any " British Navy " is concerned. That the Phoenicians voyaged here we know well enough, and a " British fleet " of the B.C. era may have existed, a fleet due to possible Phoenicians who, having visited these shores, remained in the land. Equally well it may be mythical. Whatever share the ancient Britons may have had in the supposed commercial relations with Gaul, it is clear that no fleet as we understand a fleet existed in tlie days of Julius Caesar. Later, while England was a Roman province, Roman fleets occasionally fought uj)on British waters against ])irates and in connection with Roman revolutions, but they were ships of the ruHng power. Roman power passed away. Saxons invaded and remained ; but having landed they became people of the land — not of the sea. Danes and other seafarers pilaged Enghsh sliores much as they listed till Alfred the Great came to the throne. 2 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Alfred has been called the " Father and Founder of the British Fleet." It is customary and dramatic to suppose that Alfred was seized with the whole modern theory of " Sea Power " as a sudden inspira- tion — that " he recognised that invaders could only be kept off by defeating them on the sea." This is infinitely more pretty than accurate. To begin with, even at the beginning of the present Twentieth Century it was officially put on record that " while the British fleet could prevent invasion, it could not guarantee immunity from small raids on our great length of coast line." In Alfred's day, one mile was more than what twenty are now ; messages took as many days to deliver as they now do minutes, and the " raid " was the only kind of over-sea war to be waged. It is altogether chimerical to imagine that Alfred " thought things out " on the lines of a modern naval theorist. In actual fact,* what happened was that Alfred engaged in a naval fight in the year 875, somewhere on the South Coast. There is httle or no evidence to show where, though near Wareham is the most likely locality. In 877 something perhaps happened to the Danes at Swanage, but the account in Asser is an interpolated one, and even so suggests shipwreck rather than a battle. In 882 (possibly 881) two Danish ships sank : " the rest " (number not recorded) surrendered later on. In 884 occurred the battle of the Stour. Here the Saxon fleet secured a preliminary success, in which thirteen Danish ships were captured. This may or * All statements as to King Alfred's navy are taken directly from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser, and Florence of Worcester. ^ r^j jur-^w '^^'/;, WAHbHIt' OF THt TIME OK KING ALFHED, KING ALFRED AND THE DANES. 5 may not have been part of an ambush — at any rate the final result was the annihilation of King Alfred's fleet. In 896 occurred the alleged naval reform so often alluded to as the " birth of the British Navy " — those ships supposed to have been designed by Alfred, which according to Asser* were " full nigh twice as long as the others .... shapen neither like Frisian nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him that they would be most efficient." Around these " early Dreadnoughts " much has been weaved, but there is no evidence acceptable to the best modern historians that Alfred really built any such ships — they tend to reject the entire theory. The actual facts of that " naval battle of the Solent " in 897 from which the history of our navy is popularly alleged to date, appear to be as follows : There were nine of King Alfred's ships, manned by Frisian pirates, who were practically Danes. These nine encountered three Danish vessels in a land-locked harbour — probably Brading — and all of them ran aground, the Danish ships being in the middle between two 8axon divisions. A land fight ensued, till, the tide rising, the Danish shij)s, which were of lighter tlraught than the 8axon vessels, floated. The Danes then sailed away, but in doing so two of them were wrecked. All the rest of the story seems to be purely legendary. Our real " island story " — as events during the next few lumdred years following Alfred clearly indicate — is not that of a people born to tlie sea; but the story of a people forced thereto by circumstances and the need of self-preservation. * An interpolated poMaugo 6 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. It is a very unromantic beginning. There is a strange analogy between it and the beginning in later days of the Sea Power of the other " Island Empire " — Japan. Japan to-day seeks — as we for centuries have sought — for an historical sequence of the " sea spirit " and all such things as an ideal islander should possess. Neither we nor they have ever understood or ever properly realised that it was the Continentals who long ago first saw that it was necessary to command the sea to attack the islanders. The more obvious contrary has always been assumed. It has never been held, or even suggested, that the Little Englander protesting against " bloated naval armaments," so far from being a modern anachronism, an ultra-Radical or Sociahst exotic, may really claim to be the true exponent of " the spirit of the Islanders " for all time. That is one reason why (excluding the mythical Minos of Crete) only two island-groups have ever loomed big in the world's history. When Wilhelm II of Germany said : " Unsere Zukunft liegt auf dem Wasser,'' he uttered a far more profound truth than has ever been fully realised. Fleets came into being to attack Islanders with. The Islanders saw the sea primarily as a protection existing between them and the enemy. To the Continental the sea was a road to, or obstacle between him and the enemy, only if the enemy filled it with ships. The Islanders have ever tended to trust to the existence of the sea itself as a defence, except in so far as they have been taught otherwise by individuals who reahsed the value of shipping. Those milhons of British citizens who to-day are more or less torpid on the subject of naval defence are every whit as normal as ORIGIN OF "SHIP MONEY." 7 those Germans who, in season and out, preach naval expansion. The explanation of all this is probably to be found in the fact that the earliest warfare kno^vn either to Continentals or to Islanders was military tvarfare. The ship as at first employed was used entirely as a means of transport for reaching the enemy — first, presumably, against outlying islands near the coast, later for more over-sea expeditions. Ideas of attack are earher than ideas of defence, and the primary idea of defence went no further than the passive defensive. King Alfred, merely in reahsing the offensive defensive, did a far greater thing than any of the legendary exploits associated with his history. The idea was submerged many a time in the years that followed, but from time to time it appeared and found its ultimate fruition in the Royal Navy. Yet still, the wonder is not that only two Island Empires have ever come into existence, but that any should have come into existence at all. The real history of King Alfred's times is that the Continental Danes did much as they listed against the insular 8axons of England, till the need was demonstrated for an endeavour to meet the enemy on his own element. in the subsequent reigns of Athelstan and Edmund, some naval expeditions took place. Under Edgar, the fleet reached its largest. Altliough the reputed number of 3,600 vessels is, of course, an exaggerated one, there was cnoujih naval power at that time to secure peace. This " navy " had, however, a very transient exist- ence, because in th(^ reign of Ethelrcd, who succeeded to the throne, it had practically ceased to exist, and an attempt was made to revive it. This attempt was so 8 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. little successful that Danish ships had to be hired for naval purposes. A charter of the time of Ethelred II exists which is considered by many to be the origin of that Ship Money which, hundreds of years later, was to cause so much trouble to England. Under this, the maintenance of the Navy was made a State charge on landowners, the whole of whom were assessed at the rate of producing one galley for every three hundred and ten hides of land that they possessed. This view is disx^uted by some historians, who maintain that the charter is possibly a forgery, and that it is not very clear in any case. However, it does not appear to have produced any useful naval power. That naval power was insufficient is abundantly clear from the ever increasing number of Danish settlements. In the St. Bride's Day massacre, which was an attempt to kill off the leading Danes amongst the recent arrivals, further trouble arose ; and in the year 1013, Swain, King of Denmark, made a large invasion of England, and in the year 1017, his son Canute ascended to the throne. Under Canute, the need of a navy to protect the coast against Danish raids j)assed away. The bulk of the Danish ships were sent back to Denmark, forty vessels only being retained. Once or twice during the reign of Canute successful naval expeditions were undertaken, but at the time of the King's death the regular fleet consisted of only sixteen ships. Five years later, an establishment was fixed at thirty-two, and remained more or less at about that figure, till, in the reign of Edward the Confessor trouble was caused by Earl Godwin, Avho had created a species of fleet of his own. With a view to suppressing ORIGIN OF "SHIP MONEY." 9 these a number of King's shijDs were fitted out ; but as the King and Godwin came to terms the fleet was not made use of. Close following upon this came the Norman invasion, which of all the foolhardy enterprises ever embarked on by man was theoretically one of the most foolish. Wilham's intentions were perfectly well known. A certain " English fleet " existed, and there was nothing to prevent its expansion into a force easily able to annihilate the heterogeneous Norman flotilla. How many ships and men William actually got together is a matter upon which the old chroniclers vary considerably. But he is supposed to have had with him some 696 ships* ; and since his largest ships were not over twentv tons and most of them a great deal smaller, it is clear that they must have been crowded to excess and in poor condition to give battle against anything of the nature of a determined attack from an organised fleet. No English fleet put in appearance, however. Harold had collected a large fleet at Sandwich, but after a while, for some unknown reason, it was dispersed, probably owing to the lateness of the season. The strength of the fleet collected, or why it was dispersed, are, however, immaterial issues : the fact of importance is that the fleet was " inadequate " because it failed to prevent the invasion. A neglected fleet entailed the destruction of the 8axon dominion. * Waco. II. THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET ERAS. WILLIAM the Conqueror's first act on landing was to burn all his ships — a proceeding useful enough in the way of preventing any of his followers retiring with their spoils, but inconvenient to him shortly after he became King of England. Fleets from Denmark and Norway raided the coasts, and, though the raiders were easily defeated on shore, the pressure from them was sufficient to cause William to set about recreating a navy, of which he made some use in the year 1071. In 1078 the Cinque Ports were established, five ports being granted certain rights in return for policing the Channel and supplying ships to the King as required. But the amount of naval power maintained was very small, both in the reign of William the First and his successors. Not until the reign of Henry II was any appreciable attention paid to nautical matters. Larger ships than heretofore were built, as we assume from records of the loss of one alleged to carry 300 men. It was Henry II who first claimed the " Sovereignty of the British Seas " and enacted the Assize of Arms whereby no ship or timber for shipbuilding might be sold out of England. When Richard I came to the throne in 1189, fired with ambition to proceed to the Crusades, he ordered all ports in his dominions to supply him with ships THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET ERAS. 11 in proportion to their population. The majority of these ships came, however, from Acquitaine. The fleet thus collected is said to have consisted of nine large ships, 150 small vessels, thirty galleys, and a number of transports. The large ships, which have also been given as thirteen in number, were known at the time as " busses." They appear to have been three-masters. The fleet sailed in eight divisions. This expedition to the Hoh' Land was the first important over-sea voyage ever participated in by English ships, the greatest distance heretofore traversed having been to Norway in the time of Canute. This making of a voyage into the unknown was, however, not quite so difficult as it might at first sight be supposed to be, because there is no doubt whatever that the compass was by then well-known and used. Records from 1150 and onwards exist which describe the compass of that period. A contemporary chronicler* wrote of it : — " This [polar] star does not move. They [the seamen] have an art which cannot deceive, by virtue of the manite, an ill brownish stone to which iron spontaneously adheres. They search for the right point, and when they have touched a needle on it, and fixed it to a l)it of straw, they lay it on water, and the straw keeps it afloat. Then the point infallibly turns towards the star ; and when the night is dark and gloomy, and neither star nor moon is visible, they set a light beside the needle, and they can be assured that the star is opposite to the point, and thereby the mariner is directed in his course. This is an art which cannot deceive." The compass would seem to have existed, so far as northern nations were concerned, about the time of Williiim the Conqueror. Not till early in the Fourteenth Century did it assume the form in whicli we now know it, but its actual antiquity is considerably more. Guyot de I'rovins ex Niohulou. 12 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. In connection with this expedition to the Holy Land, Richard issued a Code of Naval Discipline, which has been described as the germ of our Articles of War. Under this Code if a man killed another on board ship, he was to be tied to the corpse and thrown into the sea. If the murder took place on shore, he was to be buried ahve with the corpse. The penalty for drawing a knife on another man, or drawing blood from him in any. manner Avas the loss of a hand. For " striking another," the offender was plunged three times into the sea. For reviling or insulting another man, compensation of an ounce of silver to the aggrieved one was awarded. The punishment for theft was to shave the head of the thief, pour boiling pitch upon it and then feather him. This was done as a mark of recognition. The subsequent punishment was to maroon a man upon the first land touched. Severe penalties were imposed on the mariners and servants for gambling. Of these punishments the two most interesting are those for theft and the punishment of " ducking." This last was presumably keel-hauling, a punishment which survived well into the Nelson era. It is to be found described in the pages of Marrj^at. It consisted in drawing the offender by ropes underneath the bottom of the ship. As his body was thus scraped along the ship's hull, the punishment was at all times severe ; but in later days, as ships grew larger and of deeper draught, it became infinitely more cruel and heavy than in the days when it was first instituted. The severe penalty for theft is to be noted on account of the fact that, even in the early times, theft, as now, was and is recognised as a far more serious offence on ship board than it is on shore — the reason n > a) D > n H 5 Z H I H I m w > > n m z I ^ RICHARD I AND THE SARACEN SHIP. 15 being the greater facilities that a ship affords for theft. On his wa}^ to the Holy Land, Richard had a dispute at Sicily with the King of France, out of which he increased his fleet somewhat. Leaving Sicily, some- where between Cyprus and Acre he encountered a very large Saracen ship, of the battle with which very picturesque and highh^ coloured accounts exist. There is no doubt that the ship was something a great deal larger than anything the English had ever seen here- tofore, although the crew of 1,500 men with which she is credited by the chroniclers is undoubtedly an exaggeration. The ship carried an armament of Greek fire and " serpents." The exact composition of Greek fire is unknown. It was invented by the Byzantines, who by means of it succeeded in keeping their enemies at bay for a very long time. It was a mixture of chemicals which, upon being squirted at the enemy from tubes, took j&re, and could only be put out by sand or vinegar. " Serpents " were apparently some variation of Greek fire of a minor order, discharged by catapults. In the first part of the attack the English fleet was able to make no impression upon the enemy, as her higli sides and the Greek fire rendered boarding impossible. Not until King Richard had exhilarated his fleet by informing them that if the galley escaped they " shoukl be crucified or })ut to extreme torture," was any progress made. After that, according to the contemporary account, some of the Eii^Hsh jumped overboard and succeeded in fastening ropes to the rudder of the Saracen ship, " steering her as they pleased." They then obtained a footing on board, but 16 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. were subsequently driven back. As a last resource King Richard formed his galleys into line and rammed the ship, which afterwards sank. The relation of Richard's successor, King John, to the British Navy, is one of some peculiar interest. More than any king before him he appears to have appreciated the importance of naval power, and naval matters received more attention than heretofore. In the days of King John the crews of ships appropriated for the King's service were properly provisioned with wine and food, and there are also records of pensions for wounds, one of the earliest being that of Alan le Walleis, who received a pension of sixpence a day for the loss of his hand.* King John is popularly credited with having made the first claim to the " Sovereignty of the Seas " and of having enacted that all foreign vessels upon sighting an English one were to strike their flags to her, and that if they did not that it was lawful to destroy them. The authenticity of this is, however, very doubtful ; and it is more probable that, on account of various naval regulations which first appeared in the reign of King John, this particular regulation was fathered upon him at a later date with the view to giving it an historical precedent. In the reign of King John the " Laws of Oleron " seem to have first appeared, but it is not at all clear that they had any specific connection with England. They appear rather to have been of a general Euro- pean nature. The gist of the forty-seven articles of the " Laws of Oleron," of which the precise date of promulgation cannot be ascertained, is as follows : — * * ex Nicolas. THE LAWS OF OLERON. 17 " By the first article, if a vessel arrived at Bordeaux, Rouen, or any other similar place, and was there freighted for Scotland, or any other foreign countr}', and was in want of stores or provisions, the master was not permitted to sell the vessel, but he might with the advice of his crew raise money by pledging any part of her tackle or furniture. " If a vessel was wind or weather bound, the master, when a change occurred, was to consult his crew, saying to them, "Gentlemen, what think you of this wind ? " and to be guided by the majority whether he should put to sea. If he did not do this, and any misfortune happened, he was to make good the damage. " If a seaman sustained any hurt through drunkenness or quarrelling, the master was not bound to provide for his cure, but might turn him out of his ship ; if, however, the injury occurred in the service of his ship, he was to be cured at the cost of the said ship. A sick sailor was to be sent on shore, and a lodging, candles, and one of the ship's boys, or a nurse provided for him, with the same allowance of provisions as he would have received on board. In case of danger in a storm, the master might, with the consent of the merchants on board, lighten the ship by throwing part of the cargo overboard ; and if they did not consent, or objected to his doing so, he was not to risk the vessel but to act as he thought proper ; on their arrival in port, he and the third part of the crew were to make oath that it was done for the preservation of the vessel ; and the loss was to be borne equally by the merchants. A similar proceeding was to be adopted before the mast or cables were cut away. " Before goods were shipped the master was to satisfy the merchants of the strength of his ropes and slings ; but if he did not do 80, or they requested him to repair them and a cask were stove, the mastei* was to make it good " In cases of difference between a master and one of his crew, the man was to bo denied his mess allowance thrice, before ho was turned out of the ship, or discharged ; and if the man offered reasonable satisfaction in the presenc(3 of the crew, and the master persisted in discharging liim, the sailor might follow the ship to her place of destination, and demand the same wages as if he had not been sent ashore. 18 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. " In case of a collision by a ship undersail running on board one at anchor, owing to bad steering, if the former were damaged, the cost was to be equally divided ; the master and crew of the latter making oath that the collision was accidental. The reason for this law was, it is said, ' that an old decayed vessel might not purposely be put in the way of a better.' It was specially provided that all anchors ought to be indicated by buoys or ' anchor-marks.' " Mariners of Brittany were entitled only to one meal a day, because they had beverage going and coming ; but those of Normandy were to have two meals, because they had only water as the ship's allowance. As soon as the ship arrived in a wine country, the master was, however, to procure them wine. " Several regulations occur respecting the seamen's wages, which show that they were sometimes paid by a share of the freight. On arriving at Bordeaux or any other place, two of the crew might go on shore and take with them one meal of such victuals as were on board, and a proportion of bread, but no drink ; and they were to return in sufficient time to prevent their master losing the tide. If a pilot from ignorance or otherwise failed to conduct a ship in safety, and the merchants sustained any damage, he was to make full satisfaction if he had the means to ; if not, he was to lose his head ; and, if the master or any one of the mariners cut off his head, they were not bound to ansM^er for it ; but, before they had recourse to so strong a measure, ' they must be sure he had not wherewith to make satisfaction.' " Two articles of the code prove, that from an ' accursed custom ' in some places, by which the third or fourth part of ships that were lost belonged to the lord of the place — the pilots, to ingratiate themselves with these nobles, ' like faithless and treacherous villains,' purposely ran the vessel on the rocks. It was therefore enacted that the said lords, and all others assisting in plundering the wreck, shall be accursed and excommunicated, and punished as robbers and thieves ; that ' all false and treacherous pilots should suffer a most rigorous and merciless death,' and be suspended to high gibbets near the spot, which gibbets were to remain as an example in succeeding ages. The barbarous lords were to be tied to a post in the middle of their own houses, and, being set on fire at the four corners, all were to be burned together ; the walls THE LAWS OF OLERON. 19 demolished, its site converted into a marketplace for the sale only of hogs and swine, and all their goods to be confiscated to the use of the aggrieved parties. " Such of the cargoes as floated ashore were to be taken care of for a year or more ; and, if not then claimed, they were to be sold by the lord, and the proceeds distributed among the poor, in marriage por- tions to poor maids and other charitable uses. If, as aften happened, ' people more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad dogs,' murdered shipwrecked persons, they were to be plunged into the sea till they were half-dead, and then drawn out and stoned to death." These laws, unconnected though they appear to be with strictly naval matters, are none the less of extreme interest as indicating the establishment of " customs of the sea," and the consequent segregation of a " sailor class." It has ever to be kept very clearly in mind that there was no such thing as a " Navy " as we understand it in these days. When ships were required for war purposes they were hired, just as waggons may be hired bv the Armv to-dav ; nor did the mariners count for much more than horses. The " Laws of Oleron," however, gave them a certain general status which they had not possessed before ; and the regulations of John as to providing for those engaged upon the King's service — though they in no way constituted a Royal Navy — played their part many years later in making a Royal Navy possible, or, perhaps, it may be said, *' necessar}^" Necessity has ever been the principal driving force in the naval history of England. To resume. The limitations of the powers of the master {i.e. captain) in these *' Laws of Oleron " deserve special attention. " Gentlemen, what think you of this wind ? " from the captain to his crew would hv, considennl *' democracy " carried to extreme and extravagant limits in tlie present day ; in the days when it was X 20 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. promulgated as " the rule " it was surely stranger still f Little wonder that seamen at an early stage segregated from the ordinary body of citizens and became, as described by Clarendon in his " History of the Rebellion " a few hundred years later, when he wrote : — " The seamen are a nation by themselves, a humorous and fantastic people, fierce and rude and resolute in whatsoever they resolve or are inclined to, but unsteady and inconstant in pursuing it, and jealous of those to-morrow by whom they are governed to-day.' To this, to the earlier things that produced it, those who will may trace the extreme rigour of naval discipline and naval punishments, as compared with contemporaneous shore punishments at any given time, and the extraordinary difference at present existing between the American and European navies. The difference is usually explained on the circumstance that Europe is Europe, and America, America." But differences " having their origin in the " Laws of Oleron " may play a greater part than is generally allowed. The year 1213 saw the Battle of Damme. This was the first real naval battle between the French and English. The King of France had collected a fleet of some " seventeen hundred ships " for the invasion of England, but having been forbidden to do so by the Pope's Legate, he decided to use his force against Flanders. This Armada was surprised and totally destroyed by King John's fleet. After the death of John the nautical element in England declared for Henry III, son of John, and against Prince Louis of France, who had been invited to the throne of England by the barons. Out of this came the battle of Sandwich, 1217, where Hubert de MERCANTILE FLEETS AT WAR. 21 Burgh put into practice, though in different form, those principles first said to have been evolved by Alfred the Great — namely, to attack with an assured and complete superiority. Every English ship took on board a large quantity of quick-lime and sailed to meet the French, who were commanded by Eustace the Monk. De Burgh man- oeuvred for the weather gauge. Having gained it, the English ships came down upon the French with the wind, the quick-lime blowing before them, and so secured a complete victory over the tortured and blinded French. This is the first recorded instance of anvthincr that mav be described as " tactics " in Northern waters. The long reign of Henry III saw little of interest in connection with nautical matters. But towards the end of Henry's reign a private quarrel between English and Norman ships, both seeking fresh water off the Coast of Bayonne, had momentous consequences. The Normans, incensed over the quarrel, captured a couple of Enghsh ships and hanged the crew on the yards interspersed with an equal number of dead dogs. Some English retaliated in a similar fashion on such Normans as they could lay hands on, and, retaliation succeeding retaliation, it came about that in the reign of Edward I, though England and France were still nominally at peace, the entire mercantile fleets of both were engaged in hanging each other, over what was originally a private quarrel as to who should be first to draw water at a well. Ultimately the decision appears to have been come by " to fight it out." Irish and Dutch ships assisted B 22 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. the English. Flemish and Genoese ships assisted the Normans and French. The English to the number of 60 were under Sir Robert Tiptoft. The number of the enemy is placed at 200, though it was probably con- siderably less. In the battle that ensued the Norman and French fleets were annihilated. This battle, even more than others of the period, cannot be considered as one of the battles of " the British fleet." It is merely a conflict between one clique of pirates and traders against another clique. But it is important on account of the light that it sheds on a good deal of subsequent history ; for the fashion thus started lasted in one way and another for two or three hundred years. Nor were these disputes always international. Four years later than the fight recorded above, in 1297, the King wished to invade Flanders with an army of 50,000 men. The Cinque Ports being unable to supply the requisite number of ships to transport this army, requisitions were also made at Yarmouth. Bad blood soon arose between the two divisions, with the result that they attacked each other. Thirty of the Yarmouth ships with their crews were destroyed and the expedition greatly hampered thereby. Two events of importance in British naval history happened in the reign of Edward I. The first of these, which took place about the year 1300, arose out of acts of piracy on foreigners, to which English ships were greatly addicted at that time. In an appeal made to Edward by those Continentals who had suffered most from these depredations, the King was addressed as "Lord of the Sea." This was a definite recognition of that MERCANTILE FLEETS AT WAR. 23 sea claim first formulated by Henry II and which was afterwards to lead to so much fighting and bloodshed. The second event was the granting of the first recorded " Letters of Marque " in the year 1295. These were granted to a French merchant who had been taking a cargo of fruit from Spain to England and had been robbed by the Portuguese. He was granted a five year license to attack the Portuguese in order to recoup his loss. In the reign of Edward II the only naval event of interest is, that when the Queen came from abroad and joined those who were fighting against the King, the nautical element sided with her. The reign of Edward III saw some stirring phases in Enghsh histor}^ With a view to carrying on his war against France, Edward bestowed considerable -attention on naval matters, and in the year 1338, he got together a fleet stated to have consisted of 500 vessels. These were used as transports to convey the Arni}^ to France, and are estimated to have carried on the average about eighty men each. Meanwhile, the French had also got together a fleet of about equal size, and no sooner had the English expedition reached the shores of France than the whole of the south coast of England was subjected to a scries of French raids. Southampton, Plymouth and the ■Cinque Ports were sacked and burned with practical impunity. These raids continued during 1338 and 1339 ; the bulk of the English fleet still lying idle on transport service at Edward's base in Flanders. A certain number of ships had been sent back, but most of these had been as hastily sent on to Scotland, where their services 24 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. had been iirgently needed. Matters in the Channel culminated with the capture of the two largest English ships of the time. A fleet of small vessels hastily fitted out at the Cinque Ports succeeded in destroying Boulogne and a number of ships that lay there, but generally speaking the French had matters very much their own way on the sea. Towards the end of 1339, Edward and his expedition returned to England to refit, with a view to preparing for a fresh invasion of France during the following summer. As Edward was about to embark, he learned that the French King had got together an enormous fleet at Sluys. After collecting some additional vessels, bringing the total number of ships up to 250 or there- abouts, Edward took command and sailed for Sluys, at which port he found the French fleet. He localised the French on Friday, July 3rd, but it was not until the next day that the battle took place. The recorded number of the enemy in all these early sea fights requires to be accepted with caution. For what it is worth the number of French ships has been given at 400 vessels, each carrying 100 men. The French, as on a later occasion they did on the Nile, lay on the defensive at the mouth of the harbour, the ships being lashed together by cables. Their boats, filled with stones, had been hoisted to the mast-heads. In the van of their fleet lay the Christopher, Edward, and various other " King's ships," which they captured in the previous year. The English took the offensive, and in doing so manoeuvred to have the sun behind them. Then, with their leading ships crowded with archers they bore '^. * IS > H H r m O •n (/) r c < THE BATTLE OF SLUYS. 27 down upon the main French division and grappled with them. The battle, which lasted right throughout the night, Avas fought Avith unexampled fury, and for a long time remained undecisive, considerable havoc being wrought by the French with the then novel idea of dropping large stones from aloft. The combatants, however, were so mixed up that it is doubtful whether the French did not kill as many of their own number as of the enemy ; whereas, on the other side, the use of English archers who were noted marksmen told only against those at whom the arrows were directed. Furthermore, the English had the tactical advantage of throwing the whole of their force on a portion of the enemy, whom they ultimately totally destroyed. This Battle of Sluys took place in 1340. In 1346, after various truces, the English again attacked France in force, and the result was the Battle of Cressy. A side issue of this was the historic siege of Calais, which held out for about twelve months. 738 ships and 14,956 men are said to have been employed in the sea blockade. Up to this time the principal English ship had been a galley, ?".e., essentially a row boat. About the year 1350 the galley began to disappear as a capital ship, and the galleon, with sail as its main motive power, took its place. Also a new enemy appeared ; for at that time England first came into serious conflict with ►Spain. To a certain extent the galleon was to the fleets of the Mid-Fourteenth (Vntury much what the iron- clad was to the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, ar " Dreadnoughts " at the end of the first decade of the Twentieth CJcntury. 28 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. The introduction of this type of vessel came about as follows : — A fleet of Castillian galleons, bound for Flanders^ whiled away the monotony of its trip by acts of piracy against all EngUsh ships that it met. It reached Sluys- without interference. Here it loaded up with rich cargoes and prepared to return to Spain. The English mean- while collected a fleet to intercept it, this fleet being in command of King Edward himself, who selected the " cog Thomas " as his flagship. The English tactics would seem to have been carefully thought out beforehand. The Castillian ships were known to be of relatively vast size and more or less unassailable except by boarding. The result was. that when at length they appeared, the English charged their ships into them, sinking most of their own ships in the impact, sprang aboard and carried the enemy by boarding. The leading figure on the English side was a German body-servant of the name of Hannekin, who distinguished himself just at the crisis of the battle by leaping on board a Castillian ship and cutting the halyards. Otherwise the result of the battle might have been different, because the Castillians, when about half only of the English ships were grappled with them, hoisted their sails, with the object of sailing away and destroying the enemy in detail. Hannekin' s perception of this intention frustrated the attempt. The advantages of the galleons (or carracks as they were then called), must have been rendered obvious in this battle of " Les Espagnols-sur-Mer," as immediately afterwards ships on the models of those captured began to be hired for English purposes. LES ESPAGNOLS-SUR-MER. 29 Concurrent, however, mth this building of a larger type of ship, a decline of naval power began ; and ten years later, English shipping was in such a parlous state that orders were issued to the effect that should any of the Cinque Ports be attacked from the sea, any ships there were to be hauled up on land, as far away from the water as possible, in order to preserve them. In the French War of 1369, almost the first act of the French fleet was to sack and burn Portsmouth without encountering any naval opposition. In 1372 some sort of English fleet was collected, and under the Earl of Pembroke sent to reheve La Rochelle, which was then besieged by the French and Spanish. The Spanish ships of that period had improved on those of twenty years before, to the extent that (according to Froissart), some carried guns. In any case they proved completely superior to the English, whose entire fleet was captured or sunk. This remarkable and startling difference is only to be accounted for by the difference in the naval policy of the two periods. In the early years of Edward Ill's reign, when a fleet was required it was in an efficient state, and when it encountered the enemy, it was used by those who had obviously thought out the best means of making the most of the material available. In the latter stage, there was neither efficiency nor purpose. The result was annihilation. How far the introduction of cannon on shipboard contributed to this result it is difficult to say exactly. In HO far as it may have, the blame rests with the P^ngjish, who were perfectly familiar with cannon at that time. If, therefore, the very crude stone-throwing cannon of those days had any particular advantages 30 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. over the stone-throwing catapults previously employed, failure to fit them is merely a further proof of the inefficiency of those responsible for naval matters in the closing years of Edward Ill's reign. Probably, how- ever, the cannon contributed little to the result of La Rochelle, for, like aU battles of the era, it was a matter of boarding — of " land fighting on the water." The reign of Richard II saw England practically without any naval power at all. The French and Spaniards raided the Channel without interference worth mention. Once or twice retaliatory private expeditions were made upon the French coast ; but speaking generally the French and Spaniards had matters entirely their own way, and the latter penetrated the Thames so far as Gravesend. In the year 1380, an English army was sent over to France, but this, as Calais was British, was a simple operation, and although two years later ships were collected for naval purposes, English sea impotence remained as conspicuous as ever. In 1385, when a French armada was collected at Sluys for the avowed purpose of invading England on a large scale, no attempt whatever seems to have been made to meet this with another fleet. Fortunately for England, delays of one kind and another led to the French scheme of invasion being abandoned. Under Henry IV, matters remained much the same, until in the summer of 1407, off the coast of Essex, the King, who was voyaging with five ships, was attacked by French privateers, which succeeded in capturing all except the Royal vessel. This led to the organisation of a " fleet " and a successful campaign against the privateers. The necessity ■■^■^■ttMHHM|HMHBH|feMll«. - .^A^kA* ! o , ♦- H w Z o \ c H I I > CD i ^'- C •0 r »' > 1 1 t 1 PRIVATEERS ATTACK THE KING'S SHIP, 33 of Sea Power began to be realised again, and this so far bore fruit that in the reign of Henry V no less than 1,500 ships were (it is said) collected in the Solent, for an invasion of France. But since some of these were hired from the Dutch and as every English vessel of over twenty tons was requisitioned by the King, the large number got together does not necessarily indicate the existence of any very great amount of naval power. This fleet, however, indicated a revival of sea usage. In 1417, large ships known as " Dromons " were built at Southampton, and bought for the Crown, but these were more of the nature of " Royal Yachts " than warships. The principal British naval base at and about this period was at Calais, of which, at the time of the War of the Roses, the Earl of Warwick was the governor. T^e first act of the Regency of Henry VI was to sell by auction such ships as had been bought for the Crown under Henry V. The duty of keej)ing the Channel free from pirates was handed over to Jjondon merchants, who were paid a lump sum to do this, but did not do it at all effectively. Edward IV made some use of a Fleet to secure his accession, or later restoration. Richard ITT would seem to have realised the utility of a Fleet, and during his short reign he did his best to begin a revival of " the Navy " by buying some shiy)s, which, however, he hired out to merchants for trade puri)oses ; and so, at the critical moment, lie liad apparently notliing available to meet the mi)d over-sea expedition of Henry of Richmond. So — right up to comparatively recent times — there was never any Royal Navy in the proper meaning 34 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. of the word, nor even any organised attempt to create an equivalent, except on the part of those two Kings who we are always told were the worst Eangs England ever had — John and Richard III. Outside these two, there is not the remotest evidence that anyone ever dreamed of " naval power," " sea power," or anything of the sort, till Henry VII became King of England, and founded the British Navy on the entirely unromantic principle that it was a financial economy. Such was the real and prosaic birth of the British Navy in relatively recent times. It was made equally prosaic in 1910 by Lord Charles Beresford, when he said, " Battleships are cheaper than war." There is actually no poetry about the British Navy. There never has been — it will be all the better for us if there never is. It is merely a business-hke institution founded to secure these islands from foreign invasion. Dibden in his own day, Kipling in ours, have done their best to put in the poetry. It has been pretty and nice and splendid. But over and above it all I put the words of a stoker whose name I never knew, "It's just this — do your blanky job ! " That is the real British Navy. Henry VII did not create this watchword, nor anyone else, except perhaps. Nelson. III. THE TUDOR PERIOD AND BIRTH OF A REGULAR NAVY. THAT Henry VII assimilated the lesson of the utility of naval power is abundantly clear. Henry VII it was who first established a regular navy as we now understand it. Previous to his reign, ships were requisi- tioned as required for war purposes, and, the war being over, reverted to the mercantile service. The liability of the Cinque Ports to provide ships when called upon constituted a species of navy, and certain ships were specially held as " Royal ships " for use as required, but under Henry ships primarily designed for fighting purposes appeared. The first of these ships was a vessel generally spoken of as the " Great Harry,'''' though her real name seems to have been The Regent, built in 148o. Incidentally this ship remained afloat till 1553, when she wa.s burned by accident. She has been called " the first ship of the Royal Navy " ; and though her right to the honour has been contested, she appears fully entitled to it. The real founder of the Navy as we understand a navy to-day was Henry VII. Another important event of this reign is that during it the first dry dock was built at Portsmouth. Up till then there had been no facilities for the under-water repair of shijhs other than the j)rimitive method of running them on to the mud and working on them at 36 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. low tide. While ships were small this was not a matter of much moment, but directly larger vessels began to be built, it meant that efficient overhauls were extremely difficult, if not impossible. Yet another step that had far reaching results was the granting of a bounty to all who built ships of over 120 tons. This bounty, which was " per ton " and on a sliding scale, made the building of large private ships more profitable and less risky than it had been before, and so assisted in the creation of an important auxihary navy as complement to the Royal Navy. The bounty system did more, however, than en- courage the building of large private ships. The loose method of computing tonnage already referred to, became more elastic still when a bounty was at stake ; and even looser when questions of the ship being hired per ton for State purposes was at issue. Henry VII, who was nothing if not economical, felt the pinch ; the more so, as just about this time Continentals with ships for hire became alarmingly scarce. Something very hke a " corner in ships " was created by English merchants. Henry VII was thus, by circumstances beyond his own control, forced into creating a permanent navy in self defence. He died with a " navy " of eighteen ships, of which, however, only two were genuinely entitled to be called " H.M.S." He had to hire the others ! This foundation of the " regular navy " is not at aU romantic. But it is how a regular navy came to be founded — by force of circumstances. Henr}^ VII, *' founder of the Royal Navy," undoubtedly realized clearer than any of his predecessors for many a hundred INVENTION OF PORTHOLES. 37 years the meaning of naval power. But — his passion for economy and the advantage taken by such of his subjects as had ships available when hired ships were scarce, had probably a deal more to do with the institution of a regular navy than any preconceived ideas. In two words — *' Circumstances compelled." And that is how tilings stood when Henrv VIII came to the throne. The nominal permanent naval power established by Henry VII consisted of fifty-seven ships, and the crew of each was twenty-one men and a boy, so that the Great Harry, which must have required a considerably larger crew, would seem to have been an experimental vessel. The actual force, however, was but two fighting ships proper. Under Henry VIII, however, the policy of monster ships was vigorously upheld, and one large ship built in the earl}'' years of his reign — the Sovereign — was reputed to be " the largest ship in Europe." In 1512 the King reviewed at Portsmouth " twenty-five ships of great burthen," which had been collected in view of hostiUties with France. These ships having been joined by others, and amounting to a fleet of forty-four sail, encountered a French fleet of thirty-nine somewhere off the coast of Brittany. This })articular battle is mainly noteworthy o^ving to the fact that the two flagships grappled, and while in this position one of them caught fire. The flames being communicated to the other, botli blow up. This catastrophe so a})palU'd the two sides that they abandon- ed the battle by mutual consent ; from which it is to be presumed that the nautical mind of the day had, 38 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. till then, little realised that risks were run by carrjdng explosives. The EngHsh, however, were less impressed by the catastrophe than the enem}^ since next day they rallied and captured or sank most of the still panic-stricken French ships. Henry replaced the lost flagship by a still larger ship, the Grace de Dieu, a two-decker with the lofty poop and forecastle of the period. She was about 1,000 tons. Tonnage, however, was so loosely calculated in those days that measurements are excessively approximate. When first cannon were introduced, they were (as previously remarked) merely a substitute for the old- fashioned catapults, and discharged stones for some time till more suitable projectiles were evolved. Like the catapults they were placed on the poop or forecastle, as portholes had not then been introduced. These were invented by a Frenchman, one Descharges, of Brest. By means of portholes it was possible to mount guns on the main deck and so increase their numbers. Although the earliest portholes were merely small circular holes which did not allow of any training, and though the idea of them was probably directly derived from the loopholes in castle walls, the influence of the porthole on naval architecture was soon very great indeed. By means of this device a new relation between size and power was established, hence the " big displacements " which began to appear at this time. The hole for a gun muzzle to protrude through, quickly became an aperture allowing of training the gun on any ordinary bearing in English built ships. The English (for a very long time it was English only) H O X > o m o m c INVENTION OF PORTHOLES. 41 realisation of the possibilities of the porthole in Henry VIII's reign contributed very materially to the defeat of the Spanish Armada some decades later. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the porthole was to that era what the torpedo has been in the present one. Introduced about 1875 as a trivial alternative to the gun, in less than forty years the torpedo came to challenge the gun in range to an extent that as early as 1905 or thereabouts began profoundly to affect all previous ideas of naval tactics, and that by 1915 has changed them altogether ! Another great change of these Henry VIII days was in the form of the ships.* At this era they began to be built with " tumble-home " sides, instead of sidfes slanting outwards upwards, and inwards downwards as heretofore. With the coming of the porthole came the decline of the cross-bow as a naval arm. In the pre- porthole days every record speaks of " showers of arrows," and the gun appears to have been a species of accessor\\ In the early years of the Sixteenth Century it became the main armament, and so remained un- challenged till the present century and the coming of the long-range torpedo. Henry VIII's reign is also remarkable for the first institution of those " cutting out " expeditions which were afterwards to become such a particular feature of Britisli methods of warfare. This first attempt happened in the year 1513, when Sir Edward Howard, finding the French fleet lying in Brest Harbour refusing to come out, " collected boats and barges " and attacked them with these craft. The attempt was • Honry V'lII intnidiicod a now form of wiirHliip in tlio " pinnoceH," which were, to u c4-rtain extent, fiiiuloffous to the torpedo unift of to-day. 42 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. not successful, but it profoundly affected subsequent naval history. Therefrom the French were impressed with the idea that if a fleet lay in a harbour awaiting attack it acquired an advantage thereby. The idea became rooted in the French mind that to make the enemy attack under the most disadvantageous circumstances was the most wise of policies. That " the defensive is compelled to await attack, compelled to allow the enemy choice of the moment " was overlooked ! From this time onward England was gradually trained by France into the role of the attacker, and the French more and more sank into the defensive attitude. Many an English life was sacrificed between the " discovery of the attack " in the days of Henry VIII, and its triumphant apotheosis when centuries later Nelson won the Battle of the Nile ; but the instincts born in Henry's reign, on the one hand to fight with any advantage that the defensive might offer, on the other hand to attack regardless of these advan- tages, are probably the real key to the secret of later victories. The Royal ships at this period were manned by voluntary enlistment, supplemented by the pressgang as vacancies might dictate. The pay of the mariner was five shillings a month ; but petty officers, gunners and the like received additional pickings out of what was known as " dead pay." By this system the names of dead men, or occasionally purely fancy names, were on the ship's books, and the money drawn for these was distributed in a fixed ratio. The most interesting feature of Henry VII and Henry VIII' s navies is the presence in them of a number of Spaniards, who pre- PAY IN TUDOR TIMES. 43 sumably acted as instructors. These received normal pay of seven shillings a month plus " dead pay." The messing of the crews was by no means indifferent. It was as follows per man : — Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday : J lb. beef and J lb. bacon. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday : Four herrings and two pounds of cheese. Friday : To every mess of four men, half a cod, ten herrings, one pound of butter and one pound of cheese. There was also a daily allowance of one pound of bread or biscuit. The liquid allowance was either beer, or a species of grog consisting of one part of sack to two of water. Taking into account the value of monev in those days and the scale of living on shore at the time, the conditions of naval life were by no means bad, though complaints of the low pay were plentiful enough. Probably, few received the full measure of what on paper the}' were entitled to. Henry VIII died carh' in 1547. In the subsequent reigns of Edward VI and Mary, the Navy declined, and little use was made of it except for some raiding expeditions. When Elizabeth came to the throne the regular fleet had dwindled to very small proj)ortions, and, war being in progress, general permission was given for privateering as the only means of injuring the enemy. It presently degenerated into j)iracy and finally had to be put down by the Royal ships. No sooner, however, was the war over tlian tlie Queen ordered a special survey to be made of the Navy. New shi})H were laid down and arsenals establislied for c 44 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. the supply of guns and gunpowder, which up to that time had been imported from Germany. Full advantage was taken of the privateering spirit, the erstwhile pirates being encouraged to undertake distant voyages. In many of these enterprises the Queen herself had a personal financial interest. She thus freed the country from various turbulent spirits who were inconvenient at home, and at one and the same time increased her own resources by doing so. There is every reason to believe that this action of Elizabeth's was part of a well-designed and carefully thought out policy. The type of ship suitable for distant voyages and enterprises was naturally bound to become superior to that which was merely evolved from home service. The type of seamen thus bred was also necessarily bound to be better than the home-made article. Elizabeth can hardly have failed to realise these points also. To the personnel of the regular Navy considerable attention was also given. Pay was raised to 6/8 per month for the seamen, and 5/- a month with 4/- a month for clothing for soldiers afloat. Messing was also in- creased to a daily ration of one pound of biscuit, a gallon of beer, with two pounds of beef per man four days out of the seven, and a proportionate amount of fish on the other three days. Subsequently, and just previous to the Armada, the pay of seamen rose to 10/- a month, with a view to inducing the better men not to desert. The regular navy was thus by no means badly provided for as things went in those days ; while service with " gentlemen adventurers " offered attractions to a very considerable potential reserve, and so England contained a large population which, from one cause THE GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS. 45 and another, was available for sea service. To these circumstances was it due that the Spanish Armada, when it came, never had the remotest possibility of success. It was doomed to destruction the day that Ehzabeth first gave favour to the " gentlemen adventurers."" Of these adventurers the greatest of all was Francis Drake, who in 1577 made his first long vo3^age with five ships to the Pacific Ocean. Drake, alone, in the Pelican^ succeeded in reaching the Pacific and carrying out his scheme of 0})erations, which — not to put too fuie a point on it^ — consisted of acts of piracy pure and simple against the Spaniards. He returned to England after an absence of nearly three years, during which he circumna\igated the globe. There is httle doubt that Drake in this voyage, and others hke him in similar expeditions, learned a great deal about the disadvantages of small size in ships. Drake, however, learned another thing also. Up to this day the crew of a ship had consisted of the captain and a certain military element ; also the master, who was responsible for a certain number of " mariners." The former were concerned entirely with fighting tlie ship — the latter entirely with manoeuvring it. This system of specialisation, awkward as it appears thus baldly stated, may have worked well enough in ordinary practice. It did not differ materially from the differentiation between deck hands and the engineering dej)artment8, which to a greater or less extent is very marked in every navy of the present day. Drake, however, started out with none too many men, and it was not long before he lost some of those he had and foimd himself shorthanded. His solution of 46 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. the difficulty is in his famous phrase, " I would have the gentlemen haul with the mariners." How far this was a matter of expediency, how far the revelation of a new poKcy, is a matter of opinion. It must certainly have been outside the purview of Elizabeth. But out of it gradually came that every English sailor knew how to fight his ship and how to sail her too, and this amounted to doubling the efficiency of the crew of any ship at one stroke. Of Drake himself, the following contemporary pen- picture, from a letter written by one of his Spanish victims, Don Franciso de Zarate,* explains almost everything : — " He received me favourably, and took me to his room, where he made me seated and said to me : ' I am a friend to those who speak the truth, that is what will have the most weight with me. What silver or gold does this ship bring ? ' "... .We spoke together a great while, until the dinner-hour. He told me to sit beside him and treated me from his dishes, bidding me have no fear, for my life and goods were safe ; for which I kissed his hands. " This English General is a cousin of John Hawkins ; he is the same who, about five years ago, took the port of Nombre de Dios ; he is called Francis Drake ; a man of some five and thirty years, small of stature and red-bearded, one of the greatest sailors on the sea, both from skill and power of commanding. His ship carried about 400 tons, is swift of sail, and of a hundred men, all skilled and in their prime, and all as much experienced in warfare as if they were old soldiers of Italy. Each one, in particular, takes great pains to keep his arms clean ;| he treats them with affection, and they treat him with respect. I endeavoured to find out whether the General was liked, and everyone told me he was adored." Less favourable pictures of Drake have been penned, and there is no doubt that some of his virtues have been greatly exaggerated. At the present day there is perhaps too great a tendency to reverse the process. * Records of the Drake family. t The italics are mine. — F.T.J. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. 47 Stripped of romance, many of his actions were petty, while those of some of his fellow adventurers merit a harsher name. Hawkins, for instance, was hand-in- glove with Spanish smugglers and a slave trader. Many of the victories of the Ehzabethan " Sea-Kings " were really trifling little affairs, magnified into an importance which they never possessed. But, when all is said and done, it is in these men that we find the birth of a sea spirit which still lingers on, despite that other insular spirit previously referred to — the natural tendency of islanders to regard the water itself as a bulwark, instead of the medium on which to meet and defeat the enemy. The Spanish, already considerably incensed by the piratical acts of the English " gentlemen adventurers," presently found a further cause of grievance in the assistance rendered by Elizabeth to their revolting provinces in the Netherlands. Drake had not returned many years from his famous voyage when it became abundantly clear that the Spaniards no longer intended quietly to suffer from English interference. Spain at that time was regarded as the premier naval j>ower of Euroj)o. Her superiority was more mythical than actual, for reasons which will later on be referred to : however, her commercial oversea activities were very great. The wealth which she wrung from tlie Indies — though |)rol)abIy infinitely less than its supfxised value — was sufficient to enable her to equij) considerable naval forces, certainly larger ones numeric- ally than any which England alone was able to bring against them. 48 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Knowledge of the fact that Spain was preparing the Armada for an attack on England, led to the sailing of Drake in April, 1587, with a fleet consisting of four large and twenty-six smaller ships, for the hire of which the citizens of London were nominally or actually responsible. His real instructions are not known, but there is Httle question that, as in all similar expeditions, he started out knowing that his success would be approved of, although in the event of any ill-success or awkward questions, he would be publicly disavowed. Reaching Cadiz, he destroyed 100 store ships which he found there ; and then proceeding to the Tagus, offered battle to the Spanish war fleet. The Spanish admiral, however, declined to come out — a fact which of itself altogether discredits the popular idea about the vast all-powerful ships of Spain, and the little English ships, which, in the Armada days, could have done nothing against them but for a convenient tempest. On account of this expedition of Drake's, the sailing of the Armada was put off for a year. So far as stopping the enterprise was concerned, Drake's expedition was a failure. Armada preparations still went on. It is by no means to be supposed that the Armada in its conception was the foolhardy enterprise that on the face of things it looks to have been. The idea of it was first mooted by the Duke of Alva so long ago as 1569. In 1583 it became a settled project in the able hands of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, who alone among the Spaniards was not more or less afraid of the English. In the battle of Tercera in 1583, certain ships, which if not English were at any rate supposed to be, had shown the white feather. Santa Cruz assumed therefrom that the English were easily to be overwhelmed THE TUDOR PERIOD. 49 by a sufficiently superior force, and he designed a scheme whereby he would use 556 ships and an army of 94,222 men. Philip of Spain had other ideas. Having a large armv under the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands, he proposed that this force should be transported thence to England in flat-bottomed boats, while Santa Cruz should take with him merely enough sliips to hold the Cliannel, and prevent any interference by the English ships with the invasion. Before the delayed Armada could sail Santa Cruz died ; and despite his own protestations Medina Sidonia was appointed in Santa Cruz's place to carry out an expedition in which he had little faith or confidence. His total force at the outset consisted of 130 ships and 30,493 men. Of these ships not more than sixty-two at the outside were warships, and some of these did not carry more than half-a-dozen guns. The main Enghsh fighting force consisted of forty- nine warships, some of which were little inferior to the Spanish in tonnage, though all were much smaller to the eye, as they were built with a lower freeboard and without the vast superstructures with which the Spaniards were encumbered. As auxiliaries, the English had a ver}^ considerable force of small ships ; also the Dutch fleet in alliance with them. The guns of the English ships were, generally speaking, heavier, all their gunners were well trained, and their j)ortholes especially designed to give a con- Hiderable arc of fire, whereas the Spanish had very indilTcrent gunners and narrow portholes. The Spaniards tlicniscilves thoroughly recognised their inferiority in the matter of giiniuTy, and the s])ecific instructions 60 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. of their admiral were that he was to negative this inferiority by engaging at close quarters, and trust to destroying the enemy by small-arm fire from his lofty superstructures. The small portholes of the Spanish ships, which permitted neither of training, nor elevation, nor depression, are not altogether to be put down to stupidity or neglect of progress, for all that they were mainly the result of ultra-conservatism. The gun — as Professor Laughton has made clear — was regarded in Spain as a somewhat dishonourable weapon. Ideals of " cold steel " held the field. Portholes were kept very small, so that enemies relying on musketry should not be able to get the advantage that large portholes might supply. To close with the enemy and carry by boarding was the be-all and end-all of Spanish ideas of naval warfare. When able to employ their own tactics they were formidable opponents, though to the English tactics merely so many helpless haystacks. On shore, in England, the coming of the Armada provoked a good deal of panic ; though the armj^ which Ehzabeth raised and reviewed at Tilbury was probably got together more with a view to allaying this panic than from any expectations that it would be actually required. The views of the British seamen on the matter were entirely summed up in Drake's famous jest on Plymouth Hoe, that there was plenty of time to finish the game of bowls and settle the Spaniards afterwards ! Yet this very confidence might have led to the undoing of the English. The researches of Professor Laughton have made it abundantly clear that had H I m VI •D > z (/) I > z > FIRST ACTION WITH THE SPANISH ARMADA. 53 Medina Sidonia followed the majority opinion of a council of war held off the Lizard, he could and would have attacked the English fleet in Plymouth Sound with every prospect of destroying it, because there, and there only, did opportunity offer them that prospect of a close action upon which their sole chance of success depended. Admiral Colomb has elaborated the point still further, with a quotation from Monson to the effect that had the Armada had a pilot able to recognise the Lizard, which the Spaniards mistook for Ramehead, they might have surprised the English fleet at Plymouth. This incident covers the whole of what Providence or luck really did for England against the Spanish. To a certain extent a parallel of our own day exists. When Rodjestvensky with the Baltic fleet reached Far Eastern waters, there came a day when his cruisers discovered the entire Japanese fleet lying in Formosan waters. The Russian admiral ignored them and went on towards ^'^adivostok. The parallel ends here because the " Japanese fleet " was merely a collection of dummies intended to mislead him.* The first engagement with the Spanish Armada took place on Sunday, June 21st. It was more in the nature of a skirmish than anything else. The Spaniards made several vain and entirely ineffectual attempts to close with the swifter and handier English vessels. They took care, however, to preserve their formation, • 8<) far tut I um aware nothing about this appcarw in any ollicial account. I havf« no JapanoR^ confirmation, l)ut accountn f;lcuiioH<;d, and mo tw'curod at VladivoMtok tliat relit of which he wiih ho nuich in inHsi. 54 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. and so to that extent defeated the English tactics, which were to destroy in detail what could not be destroyed without heavy loss in the mass. So the Spaniards reached Calais on the 27th with a loss of only three large ships. They there discovered that Parma's flat-bottomed boats were all blockaded by the Dutch, and that any invasion of England was therefore entirely out of the question. It must have been perfectly obvious to the most sanguine of them by this that they could not force action with the swifter English ships, while they could not relieve the blockaded boats without being attacked at the outset. In a word, the Armada was an obvious failure. On the night of the 28th, fire ships were sent into the Spanish fleet by the English. This, though the damage done was small, brought the Spanish to sea, and the next morning they were attacked off Gravelines by the English. The battle was hardly of the nature of a fleet action, so much as well-designed tactical operations intended to keep the enemy on the move. It resulted in the Spaniards losing only seven ships in a whole day's fighting. The only really serious loss that the Spaniards sustained was that they were driven into the North Sea, with no prospect of returning home except by way of the North of Scotland. Followed for awhile and harried by a portion of the English fleet, which fell upon and destroyed stragglers, the Spaniards were driven into what to most of them were unknown waters and uncharted seas. To the last the retreating fleet maintained a show of order. Fifty-three ships succeeded in returning to Spain. c o PI z r tr S < z H C m I m 3 PI < PI z o m n > T -( C X o o DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA. 57 Stripped of romance this is the real prosaic history of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The wonder is not that so few Spanish ships returned, but that so many did ! The loss in Spanish warships proper appears to have been httle over a dozen all told, and of these not more than three at the outside can be attributed to "the winds." Havoc was undoubtedly wrought, but the "galleons" which " perished by scores " on the Scotch and Irish coasts were mainly the auxiliaries, transports, and small fry ; the battle fleet proper kept together all the time, and with a couple of exceptions the ships reached home together as a fleet.* At no time in the advance of the Spanish — probably at no time in the retreat either — could the Enghsh have engaged close action with any certainty of success. Victor}' was attributable solely and entirely to the evolution of a type of ship, fast, speedy and handy, able to hit hard, and which had been more or less specially designed with an eye to offering a very small target to the clumsily designed Spanish style of gim mounting. It was " history repeating itself " in another way. As Alfred overcame the Danes by evolving something superior to the Danish galleys ; so, in Elizabethan days, there was evolved a type of warship meet for the occasion. From the defeat of the Armada and onwards, English naval operations were mainly confined to raid- ing expeditions against the Spanish coast, with a view to checking the collection of any further Armadas. • It v/nti hfully wnat<3n, of counx^ and in soro HtraitH on a(*coiuit of iU) Icn^fthy voyugc. 58 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. These operations were chiefly carried out by the " gentle- men adventurers " ; but the real Navy itself was maintained and added to, and at the death of Elizabeth in 1603, it consisted of forty -two ships, of which the 68-gun Triumph of 1,000 tons was the largest. This Navy was relied upon as the premier arm in case of any serious trouble. IV. THE PERIOD OF THE DUTCH WARS. WITH the accession of James I peace with Spain came about, but the Dutch being ignored in the transaction, out of this there arose that ill-feehng and rivah-y which was later on to culminate in the Dutch wars. In James I's reign no naval operations of great importance took place, but considerable interest attaches to the despatch of eighteen ships (of which six were " King's Ships "), to Algiers in 1520. This was the first appearance of an English squadron in the Mediterranean. Under James I the numerical force of the Navy dechned somewhat. The art of ship-building, however, made considerable advance.* A Shipwrights' Company was established in 1656, and Phineas Pett, as its first master, built and designed a 1,400 ton ship named the Prince Royal. Pett introduced a variety of novelties into his designs, and the Prince Royal and her successors were esteemed superior to anything set afloat elsewhere at the time. Here it is desirable to turn aside for a moment in order to realise the influences at work behind Phineas Pett. It has ever been the f)eculiar fortinie of the • In 1020 till- (ir.st Hiil>riiiiriti<- ujjix'iircil. It whh iiivcnlfd l>y a Dutch fjhyHiriun, C. Vim Drelxl ; uriy Alan H. Hurgoync. 60 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Royal Navy — and for that matter of the inchoate " Navy " which preceded its estabHshment — to have had men capable of " looking ahead " and forcing the pace in such a way that new conditions were prepared for when they arrived. Of such a nature, each in his own way, were King Alfred, King John, Richard III, and Henry VII, but greater than any of these was Sir Walter Raleigh, whose visions in the days of Elizabeth and James I ran so clearly and so far that even now we cannot be said to have left him behind where " principles " are concerned. Drake was the national hero of Elizabethan days, but in utility to the future, Raleigh was a greater than he, albeit his best service was of the " armchair " kind. The following extracts from Raleigh's writings, except for geographical and political differences, stand as true to-day as when he wrote them about 300 years ago. The idea of a main fleet, backed up by smaller vessels, the idea of meeting the enemy on the water and so forth, are commonplaces now, but in Raleigh's time they were quite otherwise. The italicised portions in particular indicate quite clearly in Elizabethan words the naval policy of to-day. " Another benefit which we received by this preparation was, that our men were now taught suddenly to arm, every man knowing his command, and how to be commanded, which before they were ignorant of ; and who knows not that sudden and false alarms in any army are sometimes necessary ? To say the truth, the expedition which was then used in drawing together so great an army by land, and rigging so great and royal a navy to sea, in so little a space of time, was so admirable in other countries, that they received a terror by it ; and many that came from beyond the seas said the Queen was never more dreaded abroad for anything she ever did. VIEWS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 61 Frenchmen that came aboard our ships did wonder (as at a thing incredible) that Her Majesty had rigged, victualled, and furnished her royal ships to sea in twelve days' time ; and Spain, as an enemy, had reason to fear and grieve to see this sudden preparation. '" It is not the meanest mischief we shall do to the King of Spain, if we thus war upon him, to force him to keep his shores still armed and guarded, to the infinite vexation, charge and discontent of his subjects ; for no time or place can secure them so long as they see or know us to be upon that coast. " The sequel of all these actions being duly considered, we may be confident that whilst we busy the Spaniard at home, they dare not think of invading England or Ireland : for by their absence their fleet from the Indies ma}'' be endangered* and in their attempts they have as little hope of prevailing. '■ Surely I hold that the best way is to keep our enemies from treading upon our ground : wherein, if we fail, then must we seek to make him wish that he had stayed at his own home. In such a case, if it should happen, our judgments are to weigh many particular circumstances, that belong not to this discourse. But making the question general, the position, ivhether England, loilhout that it is unable to do so ; and, therefore, I think it most dangerous to make the atlventure. For the encouragements of a first victory to an enemy, and the discouragement of being beaten to the invaded, may draw after it a most perilous consequence. " Great difference, I know there is. and diverse consideration to be had, between such a country as France is, strengthened with many fortified places, and this of ours, where our ramparts are but the bodies of men. But I say that an array to be transported over sea, and to be landed again in an enemy's countr3% and the place left to the choice of the invader cannot be resisted on the coast of England without a fleet to impeach it ; no, nor on the coast of France, or any other country, except every creek, port, or sandy hay had. a jiowerful army in each of them to make opposition For there, is no man ignorant that ships, without putting themselves out of breath, will easily fjutrun the soldiers that coast them.'f * In this connection, «ee The First Dutch War, a fnw papcH furtFier on. ■f It i.4 iritf-rfHtirij^ to notn that tFiin particular ur^^unioiit, Hi-oiniiigly rathor hyperbolical to day on account of railwayn, in ko only ij the hontile ahipn can be krj/t under observation. 62 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. " Whosoever were the inventors, we find that every age hath added somewhat to ships, and to all things else. And in mine own time the shape of our English ships hath been greatly bettered. It is not long since the striking of the topmast (a wonderful ease to great ships, both at sea and in harbour) hath been devised, together with the chain pump, which takes up twice as much water as the ordinary did. We have lately added the Bonnet and the Drabler. To the courses we have devised studding-sails, topgallant -masts, spritsails, topsails. The weighing of anchors by the capstone is also new. We have fallen into consideration of the lengths of cable, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds that can blow. Witness our small Millbroke men of Cornwall, that ride it out at anchor half seas over between England and Ireland, all the winter quarter. And witness the Hollanders that were wont to ride before Dunkirk with the wind at north-west, making a lee-shoar in all weathers. For true it is, that the length of the cable is the life of the ship, riding at length, is not able to stretch it ; and nothing breaks that is not stretched in extremity. We carry our ordnance better than we were wont, because our nether over-loops are raised commonly from the water, to wit, between the lower part of the sea. " In King Henry VIII time, and in his presence at Portsmouth, the Mary Rose, by a little sway of the ship in tacking about, her ports being within sixteen inches of the water, was overset and lost. " We have also raised our second decks, and given more vent thereby to our ordnance lying on our nether-loop. We have added cross pillars* in our royal ships to strengthen them, which be fastened from the keels on to the beam of the second deck to keep them from setting or from giving way in all distresses. " We have given longer floors to our ships than in elder times, and better bearing under water, whereby they never fall into the sea after the head and shake the whole body, nor sink astern, nor stoop upon a wind, by which the breaking loose of our ordnance, or of the not use of them, with many other discommodities are avoided. " And, to say the truth, a miserable shame and dishonour it were for our shipwrights if they did not exceed all others in the setting * This practice appears to have been allowed to die out. At anyrate it was re-introduced in the time of Queen Anne. VIEWS OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 63 up of our Royal ships, the errors of other nations being far more excusable than ours. For the Kings of England have for many years being at the charge to build and furnish a navy of powerful ships for their own defence, and for the wars only. Whereas the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the Hollanders (till of late) have had no proper fleet beloyiging to their Princes or States. Only the Venetians for a long time have maintained their arsenal of gallies. And the I^ngs of Denmark and Sweden have had good ships for these last fifty years. " I say that the aforenamed Kings, especially the Spaniards and Portugals, have ships of great bulk, but fitter for the merchant than for the man-of-war, for burthen than for battle. But as Popelimire well observeth, ' the forces of Princes by sea are marques de grandeur d 'estate — marks of the greatness of an estate — for whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade ; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.' " Yet, can I not deny but that the Spaniards, being afraid of theii* Indian fleets, have built some few very good ships ; but he hath no ships in garrison, as His Majesty hath ; and to say the truth, no sure place to keep them in, but in all invasions he is driven to take up of all nations which come into his ports for trade 4e * * * " But there's no estate grown in haste but that of the United Provinces, and especially in their sea forces, and by a contrary way to that of Spain and France ; the latter by invasion, the former by oppression. For I myself may remember when one ship of Her Majesty's would have made forty Hollanders strike sail and come to an anchor. They did not then dispute de Mari Libero, but readily acknowledged the English to be Domini Maria Britannici. That wo are less powerful than we were, I do hardly believe it ; for, although we have not at this time 135 ships belonging to the subject of 500 tons each ship, as it is said we had in the twenty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth ; at which time also, upon a general view and muster, there were found in England of able men fit to bear arms, 1,172,(X)0, yet are our merchant ships now far more warlike and better appointed than they were, and the Navy royal doublo as strong as it then was. For these were the ships of Her Majesty's Navy at that time : 64 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. 1. The Triumph 8. The Revenge 2. The Elizabeth Jonas 9. The Hope 3. The White Bear 10. The Mary Rose 4. The Philip and Mary 11. The Dreadnought 5. The Bonad venture 12. The Minion 6. The Golden Lyon 13. The Swiftsure 7. The Victory to which there have been added : — 14. The Antilope 20. The Ayde 15. The Foresight 21. The Achates 16. TheSwaUow 22. The Falcon 17. The Handmaid 23. The Tyger 18. TheJennett 24. The Bull 19. The Bark of Ballein " We have not, therefore, less force than we had, the fashion, and furnishing of our ships considered, for there are in England at this time 400 sail or merchants, and fit for the wars, which the Spaniards would call galleons ; to which we may add 200 sail of crumsters, or hoyes of Newcastle, which, each of them, will bear six Demi- culverins and four Sakers, needing no other addition of building than a slight spar deck fore and aft, as the seamen call it, which is a slight deck throughout " I say, then, if a vanguard be ordained of those hoyes, who will easily recover the wind of any other sort of ships, with a battle of 400 other warlike ships, and a rear of thirty of His Majesty's ships to sustain, relieve, and countenance the rest (if God beat them not) I know not what strength can be gathered in all Europe to beat them. And if it be objected that the States can furnish a far greater number, I answer that His Majesty's forty ships, added to the 600 beforenamed, are of incomparable greater force than all that Holland and Zealand can furnish for the wars. As also, that a greater number would breed the same confusion that was found in Xerxes' land army of 1,700,000 soldiers ; jor there is a certain pro- portion, both by sea and land, beyond which the excess brings nothing but disorder and amazement.^' I have quoted from Raleigh at considerable length — a length which may seem to some out of all proportion to the general historical scheme of this work. But of THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 65 the three possible " founders of the British Navy," King Alfred by legend, King Henry VII by force of circumstances, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, by his realisation of certain eternal verities of naval warfare, the palm goes best to Raleigh, to whose precepts it was mainlv due that England did not succumb to Holland in the days of the Dutch wars. Compared to the struggle with the Dutch, neither the Spanish wars, which preceded them, nor the great French wars which followed, were of any like importance as regarded the relative risks and dangers. And the interest is the greater in that where the United Provinces were, about and just after Raleigh's time, Germany stands towards the British Navy to-day. In 1618 the Duke of Buckingham was appointed Lord High Admiral and continued in that position after the accession of Charles I. Of the incapacity of the Duke much has been written, but whatever may be said in connection with various unsuccessful oversea enterprises, for which he was officially responsible, naval shipbuilding under his regime made very considerable progress. Things were quite otherwise, however, with the personnel. Abuses of every sort and kind crept in un- checked, and the men were the first to feel the pinch. The unscrupulous contractor appeared, and with him the era of offal foods and all kinds of similar abuses, of which many have lasted well into our own time, and some exist still. The money allotted for the men of the fleet became the prey of every human vulture, the officers, as a rule, being privy thereunto. Besides food, clothing also fell into the hands of contractors who siipphed shoddy at ridiculously higli prices, with the commission to officers stopped out of the men's pay. 66 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Pay, nominally, rose a good deal, and in 1653 reached twenty-four shillings a month for the seaman, but the figures (approximately equal in purchasing value to the pay of to-day) convey nothing. The men were half-starved, or worse, on uneatable food, and their clothing was such that they went about in rags and died like rats in their misery. The first naval event in Charles I's reign is mainly of interest because of the peculiar personal circum- stances that attended it. One Bang's ship and six hired ships were despatched, nominally to assist the French against the Genoese. On arriving at Dieppe, however, the English officers and men discovered that they were really to be used against the revolted French Protestants of La Rochelle. This being against their taste, they returned to the Downs and reported them- selves to the King. They were ordered to sail again for La Rochelle. One captain, however, point blank refused to do so. The other ships went, but the officers and men, with a single exception, having handed their ships over to the French, returned to England. Little or nothing seems to have been done in the way of punishment to the mutineers (possibly on account of pubHc opinion). But the incident sheds an interesting sidelight on the state of the Navy at the time. It is hardly to be conceived that the Army at the same period could have acted in similar fashion with equal impunity. The history of the British Navy of this period is the history of a navy lacking in discipline, and its officers divided against each other. Such expeditions as were undertaken against France and Spain signally failed. It is usual to attribute these failures to the riiiM.As 11.11, 1570 i''47. From the tontcmpijiary portrait by William Dubson in llu- National Portrait Gallery. EXCESSIVE EXPENDITURE IN BUILDING. 69 mal-administration of the Duke of Buckingham, an unpopular figure. But whether this is just or not is another matter. The entire Navy was rotten to the core in its personnel. But Buckingham's share in it would seem to have been inabiUty to understand rather than direct carelessness. Under the Duke's regime the building of efficient warships continued to progress. The " ship money," which was to cause so much trouble inland later, is outside the scope of this work, save in so far as its direct naval aspect is concerned. This, of course, was the principle that inland places benefited from sea defence quite as much as seaside districts. A great deal of the money was undoubtedly spent on ship- building ; indeed, some of the trouble lay over alleged (and seemingly obvious) excessive expenditure on the " Dreadnought " of the period, Phineas Pett's Royal Sovereign, a ship altogether superior to anything before built in England, and the first three-decker ever con- structed in this country. She was laid down in 1635 and launched in 1657. An immense amount of gilding and carving about her irritated the economically minded, but it is questionable whether the objections were well informed. Just about this time elaborate ornamentations of warships was the *' vogue," and it carried moral effect accordingly. What to the uninitiated landsmen merely spelt " waste of money on unnecessary display " spelt something else to those who went across the seas. Even in our own present utilitarian days a fresh coat of paint to a warship has been found to have a })olitical value ; and fireworks and illuminations (seemingly pure 70 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. waste of money) have played their share in helping to preserve the peace. John Hampden, according to his lights, was a patriot, and according to the purely political questions with which he was concerned he may also have been ; but on the naval issue of Ship Money he was little more or less than the First Little Englander, and hampered by just that same inability to see beyond his nose which characterised the modern Little Englander who protested against " bloated naval expenditure." The intentions were excellent — the intelligence circumscribed. A contemporary account of the Royal Sovereign is as follows : — " Her length by the keele is 128 foote or thereabout, within some few inches ; her mayne breadth or wideness from side to side, 48 foote ; her utmost length from the fore-end to the stern, a prova ad pupin, 232 foote. Shee is in height, from the bottom of her keele to the top of her lanthorne, 76 foote ; she beareth five lanthornes, the biggest of which will hold ten persons to stand upright, and without shouldering or pressing one on the other. " Shee hath three flush deckes and a forecastle, an halfe decke, a quarter-decke, and a round house. Her lower tyre hath thirty ports, which are to be furnished with demi-cannon and whole cannon, throughout being able to beare them ; her middle tyre hath also thirty ports for demi-culverin and whole culverin ; her third tj're hath twentie sixe ports for other ordnance ; her forecastle hath twelve ports, and her halfe decke hath fourteen ports ; she hath thirteene or fourteene ports more within board for murdering-pieces, besides a great many loope-holes out of the cabins for musket shot. Shee carrieth, moreover, ten pieces of chase ordnance in her right forward, and ten right off, according to lande service in the front and the reare. Shee carrieth eleven anchores, one of them weighing foure thousand foure hundred pounds ; and according to these are her cables, mastes, sayles, cordage." It remains to add that the ship was extraordinarily well built. She fought many a battle and survived some THE FIRST -LITTLE ENGLANDER." 73 fifty years, and then only perished because, when laid up for refit in 1696, she was accidently burned. And about sixty-three years ago (1852) naval architects still alluded to her with respect, nor did their designs differ from her very materially. Wherever and however Cliarles I and the Duke of Buckingham failed, their shipbuilding policy cannot but command both respect and admiration. It is the curious irony of fate that — excepting King Alfred, and also Queen Ehzabeth — it is the Sovereigns of England with black marks against them who ever did most for the Navy or miderstood its importance. And miderstanding what the Navy meant, generally secured these marks at the hands of some quite well meaning but intellectually circumscribed prototype or successor of John Hampden, to whom " meeting the enemy on the water " was an entirely indigestible theory, and a waste of money into the bargain. There is no question whatever that to them the sea appeared a natural rampart and ships upon it pure superfluity, save in so far as inconvenience to the shore counties might result. Later on, Cromwell, of course, acted on a different principle — but Cromwell was an Imperialist. Hampden was merely the " Insular Spirit " personified. In 1639, a naval incident occurred wliich goes to discredit the popular idea of the impotence of the British Navy under Charles I, whatever its internal condition. Naval operations were in progress between Holland and France on the one side, and Spain on the other. The British fleet was fitted out under Sir John Pennington (that same Pennington who had commanded the squadron whicli refused to attack La Jvochclle) with orders to maintain British neutrality. 74 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. The Spanish fleet took refuge from the Dutch in the Downs, whereupon Pennington informed the rival admirals that he should attack whichever of them violated the neutrality of an English harbour. The Spanish having fired upon the Dutch, the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp applied to Pennington for permission to attack the Downs. This was given, and the bulk of the Spanish fleet destroyed. The incident suggests that the English fleet was recognised as a neutral able to enforce its orders against all and sundry. In connection with this, it is interesting to record the existence of a naval medal of the period, bearing the motto : " Nee meta mihi quae terminus orbi " — a free translation of which would be, " Nothing limits me but the size of the World." However short practice may have fallen, Charles and his advisers had undoubtedly grasped the theory of " Sea Power." THE CIVIL WAR. When the Civil war began in 1642, the regular fleet consisted of forty-two ships. It was seized by the Parliamentarians and put under the Earl of Warwick, who held command for six years. With his fleet he very effectually patrolled the Channel, rendering abortive all over-sea attempts to assist the King with arms and ammunition. On Warwick being superseded in 1648, the fleet mutinied, and seventeen ships sailed for Holland to join Prince Charles ; but upon Warwick being reinstated the bulk of the fleet returned to its allegiance to the Parhamentarians. That the Parliamentarians were fully alive to the importance of naval power is evidenced by the fact that they seized every opportunity to lay down new ships ; and " Parliament " once in power made it THE CIVIL WAR. 76 very clear indeed that the Sovereignty of the Seas would be upheld at all costs. THE FIRST DUTCH WAR. Some forty years before, Sir Walter Raleigh, dis- cussing the rise of the Dutch United Provinces, remarked : " But be their estate what it will, let them not deceive themselves in beheving that they can make themselves masters of the sea." He advised the Dutch to remember that their inward and outward passages were through British seas. There were but two courses open to the Dutch : amity with England or destruction of English naval power. Since both nations had large commercial fleets, rivalries were inevitable ; and for some long while previous to 1652, both sides were ready enough for a quarrel. Minor acts of hostility occurred. The Dutch failed to pay the annual tax for fishing in British waters. In May, 1652, a Dutch squadron refused to pay respect to the English flag. It was fired on accordingly, and after some negotiations, war was declared two months later. The war is interesting because it saw an end to the old ideas of cross-raiding with ships regarded primarily as transports in connection with raids or to cover such. In this war fighting on the sea for the command of the sea first made a distinct appearance. Its birth was necessarily obscure and involved, both sides having the primary idea of attacking the commerce of the enemy and defending their own, rather than of attacking the enemy's fleet. The earlier battles wliich took [)lace were brought about by the defence of merchant fleets. 76 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. None of the battles of 1652 were conclusive, and though marked with extraordinary determination on both sides the damage done was, relatively speaking, small. The general advantage for the year rested slightly with the Dutch, mainly owing to Tromp's victory over Blake, who was found in considerably inferior force in the Downs. In February of the following year Tromp, with a fleet of seventy warships and a convoy of 250 merchant ships, some of which were armed, met Blake with sixty- six sail in the famous Three Day's Battle. In the course of this fight the Dutch lost at least eight warships, and a number of merchant-men variously estimated at from twenty-four to forty. The English admitted to the loss of only one ship. At the end of the third day, however, Blake drew off, and the Dutch admiral got what was left of his convoy into harbour. Oliver Cromwell being now in full power, naval preparations were pressed forward with unexampled vigour, and on June 2nd an English fleet of ninety-five sail under Monk and Deane met Van Tromp and forced him to retreat. Reinforced by Blake with eighteen more ships the English fleet renewed the battle, ultimately driving Van Tromp into harbour with the loss of several ships. On the 29th July the Dutch ran the blockade and came out. On the 31st a battle began in which Van Tromp was killed, and the Dutch with the loss of many ships driven into the Texel. The English fleet, though it lost few ships, appears to have been badly mauled in this final battle, on account of which the Dutch claimed a victory. 00 r > > 2 D -1 X o z m X o D o T H X PI O c o I > X v> THE FIRST DUTCH WAR. 79 In the following month the Dutch fleet again came out, and under De Witt took one convoy to the Sound and brought another back ^vithout interference. Just afterwards, however, their fleet was so severely injured by a tremendous three days' gale that further naval operations were out of the question. Overtures for peace were therefore made, and concluded. The types of English warships in this first Dutch war are given in Pepy's Miscellany as follows : — Rate. Name. Length of Keel. ft. Breadth ft. in. Depth, ft. in. Btirthen Tons. Highest No. of Men. Guns. First Sovereign 127 46 6 19 4 1141 600 100 Second Fairfax 116 34 9 17 ^ 745 260 52 Third Worcester 112 32 8 16 4 661 180 46 Fourth Ruby lOoJ 31 6 15 9 556 150 40 Fifth Nightingale 88 25 4 12 8 300 90 24 Sixth OreyJwund 60 20 3 10 120 80 18 The principal Dutch vessels were conspicuously inferior to the best of these English ones, and the war may be said to have been considerably decided by ship superiority. In the peace that followed — which was really very little better than an armed truce — the Dutch set themselves to build warships more on English lines. And, as we shall presently see, they evolved from the war,* future strategies based on its lessons. Admiral Colomb (Naval Warfare) traced the Dutch defeat — or perhaps on»; Hhould write, " lack of a H H r m w X ■D !/> O •n H I m X H m m > > H (/) n > BLOCKADES. 119 the circumstances of the times suggests that other motives than punishment of an individual were paramount. War was formally declared shortly after the fall of Minorca. No events of much moment marked the rest of the year 1756, but early in the following year, Calcutta, which had fallen to the natives, was recaptured by Clive, assisted by a naval force. In 1758, the Navy consisted of 156 of the line and 164 lesser vessels. The personnel was 60,000. The situation at this time was that in North America the French colonies were being hotly pressed, Louisbourg being invested. The French had a species of double plan — to relieve Louisbourg directly, and also the usual invasion of England. The relief of Louisbourg came to nought ; a Toulon squadron which came out being driven back by Osborne, while Hawke destroyed the convoys in the Basque Roads. Louisbourg finally fell, four ships of the line that were lying there being burned, and one other captured, together with some smaller craft. Nearer home, combined naval and militarv attacks were pressed upon the French coast, Anson wrecking havoc on St. Malo, while Howe destroyed practically everything at Cherbourg. The invasion of England project remained, however. In 1759, the Frencli had somewhere about twenty ships of the line, under De Conflans, at Brest, twelve at Toulon, under De la Clue, five with a fleet of transi)orts at Quiberon, five frigates at Dunkirk with transports, a division of small craft and flat-bottomed boats at Havre, and a squadron of nine ships of the line with auxiliaries in the West Indies. 120 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. These were watched or blockaded by superior British squadrons in every case — the maintenance of blockades being mainly possible owing to the improved ventilation of the ships. Provisions were still bad and scurvy plentiful, but the blockade maintained was better and closer than anything that the French can have antici- pated. This war, indeed, saw the birth of scientific blockade in place of the somewhat haphazard methods which had previously existed. In part, it arose from a better perception of naval warfare, the study of history and the growth of definite objectives. But since side by side with these improvements tactical ideas were nearly non-existent and ships in fighting kept a fine of the barrack-ground type regardless of all circumstances,* improvements in naval architecture may claim at least as big a part as the wit of man. Ideas of blockading and watching were as old as the Peloponnesian War, but means to carry them into effect had hitherto been sadly lacking. To resume, the French fleets being cornered by superior forces, had no option but to wait for lucky opportunity to effect the usual attempted junctions. This opportunity was long in coming, and meanwhile Rodney made an attack on the invading flotilla at Havre, bombarded it for fifty-two hours, and utterly destroyed the flat-bottomed boats which had been collected. In July, 1759, Boscawen, having run short of water and provisions, had to withdraw from Toulon to Gibraltar, where he began to refit his ships, and De la Clue, learning of this, came out of Toulon in August, * Time after time, hostile ships, having had enough of it, passed away ahead and escaped, because to have pressed them would have " disorganised the Una.'"' COMMERCE WAR. 121 slipping through the straits at midnight, with the Enghsh fleet in pursuit shortly afterwards. De la Clue had intended to rendezvous at Cadiz, but having altered his mind, made the almost inevitable failure of getting all his ships to comprehend it.* So it came about that daylight found him near Cape St. Vincent, with only six sail, and eight of Boscawen's ships (which he at first took to be his own stragglers) coming up. In the action that followed, three of the French ships were captured, two burned and one escaped. The stragglers of the French fleet got into Cadiz as originally directed, and a few months later escaped back to Toulon. Thurot, with a small squadron, slipped out from Dunkirk, in October, merely to intern himself in a Swedish harbour. Hawke continued his blockade of Brest, being now and then driven off by gales, and during one of these absences, Bempart, with his nine West Indian ships, got into Brest. The Brest fleet was apparently very short- handed, or else the West Indian squadron in a very bad way ; in any case the crews of the latter were distributed among the former, and De Conflans sailed with onl}^ twenty-one ships on November 14th. The expeditionary force which he proposed to convoy lay at Quiberon, whicli ])hice owing to weather he did not make till the 20th. There he sighted and gave chase to the blockading Enghsh frigates, and in doing so met Hawke's fk'ct of twenty-three ships of the line. In tlie battle of Quiberon which followed, the French lost six shij)s of the line. Eleven, by throwing their guns overboard, escaped into shallow water, the remainder • Our own navul maiuruvroH in rocont years havo h<>. The cost of this came to £2,272 for a ship of 1 he first-rate, and was only relatively satisfactory. Ever since the Treaty of Paris in 176.'), fiiction had 124 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. been growing between the Home Country and the North American Colonies. The causes which led to it concern the British Navy only in so far as it was used for the harsh enforcement of the regulations entailed by the Treaty in question — regulations which bore heavily on the Colonists. The rest of the story is merely the tale of political incapacity at home. The American Colonists, in addition to a few fast sailing frigates which they handled with unexpected aptitude, possessed a so very considerable mercantile fleet that it was estimated that 18,000 of their seamen had served in the English ships in the late war with France. Consequently, the Colonists were in a position to fit our privateers, and with these, in the first eight years of the war, they captured nearly 1,000 English merchant ships. Their own losses were, however, greater, and it is probable that despite all the military blunders which characterised English conduct of the war, the Colonists would eventually have been worn down but for the active intervention of France in 1778, and Spain a little later. As regards naval operations against the Americans themselves, these were mainly in the nature of sea transport. Where they were otherwise, they were of an inglorious nature, owing to the total inability of the Home Government to appreciate the position. The naval story of the war is, in the main, the story of frigates attempting difficult channels, and going aground in the attempt. It is of interest mainly because in 1776 one David Bushnell made the first submarine ever actually used in war, and attempted to torpedo the English flag- ship. Eagle (64). He reached his quarry unsuspected, but the difficulties of attaching his " infernal machine " were such that he had to rise to the surface for air and THE FIRST SUBAURINE. 125 abandon the enterprise. His subsequent fate was undramatic — he and his boat were captured at sea on board a merchant ship, which was carrying him else- where for further operations. France, which had been rendering considerable secret assistance to the revolted Colonists, had, ever since the Treaty of Paris, been steadily building up her Nav}', till she had eighty ships of the line and 67,000 men. The efficiency of the personnel had been increased by the enrolment of a special corps of gunners, who practiced weekly. Efforts — which, however, were only moderately successful — had also been made to break down the serious class rivalries between those officers who were of the noblesse and those who were tarpaulin seamen. But the ^majority of officers were skilled tacticall}', and special orders were issued that to seek out and attack the enemy was an objective.* Here, again, another weak point existed : d'Orvilliers, who commanded the main fleet, also received orders to be cautious — orders very similar in tenor to those by which his predecessors in previous wars were hampered. The fleet of Great Britain, s])read over many quarters of the world, including shij)s being fltted, consisted of about 150 shi])s of the line, besides auxiliaries ; but the actual available force of Home water fleet with which Keppel sailed just before the ()j)ening of the war was twenty 8hi))s only ! Capturing two Frencli frigates and learning from them tliat thirty-two sliips were at Brest, Keppel got reinforcements of ten shi[)s, and on the 27th of 'luly, 1778, met d'Orviihers, also witli thirty sliii)s, otT Usliant. TIu! battle lasted three hours, when tlu^ fleets drew • ThiH appears U> lie tho Bolitary inHtanco in French history in which a tisn nf \)\i- n<«<'t oil ErighHh lines \vu« over contemplated. 126 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. apart without any material result having been achieved. The tactical ability lay with the French, and but for the inefficiency of the leader of one French division, the Due de Chartres (the future " Phillipe Egalite "), would have done so still more. Yet, though Keppel had obviously done his best, public opinion in England had expected a great naval victory, and Keppel was the subject of a most violent controversy, which soon developed on political lines. At and about the time of the battle of Ushant, D'Estaing, with twelve ships of the line and five frigates, reached the Delaware. The English fleet under Howe, which consisted of only nine inferior ships of the line, took refuge inside Sandy Hook. D'Estaing came outside and remained ten days in July, but then sailed away. His failure to operate has been put down to the advice of pilots, but more probably, as pointed out by Admiral Mahan, he had secret instructions not to assist the Colonists too actively. The destruction of Hood's fleet would have meant the capture of New York, peace between England and America, and a considerable force released for operations against France. Most of the subsequent movements of the year seem to have been coloured by a similar policy. In 1779, the West Indian islands of St. Vincent and Grenada fell into the hands of the French. Subsequently D'Estaing returned to the North American Coast, but no important operations took place there. Finally he returned with some ships to France, sending the others to the West Indies. Spain declared war against England in 1780. Her fleet then consisted of nearly sixty ships of the line, which — like the French — were in a more efficient state WAR WITH SPAIN. 127 than in previous wars. Her prime object was the recovery of Gibraltar. A combined Franco-Spanish fleet of sixty-four ships of the Hne appeared in the Channel, causing an immense panic in England. The only available English fleet con- sisted of thirty-seven sail of the line, under Sir Charles Hardy, and this wandered away to the westward, leaving the Channel quite open to the allies, who, however, also wandered about wdthout accomplishing anything. As usual with allies, there were divided councils, and in addition the French fleet, having had to wait long for the unwilling Spaniards, was badly incapacitated from sickness. Thus, and thus only, is their failure to invade to be explained : they had 40,000 men ready to be transported over, also a naval force ample to defeat any available English fleet, and able to cover landing operations as well. When the war first began, there was in France an English admiral — that same Rodney who had destroyed the invading flotilla at Havre in the previous war — who by reason of his debts was unable to return to his own country. In private life he was a merry old soul of sixty or so, and at a dinner one night boasted that if he could pay his debts and go back to England, he would get a command and easily smash the French fleet. Hearing this, a French nobleman promptly paid his debts for him, and sarcastically told Rodney to go back and prove his words. Rodnc}', who had tlic reputation of being an able ofTic(T, but notliing more, got home in 1779. In 1780, having secured a command for the West Indies, he left Portsmouth with twenty sail of the line and a convoy for tlie n lief of (jlil)raltar. Off Finisterre, he captured 128 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. a Spanish convoy carrying provisions to the besiegers. Off Cape St. Vincent he fell in with eleven Spanish ships and attacked them at night, in a gale, blowing up one, and capturing six. Thence he proceeded to Gibraltar, relieved it from all immediate danger, Minorca also ; and then sailed for the West Indies. Here, on April 17th, some three weeks after arrival, he met the French under Guichen, and made the first attempt at that " breaking the line " associated with his name. The attempt was not a success, as his orders were misunderstood by several of his own captains and his intentions realised and foiled by his opponents.* This action was indecisive ; as also were two more that followed. In this year (1780), Captain Horatio Nelson, then only twenty-two j^ears old, made his first appearance in the Hinchinhrook (28), in an attack on San Juan, Nicaragua. He succeeded, after terrible loss of person7iel from disease. A Spanish squadron then joined the French, but an epidemic — that most fruitful of all sources for the upsetting of naval plans — overtook it. The Spaniards were incapacitated and the French returned home. Rodney went to New York, where his operations delayed the cause of the Colonists ; then returning to the West Indies, operated against the Dutch, who had by now joined the French and Spaniards. The general position of Great Britain, in 1781 and 1782, was well nigh desperate. Gibraltar was only held by a remarkable combination of luck and resolution. To quote Mahan, " England stood everywhere on the defensive." She fought with her back to the wall. In the * Admiral Mahan (Influence of Sea Power upon History) has quoted at length (p. 380) from French authorities to show that only the action of the captain of the Destin (74), in hurrying to block the gap, prevented Rodney from getting through the line on this occasion. RODNEY. 129 East Indies, Suffren kept the French flag flying: and things were generally at a ver}^ low ebb, when in 1782 Rodney " broke the line " in the victory of the Battle of the Saints. On April 9th, the fleets had come into contact without much result on either side. On the 12th, De Grasse, being then in some disorder, with thirty-four ships, encountered the English with thirty-six in good order. Rodney and Hood broke the line in two places. Admiral i\Iahan has been at pains to show us that this result was much a matter of luck and change of wind, and that the victory was by no means followed up as it might have been. One French ship was sunk and five were taken, including De Grasse himself, whose losses in his flagship, the Ville de Paris, were greater than those in the entire English fleet. To the nation at this juncture, however, an3^thing savouring of \dctory was a thing to be made the utmost of, and Rodney has probably received more than his meed of merit over what was mainly a matter of luck. Two features of special interest in connection with this battle are that, though up to it, British ships had recently, owing to copi)eri ng, proved better sailers than the French ; in the sequel to this fight, the French proved equal to sail away. The rapid deterioration of coppering, already mentioned, may account for some of this, but in this battle there is also reason to believe that the French fleet instituted firing at the rigging. Contemporary statements exist as to the French having made a wonderful number of holes in English hulls without much material result, but these may be dismissed as ])ardon- able temporary })luster. More germane is the fact that the English ships were supplied with carronades* — * I h^'i' 191). Finclmru Hpccificiilly tiiontioiiH (p. 107) tho iiitruducliuii nf curruiiudcs Um yoara later. 130 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. harmless at long range and deadly at short — for which reason the French tried to keep them at a distance, so that altogether superior efficiency with men and weapons would seem to have played a greater part than any tactical genius on the part of Rodney, in whom a dogged insistence to get at the enemy was ever the main characteristic rather than " thinking things out." The Mahan estimate of him sorts better with known facts than the estimate of his accomplishment at the time. As regards Rodney himself, it is interesting to record that Nav}^ and Party were so synonymous at the time that he, being a strong Tory, had already been superseded by political influence when he won the battle that broke French power in the West Indies. It lies to the credit of the Whigs that both he and Hood, his second in command, received peerages ; but the most difficult thing of all to understand to-day is, that in a life and death struggle such as this war was, the personal political element should have managed to find expression. In 1782, Gibraltar, which had been twice relieved, was once more in grievous straits. The French had evolved floating batteries for the attack, similar in principle to those which, some seventy years later, were to figure so prominently in the Crimea. Being merely armoured with heavy wood planks, however, they were easily set on fire with red-hot shot, and the great bombardment failed long before the reheving force, under Howe, arrived. The garrison, however, were in great straits for supplies, and their real relief was Howe's fleet, which the combined Franco- Spanish squadrons did not dare to attack. The Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, followed soon afterv/ards. By it the United States of America were THE PEACE OF 1783. 131 recognised, INIinorca was given up, but most of the captured West Indian islands restored to Great Britain. Just before the close of the war, the relative naval strengths were assessed as follows : — * Description of Vessels. Great Britain. France. Spain. Holland. Ships of the Line 105 89 53 32 Fifty-gun Ships 13 7 3 Large Frigates 63 49 12 i 28 Small ditto 69 54 30 I Sloops . . 217 86 31 13 Cutters 43 22 Armed Ships . . 24 Bombs . . 7 5 14 Fire-Ships 9 7 11 6 Yachts 5 TOTAI. 555 319 1()0 79 In this list it is interesting to note the British inabilitv to maintain even a Two-Power Standard in ships of the line, whereas in sloops and such like, an enormous preponderance prevailed. For the suppression of privateering on the coastal trade, these small craft proved very useful. Also worthy of note is the decline of tlio fire-ship as a naval arni.t The figures as a whole suggest with much clarity that had the Allies l)een able to act together, Great Britain would never have emerged from the war so well US sIk' flid. The ten years' peace that followed was little more • Fiiif-hutn «' CampfHsII. t Til'- firc-Hlii[) grow to ho Iohh and \vus of a monaco owiii)^ to tin- improved handinc^HH of uurHhipH. 132 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. than a breathing space. War was constantly appre- hended, and known improvement in French ships were such that they had to be carefully watched. The frigates built in England were made longer than before, with a view to keeping pace with French sailing qualities. Considerable interest was taken in how far the country was self-supporting in the matter of timber for shipbuilding, a certain reliance on foreign supplies having previously existed. At, and about 1775, the cost of shipbuilding for the East India Company had exactly doubled in a few years. The home supply trouble arose, partly from the increased size of shipping, partly from the tendency of owners to fell trees as early as possible. Out of which special oak plantations were set up in the New Forest and elsewhere, though oak happened to cease to be of value for shipbuilding long before they had grown large enough for the larger timbers. The question of repairs also came in for consideration, an average of twenty-five years' repair totalling the cost of a new ship. At and about this time also, the building of ships by contract in peace time was first recommended on the grounds that thus the private yards would be better available in case of war. Regular stores for ships in the dockyards were also instituted, with a view to the speedy equipment of ships in reserve.* It was mainly owing to this last provision, introduced by Lord Barham in 1783, that, though when the war of the French Revolution broke out in 1793 but twelve ships of the line and thirty lesser vessels were in commission, a few months later seventy-one ships of the hne and 104 smaller craft were in service. The number of men voted in 1793 was 45,000. * Here again see Raleigh on Elizabethan Customs. VI. THE GREAT FRENCH WAR. THE first incident of the war was connected with Toulon, which was partl)^ Royahst and partly Republican. The story in full is to be found most dramatically rendered in Ships and Men, by David Hannay. Here it suffices to say that the Royalists and Moderates having coalesced at the eleventh hour, surrendered the town to Admiral Hood ; that the British Government repudiated Hood's arrangements, and that eventually in December, 1793, he was compelled to evacuate the place after doing such damage as he could and bringing away with him a few ships of the French navy.* The incident little concerns our naval history,, the Navy being but a pawn in the political game of the moment. Indeed, it is mostly of some naval interest only because two figures, destined to bulk largely in future history, loomed up in it — Captain Horatio Nelson, of the Agamemnon, who laughed when the Spanish fleet excused its inaction by saying that it had been six weeks at sea and was disabled accordingly ; and Napoleon, who, as much as anyone, served to hurry the English out. Early in i7J)4 the British fleet had ninety-five ships of the line in commission, besides 194 lesser vessels. Tlie personnel amounted to 85,000. • By tfio l>uriiiiii^ of tlio Ijulk of t}io Hliips in Toulon, tho Fnuicli Toulon flfft waa roridi-nH-l non-(*xiHt<-rit ; l)iit. tho hIiiU} of atTuiru with timt lioot wttH Huch that itH fighting vhIuu hud long boon a cypher. 134 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. The centre of interest was the French Brest fleet. Under Villaret-Joyeuse, a captain of the old Navy, made Admiral by the Terrorists, whose cause he had espoused, this fleet was by no means inefficient, like the undis- ciplined Toulon fleet had been. It carried on board the flagship Jean Bon St. Andre, the deputy of the State, who, whatever his faults, realised the meaning of " efficiency." The bulk of the crew were men who had done well in America. Howe, on the other hand, commanded a somewhat raw fleet, hastily brought up to strength and still by no means " shaken down." Howe's orders were threefold — to convoy a British merchant fleet ; to destroy the French fleet ; and to intercept a convoy of French grain coming from America. From the 5th to the 28th May, Howe was keeping an eye on Brest and looking for the French convoy, the intercej^tion of which was more important than anything else, as France was dependent on these grain ships for the means to live. On the 28th, the French fleet was sighted a long way out in the Atlantic. Villaret-Joyeuse, who was out to protect the grain convoy at all costs, drew still further out to sea, Howe following in pursuit.* Towards evening, the last French ship Revolutionnaire (100), was come up with and engaged by six British (seventy-four's), of which one, the Audacious, was badly crippled. The Revolutionnaire herself was dismasted, but was towed away by a frigate in the night. This particular incident is one of the most prominent examples of the power of the " monster " ship * In order to bring the enemy to action, Howe formed a detached squadron of his faster ships. Hannay {Ships and Men) extols him because, in this and certain other movements in the battle, he reverted to the tactics of Monk and other Commonwealth admirals, and threw aside the conventional practice of his own day. BATTLE OF THE FIRST OF JUNE. 135 as compared with the " moderate dimension " shi])* of the period. The six did not attack her simultaneously, and some were never closely engaged. ^She was magni- ficently fought also ; but even when these elements are subtracted, the fact of the extraordinary resisting power exhibited remains. x\s only the Audacious^ which attacked last, did much harm to the Frenchman, the explanation in tliis particular case probably lies in the stouter scantlings required for a ship of 110 guns, compared to smaller ships. On the following day the action was renewed. ViUaret-Joyeuse allowed his tail ships to drop into range of the leading British vessels with a view to crippling them. Howe cut the Une, but being somewhat out- manoeuvred by the French admiral, obtained no special advantage therefrom. Some of the French ships were, however, disabled, and had to be towed in the general action that was to follow later. Two days' fog now interrupted operations, but on Sunday, June 1st, battle was joined. The opposing fleets then consisted as follows : — British. Fbench. 3 of 100 guns. 1 of 120 guns 4 „ 98 „ 2 „ 100 „ 2 „ 80 „ 4 „ 80 „ 10 „ 74 „ 19 „ 74 „ 25 20 Tliis gives 2,0:j« British to 2,066 French guns, but as, at least, one Frenchman was considerably disabled, there was probably a slight Britisli sujK'riority. • For two opposite viowH of this partioulnr incident, hoo Adinirul .Miiliiiii's Influence oj Sea Pouter on the French Revolution, and Chapter X. of Brnsaoy, 1894. 136 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Howe, more or less, arranged his heavy ships to correspond with the heavy ships of the enemy, and having hove-to half-an-hour for breakfast, flung the old fighting instructions* to the winds and bore right down into the enemy. In the melee that ensued, some of the English failed to close, and seven of the French drifted to leeward out of action. Of the French fleet, two eighty-gun and four seventy-four's were badly mauled and eventually struck, while a seventh French ship, the Vengeur (seventy- four) was sunk."!" Four were badly disabled, but drifted to leeward out of the fight. On the British side a number of ships were badly damaged. The fleets, having drawn apart, Villaret-Joyeuse succeeded in getting a portion of his fleet into some sort of order again, and threatened the disabled English ships. Howe protected these, but did not renew action ; and the French, with the disabled ships in tow, made off. Such was the battle of " the glorious First of June." Howe has been greatly blamed since then for not having followed up his victory, but there are not wanting indica- tions that the caution of Curtis, his captain of the fleet, who pleaded with Howe not to re-engage lest the advantage gained should be lost, was justified. Villaret-Joyeuse, the captain, hastily placed in command of a large fleet, was one of the most, if not the most, capable admirals France ever had against us. How badly all the French ships had suffered we now know, but the means of telling it were absent then. The all-important question of intercepting the grain convoy was also possibly present in Howe's mind * The preservation of an orderly line throughout the battle. t The story of this ship going down firing, her crew crying Vive la Bepublique, is pure fiction. She surrendered after a very gallant fight, and sank with an English flag flying. AGITATION FOR FASTER VESSELS. 137 Be that as it may, the convoy was not intercepted. It reached France in safety, and all question of starving the Revolution into surrender was at an end. On that account the battle was reckoned as a victory by the French as well as in England.* Other naval events of this 3^ear(1794)were the capture of Corsica, by Hood ; and in the West Indies, the capture of Martinique and St. Lucia. Guadaloupe was also taken, but quickl}^ re-captured. Among the prizes of the year was the French forty-gun frigate Pomone, which proved infinitely faster than anything in the English fleet. This led to much discussion in the House of Commons. A consider- able party denied that any such superiority existed; others aUeged that even if so, British ships were better and more strongly built. Others again attributed the circumstance to the heavy premiums awarded by the French Govern- ment to constructors who produced swift sailing ships. Nothing of much moment came out of the discussion. Orders were issued that ships were to be built a little longer in future, and with the lower deck ports less near the water than heretofore, but the general tendency to over-gun ships in relation to their size still remained. For the 3'ear 1795, the personnel of the fleet was increased to 100,000, and provision was made for a very considerable increase of small craft. The Dutch declared war in January, but the year was not marked by any operations of much moment so far as they were concerned. The princi})al theatres of naval o])erations were in the Mediterranean and the Channel. This year is marked by a curious indecisivcness, which had much to do with • Seeing that, had Howo sunk the grain convoy und then l>eon totally de«troyc»d himitelf, the I^'volution would Htill hnvti oonio to nottiiiig from Htarvation, thiH French view of tlie matter is intelligible enough und also very reasonable. H 138 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. the formation of Nelson's (who was serving in the Medi- terranean as captain of the Agamemnon, sixty-four), subsequent character as an admiral. The British fleet consisted of fifteen ships of the line, under Hotham. The French had got together fifteen sail at Toulon. These made for Corsica, in March, and on the way captured one of Hotham' s ships, the Berwick. With the remainder, Hotham put to sea, and on the 12th, off Genoa, he was sighted by the French. His fleet was in con- siderable disorder, and in the view of Professor Laughton, the incapacity of the French alone averted a disaster. In the desultory operations of the next two days, two prizes were taken and two Enghsh ships crippled. Nelson, who was mainly responsible for the prizes, urged Hotham to pursue and destroy the enemy, but the admiral refused.* In July, Nelson, who was on detached service, was met and chased back to Genoa by the whole French fleet, which, however, drew ofl when Hotham's fleet was sighted. Hotham, with a greatly superior fleet, came out, and eventually found the enemy off Hyeres. Chase was ordered and one French ship overhauled and captured ; then, on the grounds that the shore was too near, Hotham hauled off. These operations (or lack of them) on the part of Hotham, are important beyond most. In the view of Professor Laughton,f Hotham's indecision was mainly responsible for the rise and grandeur of Napoleon's career. Vigorous action on his part would have written * It was in connection with this engagement that Nelson wrote, '' Had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, either the whole of the French fleet would have graced my triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." Also, commenting on Hotham's, '• We must be contented, we have done very well " — " Now, had we taken ten sail and allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done." t Nelson, by J. K. Laughton. HOTHAM'S INDECISION. 139 differently the history of the world. As Hke as not, in addition to no Napoleon, there would also have been no Nelson, to go down as the leading figure in British naval history. The survival of the French fleet rendered possible that invasion of Itah^ which "made" Napoleon, and those sea battles wliich made Nelson our most famous admiral. Villaret-Joyeuse (who had commanded the French fleet in the battle of the First of June) displayed con- siderable acti\Tity in 1795, capturing a frigate and a good many merchant ships. The weather, however, was against him, and he lost five ships of the line wrecked. He, notwithstanding, kept the sea with twelve ships of the fine, and with these met Cornwalhs with five, off Brest, on June 16th. Cornwallis retired, but was over- hauled the next day, and his tail ship the Mars, (seventy-four) badly damaged, the French, as usual, firing at the rigging. Cornwallis, in the Royal Sovereign, (100) fell back to support the Mars, but was well on the way to be defeated when he adopted the clever ruse of sending away a frigate to signal to him that the Channel fleet was coming up. The code used was one known to have been captured by the French, and they, reading the signals, hastily abandoned the pursuit and made off. Three days later, Villaret-Joyeuse did actually encounter the Channel fleet, under Hood (now Lord Bridport). He made off south, chased by Bridport, who had fourteen ships, mostly three-deckers, of which the French had but one. After a four days' chase, Bridport came up with the tail of the enemy, off Lorient. A partial action ensued, in which three French ships were captured, after whicli Bridport withdrew. He gave as his reason the nearness to the French shore — exactly the reason fliat Hotham gave for neglecting a possible 140 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. victory. In both cases, the reason was rather trivial. The practical assign it to the old age of the admirals concerned. To the imaginative, these two almost incom- prehensible failures to take advantage of circumstances gave some colour to Napoleon's theory of " his destiny." In this year, a number of East Indiamen were purchased for naval use. One of these, the Glatton, (fifty-six) was experimentally armed with sixty-eight pounder carronades on her lower deck, and forty-two pounders on the upper. On her way to join her squadron, she was attacked by six French frigates, of which one was a fifty-gun, and two were of thirty-six. She easily defeated the lot — another instance of the " big ship's " advantage in minor combats. Despite this instance of what might be done, the heavy gun idea made no headway, and the Glatton remained a unique curiosity, till many years later the Americans adopted it to our great disadvantage. Towards the end of 1795 (December) Hotham was replaced in the Mediterranean by Sir John Jervis — an admiral of unique personaHty, who left upon the Navy a mark that easily endures to this day. Somewhat hyper- bolically it has been said of him that he was the saviour of the Navy in his own day, and the main element towards its disruption in these times ! Jervis had made his mark in the War of American Independence, as captain of the Foudroyant. Discipline was his passion ; and by means of it, he had made an easy capture of a French ship. Thereafter, he became a unique blend of martinet and genius. He was the first openly to re-afhrm Sir Walter Raleigh's theory, quoted in an earlier chapter, that fortifications were useless against invasion, and that only SIR JOHN JERVIS. 141 on the water could an enemy be met successfully, combatting Pitt himself on this point. Wlien the Great War broke out, his first eraploj^ment was in the West Indies, where he achieved St. Lucia, Martinique and Guadaloupe. He went to the Mediterranean, at a time when France was numerically superior to us in the Channel, and when Spain was daily expected to declare war. The fleet to which he went was like all others, tending to a mutinous spirit, and finally he had to go out in the frigate Lively. In those days, for an admiral to take passage in anything less than a ship of the line was considered a most undignified thing. It rankled so with Jervis that he never forgot it, and years after harped upon it as a grievance. Of such character was the man who took command in the Mediterranean at the end of 1795. In 1796, the personnel of the Navy was increased to 110,000. Jervis, in the Mediterranean, did little beyond blockading Toulon, and training his fleet on his own ideas. Spain declared war in October ; but her intentions being known beforehand, Corsica was evacuated, and at the end of the year the Mediterranean was abandoned also, Jervis with his entire fleet lying under the guns of Gibraltar. Nothing else was possible. Elsewhere invasion ideas were uppermost in France, and 18,00(J troops, convoyed by seventeen ships of the line and thirteen frigates, sailed from Brest for Bantry Bay, at the end of the year. Only eight ships of the line reached there ; a gale dispersed the transports and nothing happened in the way of invasion. The only other event of the year was the capture of a Dutch squadron at the Cape of Good Hoi)e. Matters generally were, however, so bad, that attemi)ts were made to secure terms of f)eace from l^Vance. These attempts failed. 142 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. The year 1792 saw 108 ships of the Hne and 293 lesser vessels in commission. Something like sixty ships of the line were building or ordered, also 168 lesser craft. The first incident was the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (14th February, 1797). The Spaniards, having come out of Cartagena, were making for Cadiz, when sighted by Jervis. The rival fleets were : — British. Spanish. 2 of 100 guns. 1 of 130 guns. 3 „ 98 „ 6 „ 112 „ 1 „ 90 „ 2 „ 80 „ 8 „ 74 „ 18 „ 74 „ 1 „ 64 15 27 The battle is mainly of interest on account of Nelson's part in it. The Spaniards were sailing in no order whatever, the bulk of them being in one irregular mass, the remainder in another. Jervis, in Hne ahead, proposed to pass between the two divisions, and destroy the larger before the smaller could beat up to assist them. The Spaniards, however inefficient they may have been in other ways, saw through this manoeuvre, and their main body was preparing to join up astern of the British, when Nelson, in the Captain, flung himself across them and captured two ships by falling foul of them and boarding. Three other ships were captured, the rest escaped. In this battle, as in those of the year before, the same caution about following up the victory was observed, and the age of the admiral concerned has again been produced as the reason. But the thoughtful — taking the previous career of most of those concerned into consideration — may suspect the existence of some • %r / ■X \ 'A ir>-**' -^^ jyr Ti.t HjUURUYANf ONh OK NELSON b OLD SHIPS. BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT. 145 special secret orders about taking no risks, as yet un- earthed by any historian. The only really workable alternative is Napoleon's " destiny " theory already alluded to. Of the two, the secret order hypothesis is the more practical. Into the whole of these victories not properly followed up, it is also possible, though hardly probable, that the mutinous state of the personnel entered. In the battle of Cape St. Vincent, the Spaniards had an enormous four-decker, the Santissima Trinidad, of 130 guns. She was the first ship engaged by Nelson, and was hammered by most of the others closely engaged as well, but her size and power saved her from the fate of the rest of the ships that were with her. It is difficult even now to assess the exact situation of the mutineers of 1797. The organised self-restraint of the Spithead Mutiny is hard to understand, when we remember the heterogeneous origin of the crews. " Jail or Navy " was an every-day offer to prisoners. Long- shoremen, rifi-raff, pressed landsmen, thieves, murderers, smugglers, and a few degraded officers, were the raw material of which the crews were composed. They were stiffened with a proportion of professional seamen, and it is these that must have leavened the mass, and kept the jail-bird element in check. Pay was bad, ship life close akin to prison life, discipline and punishments alike brutal, and the food disgracefully bad. It was this last that brought about the mutiny. There is an old saying to the effect that you may ill-treat a sailor as you will, but if you ill-feed him, trouble may be looked for ! One or two isolated mutinies, like that of the Hermione, were due to a captain's brutality ; but mainly and mostly bad food and mutiny were closely linked. 146 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Commander Robinson* draws attention to the fact that the pursers themselves were hardly the unscrupulous rascals they were supposed to be on shore, and that the system and regulations of victualling were recognised by the seamen as at the bottom of the mischief. The same authority quotes a contemporary : — " The reason unto you I now will relate : We resolved to refuse the purser's short weight ; Our humble petition to Lord Howe we sent, That he to the Admiralty write to present Our provisions and wages that they might augment." Discontent had, of course, long been brewing, but the Admiralty seems to have been without any suspicions. They dismissed the petition as being in no way represen- tative ; later, having received reports to the contrary, ordered Lord Bridport's fleet at Spithead to proceed to sea. On April 15th, when the signal to weigh anchor was made, the crews of every ship manned the rigging and cheered. No violence was offered to any officer ; the men simply refused to work. Each ship suppUed a couple of delegates to explain matters, and after an enquiry, their demands were granted and a free pardon given. Delays, however, ensued, and on May 7th, the fleet again refused to put to sea. On this occasion, the officers were disarmed, confined to their cabins, and kept there, till a few days later a general pardon was proclaimed, when this mutiny ended. A similar mutiny at Plymouth was equally mild. Of a very different character was the mutiny at the Nore, which broke out on May 13th, under the leader- ship of the notorious Richard Parker. Parker was a man of considerable parts, said to have been an ex-officer dismissed the service with disgrace, and to have entered * The British Tar in Fact and Fiction. THE GREAT NAVAL MUTINIES. 147 as a seaman. He possessed undoubted ability and considerable ambition. He very clearly aimed at something more than the redress of grievances, since his first act was to put a rope round his own neck by instigating the crew of the Inflexible to fire into a sister ship, on board which a court-martial was being held. Subsequently, delegates were sent to the Admiralty with extravagant claims, which — as Parker may have antici- pated — were ignored. Eleven ships of Admiral Duncan's fleet (then block- ading the Texel) had joined Parker by the first of June. Duncan was left with, but two ships in face of the enemy. By showing himself much and making imaginary signals Duncan managed to conceal the facts from the Dutch : but he had considerable trouble to keep his two ships from joining the mutineers now blockading the Thames. There is reason to believe that Parker was in touch with the Revolutionists in France and the dissatisfied Irish, but the bulk of the mutineers were altogether uninfluenced by political ideas. The mutiny began to waver. The ships at other home ports were unsym- pathetic, and Parker and his friends found men cooling off. In order to keep things together it was their custom to row round the fleet* and inspect ships suspected of being " cool," — the side being piped for them. In one case, however, the boatswain's mate refused to do so, and flung his call at their heads. On coming on board, they sentenced him to thirty-six lashes for " mutinous conduct ! " On June 10th, despite this disciplinary system, two of the mutineer sliips sailed away under fire from the others, and on the 14th, Parker's own ship • The title of " djilogatos " scHsmH f|iiniiitly onounh to huvo IchI Parkor and hiH friciKln into troublo. Tho m(in got hold of tho word an " Uelicatcs,^' and int»;rprct H H r c T H X > •n > r o > X ■\i1- »* ^\ 4 NELSON'S CHASE OF VILLENEUVE. 175 force twenty-nine sail, put into Cadiz,* off which CoUing- \vood maintained a weaiy blockade of him. Early in September, news reached England that Villeneuve was at Cadiz, and Nelson left Southsea Beach on September 14th, sailing next day. Collingwood, off Cadiz, had been reinforced up to twenty-four sail. A martinet officer of the old type, it is likely enough that had Villeneuve come out, he might have done something against the worn-out blockaders. The arrival of Nelson, on September 28th, changed all this. Colhngwood's red tape restrictions were counter- manded, and the spirit of the entire fleet changed accordingly. As usual. Nelson spared no effort to keep the men fit and healthy. On the 19th October, Villeneuve came out — driven thereto by threats from Napoleon. As Napoleon had broken up his Boulogne camp on August 26th and by now had the greater part of that army in Germany, his forcing Villeneuve to sea is one of those mysteries which can never be fathomed. He acted in the teeth of naval advice, and there are few more pathetic pictures in history than the disgraced X'illeneuve putting to sea to known certain defeat, endeavouring to fire his men with hope.f On the 20th October, the Franco-Spanish fleet was at sea with thirty-three ships of the fine, the British consisting of twenty-seven. Nelson let the enemy get clear of the land, and then on October 21st, attacked them off Trafalgar. * Hia ordfTB wen* to go to Hrost ; but liaviii^ Imhmi fri^^litcnod hy sorno purely mythical riewH of u Britiah fl«»Pt of twonty-iivo sail (sont him via a noutni! Hhip), he wfiit to Ca z > I AMERICANS AND SUBMARINES. 193 complete, however, to take any part in the war ; but had the war continued, few British ships could have survived her attacks, presuming her to have been seaworthy. To resume : 1813 as regards the French was not productive of much in the way of naval operations. The French had by now built so many new ships at Toulon that they were actually superior to the blockading British squadron. But tlie}^ made no attempt to use this superiority, and nothing resulted except a few small skirmishes. A few insignificant captures were made on the British side. At the beginning of the year 1814, there were ninety-nine ships of the line in commission and 495 lesser vessels. The personnel amounted to 140,000, and the estimates £19,312,000. A number of single ship actions took place between frigates, and in most of these a considerable improvement in French efficiency was noted. Nothing, however, was done with the larger ships, and the war ultimately ended with the deportation of Napoleon to Elba. No sooner was peace declared than the fleet was greatly reduced and a large number of ships sold or broken up. Nineteen ships of the line and ninety-three other vessels were thus disposed of. The personnel for the year 1815 was reduced to 70,000 for the first three months and 90,000 for the remainder of the year. The estimates stood at £17,032,700, of which £2,000,000 was for the payment of debts. The re-a])pearance of Napoleon and the events which culminated in the battle of Waterloo did not lead to any naval operations, and with the final deportation of Napoleon to St. Helena, a further reduction of the fleet took place. The estimates sank to £10,114,345, and considerable reductions of oflicers and men were made. VIII. GENERAL MATTERS IN THE PERIOD OF THE FRENCH WARS. NAVAL uniform, as we understand it, first came into use for officers in the days of George II,* who so admired a blue and white costume of the Duchess of Bedford that he decided then and there to dress his naval officers in similar fashion. No very precise regulations were, however, followed, and for many years uniform was more or less optional or at the fancy of the captain. The first uniform consisted of a blue coat, with white cuffs and gold buttons. The waistcoat, breeches, and stockings were white. The hat was the ordinary three- cornered black hat of the period with some gold lace about it and a cockade. Other officers wore uniforms which were slight variants upon this : while as special distinguishing marks only the captain (if over three years' seniority) wore epaulettes upon both shoulders. A lieutenant wore one only. From time to time the uniform was altered slightly, mostly as regards the cuffs and lapels ; but enormous latitude was allowed, and some officers even dressed as seamen. * The British Tar in Fact and Fiction, Commander Robinson, R.N. UNIFORMS. 195 There was no general uniform whatever for the men ; though circumstances led to the bulk of the men in an}'' one ship being dressed more or less alike. This was the result of the " slop chest." This was introduced about the year 1650, and amounted to nothing more than a species of ready-made tailor ship at which men at their own expense could obtain articles of clothing. Later on it became compulsory for newly- joined men, whose clothes were defective, to purchase clothing on joining, to the tune of two months' pay. These articles being supplied to a ship wholesale, were naturally all alike, and so the men of one ship would all be more or less uniformly attired. Men of another ship might be dressed quite differently, though also more or less like each other. But any idea of uniform as " uniform," right up to Trafalgar, was entirely confined to one or two dandy captains, and they mainly only considered their own boat's crews.* Some fearful and wonderful costumes of this kind are recorded. Uniform wearing of the " slop chest " variety was, however, always regarded as the badge of the pressed man and jail bird. The " prime seaman " who joined decently clad was allowed to wear his own clothes, and these were decided by fashion. There were dudes in the Navy in those days, and contemporary art records a good deal of variety. In our own day, when exactitude is at a premium, it has erred badly enough to depict bluejackets with mr)Ustachios.f In the old days it was probably even more careless still. Consequently everything as to • Vide AnHOii'H boat's crow in \\in trip up to Canton. Sonio ca]>tainH «p > r o > X > z z < X > X < ECONOMY AND BRUTALITY. 207 took all as thev came in turn, whether officer or man. If anyone seemed too badly wounded to be worth attention they had him taken above and thrown overboard. If, at a hasty glance, taking off an arm or a leg, or botli, seemed likely to promise a cure, they gave the wounded man a tot of rum and a bit of leather to chew, and set to work ! The wounded who survived were treated with a humanity which makes the " more humanity to the wounded " of the Spithead mutineers a little difficult to understand at first sight. They were fed on delicacies ; and anything out of the ordinary on the wardroom table was always sent to them. They also got all the officers' wine. On the other hand, time in the sick bay was de- ducted from their pay,* and they were liable to all kinds of infectious diseases caught from the last patient. To satisfy the demands of the economists, lint was forbidden and sponges restricted, so that a single sponge might have to serve for a dozen wounded men. Blood- poisoning was thus indiscriminately spread, and a wounded man thus infected with the worst form of it, was mulcted in his pay for medicines required. When the Spithead mutineers demanded " more humanity to the wounded " those were the things that probably they had in mind. It lias further to be remembered that a man wounded too badly to be of any further use afloat was fiiuig asliore without pension or mercy. The surgeons were fully as humane as tiieir brethren ashore, possibly mucli more so, from the mere fact that any community of men flung together to sink or swim together comjjels common sympathies. To the men the ])urser • A form of tliiH rulf oxiHtn to-day. A riiuti woiincI(«i in action in not now mulct<«d ; l)Ut a nmn who tuinMcH down a hatchway and hniakH hia lo^; has to Buffer " hoHpital Htoppog<'8," und " pay for hiu own euro," to a certain extont. 208 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. was classically a thief, the surgeon a callous brute, the officers generally brutes of another kind. This cheap view of the situation has been perpetuated ad lib. But all the best evidence is to the effect that, as a rule, and save in exceptional cases, most of those on board a war- ship pulled together, and that all strove to make the best of things. Things to be made the best of were few, no doubt, and the grumblers and growlers are the folk who have left most records. Allowing for the different era, similar growls can be found to-day. To-day the contented man says nothing ; the discontented says a little, and outside sympathisers say a great deal. The truth probably lies with the actually discontented's version somewhat discounted. In the days of the Great War, the same fact probably obtained. Unquestionably the seaman proper loved the sea and his duty, despite all hardships and drawbacks. To this fact is to be attributed the easy victories of the Great Wars, and, relatively to corresponding shore Hfe, sea life afloat can hardly have been quite so black as most people delight to paint it.* The pay of the Navy of the period remains to be mentioned. It ran as foUows : — Captain — 6s. to 25s. a day, according to the ship, plus a variety of allowances. Midshipmen — £2 to £2 15s. 6d. a month. Surgeons — lis. to 18s. a day, with half -pay when unemployed. Assistant-Surgeons — 4s. and 5s., with half -pay when unemployed. Chaplains — about 8s. 6d. a day, with allowances. * Commander Robinson, R.N., in The British Tar in Fact and Fiction, seems to have got nearer the true picture than thoso who have painted things in darker and more lurid colours. He is practically the only writer upon the subject who has realised that many old yarns are capable of being discounted. PAY OF THE NAVY. 209 Schoolmasters — £2 to £2 8s. a month, with bounties. Boatswains — £3 to £4 16s. a month. Boatswain's Mate — £2 5s. 6d. a month. Gunner — £1 16s. to £2 2s. a month. Carpenter — £3 to £5 16s. a month, according to the ship. Quartermaster — £2 5s. 6d. a month. Sailmaker — £2 5s. 6d. a month. Saihnaker's Assistant — £1 18s. 6d. a month. Master-at-Arms — £2 Os. 6d. to £2 15s. 6d. a month. Ship's Corporals — £2 2s. 6d. a month. Cook — lis. 8d. a month and pickings. Able Seaman — lis. a month (33s. a month after 1797). Ordinary Seaman — 9s. a month (25s. 6d. a month after 1797). Landsman — 7s. 6d. a month (23s. a month after 1797). Ship's Boy — 13s. to 13s. 6d. a month. As a rule the men received their pa}^ in a lump when the ship paid off. Hence those extraordinary scenes of dissipation with which the story books have made us sufficiently familiar. Jews* and women soon fleeced the Tar, who was generally too drunk to know what he was doincr, there being dozens of willing hands ready to see to it that he was well plied with liquor. FLAGS. In the year 1800 the Union flag was altered to its present form by the incorporation of the red cross of St. Patrick. This flap^, the Union Jack, was used for flying on the bowsf)rit,t and at the main masthead by an Admiral of the Fleet. To hoist it correctly, i.e., rit^ht • It 19 only fair to the Hohn^w race to say that " Jow " was a g(»noric t«rm for a Hpocial typo of pc^rson who grow rich on advancing monoy to Bailonn and wiling' thfrn Hhoddy artiolr<8 at ridinilonsly onhancc^d prices. Quito a larjjf numlx^r <»f thr<> down, suffonid hoavily from the nhot tliat j) THE FIRST STEAM VESSEL. 219 In 1842, however, the Admiralty seriously took the question up. The Rattler, of 777 tons, and 200-horse- power, was lashed stern-to-stern with the paddle-yacht Electro of the same displacement and horse-power. Both ships were driven away from each other at full speed, and the Rattler succeeded in towing the Electro after her. After this, in 1844, a screw frigate, the Dauiitless, was ordered to be constructed ; but as late as the year 1850, steam was merely regarded as an auxiliary, and received Uttle or no consideration outside that. The use of iron instead of oak as a material for shipbuilding was first seriously considered about the year 1800. In 1821, an iron steamer was in existence, and in 1839 the Dover was ordered to be built for Government service as a steam packet. In 1841, the Mohawk was ordered by the Admiralty for service on Lake Huron, but the first iron warship for the Royal Navy proper was the Trident, of 1850 tons and 300 horse-power, built at Blackwall, by Admiralty orders, in 1843. Iron, as a material for warship construction, was looked on with considerable suspicion, both in England and in France. Experiments were conducted at Woolwich with some plates rivetted together like the sides of an iron shij), these plates being lined inside with cork and india-rubber (the first idea of a cofferdam). It was expected that this preparation, which was known as " kamptulicon," would close up after shot had passed through and prevent ingress of water. This was found to be quite correct, but the egress of shot on the other side had quite the opposite result. The plates were sometimes packed with wood and sometimes cased with it, but the general result of tlie experiments was held 220 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. prejudicial to the use of iron, which was supposed to sphnter unduly compared to wood. The importance of deciding whether warships should be built of iron or wood was accentuated by the necessity of replacing those heavy warships which had been converted to auxiliary steam vessels. All such proved to be cramped in stowage and bad sea boats. So long ago as 1822 shell-guns had been adopted. Consequently, in the experiments as regards iron, shell- fire had to be taken into consideration. In 1842, experiments were made with iron plates three-eighths of an inch thick, rivetted together to make a total thickness of six inches. It was, however, reported that at 400 yards these were not proof against eight-inch guns or heavy thirty-two pounders. These matters were taken into consideration by Captain Chads, whose official report was as follows : — " The shot going through the exposed or near side generally makes a clean smooth hole of its own size, which might be readily stopped ; and even where it strikes a rib it has much the same effect ; but on the opposite side all the mischief occurs ; the shot meets with so little resistance that it must inevitably go through the vessel, and should it strike on a rib on the opposite side the effect is terrific, tearing off the iron sheets to a very considerable extent ; and even those shot that go clean through the fracture being on the off side, the rough edges are outside the vessel, precluding the possibility almost of stopping them. " As it is most probable that steam vessels will engage directly end-on I have thought it desirable to try to-day what the effect of shot would be on this vessel* so placed, and it has been such as might be expected, each shot cutting aways the ribs, and tearing the iron plates away sufficient to sink the vessel in an instant." In 1849 an official report stated that : — " Shot of every description in passing through iron makes such large holes that the material is improper for the bottom of ships. * The seventy-three ton iron steamboat Ruby. 3 o 3 C r. r. - n M f: :?: < r ft z' c tr ( IRON SHIPS CONDEMNED. 223 " Iron and oak of equal weight offering equal resistance to shot, iron for the topsides affords better protection for the men than oak, as the splinters from it are not so destructive. " Iron offering no lodgment for shells in passing through the side, if made with single plates it will be free from the destructive effects that would occur by a shell exploding in a side of timber." Certain modifications were then introduced and tried in the j'ear 1850, and Captain Chad's report was that :— " With high charges the splinters from the shot were as numerous and as severe as before, with the addition in this, and in the former case, of the evils that other vessels are subject to, that of the splinters from the timber. " From these circumstances I am confirmed in the opinion that iron cannot be beneficially employed as a material for the construction of vessels of war." As a result of this report, seventeen iron ships which were building, the largest being the Simoon, of nearly 2,000 tons, were condemned ; and it was definitely decided that ships must be built of wood, and that iron in any form was disadvantageous. The advantages of the shell were fully understood, and at least half of the guns of the ships of the line of the period were sixty-five cwt. shell guns. Experiments had fully taught what shell-fire might be expected to accomplish. General Paixham, the inventor of the shell gun, had long ago stated that armour was the only antidote to shell, and the fact that armour up to six inches had been experimented with indicates that this also was understood. Between the appreciation of the fact and acting u])on it, there was, however, a decided gulf. In the British Navy, as in others also, the natural conservatism of the sea held its usual sway. Matters were at about this stage when, in the year 1853, the Russian Admiral Nachimoif, with a fleet con- sisting of six ships of the line, entered the luirboiir of 224 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Sinope, on the 30th November, 1853, and absolutely annihilated, by shell fire, a Turkish squadron of seven frigates which were lying there. The damage wrought by this shell-fire was terrific. " For God's sake keep out the shells ! " is generally believed to have been the cry of most naval ofiicers about that period, though there is some lack of evidence as to whether this demand was ever actually made, except by the Press. The terrible effect of shell-fire was, however, obvious enough ; but as stated above it was really well-known before the war test that so impressed the world. When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, the British personnel stood at 45,500, and the Estimates were £7,197,804. On the 28th March, war was formally declared. Naval operations in the Crimean war were almost entirely of secondary note. Some frigates bombarded Odessa, in April, and a certain amount of damage was done along the Caucasian coast. In September, the British fleet, consisting of ten ships of the line, two frigates and thirteen armed steamers, convoyed an enormous fleet of Turkish and French war- ships crammed with troops for an attack on Sebastopol. The Russian fleet lay inside that harbour and made no attempt whatever to destroy the invading flotilla, though it might easily have done considerable mischief, if not more. Instead of that, the ships were sunk at the entrance of the harbour, and the siege of Sebastopol presently commenced. On October 17th, the Alhed fleet attempted to bombard Fort Constantine, but the ships were soon defeated by the shore defences and many of them badly injured. The French, who had formed somewhat more favour- able opinions of iron armour than we had, had, after FLOATING BATTERIES IN ACTION. 225 Sinope, already commenced the construction of five floating batteries which were to carry armour. They were wooden ships of 1,400 tons disjolacement, with four- inch armour over their hulls. They carried eighteen fifty-pounder guns and a crew of 320. As originally designed they were intended to sail, although the}^ were fitted with slight auxiliary steam power. When com- pleted they were found unable to sail, so pole masts were fitted to them. Artificial ventilation was also supplied and their funnels were made telescopic. The designs of these vessels were sent to the British Admiralty, who, after considerable delay, built four copies, the Glutton, Meteor, Thunder, and Trusty. These, however, were not completed in time to take any part in the war. So soon as the French armoured batteries were read}'- they were sent out to the Crimea, where they joined a large fleet which had been prepared to attack Kinburn, wiiich was bombarded in October, 1855. In a very short while the forts were totally destroyed, and with very small loss to the armoured batteries. The effect created by this was so great that four more armoured batteries were ordered in England, the Etna, Erebus, Terror, and Thunderbolt. In the Baltic, to which a British fleet, under Admiral Napier, had been sent, the Russians kept behind the fortifications at Kronstadt, and nothing was accomplished beyond the bombardment of Sveaborg, and the destruction of tlie town and dockyard. Some small bombardments also took j)lace in the White Sea and oil the Siberian coast, where Petroi)avlovsk was attacked and the attack was defeated, and such other actions as took place were generally unsuccessful. It 226 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. had become abundantly clear that against fortifications wooden ships had very small chance of success. Incidental items of naval interest are that in this particular war Captain Cowper Coles mounted a sixty- eight-pounder gun upon a raft named the Lady Nancy. This attracted so much attention from the small target, light draft and steady platform, that Coles was sent home to develop his ideas. In this war, also, mines appeared, the Russians dropping a good many off Kronstadt. Those used by the Russians were filled Tvith seventy pounds of powder, and exploded on contact by the famihar means of a glass tube of sulphuric acid being broken and the acid falling into chlorate of potash. No material damage was done to ships by this means, but a considerable number of those who had picked them up and investigated them were injured. The ingenuity and new means of offence were, however, by no means confined to the Russians, for a Mr. Macintosh, after the failure of the first bombardment of Sebastopol, evolved a system of attacking fortifications with a long hose supported by floats, through which naptha was to be pumped. Being set alight with some potassium, the fort attacked would be immediately smoked out. Experiments at Portsmouth having proved that this system was " simple, certain and cheap," Mr. Macintosh proceeded to the Crimea with his invention at his own expense. He was eventually given £1000 towards his expenses, but no attempt was made to employ the system. It is by no means clear how the necessary potassium was to be got into the water at the requisite spot. The same war also produced the fire-shell of the British Captain Norton. This appears to have been a CRIMEAN WAR RESULTS. 227 resurrection of the old idea of Greek fire. It could be used from a rifle or from a shell-gun, and like the previous invention " rendered war impossible," and again like the previous invention does not appear to have ever materialised into practice. On the practical side more results were achieved. The Lancaster gun which fired an oval shot was actually used with success in the war. From it the rifled gun presently emerged. There also emerged the then amateur invention of one Warry, who invented a new tyY)e of gun capable of firing sixteen to eighteen rounds per minute. The idea of wire woimd guns was also apparent, and Mr. Armstrong* (as he then was), suggested the idea of percussion shell. It is interesting to note that these last were received with extreme dissatisfaction in the Navy on the grounds that they might go off at the "WTong time. Of the Crimean War, however, it may be said that though it was not noted for naval actions, it was probably the most important war in its indirect results on the Navy that ever took place. It brought in the armoured ship, the rifled gun, and what was ultimately to develop into the torpedo. It saw the crude birth of " blockade mines " and rapid fire guns ; everyone of them inventions that, judging by the slow ]>rogress of steam, would — failing war to necessitate swift develo])ment — have been still in the exjicrimental stage even to-day. In our own times war having ever been a nearer possibility than in the 1850 era, ])eace ])rogress has always been more rapid, and no invention of practical value ever failed to secure full tests. Yet there were not wanting those who |)roj)heHied that the Dicadncjugiits • The F.nnl Arriwtrong, founder of ElNM'iuk, otu. 228 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. of to-day merely reproduced in another form the 120 screw ships of the Hne of sixty years ago ; and that the next great naval war might well bring about changes every whit as drastic as any that the Crimean War caused to come into being. The torpedo had become fully as great a menace to the modern ship of the Hne as the shell gun was to the big ship of 1853. The submarine was an infinitely greater menace to it than the crude Russian mines of the Crimean War ever were. Endless potentialities resided in aircraft. ^Vherefrom it was well argued that out of the next great naval war (despite whatever lesser wars in between may have taught), the battleship was likely to be profoundly modified. That it will be swept out of existence was improbable. The whole lesson of history is that the " capital ship " will ever adjust itself to the needs of the hour. It has always been the essential rallying point of lesser craft — the mobile base to meet the mobile base of the enemy. Meanwhile, it is beyond question that at the time of the Crimean War the British Navy from one cause and another was little better than a paper force. It is plain enough that little remained of the fleet of the Nelson era. The fleet " worried through," but very clearly it had reached the end of its tether. The reason why will be found in the next chapter. The above paragraphs were originally written in 1912. Since then much has happened. In this edition they have only been revised to the extent of substituting the past for the present tense. Nothing has occurred to alter what then was the obvious. X. THE COMING OF THE IRONCLAD. THE period immediately following the Crimean War saw a gradual change in the relations between England and France. In 1858 a panic similar to those with which later years have familiarised us began to arise, and in December, 1858, and January, 1859, a committee sat under the Administration of Lord Derby " to consider the very serious increase which had taken place of late years in the Navy Estimates, while it represented that the naval force of the country was far inferior to what it ought to be with reference to that of other Powers, and especially France, and that increased efforts and increased expenditure were imperatively called for to place it on a proper footing." This committee found that whereas in 1850 there were eighty-six British ships of the line to forty-five French ones, this ratio had altogether ceased to exist ; and that both Powers had now twenty-nine screw ships of the line. Any other large ships had ceased to count. In 1859 there also appeared the famous " Leipsic Article," commenting on the decline of the British Fleet and the rise of the French. Certain extracts from this, though dealing with the past for the most part, arc here given en bloc, for they indicate very clearly the circum- utances in which, vndcr pre-ssure frcrm (Herman ivfluenceSy the modern Jiritish Navy c/irne to he founded. It is, to say 230 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. the least of it, questionable whether but for this Teutonic agitation public opinion in England would ever have been aroused from its lethargy in time. This epoch-making article appeared in the Conversations Lexicon, of Leipsic. After some prelude the article referred to the appear- ance of the French Fleet in the Crimean War : — " The late war in the East (Crimean) first opened the eyes of Englishmen to the true position of affairs, and it was not without some sensation of alarm that they gazed at this vision of the unveiled reality. Here and there, indeed, an allusion, having some foundation in fact, had been heard, during the Presidency of Louis Napoleon, and had drawn attention to the menaced possibility of an invasion of the British Isles ; but such notions were soon over- whelmed by the derision with which they were jeeringly greeted by the national pride. " Those expressions of contempt were, however, not doomed to be silenced in their turn by the sudden apparition in the autumn of 1854 of thirty-eight French ships of the line and sixty-six frigates and corvettes, fully manned and ready for immediate action. During the three preceding years Louis Napoleon had built twenty-four line-of -battle ships, and in the course of the j'^ear 1854 alone thirteen men-of-war were launched, nine of which were ships of the line. In addition to these, the keels of fifty-two more, comprising three ships of the line and six frigates, were immediately laid down. The English had thus the mortification to be obliged not only to cede to their allies the principal position in the camp, but also reluctantly to acknowledge their equality on that element whereon they had hoped to reign supreme. . . . <' •*• i'- »!e -I- •.- 1- *{' " If we carried our investigation no further than this we should naturally conclude that, with such a numerical superiority, sufficient in itself to form a very respectable armament for a second- rate power, England has very little to fear from the marine of France. We must not forget, however, that quality as well as numbers must be considered in estimating the strength of a Fleet. When we take this element into our calculations, we shall find the balance very soon turned in favour of France. We perceive, then, GERMANS AGITATE FOR BRITISH EFFICIENCY. 231 that while the English list comprises every individual sail the country possesses, whether tit for commission or altogether antiquated and past service (and some, like the Victory, built towards the close of the last or the beginning of this century), the French Navy, as we have observed, scarcely contains a single ship built prior to the year 1840 ; so that nearly all are less than twenty years old. This is a fact of the greatest importance, and indicates an immense preponderance in favour of France. Though many of England's oldest craft figure in the " Navy List " as seaworthy and fit for active service, we have no less an authority than that of Sir Charles Napier (in his Letter to the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1849) that some are mere lumber, and many others cannot be reckoned upon to add any appreciable strength to a Fleet in case of need. Independently, too, of the introduction of the screw, such fundamental changes have been introduced, within the last fifty years, both into the principles of naval architecture and of gunnery, that a modern 120-gun ship, built with due regard to recent improvements, and carrying guns of the calibre now in ordinary use, would in a very short space of time put ten ships like the Victory hers de combat, with, at the same time, little chance of injury to herself. " It is time, however, to turn our attention to another important part of the material, namely, artillery. Under this head we purpose designating, not only to the number of guns and their calibre, but also the mode in which they are served, for in actual warfare this, of course, is a primary consideration. If we take the received history of naval warfare for the basis of our investigation, we cannot fail to remark one notable circumstance in favour of the English, which can only be ascribed to their superiority in the use of this arm. That circumstance is the important and uniform advantage they have had in the fewer number of casualties they have sustained as compared with other nations with whom they may have chanced to have been engaged. To prove that our assertions are not made at random, we subjoin some statistics in support of this position. In April, 1798, then, the English ship Mars took the French UHercule ; the former had ninety killed and wounded, the latter 290. In the preceding F'ebruary there had been an engagement l)ctween the English Sybil and French La Forte, in whicli the killed and wounded of the former ininil>ered twenty-one, and those of the latter 143. In March, 1800, the English ship London took the French Marrngo ; 232 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. the English with a loss of thirty-two, the latter of 145 men. On the 4th November, 1805, two English ships of the line engaged four French vessels, and the respective losses were, again, 135 and 730, On the 14th February, 1797, in an action between the Fleets of England and Spain, the English lost 300 and the Spaniards 800. On the 11th of October of the same year, in the engagement off Camperdown between the English and Dutch, the respective losses were 825 and 1,160. On the 5th July, 1808, the English frigate Seahorse took the Turkish frigate Badere Zuffer, and of the Turks there fell 370 against fifteen English. Finally, in the same year the Russian ship of the line Wsewolod was taken by two English ships of the line, with a loss to the latter of 303, and to the former of only sixty- two. " This contrast, so favourable to England, has been constantly maintained, and can only be attributable to her superior artillery. Her seamen not only aimed with greater precision, and fired more steadily than those of the French and of other nations, but they had the reputation of loading with far greater rapidity. It was remarked, in 1805, that the English could fire a round with ball every minute, whereas it took the French gunners three minutes to perform the same operation. Then, again, the English tactics were superior. It was the universal practice of the French to seek to dismast an adversary ; they consequently aimed high, while the English invariably concentrated their fire upon the hulls of their adver- saries ; and clearly the broadside of a vessel presents a much better mark to aim at than the mere masts and rigging. British guns were also usually of higher calibre, for though they bore the same denomination, they were in reality much heavier. Thus, the English Lavinia, though nominally a frigate of forty guns, actually carried fifty ; and thirty-six and 38-gun frigates nearly always carried forty-four and forty-six. The English ship Belleisle, at Trafalgar, though said to be a seventy-four, carried ninety pieces of ordnance, while the Spanish ship she engaged, though called eighty -four had, in fact, only seventy-eight guns. From this disparity in the number and calibre of their guns, as well as in the mode in which they were served, it resulted that France and her allies lost eighty-five ships of the line and 180 frigates, while her antagonist only suffered to the extent of thirteen ships of the line and eighty-three frigates. WHY FRANCE WAS BEATEN. 233 " It was not until the close of the war that France became fully aware to what an extent her inferiority in the above respects had contributed to her reverses ; otherwise the unfortunate Admiral Villeneuve would not invariably have ascribed his mishaps to the inexperience of his officers and men, and to the incomplete and inferior equipment of his vessels. The truth was, that not only was the artillery, as we have shown, inferior, but the whole system in vogue at that period on board French ships was antiquated, having continued without reform or improvement for two hundred years ; it was deficient, too, in enforcing subordination, that most essential condition of the power and efficiency of a ship of war." The French inscription maritime is then dealt with at great length, after which occur the following passages, even more interesting perhaps to-day than when they were written : — " In considering, then, what perfect seamanship really is, we must first adopt a correct standard by which to estimate it. The English sailor has been so long assumed as the perfect type of the genus seaman, that the world has nearly acquiesced in that view, and even we in Germany have been accustomed to rank our crews below the English, though it is an unfair estimate. There are no better sailors in the world than the Cerman seamen, and there is no foreign nation that would assert the contrary * On the other hand, it has also been the fashion universally to abuse French seamanship, and to speak of her sailors as below criticism. None proclaimed this opinion more loudly than the English ; but in doing so they recurred to the men they ha^^l beaten under the Revolution and Bona])arte. The Crimean War, however, opened their eyes, and taii^lil Ihein that the French sailors of to-day wt-re no longer the nu-n of iSOd, and that, to say the least, they are in no resiHJCt inferior to the British. England had for years been compelled to keep up a large efTectivo force always ready for action, in consequence of the nature of her dependenci(;H, which, as they consist of remote colonies across distant seas, required such a provision for their protection. This gave her an immeasurable superiority in days fiotn- Ijy. Hut sincc^ France in 1840 discovered her deiiciency, it has been su[)plied by the maintenance of a j)crrnanent • Thi? it«lir-M iin* iriiiu'. — F.T.J. N 234 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. experimental Fleet, which, under the command of such Admirals as Lalande de Joinville, Ducas, Hamelin, and Bruat, has been the nursery of the present most effective body of officers and men ; which, since 1853, have not ceased to humble the boasted superiority of England, besides causing her many anxious misgivings. Anyone who had the opportunity of viewing the two Fleets together in the Black Sea or the Baltic, and was in a position to draw a comparison, could not fail to be convinced that everj'^thing connected with manoeuvring, evolutions, and gunnery was, beyond comparison, more smartly, quickly, and exactly executed by the French than by the English, and must have observed the brilliant prestige which had so long surrounded England's tars pale sensibly beside the rising glories of her rival.''* That this was not merely captious criticism is borne out by the following extracts from " The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B.": — " We have great reason to be afraid of France, because she possesses a large disposable army, and our arsenals are comparatively undefended — London entirely so — and we have no sufficient naval force at home. Of ships (with the exception of steamers) we have enough ; but what is the use of them without men ? They are only barracks, and are of no more use for defence than if we were to build batteries all over the country, without soldiers to put into them. ^ H: H: H: " Such were our inadequate resources for defence, had the Russians been able to get out of the Baltic, and make an attempt on our unprotected shores. H: ^ H: 4: " The great difficulty consisted in the manning of such a fleet. Impressment was no longer to be thought of ; but, strange to say, the Bill which had passed through Parliament, empowering, in case of war, the grant of an ample bounty to seamen, was not acted upon, and consequently most of the ships were very inefficiently manned — some of them chiefly with the landsmen of the lowest class. Nothing had been done towards the training of the men, and no provision was * My italics. In the Germany of to-day (May, 1915), exactly the same style of argument is being advanced. BRITISH DEFECTS IN CRIMEAN WAR. 235 even made to clothe them in a manner required by the climate to which they were about to be sent. " Our Ambassador likewise warned the British Government that the Navy of Russia could not with safety be under-estimated, and, moreover, the Russian gunners were all well trained, while those of the British Squadron were most deficient in this respect. The object of the Russians, in wishing to get their best ships to Sveaborg, was the impression that Cronstadt would be first attacked ; in which case, calculating on the strength of the forts to repel an assault, they would have fresh ships whereivith to assail our disabled and weakened fleet, should they be obliged to retreat* Sir Hamilton Seymour warned our Government of the great number of gunboats the Russians could bring out, eighty of which were to be manned by Finns, Mty men to each boat. * * * * " Such," says the author of the biography, " were the reasons, no doubt powerful enough, for hurr3ung off, even without pilots, the ill-appointed and under-manned squadron placed under Sir Charles Napier's command, at this inclement season of the year, when the jXTiodical gales of the vernal equinox might be daily expected. The squadron, on leaving Spithead, consisted of four sail-of-the-line, four blockships, four frigates, and four steamers (not a single gunboat) ; and with this force, hastily got together, for the most part manned with the refuse of London and other towns, destitute of even clothing, their best seamen consisting of dockyard riggers and a few coastguard men — and without the latter, it has been alleged, the squadron could not have put to sea — with this inoflicient force did Sir Charles Napier leave our shores, to offer battle to the Russian Fleet, consist- ing of seven-and-twenty well-trained and well-appointed ships of the line, eight or ten frigates, seven corvettes and brigs, and nine steamers, besides small craft and flotillas of gunl)oats, supposed in the aggregate to number one hundred and eighty. * * * * " It is, probably, an unprecedented event in the annals of war, or, at least, in those of our history, that a fleet should bo sent out, on a most momentous service so ill-maiuied that the (.'ommander was directed to 0 rounds the gun showed symptoms of deterioration. In conclusion, it was said that the destructive effects occasioned by this new ordnance exceeded anything that had been previously witnessed, and that in all probability it was destined to effect a complete revolution in warfare." Armstrong's own statement was : — " Schemers whose invention merely figure upon paper, have little idea of the difficulties that are encountered by those who carry inventions into practice. For my part, I had my full share of such difficulties, and it took me nearly three years of continual application to surmount them Early last year a committee was appointed to investigate the whole subject of rifled cannon. They consisted of officers of great experience in gunnery ; and after having given much time for a period of five months to the guns, projectiles, and fuses which I submitted to them, they returned a unanimous verdict in favour of my system. With respect to the precision and range which have been attained with these guns, I may observe that at a distance of 600 yards an object no larger than the muzzle of an enemy's gun may be struck at almost every shot. At 3,000 yards a target of 9ft. square, which at that distance looks like a mere speck, has on a calm day been struck five times in ten shots. A ship would afford a target large enough to be hit at much longer distances, and shells may Imj thrown into a town or fortress at a range of more than five miles. But to do justice to the weapon when used at long distances, it will bo necessary that gunners should undergo a more scientific training than at present ; and I believe that both the naval and military departments of Government will take the noccHHary measures to afford proper instruction, both to officers and men. It is an interesting question to consider what would be the effect of the general introduction of these weapons u|)on the various conditions of warfare. In the case of ships opposcid to ships in the o\ien sea, it appears to me that they would sim[)ly destroy each other, if both were made of timber. The day has gone by for putting men 242 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. in armour. Fortunately, however, no nation can play at that game like England ; for we have boundless resources, both in the production and application of iron, which must be the material for the armour. In the case of a battery against a ship, the advantage would be greatly in favour of the battery, because it would have a steady platform for its guns, and would be made of a less vulnerable material, supposing the ship to be made of timber. But, on the other hand, in bombard- ing fortresses, arsenals, or dockyards, when the object to be struck is very extended, ships would be enabled to operate from a great distance, where they could bid defiance to land defences." After some observations, the author continued : — " Notwithstanding the high estimation in which Sir William Armstrong's guns are held, and deservedly so from their great intrinsic merit, they have certainly in Mr. Warry's great invention a rival that may eventually be found to eclipse them. " The Armstrong gun cannot be fired oftener than three times a minute, and the bore, it is said, has to be constantly sluiced with water ; whereas Warry's admits, as has been afi&rmed, of being discharged 16 or 18 times a minute, or 1,000 an hour, without difficulty, though of course not without heating, as some reporters have misrepresented. Guns of the former description are expensive, and must be made expressly by means of special machinery. Mr. Warry, on the other hand, asserts that he can convert every existing gun into a breech-loader upon his principle, and at a moderate outlay : an advantage of the greatest moment at the present time, " This gun is fired by means of a lock. On one side of the breech there is a lever, so contrived that by one motion of the hand it is made to cock the hammer and to open the chamber. A second movement closes the charger again, pierces or cuts the cartridge, places a cap on the nipple, and fires the gun almost simultaneously. " With a due supply of ammunition, therefore, a destructive torrent of shot and shell may be maintained ad libitum. It is not difficult to form a conception of the havoc even one such gun would occasion if brought to bear upon the head of an advancing column. " The inventor has, besides, made application for a patent for a new coating he has devised for all kinds of projectiles, in lieu of any leaden or metallic covering, which has been found very objection- ELEMENTARY QUICKFIRERS. 243 able in actual practice. The new coating, it is said, reduces the fouling ' to a minimum. "■ But we cannot turn even from this very brief consideration of the improvements in modern cannon without offering a few observations relative to an invention of a different kind, but one that may possibly prove of greater moment than either of the guns that have been described. This is the composition known as Norton's liquid fire.' In the terrific character of its effect it rivals all that has been recorded of the old Greek fire ; at the same time it is perfectly manageable, and may be projected from an Enfield rifle, from a field-piece, or from heavier ordnance. The composition Captain Norton uses consists of a chemical combination of sulphur, carbon, and phosphorus. He merely encloses this in a metal or even in a wooden shell, and its effect upon striking the side or sails of a ship, a wooden building, or indeed any object at all combustible, is to cause its instant ignition. This ' liquid fire ' has apparently the property of penetrating or of saturating any substance against which it may be projected, and such is its affinity for oxygen that it even decomposes water and combines with its com{)onent oxygen. Water, consequently, has no power to quench it, and if burning canvas, set on fire in this way, be trodden under foot and apparently extinguished it soon bursts again into flames." It is not uninteresting to reflect that although Norton's hquid fire came to nothing, yet the present century has already seen three variations on the idea. The first instance is the type of big shell used by the Japanese at Tsushima. Little is known as to their exact composition, but they were undoubtedly extremely inflammable. (Ja})tain SemenofE in " The Battle of Tsushima " thus describes them : — " The Japanese had apparently succeeded in realising what the Americans had endeavoured to attain in inventing their ' V'eHUviiim.' " In addition to this there was the iiinisual high teinperaturo and lifjuifi (lame of the expJOHion, which seemed to spread over everj^hing. I actually watched a steel plate catch fire from a burst. Of course, the steel ill' I not limn, Kut the paint on it did. Such 244 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. almost non-combustible materials as hammocks, and rows of boxes, drenched with water, flared up in a moment. At times it was impossible to see anything with glasses, owing to everything being so distorted with the quivering, heated air. " According to thoroughly trustworthy reports, the Japanese in the battle of Tsushima were the first to employ a new kind of explosive in their shells, the secret of which they bought during the war from the inventor, a colonel in one of the South American Republics. It was said that these shells could only be used in guns of large calibre in the armoured squadrons, and that is how those of our ships engaged with Admiral Kataoka's squadron did not suffer the same amount of damage, or have so many fires, as the ships engaged with the battleships and armoured cruisers." The second instance is the Krupp fire shell designed for use against dirigible balloons. The third is the " Thermite shell," which, early in 1912, was proposed for adoption in France. It was calculated that one 12-inch A.p. shell exploding would melt half a ton of steel. The following passage from Hans Busk is of interest : — " In 1855 Mr. Longridge, C.E., proposed to construct cannon of tubes covered with wire wound round them so tightly as almost entirely to relieve the inside from strain. On the 25th of June of the same year Mr. Mallet read a paper advocating the construction of cannon of successive layers of cylinders, so put together that all should be equally strained when the gun is fired ; thus the inside would not be subject to fracture, while the outside would be useless as in a cast mass. His method of effecting this was, as is well known, to have each cylinder slightly too small to go over the one under it till expanded by heat, so that when cool it compresses the interior and is slightly strained itself. Thirty-six-inch mortars have been made on the principle, and if they have failed with 401bs. of powder, cast-iron must have failed still less. In 1856 Professor Daniel Treadwell, Vice-President of the American Academy, read a paper to JOHN SCOTT KISSKI.I.. EARLY WIRE-GUNS. 247 that body recommending the same principle of construction ; and Captain Blakely has himself for some years been endeavouring to urge its adoption by argument and direct experiments. In December, 1857, some trials were made with guns constructed by that officer ; and the result of a comparative trial of a 9-pounder with a cast-iron service gun of similar size and weight gave results proving the soundness of his views ; for Captain Blakely 's gun bore about double the amount of firing the service gun did, and being then uninjured, was loaded to the muzzle, and was thus fired 158 times before it burst." From these contemporar}' extracts it will be seen that by 1859 the germ of nearly every modern idea in connection with gunnery existed, and has since developed somewhat on " trial and error " lines for at any rate the greater part of the intervening period. The contemporary situation as regards defence is also best summed up from the authority from whom the above gunnery extracts are taken : — " The result of numerous trials appeared to convince those best competent to judge of such matters that iron plates, or, rather, slabs, eleven centimetres (about 4iins.) in thickness, would offer adequate protection to a ship from the effects of hollow shot. Acting upon this impression, four fioating batteries, resembling in most respects those constructed here, were ordered to be built, and notwithstanding the enormous difficulties connected with such an undertaking, these four vessels were turned out, complete in all respects, in ten months — an astonishing instance of the resources of French dockyards and the ability of French engineers. " From this event may be dated the commencement of a new epoch in naval tactics. The next problem was to determine whether a form better adapted for j)rogrcssion than that of thes(! batteries could not Ix; given to vessels sheathed in a similar manner. Hence originated the iron-plated frigates (frcgaies blirulees). The intention of their designer is, that they should have a sjx'ed and an armament at lea«t equal to that of the swiftest existing frigates, but their colossal weight, and consequently their great draught of water, must 248 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. almost preclude the fulfilment of this expectation. Should they prove successful, a number of larger ships of the same kind are to be commenced forthwith. It is difficult to understand how, in the case of these ships being found to answer, it will be possible for us to avert a real " reconstruction " of our Navy, or, how any other nation, aiming to rank as a maritime Power, can avoid the adoption of a similar course. In fact, the necessity has been appreciated, and we are already at work. But a good deal has to be accomplished ere the use of such vessels become universal. If these iron-plated vessels do resist shell, it seems certain, as has been already stated, that solid shot will either perforate at short ranges any thickness of metal that has yet been tried, or will so indent the sheathing at longer distances that the internal lining and rib-work of oak will be riven, shattered, loosened, or crushed to an extent that would almost as speedily put the ship hors de combat as if she had but been built after the old fashion, much, as in days gone by, upon the introduction of gun- powder into warfare, the use of armour was found rather to aggravate, than to ward off, the injuries infiicted by gunshot. It was the result of the operations against Kinburn that more particularly gave rise to the high opinion at present entertained in favour of these vaisseaux blindees. Unwieldy and cumbersome as they appeared, they were certainly a great improvement upon the floating batteries used by the French and Spanish against Gibraltar in 1782. Those were merely enormous hulks, destitute of masts, sails, or rigging ; their sides were composed of solid carpentry, 6ft. 6ins. in thickness, and they carried from nine to twenty-four guns. When in action, streams of water were made to flow constantly over their decks and sides, but notwithstanding every precaution, such an overwhelming storm of shell and red-hot shot was poured upon them by the English garrison that they were all speedily burnt. Not so the Devastation, La Lave, and La Tonnante before the Russian fortress above mentioned, on the memorable 14th October, 1855. At 9 p.m. they opened fire, and in an hour and twenty-five minutes the enemy was silenced, nearly all the gunners being killed, their pieces dismounted, and all the ramparts themselves being for the most part demolished. To accomplish this destruction in so short a space of time, the three batteries, each carrying eighteen fifty pounders (supported, of course, by the fire of the English vessels), advanced in very shallow water THE FIRST BRITISH IRONCLADS. 249 A\ithin 800 yards of the walls, receiving themselves very little damage in comparison with the immense havoc thej^ occasioned." From the above extract it is clear that the " im- penetrable coat of mail " idea, popularly supposed to have led to the introduction of ironclads, never existed to any appreciable extent. Indeed, when the Com- mittee, alluded to on an earher page, concluded its labours in 1859, it merelv recommended the conversion of nineteen more saihng ships into steamers. It was Sir John Pakington who decided to lay down a couple of " armoured steam frigates," and to build them of iron instead of wood. The French frigates hlindees were wooden ships, armoured. John Scott Russell is said to have been Pakington's chief adviser in this matter of building iron armoured ships and disregarding all the laborious conclusions of Captain Chads against iron hulls. As regards the general recommendations of the committee already referred to, these had resulted in 1861 in there being no less than sixty-seven wooden unarmoured ships of the line building or converting into " screw ships." The two iron-plated steam frigates were decided on without any po[)ular enthusiasm concerning them. Now and again retired Admirals ])aid surre])titious visits to the French " hlindees " and returned with alarming reports ; but, with tlie possible exception of flying machines, no epoch-making thing ever came in (|uite so cpiiclly as tlie ironclad. Tlu; wildest dreamer saw nothing in it beyond a variation on existing types. The ironclad was sometliing wliicli, by carrying a great deal of weight, could keep out sliell ; beyond that no one 250 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. seems to have had any particular ideals whatever, except perhaps Sir Edward Reed. Early in 1859 designs for a type of ship to " answer " the French frigates hlindees were called for, and fourteen private firms submitted designs. All, however, were discarded. Details of the designs submitted were as follows :* — Dis- Wt. of wt. of LH.P. Designer. Length. Breadth pl'm't. Speed. Armour Hull of Tons. Knots. Displ. Displ. Eng. Laird 400.0 60.0 9779 13| .11 .51 3250 Thames Co. . . 430.0 60.0 11180 .10 .58 4000 Mare 380.0 57.0 7341 .13 .46 3000 Scott Russell . 385.0 58.0 7256 .18 .38 3000 Napier 365.0 56.0 8000 13^ 4120 Westwood & Baillie 360.0 55.0 7600 131 .16 .36 4000 Samuda 382.0 55.0 8084 13i .16 .57 2500 Palmer 340.0 58.0 7690 131 4500 Abethell 336.0 57.0 7668 2500 Henwood .... 372.0 52.0 6507 .18 .40 2500 Peake 354.9 56.0 7000 .14 .46 3000 Chatfield 343.6 .59.6 7791 .14 Lang 400.0 55.0 8511 15 .14 .53 2500 Cradock 360.0 57.6 7724 .20 .42 2500 Admiralty Office 380.0 58.0 8625 14 The Abethell and Peake designs were wooden hulled, all the others iron ships. The two ships. Warrior and Black Prince, as actually laid down, differed from the Admiralty design in certain details. The beam was increased slightly, and the displacement rose from 8625 to 9210. The Warrior was laid down on the 25th May, 1859, at the Thames Ironworks, Blackwall ; the Black Prince a little later at Glasgow. In substances they were ordinary " wooden frigates," built of iron instead of wood, with armour to protect * From Naval Development of the Century, by Sir N. Barnaby, K.C.B. > S3 ■J. r. \ FRENCH AND BRITISH IDEALS. 253 most (but not all) of the guns. This was done by a patch of armour amidsliips, covering about 60% of the side. It was deemed advisable to protect the engines ; other- wise as hke as not the armour would have been over the battery only. Waterline protection was entirely unrealised, the steering gear of the Warrior being at the mercy of the first lucky shot. This, as Sir N. Bamaby has pointed out, was due to accepting existing conditions : — " The tiller was necessarily above the water-line and was outside of the cover of the armour. The wooden line-of-battle ships, with which the designers of these first iron-cased ships were familiar, had required no special water-line protection, and when wheel ropes or tiller were shot away the ship did not cease to be able to fight. The Jine-of-battle ships, which they knew so well, had a lower, or gun deck about four feet above the water-line, and an orlop deck about three feet below the water-line. Between these two decks the ship's sides were stouter than in any other part, and shot did not easily perforate them. When a shot did enter there, between wind and water, as it was called, ample provision was made to prevent the serious admission of water. " In this between-deck space the sides of the ship were kept free from all erections or obstructions. The ' wing passages ' on the orlop were clear, from end to end of the ship, and they were patrolled by the carpenter's crew, who were provided with shot plugs of wood and oakum and sail cloth with which to close any shot holes. As against disabled steering gear there were spare tillers and tiller ropes, and only injury to the rudder head itself was serious." It is easy to-day to indicate where the old-time designers erred ; and later on they realised and rojiairod their error with comni('ndal)l(^ pronif)litu(le. The really intcrostin^f point is tlial liritish designers evolved the ideal tliin^j for the day, while the Fren(;h evolvcul the idea of thc^ ideal thing for tlic to-morrow. Unhappily for the latter, their evolution was unable to survive its o 254 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. birth till the day of its utility. La Gloire, the first French ironclad, was broken up more years ago than any can remember ; the Warrior and the Black Prince, though long ago reduced to hulk service,* still float as sound as when in 1861 the Warrior first took the water. To the French belongs the honour of reaUsing what armour protection might mean ; but to England goes the credit of reducing the idea to practical application. The Warrior was designed by Messrs. Scott Russell and Isaac Watts, the Chief CJonstructor. Her length between perpendiculars was 380 feet. She carried originally a uniform armament of forty-eight 68-pounders smooth bores, weighing 95cwt. each. These fired sheU and cast-iron spherical shot. The guns were carried as follows : — Main deck, thirty-eight, of which twelve were not protected by armour. On the upper-deck, ten, also unprotected. This armament was subsequently changed to two 110-po under rifled Armstrongs on pivot mountings, and four 40-pounders on the upper-deck ; while the main- deck battery was reduced to thirty -four guns. At a later date it was again altered to four 8-inch 9-ton M.L.R., and twenty-eight 7 -inch 6J-ton M.L.R;. In addition to her armour the Warrior was divided into 92 water-tight compartments, fore and aft. She had a double bottom amidships, considerably sub- divided (fifty-seven of the compartments), but no double bottom in the modern sense. The Warrior^ s engines, by Penn, were horizontal single expansion. On trial they developed 5,267 I.H.P., and the then excellent speed of 14.079 knots. f Her * The Warrior now forms part of the Vernon Establishment at Portsmouth. t Our Ironclad Ships, by (Sir) E. J. Reed. Sir N. Barnaby in Naval Development of the Century gives 5,470 = 14.36 knots. W^y^'t^^' m • « > •' ■»■ »i » w' ■« « • » . , , , FRENCH LA GLOIRE feSfc: .■■■ WARRIOR & BLACK PRINCE ~ : . - •':: / M HECTOR ^ )^ ^ ^/////J7/JU!//J/yy///f y/^imMl'.k^m i^MM!>M^^-.jf^yJ!^^^ vauttMyMXM/yMfmy/yyyy/'y/'^^^^^ ACHILLES MINOTAUR r V NORTHUMBERLAND to -n j» o • tOO'Ifl SCAIF I AKI.Y I.UIIISII UKiiAl'sini IKi'M I \lis CONVERTED IRONCLADS. 257 six hours' sea speed trial resulted in a mean 5,092 H.P. and 13.936 knots. Save for her unprotected steering gear, the Warrior may be described as a brilliant success for her era. She was launched on December 29th, 1860, and completed in tlue following year. The Black Prince was completed in 1862. The Warrior and Black Prince^ under a system which long endured in the British Navy, were followed by a certain number of diminutives, of which the first were the Defence and Resistance, of 6,150 tons, with speeds of just under 12 knots, and an armament of 16 guns. The armour was the same, but the battery protection was extended fore and aft, so that all guns were inside it. These ships were completed in 1862. Three more Rhi])s were projected, of which the Hector and Valiant, completed in 1864 and 1865, were of })recisely the same tyi)e as the Resistance, but displaced 6,710 tons, witli about a knot more speed, and carried a couple of extra guns. A third ship, originally intended to have been of the same class, was the A chillers, but, mainly owing to the influence of Mr. Reed (of whom more anon), who pointed out the danger of unprotected steering gear, her design was altered and a complete belt of 4J-inch armour given to her instead of a partial one. These changes in tlic design, together with an increased horse-power which produced on trial 14.32 knots, advanced the displacement of tlie Achilles to f),820 tons, while tlie armament was brought up to fourt(;en 12-ton guns and two 6i-ton. Tlie weight of armour was 1,200 tons. 258 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. The Achilles, like many another ship that was to follow her, was the " last word " of her own day. No expense was spared in seeking to secure a maximum of efficiency in her. As originally completed she was a ship-rigged vessel, but with a view to improving her sailing efficiency, this was subsequently altered to a four-masted rig, which proved so little successful that eventually she reverted to three masts again. In the meantime the authorities were so pleased with the Achilles that three improved editions of her were designed. They were not completed until a new type of ship, which was completed before they were, replaced them ; but chronologically they followed close upon the Achilles. They were laid down in 1861, and designed by Isaac Watts. They were named Agincourt, Minotaur, and Northumberland, They differed in minor details, but in substance were all about 1,000 tons more than the Achilles, and their increased displacement mostly went in one inch extra armour protection (5 J-inch against 4J-inch). As originally designed they were intended to mount seven 12- ton and twenty 9-ton guns, but at a very early date the first two were given a uniform armament of seventeen 12-ton. A small portion of this armament of the upper deck was provided with armoured protection for right-ahead fire. In appearance they were magnificent ships, fitted with five masts. Being 400 feet between perpendiculars they were the largest ships of their time, and at sea always proved very steady under both sail and steam. These ships were the subject of violent disputes between the Controller of the Navy and their constructor. The Controller insisted that they were extravagantly a > o _ ^-m 3- CONVERTED IRONCLADS. 263 large ships, as compared to French ships. The constructor insisted that it was essential that for any given power and protection a British ship must be larger than a foreign one, because of her more extended probable duties, and the consequent necessity of a larger coal supply.* At and about this period there were a number of wooden ships-of-the-line building, which had been laid down from the year 1859 onwards. Following the French fashion, they were converted into ironclads. These ships, displacing from 6,100 to 6,830 tons, were the Repulse, Royal Alfred, Zealous (laid down 1859), Caledonia, Ocean, Prince Consort, Royal Oak (1860).| The upper-decks of these ships were removed, and they were fitted with side armour, which was 4.5 inches in the earliest to be treated, and 5^ inches in the latest. All of them carried sixteen 9-ton guns and four 6i-ton, with provision for ahead fire. The experiment, though useful as a temporary expedient, was very expensive, and several of the ships had to be lengthened before anything could be done to them. None of them were very successful, and most of them disappeared from the Navy List at an early date. This ends the period of " broadside ironclads " ; of the best of which it may be said that they were nothing; but efforts to adapt new ideals to old methods. • Apparently tlio firHt iiiKtanco of tho putting forwarfl of a prinriplo wliirh later on jirofouiidly afTi*ct<;d conHtniction. t In 1863, thrjx; ironclntlK, the Lord Clyde and Lord Warde.n, of 7,840 touH, and a Hmall ahip, fh«; Fallnti, H.HttO terns, wcro constructed with wooflcii HuUh, in order to uwj u[j tho Hton-H of tiinhcr wliich hoA been uccuuiulatcd. — Seo p. 70, Onr Ironcltxd Shipa, by Sir K. J. ll«!<,'d. XI. THE REED ERA. IN 1862 Mr. (afterwards Sir) E. J. Reed, was appointed Chief Constructor, and proceeded at once to produce the type of ship chiefly associated with his name. His ideals ran in the direction of short, handy ships of medium size, as heavily armed as possible, and with a good turn of speed. His arguments in favour of these ideals he afterwards described as follows : — * " The merits of iron-clad ships do not consist in carrying a large proportion of weights to engine-power, or having a high speed in proportion to that power ; but rather in possessing great powers of offence and defence, being comparatively short, cheap, and handy, and steaming at a high speed, not in the most economical way possible, but by means of a moderate increase of power on account of the moderate proportions adopted in order to decrease the weight and cost, and to increase the handiness." Generally speaking, his views were very revolu- tionary. The greatness of Sir E. J. Reed lay in the fact that he was the first man to conceive of the ironclad as a separate and distinct entity. Previously to him the ironclad was merely an ordinar}^ steamer with some armour plating on her. His first ship was the Bellerophon, of 7,550 tons displacement. She embodied distinct novelties in the construction of her hull, described by her designer in the following passages : — * * Our Ironclad Ships, by Sir E. J. Reed. SIK K, ;. KKII). From a purtr:iit made when he wa« Chief Constructor <>i the Hritlali Navy. I WATER-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS. 267 " The Warrior and the earlier ironclads are constructed with deep frames, or girders, running in a longitudinal direction through the greater part of the length of the ship, combined with numerous strong transverse frames, formed of plates and angle-irons, crossing them at right angles. In fact, up to the height of the armour the ship's framing very closely resembles in its character that of the platform or roadway of a common girder bridge, in which the principal or longitudinal strength is contributed by the continuous girders that stretch from pier to pier, and the transverse framing consists of short girders fitted between and fastened to the continuous girders. If we conceive such a platform to be curved transversely to a ship-shape form, and the under side to be covered with iron plating, we have a very fair idea of the construction of the lower part of the Warrior. If, instead of this arrangement, we conceive the continuous longitudinal girders to be considerably deepened > and the transverse girders to be replaced by so-called ' bracket - frames,' and then, after curving this to a ship-form, add iron-plating on both the upper and the under sides, we have a correspondingly good idea of the construction of the lower part of the Bellerophon. The Bellerophon's construction is, therefore, identical in character with the cellular system carried out in the Menai and other tubular bridges, which 83'8tem has been proved by the most elaborate and careful experiments to be that which best combines lightness and strength in wrought-iron structures of tubular cross-section. The Warrior's system, wanting, as it does, an inner skin of iron — except in a few places, such as under the engines and boilers — is not in accordance with the cellular system, and is inferior to it in strength- As regards safety, also, no comparison can be made between the system of the Warrior and that of the Bellerophon. If the bottoin plating is penetrated, in most places the water must enter the Warrior's hold, and she must depend for safety entirely on the efficiency of her watertight bulkheads. If the Bellerophon's bottom is broken through, no danger of this kind is run. The water cannot enter the hold until the inner bottom is broken through, and this inner bottom is not likfly to be damaged by an ordinary accident, seeing that it is two or three feet distant from the outer bottom. Should some exceptional accident occur by which the inner bottom is penetrated, the Bellerophon would still have her watertight Itulkheads to depend S>i4«<<^>5!«»««4«»«^/^^^ "^ BELLEROPHON. o o o a a Q '/V/l}}///imm// 06 O HERCULES AUDACIOUS. ^ SULTAN r ALEXANDRA. bCALL 700 f I I'.Ki'VI' till \ SI' > f \ I K \l r. \ I rM<"< villi's < 'I I III I.I i l> I K \ THE " CAPTAIN " CRITICISED. 283 rigged ship is not a very eligible position for fighting large guns. Anyone who has stood upon the deck of a frigate, amid the maze of ropes of all kinds and sizes that surrounds him, must feel that to bring even guns of moderate size away from the port holes, to place them in the midst of these ropes, and discharge them there, is utterly out of the question ; and the impracticability of that mode of proceeding must increase in proportion as the size and power of the guns are increased. But as a central position, or a nearly central position, is requisite for the turret, this difficulty has had to be met by many devices, some of them tending to reduce the number of the ropes, and others to get them stopped short above the gims. In the former category come tri])od masts ; in the latter, flying-decks over the turrets ; the former have proved successful in getting rid of shrouds, but they interfere seriously with the fire of the turret guns, and are exposed to the danger of being shot away by them in the smoke of action ; the latter are under trial, but however successful they may prove in some respects, they will be very inferior in point of comfort and convenience to the upper decks of broadside frigates. In the case of the Monarch, which has a lofty upper deck, neither a tripod system nor a tiyiug deck for working the ropes upon has been adopted. A light Hying deck to receive a portion of the boats, and to afford a passage for the officers above the turrets, has been fitted ; but the ropes will be worked upon the upper deck over which the turrets have to fire, and conse- quently a thousand contrivances have had to be made for keeping both the standing and running rigging tolerably clear of the guns. It seems to me out of the question to suppose that such an arrange- ment can ever become general in the British Navy, especially when one contrasts the Monarch with the Hercules as a rigged man-of-war. Nor is the matter at all improved, in my opinion, in the ease of the Captain and other rigged turret-ships in which the ropes have to be worked upon bridges or flying-decks i)oiHed in the air above the turrets. Such bridges or decks, even if they withstand for long the repeated fire of the ship's own guns, must of necessity l)o mountod upon a few supports only ; and I am ai)pn'hensive that in action an enemy's fire would bring down parts, at least, of these cumbrous structures, with their bitts, blocks, ropes, and the thousand and one other fittings with which a rigged ship's deck is encumbered, with what result I need not predict. 284 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. " It is well known that both in the Captain and in the Monarch the turrets have been deprived of their primary and supreme advantage, that of providing an all-round fire for the guns, and more especially a head fire. This deprivation is consequent upon the adoption of forecastles, which are intended to keep the ships dry in steaming against a head sea, and to enable the head-sails to be worked. When it first became known that the Monarch was designed with a forecastle (by order of the then Board of Admiralty) there were not wanting persons who considered the plan extremely objectionable, and who took it for granted that as a turret-ship the new vessel would be fatally defective. The design of the Captain shortly afterwards, under the direction of Captain Coles, with a similar but much larger forecastle, was an admission, however, that the Board of Admiralty did not stand alone in the belief that this feature was a necessity, however objectionable. Both these ships, therefore, are without a right-ahead fire from the turrets, the Monarch having this deficiency partly compensated by two fore- castle (6|-ton) guns protected with armour, while the Captain has no protected head-fire at all, but merely one gun (6|-ton) standing exposed on the top of the forecastle." Time has shown that he was quite correct in his views ; but in 1866 and the years that followed he was regarded as unduly conservative and non-progressive. Captain Coles objected to the Monarch altogether. He insisted with vehemence that she did not in the least express his ideas. She had a high forecastle, also a poop ; these features depriving her of end-on fire, except in so far as a couple of 6|-ton guns in an armoured forecastle supplied the deficiency. The Admiralty replied that a forecastle was essential for sea-worthiness ; but Coles was so insistent that eventually he was allowed to design a sea-going turret-ship on his own ideas, in conjunction with Messrs. Laird, of Birkenhead, who had already had considerable experience in producing masted JJ ROYAL SOVEREIGN a TYPICAL US MONITOR •^/jiuf/M^MM/»MfMy/mr/frMfff//'f///fyffy/fff*ff/ffrffff/^f/f/.'f/f*ffy'f^'ff''f'yff'fi my. RK^ SCORPION CAPTAIN x- ....pj^! '//■//yy//////////////////^ •///. //Myy/y///////////////////////yyj///y//////////»//////////////^//y/^^^ MONARCH REED IDEAL OF A MASTED TURRET SHIP M « O SCAUL TLHRM SHII's <»l iHh KKKU \Mk. THE "CAPTAIN" CRITICISED. 287 turret-ships.* Coles was given a free hand. As a naval officer his form of turret displays the practical mind ; as a ship designer he was simply the raw amateur. The Captain, which he produced, accentuated every fault of the Monarch, except in the purely technical matter of rigging being in the way of the guns. Coles got over this by fitting tripod masts (which Laird's had evolved before himt) ; but for the hght flying bridges of the Monarch he substituted a very considerable superstructure erection. For the Monarch's armoured two-gun forecastle, which he had so violently condemned, he substituted a much larger unarmoured, one-gun structure. Owing to an error in design, his intended 8-ft. freeboard was actually only 6ft., and his ideal ship resulted in nothing but a Monarch of less gun power, and of 8ft. less freeboard. Her fate is dealt with later. Details of the two ships are Captain. Monarch . DiBplacement .... Length (p.p.) Beam 6900 tons. 320 feet. 53 feet. 25ft. 9Jin. (mean). Four 25 ton M.L.fi., two 6J ton, do. 600 tons.** 14.25 kts. (twin screws). 8-H inches. 13-8 inches. 18U9. 8320 tons. 330 feet. 57 i feet. Draught 26ft. Tin. (max.) Guns Four 25 ton M.L.R., Coal three 6i ton, do. J 630 tons. ' Spoetl 14.94 (single screw). Watorline Bflt 'riirrelH . 7-6 inches. 10-8 inches. Completed 1869. It has been said that Captain Coles was tied down by Admiralty ideas that a sea-going shi]) must have * The Scorpion and Wivem, huilt for the Confederate States and bought in 1865. The I'ernvitin fluruicar aUo anU'-dat^vl thf Captain in design. All of thcMO were low frcM-lioard ships. Coles iiud M(>in(!thing to do with the dcHigtiH of all. t All the alxivo ships haal advantages of the turret system. 292 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. To the loss of the Captain is to be traced some of the extraordinary opposition which the Devastation idea subsequently encountered. The various writings of Sir E. J. Reed make it abundantly clear that just as in the Bellerophon he had realised that an ironclad battleship must be something more than an old-type vessel with some armour on her, so he realised from the first that the ordinary sea-going warship with turrets on deck, instead of guns in the battery, was no true solution of the turret problem. There is ample evidence that he studied the monitors of the American Civil War with a balanced intelligence far ahead of his day, taking into consideration every pro and con with absolute impartiality, and applying the know- ledge thus gained to the different conditions required for the British Fleet. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the only man who really kept his head while the turret-ship controversy reigned ; the one man who thought while others argued. He swiftly recognised the tremendous limitations of the American low-freeboard monitors, and at an earl}^ date evolved his own idea of the " breastwork monitor," which began with the Australian Cerberus, and ended with the predecessor of the present Dreadnought. The ships of this type varied considerably from each other in detail ; but the general principle of all was identical. All, whether coast-defence or sea-going, were " mastless " ; all, while of low freeboard fore and aft, carried their turrets fairly high up on a heavily armed redoubt amid- ships. Side by side Avith them he developed the central battery ironclads of this particular era. He ceased to be Chief Constructor before either type reached its. -I I m C r o z < z n w r m fe t- il" i'.J...;. COPPER SHEATHING RESORTED TO. 295 apotheosis ; but all may be deemed lineal descendants of his original creations. First, however, it is desirable to revert to the Reed broadside and central battery-ships. The Audacious class, which followed closel}^ upon the Hercules, and were contemporary in the matter of design, were avowedly " second-class ships," intended for service in distant seas. The ships of this class, of which the first was completed in 1869 and the last in 1873, were the Aitdacious, Invbicihle, Iron Duke, Vanguard, Siviftsure, and Triumph. As the sketch plan illustrations indicate, the main deck battery in them was more centralised than in the Hercules, while instead of the bow battery they carried on their upper decks four 6J-ton guns capable of firing directly ahead or astern. Excluding the converted ships, the Audacious was the eleventh British ironclad to be designed in point of date of laying down, but in the matter of design she followed directly on the eighth ship — Hercules. Her weights, as compared with the Belleropho7i, were : — Name. Weight of hull. Weight carried. litUerophon A udacious 3052 tons. 2675 toios. 3798 t^ns. 3234 tons. In some of these ships the princijile of wood-copper sheathing was rc-introduced ; the iron ships having been found to foul their hulls more quickly than wooden hulled ships. The Smftsure and Triumph (the two latest) were the ones so treated. Sir K. J. Reed was not responsible for the experiment, which was entirely an Admiralty one. It proved successful enough, the loss (ii sjK'cd being trifling. 296 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Details of the Audacious class Displacement — 6,010. Length— 280ft. Beam — 54ft. H.P.— 4,830. Mean Draught — 23ft. 8ins. Guns— Ten 12-ton M.L.R. Coal — 500 tons. Belt Armour — Sins, to Gins. Van- Audacious Iron Duke Invincible guard Swiftaure TriumpJi Speed 18.2 13.64 14.09 13.64 13.75 13.75 Builder of Ship .... Glasgow Pembroke Glasgow- Jarrow Jarrow Bioilder of Machin'y. Ravenhill Ravenhill Napier Maudslay Maudslay Launched . . 1869 1870 1869 1869 1870 1870 Campleted . 1869 1871 1870 1871 1872 1873 Cost-Hull & Machin'y. £246,482 £196,479 £239,441 £257,081 £258,322 The sheathing increased the displacement of the two latest ships by about 900 tons in the Swiftsure, and some 600 tons in the Triumph. These two were single-screw ships only, whereas all the others were twin-screw. In September, 1875, the Vanguard was rammed and sunk by the Iron Duke. The finding of the Court Martial was as follows : — " The court having heard the evidence which had been adduced in this inquiry and trial, is of opinion that the loss of Her Majesty's ship Vanguard was occasioned by Her Majesty's ship Iron DuJce coming into collision with her ofE the Kisbank, the Irish Channel, at about 12-50 on the 1st September, from the effects of which she- foundered ; that such collision was caused — First, by the high rate of speed at which the squadron, of which these vessels formed a * The Audacious herself was " modernised " in the later eighties. Her sailing rig was removed and a " military rig " substituted. Some minor changes in her leaser guns were also made. ■y. il^^^_ I I "VANGUARD" COURT-MARTIAL. 299 part, was proceeding whilst in a fog ; secondly, by Captain Dawkins, when leader of his division, leaving the deck of the ship before the evolution which was being performed was completed, as there were indications of foggy weather at the time ; thirdly, by the unnecessary reduction of speed of H.M.S. Vangtiard \vithout a signal from the vice-admiral in command of the squadron, and without H.M.S. Vanguard making the proper signals to the Iron Duke ; fourthly, by the increase of speed of H.M.S. Iron Duke during a dense fog, the speed being already high ; fifthly, by H.M.S. Iron Duke improperly shearing out of the line ; sixthly, for want of any fog signals on the part of H.M.S. Iron Duke. " The court is further of opinion that the cause of the loss of H.M.S. Vanguard by foundering was a breach being made in her side by the prow of H.M.S. Iron Duke in the neighbourhood of the most important transverse bulkhead — namely, that between the engine and boiler rooms, causing a great rush of water into the engine-room, shaft-alley, and stoke-hole, extinguishing the fires in a few minutes, the water eventually finding its way into the provision room flat, and provision rooms through imperfectly fastened watertight doors, and owing to leakage of 99 bulkhead. The court is of opinion that the foundering of H.M.S. Vanguard might have been delayed, if not averted, by Captain Dawkins giving instructions for immediate action being taken to get all available pumps worked, instead of employing his crew in hoisting out boats, and if Captain Dawkins, Commander Tandy, Navigating-Lieutenant Thomas, and Mr. David Tiddy, carpenter, had shown more resource and energy in endeavour- ing to stop the breach from the outside by means at their command, such as hammocks and sails — and the court is of opinion that Captain Dawkins should have ordered Captain Hickloy, of H.M.S. Iron Duke, to tow H.M.S. Vanguard into shallow water. The court is of o])inion that blame is imputable to Captain Dawkins for exhibiting want of judgment and for neglect of duty in handling his ship, and that he .showed a want of resource, promptitude, and decision in the means be adopted for saving H.M.S. Vanguard after the collision. The court is further of opinion that blame is imputable to Navigating- Lieutenant Thomas for neglect of duty in not jiointing out to his captain that there was shallower water within a short distance, and in not having offtired any suggestion as to the stopping of tlie leak on the outside. The court is further of opinion tlial Cojumander 300 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. Tandy showed great want of energy as second in command under the circumstances. The court is further of opinion that Mr. Brown, the chief engineer, showed want of promptitude in not appljdng the means at his command to relieve the ship of water. The court is further of opinion that blame is imputable to Mr, David Tiddy, of H.M.S. Vanguard, for not offering any suggestions to his captain as to the most efficient mode of stopping the leak, and for not taking immediate steps for sounding the compartments and reporting from time to time the progress of the water. The court adjudges Captain Richard Dawkins to be severely reprimanded and dismissed from H.M.S. Vanguard and he is hereby severely reprimanded and so sentenced accordingly. The court adjudges Commander Lash wood Goldie Tandy and Navigating-Lieutenant James Cambridge Thomas to be severely reprimanded, and they hereby are severely reprimanded accordingly. The court imputes no blame to the other officers and ship's company of H.M.S. Vanguard in reference to the loss of the ship, and they are hereby acquitted accordingly." This disaster drew attention to the ram, the more so when it became known that the Iron Duke was uninjured. Ram tactics had, of course, been heard of before, and had been discussed at great length by Sir Edward Reed in 1868. At that date, although one or two special ram-ships had been built, Sir E. J. Reed had expressed a certain amount of scepticism as to whether the ram could be successfully used in connection with a ship in motion, and pointed out that in the historical instance of the Re d^ Italia at the battle of Lissa, the ship was stationary. He further had written : — * " Even if the side were thus broken through, any one of our iron-built ships would most probably remain afloat, although her efficiency would be considerably impaired, the water which would enter being confined to the watertight compartment of the hold, enclosed by bulkheads crossing the ship at a moderate distance before and abaft the part broken through. In fact, under these circumstances the ship struck would be in exactly the same condition * Our Ironclad Ships, by Sir E. J. Reed. :^x^ -y-—— ' - ^.j^^^M^^iti^lj ^^^^^ •umiim^i k HOTSPUR French Ram TAUREAU (I865j V7//7///^ * /////7//7///////////.'/^ 7y777 7!, wjm v///yy///M'j///w//////MWMWM ■^xyy>»y»vv-yxi«ig^>y»y>y^xx>yvega>Mi«iMg^ u GLATTON 3£l^,. TsEZZI W Jmmm Mmm ^ . RUPERT \y i(^ 73 iO it 100 \^ ScAit RXMS rtr TMK KM-D \M \. BULKHEADS FAIL. 303 as an ordinary iron ship which by any accident has had the bottom plating broken, and one of the hold-compartments filled with water, so that we have good reason to believe that her safet}' need not be despaired of, unless, by the blow being delivered at, or very near, a bulkhead, more than one compartment should be injured and filled. All iron ships can thus be protected to some extent against being sunk by a single blow of a ram, and our own vessels have the further and important protection of the watertight wings just described ; but wood ships are not similarly safe. One hole in the side of the Re d'ltalia sufficed to sink her ; but this would scarcely have been possible in an iron ship with properly arranged watertight compartments. The French, in their latest ironclads, have become alive to this danger, and have fitted transverse iron bulkheads in the holds of wood-built ships in order to add to their safety. No doubt this is an improvement, but our experience with wood ships leads us to have grave doubts whether these bulkheads can be made efficient watertight divisions in the hold, on account of the working that is sure to take place in a wood hull. This fact adds another to the arguments previously advanced in favour of iron hulls for armoured ships ; for it appears that an iron-built ship, constructed on the system of our recent ironclads, is comparatively safe against destruction by a ram, unless she is repeatedly attacked when in a disabled state, while a wood-built ship may, and most likely will, be totally lost in consequence of one well-delivered heavy blow." This is in strange contrast to the fate of the Van- guard, but the finding of the court-martial indicates that the precautions taken were hardly such as were comtemplated by the ship's designer ! Furthermore, she appears to have been struck immediately on one of the water-tight bulkheads, and so, instead of being left with seven of her eight compartments unfilled, she had only six unfilled. The shock, also, was such that most of the otlior bulkheads started leaking ; and in addition to this the double bottom is said to have been filled with bricks 304 THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET. and cement,* and so less operative than it might other- wise have been, since any shock on the outer bottom would thus be immediately communicated to the inner one. The actual successor of the Hercules^ in the matter of fiirst-class ships, was the Sultan. She differed from the Hercules merely in a somewhat increased draught and displacement, and increased provision for end-on bow fire — four 12 J- ton guns able to fire ahead being substituted for the one smaller gun in the Hercules. This end-on fire was given because ram-tactics were then coming greatly into favour. Particulars of the Sultan^f which was the last of the central battery iron- clads to be designed and built by Sir E. J. Reed, are as follows : — Displacement^ — 9,290 tons. Length— 325ft. Beam — 59ft. Jin. " H.P.— 7,720. Mean Draught — 26ft. 5ins. Guns— Eight 18-ton M.L.Pv., four 121-ton M.L.R. Coal— 810 tons. Armour (iron) — 9ins., 8ins., and Gins. Speed — 14.13 knots (single screw). Builder of Ship — Chatham. Builder of Machinery — Penn. Cost — Hull and machinerv, £357,415. Launched — 1870 ; completed for sea in 1871. * Ironclads in Action, by H. W. Wilson. t The Sultan was built as a ship-rigged ship. In 1894-96 she was " recon- structed,'' two military masts being substituted for her original rig. She was also re-engined and re-boilered by Messrs. Thompson, of Clydebank. Beyond going out for the naval manoeuvres one year she did not. however, perform any service in her altered condition, and is now used a.s a hulk. X' M:k ::.i::t- jiixsa :a. mKm'AK'/v '- ' • ' ; hrm>nn^¥^r'nm^v}v>y^iAvy-KW(^i'M£l ■^222222222 ■iM^. CERBERUS. * — - Vi. ' ' ■■''/ . DEVASTATION jtL. v ^ ^^.U. ^ ... v .... A . ■■....■.■■..:. ■.,.. ^: ..^.. v ... . . ^ .. y .....^.. ^ .. >^ . l , 3 FURY. Xi Q n .■..^.■,^.t.s. > *.»*....^-. DREADNOUGHT. *- * " — • K>a SCA too If I'.Kh \sl Ui'KK SKIMIUKS. BREASTWORK MONITORS. 307 Sir E. J. Reed's " breastwork monitors " have already been referred to. They were received with Httle enthusiasm by the Admiralty, and the first of them were merely Colonial coast defence vessels. These were : — Name. Displ'm't. Tons. Speed. Knots. Armour. Inches. Cerberus ' 3480 Abyssinia 2900 Magdala i 3340 9.75 9.59 10.67 8 7 8 Turret Armour. 10 10 10 Com- pleted. 1870 1870 1870 In general design all were identical, a redoubt amid- ships carr}dng two centre line turrets and a small oval superstructure between. Twin screws were employed. The belief in the ram already alluded to had by now attained such proportions that a ship specially designed for ramming was called for, and the Hotspur was the result. Nothing written by Sir E. J. Reed (and he wrote a great deal) indicates that he was in sympathy with her design, though nominally responsible. The Hotspur was not even a turret-ship. She carried a fixed armoured structure of considerable size,* inside of which a single 25-ton gun revolved, firing through the most convenient of several ports. She was fitted with two masts with fore and aft sails. Particulars of her were : — Displacement — 4,010 ton.s. Length— 235ft. Beam — 50ft. H. P.— 3,060. Mean Drauglit — 21ft. lOins. Guns — One 25-ton M.L.R., two 6.\-ton. Belt Armour — liin. to Sin. ; comj)letc belt. Turret Armour — lOiii. * Lnto thi'y war or other vessels. FLEET IN BEING.— An inf.Tior naval forf<-, (;aj>abl*; of action and infki'-ncing or injpoe placed, and out of which the water may be pumped, bringing her above water-level, so that tlie bottom of the ship can be repaired, etc. ; they have usually no motive power. FLOTTENVEREIN.— The German Navy League. FLUSH DECK.— A deck having neither raised nor sunken part, so that it runs continuously from stem to stern. FORE AND AFT.— In the direction of a line drawn from stem to stern of a v«»a8el — at right angles to athwartships. FORWARD.— In front of— the fore- part, in the vicinity of the bows of a vessel. GRAVING DOCK.— A dock exca- vated out of the land into which entry is made from seaward. GUN. — A weapon used for fhing shot or shell. See " Breech-loader " and "Q.F. Gun." GUNBOAT.— A small type of slow cruiser armed with light guns, specially adapted for harljour or river service. GUN-COTTON.— A high ex-plosive used in torpedoes and suVnnarine mines, etc. Wet Gun-Cotton. — Gun-Cotton with a certain percentage of moisture in it ; it is useless as an explosive unless dry gun- cotton is present to detonate it. GUNLAYER.— .\ man specially qualilii'd to train (lay) and fire a gun. Gunlayers' Test. — An annual |)riictice carried out in ev(»ry ship to test the efliciency of tho ^;uii layers individually. GUN-POWER.— The fighting efli- cieney i)f 11 ship oxpressiHl in tlio total weij^'ht of metal capable (»f being discharged in a single broadside or u specififMj period of time. A SHORT GLOSSARY OF COMMON NAVAL TERMS. HALYARD. — A rope with which a sail, flag, or yard is hoisted. HARVEYISED. — Armour made by the " Harvey " process. Now obsolete. HATCH, HATCHWAY.— An opening in the deck of a ship through which persons or cargo may descend or be lowered. HEAVY GUN.— Any gun greater than and including a 4-in. Q.F. or B.L. HOG. — When a vessel has a tendency to droop at her ends she is said to hog. HORNPIPE. — The dance once pop- ular among the sailors of the British Navy and still sometimes performed at festive times. HOSPITAL SHIP.— An auxiliary vessel specially designed for the reception of sick and wounded men ; by nature of her duties and under rules of International Law she is immune from attack. HULL. — The body, framework, and plating of a vessel. HURRICANE DECK.— In large steamships a light upper deck extend- ing across the vessel amidships. HYDRO-AEROPLANE.— A seaplane (q.v.) HYDROPLANE.— A type of boat the flattened keel of which is so constructed that, after a certain speed has been attained, the hull rises in the water and skims lightly over the surface, thus driving forward above rather than through the water. The hydroplane cannot rise into the air and fly. IDLERS. — Those, being liable to constant duty by day, who are not required to keep the night watches, such as carpenters, sail-makers, etc., also called " Daymen." JACK-STAFF.— A flagpole for flying the Union Jack, invariably at the bows of the ship. KEEL. — That portion of a ship running fore and aft in the middle of a ship's bottom. KEEL-PLATE.— The lowest plate of all in the keel ; this plate is the first to be laid down when building is commenced. KNOT. — The \mit of speed for ships. A ship is said to be going X knots, when she is going X sea (or nautical) miles in one hour. One sea mile = 6,080 ft. N.B. — The word knot should never be used to indicate distance. KRUPP STEEL.— Steel hardened by a special process discovered and applied at Essen. LABOUR. — When a vessel pitches or strains in a heavy sea she is said to " labour." LANDLOCKED.— Sheltered on all sides by the land. LARBOARD.— The old term for port, (q.v.) LATITUDE. — Distance north or south of the equator, expressed in degrees. LAUNCH. — To place a ship in the water for the first time. LAY DOWN. — To commence build- ing a ship. LEE. — Or Leeward (pronounced Loo'ard). The side of a vessel opposite to that upon which the wind blows. LIGHTER. — A powerful hull or barge with a flat bottom, used for transporting heavy goods, such as coal, ammvmition, etc. LIST. — A vessel is said to have a list if she heeled temporarily or permanent- ly to one side. LOG. — The instrument used to measTire a vessel's speed through the water. Also the ship's daily journal. LONGTITUDE. — Distance east or west of a first meridian, expressed in degrees. MAGAZINE. — The place on board ship or on shore where ammunition is stored. MAN. — To place the right comple- ment of men in a ship or boat to work her. MARINE. — A soldier specially trained for sea service. " Soldier and sailor too." MAST. — The tall structure in a ship formerly for the carrying of sail, but A SHORT GLOSSARY OF COMMON NAVAL TERMS. now carrj'ing control stations, fighting tops, andwirelees telegraphy apparatus. MASTER.— The Captain of a merchant vessel who holds a master's or extra meister's certificate. MINE. — A weapon of war whicli is placed in the sea by the enemy, and explodes on a ship striking it ; or can be fired from the shore or ship by means of an electric current. MINEFIELD. — A space near a harbour specially devoted to mining operations. MINE-LAYER.— A ship specially fitted to lay mines out. MINE-SWEEPER.— A ship whose duty it is to discover and destroy the enemy's mines in order to leave a cleair passage for friendly craft. HOLE. — A stone break-water or sea-wall. MOOR. — To anchor a ship with two ajiciiors. MOTHER-SHIP.— A depot ship for torpedo craft, submarines, etc., victualling and issuing stores to the crews of the vessels under her command controlled by her officers. MUZZLE ENERGY.— The force which is propoUiiis the projectile when it leaves the gun. MUZZLE VELOCITY.— The speed at which a pr(jjectik' is travelling when it leaves the gun. NAUTICAL MILE. -One sixtieth of a (ie (submerged or above water) and which travels under water ; it ia lotulrnl with a charge of gun-cotton which explodes on impact. TORPEDO-BOAT.— A vessel special- ly (li-Bigiied for tiLtaek on larger ships by means of t<)rpe<'K. TORPEDO BOAT DESTROYER (T.B.D.) — Soo " iJ.-.-.tnjyur." TORPEDO-NET.— A steel wire net which is thrown over the side of a ship and held extended by means of booms ; it hangs down about 20 to 30 ft. below the surface, and acts as a defence against torpedoes. TORPEDO TUBE.— A tube from which torpedoes are ejected either by means of a small charge of gunpowder or compressed air. TRAJECTORY.— The line of flight of a projectile after leaving the gun. TROUGH. — The hollow between two waves. TRUCK.— The cap at the head of the mast or a flagstaff. It generally contains one or more holes for the reception of signal halyards. TURRET. — The revolving armoured structiire in which big guns are mounted, including the turn-table, ammunition hoists, etc. See " Barbette." TWO-KEELS-TO-ONE-STANDARD. The standard under which the Britisli Fleet should be maintained at a strength, as against the next strongest Power, of two completed capital-ships to one. TWO-POWER STANDARD.— The standard which indicated that the British Fleet was equal in streiigth to the fleets of the two next strongest Powers. This standard has been abandoned. WAIST. — That portion of a ship on the upper deck between the forecastle and quarter deck. WATER-TUBE BOILER.— A boiler in which tho water is contained in tubes round which the hot gases circulate. WAY (Momentum). — It is important to note the difference between this and the term " wciijh,'' the two being very often confounded. A vessel in motion is said to have " way " on her ; and when she ceases to move to iiavo " no way." But a vessel under weigh is one not at anchor or secured to tlio sliore. WEATHER-SIDE.— Tho which tho wind blows. Hid< on A SHORT GLOSSARY OF COMMON NAVAL TERMS. WEEPING (or Sweating).— Drops of ■water oozing through the sides of a vessel or caused by condensation on the surface of the beams, etc. WEIGH.— To Hft the anchor from the groimd. WIRE-WOUND.— AU big British guns are made by winding miles of steel wire or ribbon round a tube over which the exterior tubes are afterwards shrunk. YARD. — A spar suspended to a mast for the purpose of hoisting or extending a sail, or to which signal halyards can be taken. From " The Navy League Annual," by the courtesy of Alan H. 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