and wood cannot resist the strokes. So attempts are now being made to put the wooden ships in armour. This has been attributed to the French Emperor, but Admiral Sartorius claims it. The germ of this may be found in the old galleys, where the shields of the warriors were suspended round the bulwarks to impede the enemy’s shot. Armour for men and armour for horses was abandoned when gun-bullets became too destructive for the greatest weight that could be carried by animal power.
But ships may be armoured to resist, by strength and by distance, the heaviest shot now existing, though possibly not the shot that may yet be made. It is a contest between power of destruction and power of resistance. Around the steam-ram now constructing, plates are to be fixed four inches and a-half in thickness, and behind them are to be built large masses of hard timber supporting the plates, which are to be bolted to it. But there is a defect here, — the plates are not of large size, and there are many joints. The pro- bability is, that the bolts would be broken and the plates would fall off. Moreover, the plates are scarcely heavy or thick enough for resistance. It is probable that the quality of the iron will not be of the best, and will be much granulated in forging.
The report of late experiments states that the plates on English armoured vessels indented with the first sixty-eight pound shot at two hundred yards’ distance, and with two more shots shivered and fell into fragments. The fallacy in the statement lies in assuming that the plates were of wrought iron. They may have been bought as wrought iron, and the buyers may thereby have been sold, but wrought iron in the true sense they could not have been. They were either cast-iron skinned over — in trade phrase, “cinder covered with a crackling,” or they were wrought-iron cold
8 winged to a granular condition. We must first esteel our metal before we try to armour a warcraft of magnitude.
It is precisely in this that the Bessemer iron alluded to in the article on Projectiles, will be found serviceable. I may say the Bessemer steel may be cast to any size by pouring together the contents of many crucibles, and plates of eight or twelve inches in thickness may be passed through the rolls. These plates may be welded together by the process before described, by a gas and atmospheric air apparatus, and an absolutely solid side produced, winch might be lined behind with any thickness of timber. It is merely a question of cost.
Friar Bacon once imagined the walling of England about with brass. It would have been an admirable resource to Birmingham for some generations; but a process of this kind would be literally walling England about with iron, and the iron walls of modern England would not shame the “wooden walls“ of the past.
In the application of this armour, the size of the vessel and amount of displacement become most important. The enormous weight has a tendency to make the vessel top-heavy, and to set her rocking. But weight matters little where the size is great. And these iron walls should be made to
slope inwards at an angle of 45 degrees, in which case it would be difficult to strike a plate direct with a shot. It would glance off, and the sloping inward would remove overhanging weight.
But it will be said, such vessels may be attacked by torpedos from below, and a hole bored in the bottom, sinking them with all on board. In the first place, it would be difficult to fix a torpedo to an iron vessel; and if practicable so to do, the bottom might be made of plates as thick as the upper armour.
Such a vessel certainly should have nothing to do with sails when in action. Masts similar to those of the old galleys to carry lights, and serving as derricks to lift weights by steam cranes, and also to serve as outlooks, might be provided with sails for slow movement, in order to economise fuel. The lights at the mast-head or funnel may be conveniently furnished by gas made in a vessel that is incombustible.
The armament of such a vessel would be ponderous guns, few but massive; but unquestionably the destroying power of greatest moment would be in the momentum of the vessel herself. In the construction of her underwater beaks the welding process which joins heavy masses of metal together would be employed to advantage, such masses as the bronze artificers of the Greeks or Homans could not achieve. And either end should be alike, striking both ways, like the Malay, with double kris projecting from each hand and each elbow, steering by the propellers or side rudders, and not by end rudders, which would be in the way. Iron bulwarks athwart-ships would protect the men on her decks, while in silence she sped on her errand of destruction; at one blow vessel after vessel of the foeman going down below her forefoot, as weeds before the ploughshare of the husbandman.
Our woodcut represents the proposed Government Ram in the act of striking an opponent. Before she is rigged, we trust that common sense will lead to the substitution of shorter masts, their heels pivotted on deck, and schooner-rig, the back-stays to the masts being so arranged as to allow them to move forward with the shock without coming by the board and then regain their position, with elastic provision both ways to moderate the force of the shocks.
A gun at either end, of twelve inch bore, forty feet in length or more, weighing about fifty tons, would carry an elongated shot or shell of half a ton in weight a distance of five miles. Lateral battery guns of less size, with balls instead of trunnions fitting into sockets in the vessel’s side, would form a battery from which unseen and unapproachable gunners would pour forth destruction.
In the letters of Lord Collingwood, who watched the French coasts during the threatened invasion of another Bonaparte, is to be found the grief expressed at long and tedious separation from his family. If a channel fleet composed of such vessels is to watch the Channel in all weathers, every resource of art should be adopted to lessen the tedium of life, and reduce the drudgery of the crew, while providing for every comfort. Of course all labour, save that of directing labour, would be transferred to steam power, and all the
comforts to be found in a first-class hotel would