Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/194

186 NAVY to hollow shot had been fired against ships from howitzers in shore batteries only; though in Germany the practice of firing shell horizon- tally from short 24-pdr. and even 12-pdr. guns had been long in use against fortifications. The destructive effects of shell against the wooden sides of vessels were well known to Napoleon, who at Boulogne armed most of his gunboats for the expedition to England with howitzers, and laid it down as a rule that ships must be attacked with projectiles which will burst after hitting. Now, Paixhans's shell guns gave the means of arming ships with cannon which, by throwing their shells as nearly as possible hori- zontally, could be used at sea, ship against ship, with nearly the same probability of hitting as the old round-shot guns. The new gun was soon introduced into all navies, and, after un- dergoing various improvements, for some time constituted an essential portion of the arma- ment of all large men-of-war. The first at- tempts were made to apply steam to the pro- pulsion of ships of war shortly after it had been applied by Fulton to that of commercial vessels. The progress from the river steamer to the coasting steamer, and gradually to the ocean steamer, was slow ; in the same ratio was the progress of war steamers retarded. As long as paddle boats were the only steamers in exis- tence, this was justifiable. The paddles and part of the engine were exposed to the enemy's shot, and could be disabled by a single lucky hit ; they took up the best portion of the broad- side room of the vessel ; and the weight of engine, paddles, and coal so much reduced the capacity of the ship, that a heavy armament of numerous long guns was entirely out of the question. A paddle steamer, therefore, could never be a ship of the line ; ' but its superior speed might permit it to compete with frigates, which are expected to hover on the flanks of an enemy, to collect the fruits of a victory, or to cover a retreat. Now a frigate has just the size and armament which enable it to go fear- lessly on any independent roving errand, while its superior sailing qualities enable it to with- draw in time from an unequal contest. The sail- ing qualities of any frigate were far outstripped by the steamer ; but without a good armament the steamer could not fulfil its mission. Regu- lar broadside fighting was out of the question ; the number of guns must, for want of space, be always inferior to that of a sailing frigate. The diminished number of guns on board a steam frigate was counterbalanced by their weight of metal and calibre. Originally these guns were intended to throw shells only, but now rifled guns have nearly superseded smooth-bores, and in a short time there will be no smooth- bores afloat in the navies of the great powers. Moreover, the reduced number of guns admits of traversing platforms and railways being laid down on the deck, by means of which all or most of the guns can be brought to bear in al- most any direction ; a provision by which the strength of a steam frigate for an attack is nearly doubled, and a 20-gun steam frigate can bring at least as many guns into action as could a 40-gun sailing frigate with but 18 working guns for each single broadside. Thus the large modern steam frigate is a most formidable ship ; the superior calibre and range of her guns, added to her velocity, enable her to crip- ple an opponent at a distance where no effec- tive return of fire would have been possible to the sailing vessel; while the weight of her metal comes in with crushing power when it is to her advantage finally to force the fighting. For smaller vessels, corvettes, advice boats, and other light craft, not counting in a naval battle, but very useful throughout a campaign, steam was at once found of great advantage, and there were many such paddle boats con- structed in most navies. It was the same with transport ships. Where landings were intended, steamers not only reduced the length of passage to a minimum, but permitted one to calculate to a moral certainty the time of arrival at any given place. The transport of bodies of troops was now made a matter of great simplicity, especially as every naval country had a large fleet of commercial steam- ers to fall back upon for transport vessels in case of necessity. It was on these considera- tions that the prince de Joinville, in his well known pamphlet, ventured to maintain that steam had altered the condition of naval war- fare to such an extent as to render an inva- sion of England by France no longer an im- possibility. Still, so long as the ships used for decisive action, the ships of the line, remained exclusively sailing vessels, the introduction of steam could work but little change in the con- ditions under which great naval battles were fought. The invention of the screw propeller was destined to supply the means of revolu- tionizing naval warfare entirely, and to trans- form all war fleets into steam fleets. It was fully 13 years after the invention of the screw before the first step in this direction was made. Finally in 1849 the French engineer Dupuy- Delome constructed the first screw line-of-bat- tle ship, the Napoleon, of 100 guns and 600 horse power. This ship was not intended to depend upon steam only ; unlike the paddles, the screw allowed a ship to retain all the lines and rigging of a sailing vessel, and to be moved at will by steam alone, by sails alone, or by both combined. She could therefore always save her coal for emergencies by having re- course to her sails, and was thus far less de- pendent upon the proximity of coaling stations than the old paddle-wheel steamer. On this account, and because her steam power was too weak to give her the full speed of a paddle steamer, the Napoleon and other vessels of this class were called auxiliary steam vessels ; since then, however, ships of war of the lar- gest class have been constructed which have steam power enough to give them all the speed of which the screw propeller is capable. The success of the Napol6on soon caused screw