CHAPTER IV
EARLY TURRET SHIPS
Introduction of the 'Monitor'—Claims of Ericsson and Captain Cowper Coles—'Merrimac' and 'Monitor' in America—'Royal Sovereign' converted in England—Further development of the Turret System—'Devastation' to 'Inflexible.'
Ericsson is generally credited with the first idea of mounting a gun in a revolving turret and placing it in a low iron-plated vessel, as practically applied in his celebrated 'Monitor' of the American Civil War. But Captain Cowper Coles, some years before, had been urging the adoption of the same system, and many of his original ideas are to be seen embodied in the ships of to-day. The plan with him seems to have originated in 1855, when during the Crimean War he mounted a 32-pounder on a raft, for service in the shallow waters of the Sea of Azof. This proving useful, he next thought of protecting the gun, and proposed an improved raft, formed of empty casks planked over, to carry a 68-pounder, pointing through an aperture in a hemispherical iron shield placed over it. He proposed a number of these rafts for an attack on Cronstadt. A committee of naval officers serving in the Black Sea reported favourably on the scheme, and Captain Coles was ordered
