The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper

      THE “VICTORY” AT CLOSE QUARTERS WITH THE “REDOUBTABLE.”

      “And still, though seventy years, boys,

       Have gone, who, without pride,

       Names his name—tells his fame

       Who at Trafalgar died?”

      May we always have a Nelson in the hour of national need!

      The day for such battles as this is over; there may be others as gloriously fought, but never again by the same means. Ships, armaments, and modes of attack and defence are, and will be, increasingly different. Those who have read Nelson’s private letters and journals will remember how he gloried in the appreciation of his subordinate officers just before Trafalgar’s happy and yet fatal day, when he had explained to them his intention to attack the enemy with what was practically a wedge-formed fleet. He was determined to break their line, and, Nelson-like, he did. But that which he facetiously christened the “Nelson touch” would itself nowadays be broken up in a few minutes and thrown into utter confusion by any powerfully-armed vessel hovering about under steam. Or if the wedge of wooden vessels were allowed to form, as they approached the apex, a couple of ironclads would take them in hand coolly, one by one, and send them to the bottom, while their guns might as well shoot peas at the ironclads as the shot of former days.

      Taking the Victory as a fair type of the best war-ships of her day (a day when there was not that painful uncertainty with regard to naval construction and armament existing now, in spite of our vaunted progress), we still know that in the presence of a powerful steam-frigate with heavy guns, or an 11,000-ton ironclad, she would be literally nowhere. She was one of the last specimens, and a very perfect specimen, too, of the wooden age. This is the age of iron and steam. One of the largest vessels of her day, she is now excelled by hundreds employed in ordinary commerce. The Royal Navy to-day possesses frigates nearly three times her tonnage, while we have ironclads of five times the same. The monster Great Eastern, which has proved a monstrous mistake, is 22,500 tons.

      But size is by no means the only consideration in constructing vessels of war, and, indeed, there are good reasons to believe that, in the end, vessels of moderate dimensions will be preferred for most purposes of actual warfare. Of the advantages of steam-power there can, of course, be only one opinion; but as regards iron versus oak, there are many points which may be urged in favour of either, with a preponderance in favour of the former. A strong iron ship, strange as it may appear, is not more than half the weight of a wooden vessel of the same size and class. It will, to the unthinking, seem absurd to say that an iron ship is more buoyant than one of oak, but the fact is that the proportion of actual weight in iron and wooden vessels of ordinary construction is about six to twenty. The iron ship, therefore, stands high out of the water, and to sink it to the same line will require a greater weight on board. From this fact, and the actual thinness of its walls, its carrying capacity and stowage are so much the greater. This, which is a great point in vessels destined for commerce, would be equally important in war. But these remarks do not apply to the modern armoured vessel. We have ironclads with plates eighteen inches and upwards in thickness. What is the consequence? Their actual weight, with that of the necessary engines and monster guns employed, is so great that a vast deal of room on board has to be unemployed. Day by day we hear of fresh experiments in gunnery, which keep pace with the increased strength of the vessels. The invulnerable of to-day is the vulnerable of to-morrow, and there are many leading authorities who believe in a return to a smaller and weaker class of vessel—provided, however, with all the appliances for great speed and offensive warfare at a distance. Nelson’s preference for small, easily-worked frigates over the great ships of the line is well known, and were he alive to-day we can well believe that he would prefer a medium-sized vessel of strong construction, to steam with great speed, and carrying heavy, but, perhaps, not the heaviest guns, to one of those modern unwieldy masses of iron, which have had, so far, a most disastrous history. The former might, so to speak, act while the latter was making up her mind. Even a Nelson might hesitate to risk a vessel representing six or seven hundred thousand pounds of the nation’s money, in anything short of an assured success. We have, however, yet to learn the full value and power of our ironclad fleet. Of its cost there is not a doubt. Some time ago our leading newspaper estimated the expense of construction and maintenance of our existing ironclads at £18,000,000. Mr. Reed states that they have cost the country a million sterling per annum since the first organisation of the fleet. Warfare will soon become a luxury only for the richest nations, and, regarding it in this light, perhaps the very men who are racking their powers of invention to discover terrible engines of war are the greatest peacemakers, after all. They may succeed in making it an impossibility.

      “Hereafter, naval powers prepared with the necessary fleet will be able to transport the base of operations to any point on the enemy’s coast, turn the strongest positions, and baffle the best-arranged combinations. Thanks to steam, the sea has become a means of communication more certain and more simple than the land; and fleets will be able to act the part of movable bases of operations, rendering them very formidable to powers which, possessing coasts, will not have any navy sufficiently powerful to cause their being respected.”9 So far as navy to navy is concerned, this is undoubtedly true; yet there is another side to the question. A fort is sometimes able to inflict far greater damage upon its naval assailants than the latter can inflict upon it. A single shot may send a ship to the bottom, whilst the fire from the ship during action is more or less inaccurate. At Sebastopol, a whole French fleet, firing at ranges of 1,600 to 1,800 yards, failed to make any great impression on a fort close to the water’s edge; while a wretched earthen battery, mounting only five guns, inflicted terrible losses and injury on four powerful English men-of-war, actually disabling two of them, without itself losing one man or having a gun dismounted; while, as has been often calculated, the cost of a single sloop of war with its equipment will construct a fine fort which will last almost for ever, while that of two or three line-of-battle ships would raise a considerable fortress. Whilst the monster ironclad with heavy guns would deal out death and destruction when surrounded by an enemy’s fleet of lighter iron vessels or wooden ones as strong as was the Victory, she would herself run great risk in approaching closely-fortified harbours and coasts, where a single shot from a gun heavy enough to pierce her armour might sink her. Her safety would consist in firing at long ranges and in steaming backwards and forwards.

      The lessons of the Crimean war, as regards the navy, were few, but of the gravest importance, and they have led to results of which we cannot yet determine the end. The war opened by a Russian attack on a Turkish squadron at Sinope, November 20th, 1853.10 That determined the fact that a whole fleet might be annihilated in an hour or so by the use of large shells. No more necessity for grappling and close quarters; the iron age was full in view, and wooden walls had outlived their usefulness, and must perish.

      But the lesson had to be again impressed, and that upon a large English and French fleet. Yet, in fairness to our navy, it must be remembered that the Russians had spent every attention to rendering Sebastopol nearly impregnable on the sea-side, while a distinguished writer,11 who was present throughout the siege, assures us that until the preceding spring they had been quite indifferent in regard to the strength of the fortifications on the land-side. And the presence of the allied fleets was the undeniable cause of one Russian fleet being sunk in the harbour of Sebastopol, while another dared not venture out, season after season, from behind stone fortresses in the shallow waters of Cronstadt.12 A great naval authority thinks that, while England was, at the time, almost totally deficient in the class of vessels essential to attacking the fleets and fortifications of Russia, the fact that the former never dared “to accept the challenge of any British squadron, however small, is one the record of which we certainly may read without shame.” But of that period it would be more pleasant to write exultingly than apologetically.

      When the Allies had decided to commence the bombardment of Sebastopol, on October 17th, 1854, it was understood that the fleet should co-operate, and that the attack should be made by the line-of-battle ships in a semicircle. They were ready at one p.m. to commence the bombardment.