The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
within 700 yards of Fort Constantine, the others staying at the safer distances of 1,800 to 2,200 yards. The whole fleet opened with a tremendous roar of artillery, to which the Russians replied almost as heavily. Fort Constantine was several times silenced, and greatly damaged; but, on the other hand, the Russians managed to kill forty-seven and wound 234 men in the English fleet, and a slightly smaller number in the French. They had an unpleasant knack of firing red-hot shot in profusion, and of hitting the vessels even at the distance at which they lay. Several were set on fire, and two for a time had to retire from the action. These were practical shots at our wooden walls. This naval attack has been characterised as “even a greater failure than that by land”—meaning, of course, the first attack.
Here we may for a moment be allowed to digress and remind the reader of the important part played by red-hot shot at that greatest of all great sieges—Gibraltar. As each accession to the enemy’s force arrived, General Elliott calmly built more furnaces and more grates for heating his most effective means of defence. Just as one of their wooden batteries was on the point of completion, he gave it what was termed at the time a dose of “cayenne pepper;” in other words, with red-hot shot and shells he set it on fire. When the ordnance portable furnaces for heating shot proved insufficient to supply the demands of the artillery, he ordered large bonfires to be kindled, on which the cannon-balls were thrown; and these supplies were termed by the soldiers “hot potatoes” for the enemy. But the great triumph of red-hot shot was on that memorable 13th of September, 1782, when forty-six sail of the line, and a countless fleet of gun and mortar boats attacked the fortress. With all these appliances of warfare, the great confidence of the enemy—or rather, combined enemies—was in their floating batteries, planned by D’Arcon, an eminent French engineer, and which had cost a good half million sterling. They were supposed to be impervious to shells or red-hot shot. After persistently firing at the fleet, Elliott started the admiral’s ship and one of the batteries commanded by the Prince of Nassau. This was but the commencement of the end. The unwieldy leviathans could not be shifted from their moorings, and they lay helpless and immovable, and yet dangerous to their neighbours; for they were filled with the instruments of destruction. Early the next morning eight of these vaunted batteries “indicated the efficacy of the red-hot defence. The light produced by the flames was nearly equal to noonday, and greatly exposed the enemy to observation, enabling the artillery to be pointed upon them with the utmost precision. The rock and neighbouring objects are stated to have been highly illuminated by the constant flashes of cannon and the flames of the burning ships, forming a mingled scene of sublimity and terror.”13 “An indistinct clamour, with lamentable cries and groans, arose from all quarters.”14
When 400 pieces of artillery were playing on the rock at the same moment, Elliott returned the compliment with a shower of red-hot balls, bombs, and carcases, that filled the air, with little or no intermission. The Count d’Artois had hastened from Paris to witness a capitulation. He arrived in time to see the total destruction of the floating batteries and a large part of the combined fleet. Attempting a somewhat feeble joke, he wrote to France:—“La batterie la plus effective était ma batterie de cuisine.” Elliott’s cooking-apparatus and “roasted balls” beat it all to nothing. Red-hot shot has been entirely superseded in “civilised” warfare by shells. It was usually handled much in the same way that ordinary shot and shell is to-day. Each ball was carried by two men, having between them a strong iron frame, with a ring in the middle to hold it. There were two heavy wads, one dry and the other slightly damped, between the powder and ball. At the siege of Gibraltar, however, matters were managed in a much more rough-and-ready style. The shot was heated at furnaces and wheeled off to the guns in wheelbarrows lined with sand.
THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR
The partial failure of the navy to co-operate successfully with the land-forces, so far as bombardment was concerned, during the Crimean war, has had much to do with the adoption of the costly ironclad floating fortresses, armed with enormously powerful guns, of the present day. The earliest form, indeed, was adopted during the above war, but not used to any great extent or advantage. The late Emperor of the French15 saw that the coming necessity or necessary evil would be some form of strongly-armoured and protected floating battery that could cope with fortresses ashore, and this was the germ of the ironclad movement. The first batteries of this kind, used successfully at Kinburn, were otherwise unseaworthy and unmanageable, and were little more than heavily-plated and more or less covered barges.
The two earliest European ironclads were La Gloire in France and the Warrior in England—the latter launched in 1860. Neither of these vessels presented any great departure from the established types of build in large ships of war. The Warrior is an undeniably fine, handsome-looking frigate, masted and rigged as usual, but she and her sister-ship, the Black Prince, are about the only ironclads to which these remarks apply—every form and variety of construction having been adopted since. As regarded size, she was considerably larger than the largest frigate or ship of the line of our navy, although greatly exceeded by many ironclads subsequently built. She is 380 feet in length, and her displacement of more than 9,100 tons was 3,000 tons greater than that of the largest of the wooden men-of-war she was superseding. The Warrior is still among the fastest of the iron-armoured fleet. Considered as an ironclad, however, she is a weak example. Her armour, which protects only three-fifths of her sides, is but four and a half inches thick, with eighteen inches of (wood) backing, and five-eighths of an inch of what is technically called “skin-plating,” for protection inside. The remote possibility of a red-hot shot or shell falling inside has to be considered. Her bow and stern, rudder-head and steering-gear, would, of course, be the vulnerable points.
From this small beginning—one armoured vessel—our ironclad fleet has grown with the greatest rapidity, till it now numbers over sixty of all denominations of vessels. The late Emperor of the French gave a great impetus to the movement; and other foreign nations speedily following in his wake, it clearly behoved England to be able to cope with them on their own ground, should occasion demand. Then there was the “scare” of invasion which took some hold of the public mind, and was exaggerated by certain portions of the press, at one period, till it assumed serious proportions. Leading journals complained that by the time the Admiralty would have one or two ironclads in commission, the French would have ten or twelve. Thus urged, the Government of the day must be excused if they made some doubtful experiments and costly failures.
But apart from the lessons of the Crimea, and the activity and rivalry of foreign powers, attention was seriously drawn to the ironclad question by the events of the day. It was easy to guess and theorise concerning this new feature in warfare, but early in 1862 practical proof was afforded of its power. The naval engagement which took place in Hampton Roads, near the outset of the great American civil war, was the first time in which an ironclad ship was brought into collision with wooden vessels, and also the first time in which two distinct varieties of the species were brought into collision with each other.
The Southerners had, when the strife commenced, seized and partially burned the Merrimac, a steam-frigate belonging to the United States navy, then lying at the Norfolk Navy-yard. The hulk was regarded as nearly worthless,16 until, looking about for ways and means to annoy their opponents, they hit on the idea of armouring her, in the best manner attainable at the moment; and for awhile at least, this condemned wreck, resuscitated, patched up, and covered with iron plates,17 became the terror of the enemy. She was provided with an iron prow or ram capable of inflicting a severe blow under water. Her hull, cut down to within three feet of the water-line, was covered by a bomb-proof, sloping-roofed house, which extended over the screw and rudder. This was built of oak and pine, covered with iron; the latter being four and a half inches thick, and the former aggregating twenty inches in thickness. While the hull was generally iron-plated, the bow and stern were covered with steel. There were no masts—nothing seen above but the “smoke-stack” (funnel), pilot-house, and flagstaff. She carried eight powerful guns, most of them eleven-inch. “As she came ploughing through the water,” wrote one eyewitness of her movements, “she looked like a huge half-submerged crocodile.” The Southerners re-christened her the Virginia, but her older name has clung to her. The smaller vessels with her contributed little to the issue of the fight, but those opposed to her were