FACTS TOUCHING THE SHIP-ARMOUR QUESTION.
iixad.vocatea of iron-clad ships are in a state of great delight
ecause the Government has ordered one or more of these vessels be built forthwith. It is regarded as a triumph of the new lights over the antiquarians, a concession to the progressive spirit of the age, and so on. We have seen many wonderful discoveries of late years which, when put to the test of experience, have broken down, and we are by no means disposed to look upon the step taken by the Government as conclusive of the controversy. Iron is a fine thing, but iron may not prove to be applicable to every kind of construction. It makes capital machines, excellent tools, admirable shop-fronts, strong bridges, fire-proof roofs and floors, handsome palaces, and much more. Nevertheless, it has not yet been proved that it will furnish shot-proof plates for the sides of our ships; or that it is a better material for coast batteries than stone faced with well-rammed earth. We have no prejudices in the matter, but we repeat what we said last week, that the question at issue is one of fact, and that the question of fact has not been decided—at least, not in favour of.iron-coated ships. It is, indeed, very doubtful whether the controversy would have survived recent experiments had not the French launched La Gloire and paraded her virtues, and had we not shown a disposi- tion to accept pretty well, if not quite all for Gospel, which our imaginative neighbours, who are ever seeking the supremacy of the sea as the alchymists sought for the philosopher's stone, have said about their frigate. But is it so certain that La Moire is a success ? First, she was to be plated with steel three inches thick, but steel was discovered to be the worst form of mail, and she was endued with iron plates four inches and a half thick. The correspondent of a contemporary, quoted by a writer in the Army and Nary Gazette tells us that the plates have been ex- posed to the severest test for five years, and that these plates are not iron. He says-
" In the first place, these plates are not iron, but an amalgam of iron, steel, and another substance, the nature or name of which I have, notwith- standing the most strenuous efforts, been unable to ascertain. But the Com- position is much lighter than iron, enables the thickness of the plates to be immensely increased, while their impenetrability to shot, conical or other- wise, has been fully proved. The experiments took place in this fashion— A target was formed with great care, exactly like the section of a ship's side, and was covered with these new plates. It was then for six months fired at three times a week at various ranges, the maximum of which was a hundred, and the minimum twenty-five yards, by unrifled 90-pounders throwing a round shot, and, by rifled 50-pounders throwing a conical shot weighing 100 lbs. One shot only (a conical one) penetrated the plates ; the head of the ball lodged in the plate ; and the concussion was such that the remainder of the shot broke clean off as if it has been shaved by ma- chinery."
These statements are entitled to some weight—if true ; but here again we say, that the question is one of fact, only to be deter- mined by the most unquestionable proofs. Of course, if La Gloire is covered with plates of this new impenetrable metal, she
is invulnerable, but we have to ascertain whether the armour- plates of this ship did withstand the fire said to have been directed against them' and whether they are composed of a new amalgam.
On the other hand, we have it on good. authority, that La Gloire is so overloaded with armour, ,and armament, that she does not
carry her guns six feet above the water line ; that she could not fight her main-deck guns in a sea which would produce compara- tively little effect on one of our first-class frigates ; that her habit of rolling would prevent her seamen gunners from making good practice; that her armament and her speed are not superior to our swift frigates carrying 68-pounders on the main deck ; and_ that she could not prevent them from coming within what range they pleased of her iron sides' and pouring in smashing broad- sides. Because the French have produced a solitary frigate about which so many contradictory assertions are made, we are not bound to rush into a course of headlong imitation. Yet if the report in the best of military papers, the Army and Nary Gazette, can be relied on, that is the course on which we are about to be impelled, much, no doubt, to the disgust and confa- sion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Now we submit that it would be far wiser to spend a few thousands in discovering what La Gloire is really made of, as- suming that there is any secret in the manufacture of her plates, than to build more plated ships of monstrous size; and still better to test the Warrior, and the rams now building, than to "reconstruct the navy" on the model of these iron monsters, respecting whose merits as engines of war we can only guess shrewdly or foolishly as the case may be. Conjecture is a bad basis for work of any kind, and inadmissible on subjects capable of scientific demonstration.
If we were to judge from the tone of much of the writing of late we should. infer that no attention had ever been paid to the subject before the Crimean war. Any one who consults the pages of Sir Howard Douglas's work on Naval Gunnery, will see that this mode of treating the question is somewhat impertinent. Years ago General then Colonel Paixhans . suggested ion armour for ships, and the French Government testing the suggestion ex- perimentally found it was not practicable. The French were testing the effect of shot upon iron plates in 1834; the English in 1838; the Americans in 1852. Since the Emperor Napoleon, fer- tile in inventions of war, built floating batteries, we admit that the question has had a wider discussion, and the experiments a broader basis. There was a real service experiment at Kinburn, but there the conditions were favourable to the floating batteries, since, as Sir Howard Douglas remarks, the Russians fought from an inferior position with an inferior weight of metal; yet, at the moment we are correcting the proof of this article a correspondent of the Times asserts coolly that the French floating batteries " received the heaviest shot at short ranges as if they had been snowballs "—the "heaviest shot" being 32-pound balls, the shot from the floating batteries being 50 pounders ! Subsequently to 1854, experiments have been continuous in England. Every year since 1855 at Woolwich, at Ports- mouth, at Shoeburyness from light and heavy ordnance, solid and hollow shot, shells, conical and. flat-fronted bolts have been hurled. upon iron targets strongly constructed in various modes. Iron of great thickness has been backed by stone and by huge beams of timber, and bolted on to the sides of ships. The results have judging from the authoritative records of Sir Howard Douglas, been pretty nearly uniform. The reader will find that wrought iron 68-pound balls, at ranges varying from two hundred to four hundred and fifty yards, have passed through or smashed up, four inch iron plates, have torn the interior work of wood and iron, and in one ease, where a shot went through a porthole, knocked out the plates on the other side. Mr. -Whitworth and Sir William Armstrong have effected similar results, but their bolts seem to produce results less destructive than the solid wrought- iron 68-pounders. The conclusions Sir Howard Douglas arrives at from a very full examination of the numerous experiments made from 1848 up to the present moment, are of great interest. They are these- " 1st. That thin plates of wrought iron are proof against any shells, for, though the shells may pass through the plates' they will be in a broken state. " 20. That being proof against shells will avail little (Art. 441) unless the vessels are likewise proof against solid shot ; for shells would of course not be fired against ships proof against them, whereas the destructive effects produced by fragments of shot and of plates, and the great damage done to the scantling of the ship by solid shot appear more like the result of a shell than of a shot.
"3d. That rifled projectiles produce greater effect than spherical projec- tiles of the same weight at long than at short ranges, on account of the rifled elongated projectiles—the resistance to which is a minimum—retain- ing more of their initial velocity than spherical projectiles at the same distance.
"4th. That the thickness of plates required to resist shot fired from the heaviest nature of guns must not be less than q inches. "5th. That, to secure the resistance of the plates and the impenetrability of the sides of a ship, it is indispensable that the plates be strongly backed by masses of the strongest and most resisting timber, as, in all the cases to which reference has just been made, it appears that the plates are easily broken when the support is removed from behind them, by the crushing, fracturing, and damaging effects of the impacts of the shot.'
Here, then, are the conditions on which shot-proof ships are to built, for such a thing as a shot-proof ship has not yet been pro- duced. The plate armour must be more than four-and-a-half inches thick—that is thicker than the plates of La Gloire ; hence it is, we suppose, that the Government have decided upon build- ing their new ships of five inch plates. Next the timber of the ship must be made of unprecedented strength to resist the tre- mendous force of the impact of solid shot upon the external plates
weapons, because the force of the blow is communicated to the whole length and breadth of the plate. Then comes the question, wasuch monstrous ships, encumbered with so much top-weight, be effective as sea-going vessels ? We repeat that the whole ques- tion is one of fact. It would be better to immolate the Warrior and sacrifice both the rams, than to go on building these monsters until we shall have ascertained, what we have not yet ascertained, that they are efficient engines of warfare. We strongly recom- mend the partisans of iron plates to read and re-read the " anti- quated lore" which is to be found in the pages of Sir Howard Douglas's work on Naval Gunnery, and then to reconsider their opinions.
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