Part 2 of 2

+----------------+---------+-----------+----------------+ | | Draught | Maximum | Heaviest Guns | | NAME OF SHIP. | of | Thickness | carried. | | | Water. | of Armor. | | +----------------+---------+-----------+----------------+ | | Feet. | Inches. | | | Amiral Baudin | 25.8 | 22 | 3 of 75 tons. | | Amiral Duperré | 25.8 | 22 | 4 ” 48 ” | | Dévastation | 25.5 | 15 | {4 ” 48 ” | | | | | {4 ” 28 ” | | Formidable | 25.8 | 22 | 3 ” 75 ” | | Foudroyant }| 25.5 | 15 | {4 ” 48 ” | | (now Courbet)}| | | {4 ” 28 ” | | Hoche | 26.5 | 17.7 | 4 ” 52 ” | | Magenta | 26.5 | 17.7 | 4 ” 52 ” | | Marceau | 26.5 | 17.7 | 4 ” 52 ” | | Neptune | 26.5 | 17.7 | 4 ” 52 ” | | Redoutable | 24.4 | 14 | {4 ” 28 ” | | | | | {4 ” 24 ” | | Caïman | 23 | 17.5 | 2 ” 48 ” | | Furieux | 21.4 | 17.5 | 2 ” 48 ” | | Indomptable | 22.8 | 19.5 | 2 ” 75 ” | | Requin | 22.8 | 19.5 | 2 ” 75 ” | | Terrible | 22.8 | 19.5 | 2 ” 75 ” | | Tonnant | 17.3 | 17.5 | 2 ” 48 ” | +----------------+---------+-----------+----------------+ The ship which alphabetically falls last in this table among the ships of 9000 tons and upwards, the _Redoutable_, came first in point of time, _viz._, in 1872, and her design marked the commencement of the new era in French iron-clad construction. One of the features of the change was, as already intimated, the abandonment of wooden hulls, which we had succeeded in accomplishing in England eight years before. The first design proposed by myself to the British Admiralty provided for an iron hull, and although the force of circumstances compelled us to construct my earliest war-vessels in timber, yet so strongly averse were we to the employment of so perishable a material as wood within an iron casing that Admiral Sir R. Spencer Robinson succeeded in preventing the construction of three out of five wooden line-of-battle armored ships that had previously been proposed by the government of the day, and sanctioned by Parliament. This was in 1863 or 1864, the _Lord Clyde_ and _Lord Warden_ being the last large armored wooden ships laid down in her Majesty’s dockyards. [Illustration: THE “RICHELIEU.”] The French delayed the change for some years, as we see. M. De Bussy, the designer of the _Redoutable_, and a most accomplished naval constructor, built a very large part of the ship of steel, and by so doing brought the French dockyards into early acquaintance with the superiority of that material to iron for constructive purposes. The _Redoutable_ has armor of more than 14 inches in thickness upon her belt, and of 9½ inches upon her central battery. She carries eight 25-ton guns[26]—four in her central battery, two in barbette half-towers, and two on revolving platforms at the bow and stern respectively. She also carries eight light 5½-inch guns. This ship generally resembles her successors, the _Dévastation_ and the _Foudroyant_ (by the same designer), in so far as that her batteries fire past sides, with great tumble home. Lord Brassey (in this respect somewhat erroneously following Mr. King, of the United States navy, in his able work upon “The War-ships and Navies of the World”), says, “The faculty of firing parallel to the line of keel is secured in the French ship by the tumble home of the ship’s sides, and not by the projection of the battery beyond them, as in the English vessel (the _Audacious_).” It is difficult to understand what this means, because it is obviously only by the projection of the battery beyond the sides of the ship which are before and after it that fore and aft fire can be obtained from the battery in either case. But it is not true that the battery of the _Audacious_, any more than the battery of the _Redoutable_, projects beyond the breadth of the ship at the water-line, which would seem to be what is intended, and Lord Brassey may assure himself of the fact by looking at Plate III. of his own work on “The British Navy,” from which the above words are quoted. The _Redoutable_ is a full-rigged ship, and nevertheless steams 14¼ knots per hour. There is one particular in which the _Dévastation_ and the _Foudroyant_, like her as they are in general design, differ materially from the _Redoutable_. I refer to the armament. The former two ships each carry four 34-centimetre 48-ton guns in the main-deck battery, in lieu of the four 25-ton guns of the _Redoutable_. The _Amiral Duperré_ (designed by M. Sabattier, the able French chief constructor) claims a few words, as she differs materially in type from the three ships just discussed. She has a complete belt of very thick armor from stem to stern—greatest thickness 22 inches, tapering to 10 inches at the extremities, with a thick deck (2 inches) at the top of the belt in the usual manner. But above this belt there is no armored main-deck battery, as in the other ships, the chief armament, of four 48-ton guns, being carried in four elevated barbette towers, two of which are well forward, and project considerably to enable their guns to act efficiently as bow-chasers, and at the same time to command all round the broadside and right astern. To facilitate this the sides of the ship have great tumble home. The other two towers are situated at the middle line of the ship, one near the stern, and the other farther forward, between the main and the mizzen masts. The main-deck, although without armor defence, is not without armament, as it carries fourteen 5½-inch 60-pounder rifled breech-loaders. Other particulars of the _Amiral Duperré_ are given in the table, and on page 81 is a view of her, engraved from a photograph with which I have been favored by a French officer. It will be observed from her description that the most characteristic feature of this great ship of more than 10,000 tons is the absence of any guns protected by armor. The barbette towers, it is true, are armored with 12-inch plates, and the main-deck guns are under the protection of the thin plating of the ship’s side, which latter is of little or no avail, however, against the armament of other first-class ships. Practically the whole of the _Duperré’s_ guns are unprotected. It may be added that during the discussions in London upon the “ships armored in places” an attempt was made to show that the _Duperré_, owing to her alleged small initial stability, was as devoid of stability when injured above the belt as certain vessels of the British _Admiral_ class when injured before and abaft the belt—a statement which I distrust, as I regard it as a mere inference from an experiment which I believe to be delusive. At the same time, the _Duperré_ would have been the better for more initial stability. [Illustration: THE “AMIRAL DUPERRÉ:” FRENCH ARMORED SHIP OF THE FIRST CLASS.] But it is obvious that all belted or partially belted vessels, in which the belt is carried but a small height above the water for the size of the ship, must run the risk of losing both buoyancy and stability very soon if even moderately inclined in or after battle, seeing that, with a moderate inclination only, the entire armor-belt on the depressed side of the ship must disappear beneath the sea’s surface. The strenuous assertion of this source of danger, although it could not lead to much increase in the stability of the existing armored ships, has produced as one effect the busy and earnest efforts which both English and French constructors have been recently making to subdivide their ships _above the armor_ into as many water-tight compartments as possible, and to stuff these compartments as full as possible of buoyant (or at least of water-excluding) materials. The necessity for resorting to this device, however, in first-class ships of nine, ten, or eleven thousand tons displacement, and of something approaching to five million dollars each in value, is not a thing for either French or English naval constructors to be proud of. But the assertion of the danger in question has had in England the further and very satisfactory result of bringing much more trustworthy ships, like the _Nile_ and _Trafalgar_, into being, and of insuring the determined support of these ships in Parliament whenever those who foolishly confound mere cheapness with merit in such constructions seek to interfere with the progress of these magnificent vessels. Two other powerful ships of the French navy, closely resembling the _Amiral Duperré_, are the _Amiral Baudin_ and the _Formidable_. They are of 3¼ feet more beam than the _Duperré_ (and therefore probably have much larger stability), and their displacement exceeds hers by 900 tons. Their armaments chiefly differ from hers in the employment of three guns of 75 tons each in their towers, in lieu of the four guns of 48 tons of the _Duperré_. The _Neptune_, _Hoche_, _Magenta_, and _Marceau_ are four other powerful ships, as will have been seen from Table A, the principal armament of each consisting of four guns of 52 tons, carried in towers, with the exception of the _Hoche_, which has two of her four principal guns of 28 tons each only. Incidental mention has already been made on page 76 of two ships, the _Caïman_ and _Indomptable_, which, although of only 7200 tons, carry very thick armor (19½ inches), and as a matter of fact carry also guns of the heaviest type (75-ton). There are two other vessels of the same description, the _Terrible_ and _Requin_. Careful note should be taken of these four steel-built vessels, which add greatly to the power of France. Each carries two of the very powerful guns just mentioned, and steams at a speed of 14½ knots. In the same category of thickly armored ships the French have yet one other ship, the _Furieux_, of 5560 tons. Her armor is 17½ inches thick in places, and she is armed with two 48-ton guns. Her speed is 12 knots. The _Tonnant_ has the same armor and armament, but she is of nearly 1000 tons less displacement, drawing much less water, and steaming only at 10 knots per hour. We may sum up the facts relating to the larger class of French iron-clads which still rank among the efficient ships of 7000 tons and upward by saying that, in addition to the sixteen ships of which the particulars are given in Table A, there are on the efficient list the _Colbert_, _Friedland, arengo_, _Océan_, _Richelieu_, _Suffren_, _Trident_, _Savoie_, _Revanche_, _Surveillante_, and _Héroïne_, most of which have been previously described in general terms, and the remainder of which are of less than 6000 tons, and were built chiefly of wood many years ago. The French navy further comprises thirteen armor-plated cruisers, of which four have lately been dropped out of some official lists. Of the remaining nine, four are modern vessels, and all of about equal size and power. These are the _Duguesclin_, _Vauban_, _Bayard_, and _Turenne_; but of these, while the first two are built of steel, the last two are built of wood, with iron topsides, as are all the remaining five vessels of this class. The subjoined table will indicate the inferior character of most of the vessels of this type: TABLE B.—FRENCH ARMORED CRUISERS.