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CHAPTER 3
Royal Navy coast defence
turret ships 1860-80
T
HREE PARTICULAR WARSHIP CLASSES
in the Royal Navy
critically influenced the creation of both the seagoing turret
battleship and the further development of the classic coast
defence ship. In 1862, less than two months after the in-
conclusive but momentous encounter across the Atlantic
between
Monitor
and
Virginia,
the conversion of
Royal Sov-
ereign
into a turret ship, the RN's first, was started. Far more
seaworthy than
Monitor,
this vessel showed that turret ships
could indeed wrest control of the inshore seas from purely
sail-rigged crafts.
But even before
Royal Sovereign
was conceived, the de-
sign of the RN's first purpose-built iron turret ship,
Prince
Albert,
had been completed, although the ship itself did not
enter service until eighteen months after
Royal Sovereign.
Both vessels were essentially simple coast defence vessels,
but
Prince Albert
was a more robust vessel and remained in
service until practically the beginning of the twentieth
century.
There is a clear design link between
Prince Albert
and the
two
Cerberus
class coast defence monitors of 1870. The latter
were the first British-designed turret ships without sail, and
as such they further directly influenced the revolutionary
Devastation
class turret ships, the first unambiguously seago-
ing turret ships. These were the true progenitors of the
battleships of the late nineteenth century, leading directly
to the even more impressive
Dreadnought.
Thus can a clear
lineage be established between
Royal Sovereign
and
Prince
Albert
and both the classic seagoing battleships and their
coastal relatives. If
Monitor
is rightly regarded as having
been a trend-setter in warship design, it is still perhaps
more relevant for the historian to examine how simple tur-
ret ships like
Royal Sovereign
and
Prince Albert
had such a
lasting influence on the development of somewhat more
seaworthy battleships, regardless of whether they were ded-
icated solely to coastal defence tasks.
In America, after all, the massive effort put into creating
large fleets of viable inshore turret ships, monitors which
were not really fit for long sea passages, was not further
developed to the next logical step, a true seagoing turret
ship. In this sense, therefore, the RN's experience with the
turret ship is of somewhat greater and more lasting relev-
ance, although Britain was not alone at this time in experi-
menting with turret ships more seaworthy than their
original American inspirations. Although the objective was
to create a seagoing turret battleship, among other seagoing
ironclads, Britain still showed considerable interest in the
coast defence concept, as shown variously by the con-
struction of the breastwork monitor
Glatton,
the ironclad
ram
Hotspur
and the four
Cyclops
class coast defence moni-
tors. Other coast defence oddities were the
Scorpion
class
turret barques originally intended for the Confederate
Navy, and the pair of
Belleisle
class armoured rams first des-
tined for the Ottoman fleet.
Captain Cowper Coles' work on practical designs for
turntable mountings for heavy guns was hampered by his
own ship-design pretensions, but nonetheless a first turret
GLATTON
Glatton
The single turret breastwork monitor was intended for both coastal
defence and offence and is seen her on Illustrated London News drawing of
December 1871.
experiment was performed with the installation of a single-
gun turret on the armoured battery
Trusty
in 1861. Success-
ful firing and defence trials at Shoeburyness, in which the
turret was proved capable of firing a dozen rounds in just
over six minutes, twice as fast as a similar broadside gun,
and in which it was shown that the turret could freely move
after twenty-nine hits from 68pdrs and 110pdrs, settled the
argument that a turret ship should be built.
1
The first was
Prince Albert,
swiftly followed by the order for the
Royal
Sovereign
conversion.
Improvements in armour protection in Europe, specifi-
cally the introduction of wrought iron armour of growing
thickness, provided significant advances over the applica-
tion of armour protection in the United States, the birth-
place of the
Monitor.
America's laminated armour was
cruder than wrought iron plate, while the Confederacy's
armour fashioned from rolled railway irons was an inade-
quate expedient born of desperation.
In gunnery, the muzzle-loaded smoothbore still ruled in
the very early 1860s before
Royal Sovereign
and
Prince Albert
were conceived. The problems of Armstrong's rifled
breech-loader, which had entered widespread British ser-
vice by 1862, but which subsequently suffered numerous
accidents, showed that the way forward was a road strewn
with development obstacles. Against the breech-loader's
superior theoretical penetration, range and accuracy were
set the practical difficulties of manufacturing reliable rifling
in large calibre weapons. The gunnery trials of 1863-65 led
to the adoption of the Woolwich muzzle-loading rifled gun,
a reliable weapon which was nonetheless retained in service
for far too long - until 1879. Towards the end of the period,
even the guns on the
Dreadnought
turret ship which had
itself been inspired by
Devastation
were being outclassed by
the experimental Fraser system gun which, in its 16in
(408mm) version, could penetrate no less than 21 in
(533mm) of iron at 1,000 yards (914m).
The simple horizontal steam engine and return connect-
ing rod engine of
Prince Albert
and
Royal Sovereign
provided a
far more reliable and compact form of propulsion than that
on the early paddle steamers. The combination of these
advances in armour, armament and propulsion, together
with the further innovation of the (often hand-driven)
armour-protected turret, were the components of the
application of new technology to warships which would al-
low the revolution initiated by
Monitor
to inspire true seago-
ing turret ships.
Although not directly relevant, this survey of British coast
defence vessels after 1860 would not be complete without
brief reference to the 'flatiron' gunboats built for the RN
during this period. Between 1867 and 1881, no fewer than
thirty-nine of these curious little craft were launched for the
RN, because of the invasion scares of the 1860s and 1870s,
and their only conceivable role was coastal defence, yet
they were too slow and unwieldy for even this task. The
first two prototypes,
Staunch
and
Plucky,
displaced 200 tons
and 212 tons respectively and each carried one 9in
(228.6mm) rifled muzzle-loader. The twenty succeeding
Ant
class and the four
Gadfly
class boats, launched in 1870-
74 and 1879 respectively, all displaced 254 tons and carried
a single lOin (254mm) rifled muzzle-loader, which was also
the armament of the two 265 ton
Bouncer
class boats
launched in 1881. Finally the eleven 386 ton
Medina
class
boats launched in 1876-77 were more modestly armed with
three 64pdr rifled muzzle-loaders.
Royal Sovereign
Originally laid down in Portsmouth dockyard in 1849 as a
steam powered, wooden line-of-battle-ship which was not
launched until 1857,
Royal Sovereign,
as a 121-gun vessel,
was thoroughly obsolescent by the early 1860s. At Coles'
suggestion, it was decided to convert
Royal Sovereign,
among
other vessels, into turret ships for coastal defence. This was
not, however, the first warship to carry Coles turrets, this
distinction being enjoyed by the little Danish coast defence
ship
Rolf Krake,
of which more in the next chapter.
The Admiralty was concerned that the proposed conver-
sions might not have been appropriate given the stresses
which heavy iron turrets could place on wooden hulls. Be-
cause of this worry it was decided to hold the conversion
DEVASTATION
Devastation.
Inspired by the
Cerberus
class. Reed’s Devastation provides the
direct link between the monitor-type coast defence vessel and the classic
battleship of the late nineteenth century
prised a foresail, mainsail with jib amidships and a further
sail aft. This gave way to a simpler fore and aft steadying
canvas rig which seems to have been rarely used. A distinc-
tive and noteworthy feature was the large crowned lion in-
stalled in the bow.
In trials in 1866 the central battery ironclad
Bellerophon
fired three 9in rounds with 431b charges at
Royal Sovereign's
after turret, none of them interrupting its operation.
3
Royal
Sovereign
saw no action and was sold for breaking up in
1885. Nevertheless it had a significant impact on succeed-
ing RN warships.
programme to just one vessel -
Royal Sovereign,
the work
being completed in August 1864.
The initial design concept behind
Royal Sovereign
was for
no fewer than 10 muzzle-loading 68pdrs or ll0pdrs
mounted in five turrets weighing 80 tons, mounted
en
echelon.
This arrangement gave way to four turrets mounting
five somewhat heavier 10.5in (267mm), 150pdr smoothbore
muzzle-loaders. One pair of guns was mounted in the for-
ward turret, weighing 163 tons, with three single turrets,
each weighing 151 tons, aft of the single steam funnel. In a
later refit in 1867 these guns were replaced by 9in rifled
muzzle-loaders, this being the result of the major trials
conducted between 1863 and 1865 to choose a future rifled
gun. The chosen design used the Woolwich groove, a modi-
fication of a French concept, with steel tubes reinforced by
coiled wrought iron hoops and tubes.
Royal Sovereign
was a curiosity in several respects.
Displacing 5,080 tons standard load, she was a somewhat
ungainly three-masted conversion, with a length to beam
ratio of 4:1, the smallest in a British armoured vessel: di-
mensions were 240ft 6in x 62ft x 23ft 3in (73.3m x 18.9m x
7.09m); draught has also been recorded as 25ft (7.62m).
2
Freeboard, at 7ft (2.13m) amidships with 3ft 6in (1.06m)
hinged bulwarks to allow the turrets to fire, made
Royal
Sovereign
a more seagoing vessel than
Monitor.
The whole hull was armoured, with an iron belt 5.5in
(140mm) thick, slimming down to 4.5in (114mm) at the
ends fore and aft, behind which lay an oak hull 36in
(918mm) thick. Side armour was 36in (914mm), turret ar-
mour ranged from 10in-5.5in (254—140mm), over 14in of
teak, with 5.5in for the conning tower.
Royal Sovereign's
Maudslay two cylinder return connecting rod engines orig-
inally gave a speed of 12.25kts, but after reconstruction this
fell to llkts.
Originally a three-decker, as a single decker with the
turrets installed on the lower gundeck (reclassified as the
upper deck),
Royal Sovereign's
initial schooner rigging com-
Prince Albert
In approving only the conversion of
Royal Sovereign
into a
turret ship, the Admiralty was erring on the side of caution.
Although Hampton Roads had shown that ironclads could
survive a battle, the Admiralty's circumspection about these
vessels was seemingly to be borne out by the unimpressive
performance of US monitors at the Battle of Charleston in
1863. Besides
Royal Sovereign's
trials, the Admiralty also
wished to await trials with
Prince Albert,
the RN's first
purpose-designed turret ship, before accepting that Coles'
turrets were the way forward for the arrangement of the
main armament of seagoing ironclads.
Designed by Isaac Watts and ordered in February 1862,
Prince Albert
was laid down at Samuda Brothers in London
in April 1862, being launched in May 1864 and finally com-
pleted after delays in February 1866. She was the result of
an extended design process which saw Coles put forward
several ideas for turret ships to the Admiralty. One concept
envisaged a 5,660 ton ship and another outlined a plan for
two smaller vessels. The first idea was too expensive, while
the second did not deliver the requisite armour protection,
so in January 1862 plans were drawn up for a significantly
more ambitious warship with displacement of 4,020 tons
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