Great War Version 1889.1
Naval Architecture
by Scott Saylors
by Scott Saylors
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We are all accustomed to this version of world history. With the end of the 100 Days (Napoleon's return to power, and final defeat at Waterloo), peace settled heavily upon Europe. The only disturbances were civil strife in Belgium and the Netherlands, occasional wars between Turkey and Russia, the power struggle between Austria and Prussia, and the final exhaustion of Napoleon's imperial aspirations in the Franco-Prussian War. The keynote to these events is their inability to ignite a general conflagration amongst the surrounding nations. The reasons for such restraint are primarily because the British Empire would have been able to economically and militarily chastise any nations which did wish to stretch their boundaries more than common decency (as the British perceived it) would allow. The peace between 1815 and 1914 was not the result of divine fiat, however; it was a fragile thing which could have been destroyed at any time if Great Britain had decided to intervene on one side or the other of these territorial disturbances. During the Crimean War, the British did participate, but Russia was unable to generate any support among the European community. During the 1870's and 80's the political climate was at its most fragile. Russia was not alone, the ambitions of France dove-tailed nicely with the Czars fancies. Italy was sure to be on the opposite side of any alliance who numbered Austria amongst their number. Germany was tied to the British Empire by blood, and a common interest in keeping the French in their place. There are many attractions to the period from a wargamers point of view. Many are fascinated by the color and pageantry of the Colonial warfare penod. Visions of the thin red line being plowed under by the "fuzzy wuzzies" or zulus, or the glamor of the French Foreign Legion inflicting French rule on Tuaregs and Moors: all these are great gaming. On the other hand, isn't it great gaming to picture the clash of the great Colonial powers with each other? The influence of modern artillery and the advent of the machine gun are all compelling. On yet another hand, what about the naval gaming opportunity? No period was greater in diversity of warship design than the last half of the nineteenth century. No period was greater in tactical problems for an admiral trying to utilize all these divergent designs in a coherent manner. Naval Architecture Innovations Warships had made great strides since the launching of the HMS Warrior. Since the mere bolting on to wooden ships of iron plates, the Central Battery ironclad had been thoroughly developed. Designers had designed turreted ships using the heavily armored simple turret of the USS Monitor vintage, to the more complicated but efficient casemate designs we associate with all battleships. Armor went from simple iron plate to face-hardened steel. The designers still struggled to armor ships efficiently, so they wouldn't bo suicidally slow. Guns had gone from muzzle-loading smooth-bores to 16.5" rifled breech-loaders. Smaller batteries were progressing to quick-fire technology by the 1880's; the mechanical machine gun was thoroughly adapted to naval use. Torpedoes, both of the spar and self-propelled variety, had become the bogey-man of every admiral's nightmares. In propulsion, the strides had been no less Brobdignagian. Ships designed to sail with steam auxiliary power were the norrn in 1865. Try as they might white-bearded admirals had not managed to maintain full shipping in the face of double and triple expansion boilers making steam power more and more economical in its fuel use. At what other period could a naval wargamer have more drastically different ships u;nder his command? I can't answer that question. So, here we go! We are looking at the Mediterranean theater of operations in July of l889. I will give a compendium of ships available to the following belligerents:
Ports: France: Toulon, Oran, Algiers Italy: La Spezia, Naples, Taranto Russia: Odessa, Sevastopol Greece: Athens, Salonika, Crete Great Britain: Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria Turkey: Sinope, Izmir, Istanbul, Famagusta Austria: Trieste Scenarios This gives a general picture of the beginnings of this hypothetical conflict. It isn't necessary to amass all the vessals mentioned: think through any action this might create. 1: The British fleet attempts to prevent the joining of the Italian and French fleets. 2: The Malta Squadron attempts to join up with the Gibraltar Squadron to prevent a sortie of the Toulon fleet. 3: The Gibraltar Squadron attemtps to isolate and destroy the Oran and Algiers squadrons. 4: The Russians with their smaller but more modern fleet attempt to destroy the Turkish Black Sea Fleet. 5: The Russians try to force the Dardenelles. 6: The Turkish Mediterranean squadrons attempt to drub the Greeks. Naval Architecture: 1860-1890No period saw ever so much change in such a shrt time. The changeover from the "Big Gun" ship of 1945 to the "Smart Missile" naval platform of 1990 dealt only with weapons development as impacted by electronics advances. The middle of the 19th century saw equally basic technical advances in propulsion, weaponry, warship protection--basic naval architecture. The period saw the change from auxilliary steam to no sails, from muzzle-loading smoothbores to breech-loading, rifled quick-fire guns, from iron plates bolted to wooden structure to fire-hardened steel hulls and from the broadside battery to the covered casemate -- altogether breath-taking pace of development. It's no wonder naval administration and naval architecture worked in so many contrastinq styles. Broadside Ironclad (BCI)
The "Citadel" had less area to protect, allowing the armor to be thicker. Besides the Citadel protecting the main battery, an armored deck and bulkhead protected engineering spaces. These ships had extreme amount of head room on the gun decks, and were very popular as flagships, because the admiral's staff had a great deal
These vessels were usually restricted to good weather, or coastal waters. The advantages were many. First, the very large guns had a wide angle of fire. Seconly, the low freeboard and armored superstructure and turret made for a poor target. The monitor was very popular with second-class navies because they did not have to worry about projecting their naval power on the high seas.
In order to solve the freeboard problem of the monitor design, naval architects developed the casemate. This was an armored tube that projected slightly above deck and extended down to the magazine, protecting the gun and the ammunition supply system at the same time. There was no armored roof or wall for the gun in the basic casemate design. In fact, the 16.5" guns of the Admiral Class Battleship had no overhead protection at all. An armored housing in most cases covered the guns, fitting down inside the casemate. Now the magazines and guns could be protected, while still raising the height of the gun mount to provide adequate freeboard, and the turret battleship could go to sea in any weather. An armored citadel protected secondary batteries, armored decks prevented plunging fire from getting into the engineering spaces and bulkheads protected the bow and stem. The modern battleship was born. The Cruiser
The "Armored Cruisers" (AC) served as the eyes of the fleet and were the prime enforcer on colonial stations. Next in size and power were the "Protected Cruisers" (PC). With an armored deck and gun mounts, these ships were ideal for protecting or destroying merchant shipping. The "Light Cruisers" (LC) did more of the same with even lighter guns and armor. The prime threats to merchant shipping were the sloops and corvettes (SL) and (CV). These older designs were qliite similar to the USS Kearsage and CSS Alabama. These tended to be slower than cruisers, with coal stretching power plants, having little or no armor protection and older weapons.
With the invention of the self-propelled torpedo, very small vessals were able to threaten the most powerful battleships. Armor was little use below the waterline. Once torpoedo boats (TB) became common, secondary armament was insufficient to eliminate the threat to the battle line. Soon enough, the torpedo design was expanded given more firepower and the torpedo boat destroyer (TBD) became the guard dog of the battle fleet. Soon enough, it was found that larger TBD's could also carry torpedo batteries, and the torpedo boat became obsolscent. Summary This is a very brief overview of naval development in the nineteenth century. Those of you who love naval wargaming should try this period. The details of properly orchestrating the application of such diverse weaponry should give you new challenges. Miniatures of the era are becoming more common. The ideal miniatures available right now are from Richard Houston in classic 1/1200th scale. These are beautiful models, quite obviously the best on the market, and he offers a wide selection. It is a great period for the scratch builder as well. Terms
TBS: Turret Battleship PC: Protected Cruiser LC: Light Cruiser CE: Corvette SL: Sloop TB: Torpedo Boat CDM: Coastal Defense Monitor AC: Armored Cruiser TGB: Torpedo Gunboat AGB: Armored Gunboat TCBI: Turret Central Battery Ironclad ICR: Ironclad Ram TR: Torpedo Ram BSI: Broadside Ironclad GB: Gun Boat GV: Gunned Vessel Naval Forces: Naval Forces: Austria Back to Tornado Alert #23 Table of Contents © Copyright 1996 by Tornado Alert! This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. |
The Broadside Ironclad (BCI) was essentially a sailing warship to which had been added a steam power plant (though station-keeping and cruising was done under sail), and cast iron plating
to protect the sides of the ship. Gun arrangments was no different than in the days of Nelson, and the primary weapon was the muzzle-loading smoothbore. These were still being built at the end of the 1860's. With the exception of the Monitor style vessels designed by Eriksson's school
of design, it is a sea-going warship of the American Civil War.
Designers soon realized that the awesome weight of iron-plating an entire battleship while trying to mount sixty or seventy of the newer large bore artillery pieces was a design impossibility. When the total practical armor weight was spread over the entire hull of the vessel it was far too thin to protect adequately. The compromise was to concentrate fewer, more powerful guns in a concentrated area, with the pieces on swivel mounts to fire through ports covering different firing arcs.
The Coastal Defense Monitor (CDM) was an outgrowth of the USS Monitor. The classic turret was a flat armored cylinder that extended the armor protection be low the deck level. A thinly armored
deck and bulkheads completed the protection. The main drawback was the extreme weight of the turret. There was no casemate to protect the gunnery and ammunition space, with a thinner armored cover over the gun machinery as in modern battleships, an henceforth no weight saving
in the design. To keep turret weight down, it could not extend far below the deck level, therefore the monitor had very little freeboard. Low freeboard means poor rough weather performance.
The Battleship
The battleship could defend the coasts and project power against opposing fleets; however, a slow line of battleships could not scout adequately, were too valuable to send out piecemeal to protect merchant shipping, too few to assign to far-flung colonial outposts, and to slow and short-ranged to harry the enemy's shipping. The cruiser was the answer. The largest were armed and armored only slightly less than the largest battleships.
Torpedo Boats