British Cruisers of the Victorian Era

To absent friends:

Antony Preston, David Lyon, and David Topliss

Frontispiece: HMS Boadicea as refitted and rearmed in 1888. A closed embrasure for an aftfiring gun is visible above her false sailing-ship style quarter lights. The charthouse is barely visible just forward of the foot of the mizzen mast.

(NationalMaritimeMuseum G10330)

Copyright © Norman Friedman 2012

Plans © A D Baker III 2012

(except those on pages 172 and 261 © PaulWebb 2012)

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Seaforth Publishing

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street, Barnsley

S Yorkshire S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

Email [email protected]

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP data record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84832 099 4

eISBN 9781473803121

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

The right of Norman Friedman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Typeset and designed by Roger Daniels

Printed and bound in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd

Contents

Acknowledgements

Illustrator’s Notes

INTRODUCTION

1.STEAM, SAIL AND WOODEN HULLS

2.IRON HULLS

3.THE FIRST ARMOURED CRUISERS

4.FAST STEEL CRUISERS

5.THE TORPEDO AND SMALL CRUISERS

6.BIG CRUISERS TO PROTECT COMMERCE

7.THE FAST WING OF THE BATTLE FLEET

Appendix: Vickers Designs

8.EPILOGUE: FISHER’S REVOLUTION

Bibliography

Notes

Data List (specifications)

List of Ships

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

My wife Rhea made this book possible. She helped me think through some of the key issues concerning dramatic changes in British exposure to trade warfare, which are vital to its thesis. As the scope of this book expanded to embrace the whole Victorian era (and a few years afterwards), I had to go back to various archives again and again, and Rhea encouraged me to do so. I could not have written this book without Rhea’s loving support and encouragement.

Any project like this book benefits enormously from the help friends can provide. This one particularly benefited as its time scope grew from the late Victorian era (beginning with HMS Iris and Mercury). Anyone who has worked in the documents of this period will recognize that the extent and quality of documentation declines dramatically for the period before about 1870. For example, no policy documents explain the dramatic cut in cruiser construction in 1863-64. None of the Covers for the big iron frigates appear to have survived (it is as though Edward Reed decamped with all of his design documentation when he stepped down as DNC). I am therefore particularly grateful to those who helped with what documentation has survived. Dr Stephen S Roberts generously provided British material he had collected many years ago for his thesis on French naval development. Professor John Beeler, who is collecting and publishing the Milne papers, provided some key letters. Professor Andrew Lambert, who has specialized in the Victorian Royal Navy, generously provided several papers, one of them unpublished. Chris Wright, editor of Warship International, provided his thesis on the Royal Navy of this period, which greatly helped clarify the policy context. I benefited enormously from a lengthy conversation with Colin Jones and with John Houghton, and the latter generously provided a copy of his book on world navies of the early Victorian period.

For both the early and the later eras, I am grateful to Jeremy Michell and to Andrew Choong of the Brass Foundry outstation of the National Maritime Museum for their enormous help with plans and photos. I am also grateful to Bob Todd, photo curator at the Brass Foundry. For photos held by the US Navy, I would like to thank my friend Charles Haberlein, curator emeritus at the Naval Historical and Heritage Command, and his assistants Ed Finney and Robert Hanshew (who is Mr Haberlein’s successor). I would like to thank the photo library staff of the US Naval Institute. I am grateful to the State Library of Victoria (Australia), which has made available the superb photography of Allan C Green which it holds. I am also grateful to the staff of the Public Record Office (now called the National Archives) at Kew and to Jennie Wraight, Admiralty Librarian at the Royal Navy Historical Branch in Portsmouth. I would like to thank Dr David Stevens of the Royal Australian Navy Historical Branch and Dr Josef Strazcek, formerly his assistant and an avid photo collector. Both supplied very useful photographs. Stephen McLaughlin very generously provided material on Vickers designs. I can only regret that no comparable record of Armstrong designs seems to have survived. That is particularly unfortunate because Armstrong built the great bulk of the export cruisers of the period covered by this book. I was fortunate to be permitted to use the Vickers collection at Cambridge University Library.

My good friend A D Baker III is listed as illustrator, but he is much more than that. As he painstakingly created drawings of British cruisers, he pointed out their many quirks and the relationships which he could see in the source drawings and photographs. Often they were not evident in other documentation. Mr Baker also kindly provided some of the photographs in this book. Both Mr Baker and I much appreciate the advice and assistance we received from our friend Alan Raven in the course of this project. I would like to thank Paul Webb for the drawings he contributed. I would like to thank Professor Jon Sumida not only for his assistance with this project, but for illuminating, many years ago, the economics of the Royal Navy – which for me explained a lot of what is described in this book.

As grateful as I am for the assistance I received, I am of course responsible for the contents of this book, including any errors.

NORMAN FRIEDMAN

Illustrator’s Notes

The drawings in this book by myself and by Paul A Webb are based directly on official Admiralty ‘as fitted’ plans. Copies of the original plans, usually amounting to several sheets for each ship, can be ordered from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. The NMM’s historic Brass Foundry building at the old Woolwich Arsenal houses one of the world’s most extensive collections of ship plans, dating back many centuries into the age of pure sail propulsion. It also has an extensive collection of ship photographs. The expert staff at the Brass Foundry, in particular Andrew Choong Han Lin, has been extremely helpful in selecting and crisply duplicating the plan sets needed for this volume.

Many of the older original plans are now fading and, in some cases, have suffered damage over the past century and more. For some ships, only the basic hull and superstructure sheets have survived. For others, only preliminary plans remain. The actual ships experienced many changes before completion. Usually only one set of plans for one ship of a class survives. Thus the dates of depiction listed for each drawing depended heavily on what was available. ‘As fitted’ drawings are unusual in showing details not only of the exterior of a ship but also many details of the interior, all on the same sheet. For the period covered by this volume, deck plans often show details of equipment like voice pipes and fire mains that are actually below the deck depicted. Elevations usually do not show the masts beyond a few feet above the decks (in many cases the funnels are also truncated). For most of the ships in this book, rigging and/or sail plans survive, but where they did not, the masting and rigging was deduced from that of the closest contemporary classes and from photographs.

Thus the availability of high-quality photography is vital to producing plans as accurate as possible. For the first volume in this series, there was ample aerial photography, but aerial views of Victorian era ships are, understandably, extremely rare. Thus details of equipment and deckhouses behind the characteristic midships bulwarks of the ships of that time are dependent on the surviving plans, a few on-board views, and photographs of contemporary ship models. The interpretation of period warship photographs is further complicated by the paint scheme used. A black-hulled ship shows few details of her sides unless the sun is at a particularly fortunate angle.

The British-designed cruisers discussed in this book were much more cluttered in appearance than are modern warships. The necessity to provide sturdy masts, first to support sails and the portable rigging for coaling, and then to carry as high as possible the antennas for primitive radio (‘wireless telegraphy’) required extensive supporting rigging. I have left in the footropes (‘ratlines’) on the mast support shrouds to help convey the complexity of the rigging and to suggest the amount of effort by the crew needed to maintain it, although regrettably this sometimes obscures some detail of the structures behind the rigging.

The vast profusion of ships’ boats (which came in a great many different sizes and forms) also cluttered the ships’ appearance. Most of the drawings for the book show the boats in both their at-sea stowage and in their ‘swung-out’ harbour positions. Due to a lack of reference material, plan view details of the innards of the boats are only shown in the rare instances where the ‘as fitted’ plans provided them. In the plan views, the outlines for boats stowed inboard are usually shown as dotted lines so that the details of their stowage racks and deck fittings below them could be depicted. In some of the elevation views, the boat profiles are shown as dotted lines for the same reason. One reason for the large number of boats, most of them oar propelled, was that life jackets only came into use late in the period covered by this volume. Carley-type liferafts only began to proliferate during the First World War.

To provide ventilation for the ships’ engineering and accommodation spaces, the ships carried numerous cowl ventilators in a great variety of sizes and shapes. Adding to the clutter were exhaust pipes for individual coal-fired heating stoves in the berthing areas and portable supports for the vast amounts of canvas awning that was rigged when in port to keep the ships’ interiors as cool as possible. Many of these features fouled the trainable armament and had to be taken down and stowed below or on topside deck racks before the ships could go into action. Most of the elevation and plan drawings also show the portable accommodation ladders, those aft for the officers and those amidships, where fitted, for the enlisted crew; these too had to be stowed on racks amidships when the ships cleared for sea. One feature not shown on the later cruisers was the wire netting that could be rigged amidships to provide some degree of protection for gun crews from splinters caused by shell-fire hits. Another defensive feature found on later, larger Royal Navy cruisers was the complex network of booms to support anti-torpedo netting, and the shelving along the ships’ sides that was used to stow the rolled-up netting when the ships were underway.

All of the ships and powered craft in this book, even the tiny 2nd Class Torpedo Boats, were fuelled by coal, hence the numerous small concentric circles drawn on decks amidships that depict the scuttles leading to coal bunkers. Replenishing coal supplies, in addition to being a time-consuming and filthy task, also required rigging temporary lines to support gear, such as the ubiquitous ‘Temperley Transporter’ patent booms that rolled fore and aft along heavy cables slung between the masts. Numerous portable derricks and booms for coaling, bringing aboard stores, lifting out and retrieving ship’s boats, and mooring boats alongside, also added further complexity, as did the clutter of anchor-handling equipment and chains.

Well into the 1890s, carved decorations were considered vital to a Royal Navy warship’s portrayal of the power and might of the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, the elaborate bow and stern scrolling and, in some cases, figureheads, were only rarely shown on ‘as fitted’ plans. Where photos and drawings permitted, I have attempted to show some of the decorations, but for many ships that had them, the available photographs were inadequate. Also missing from the official plans were any suggestions of the equally elaborate striping on the sides of the ships, and no attempt has been made to replicate the paintwork on the drawings. In any case, as the photo illustrations show, such decorative features began to be removed from major RN warships during refits even prior to the universal replacement of black, white, and buff paint schemes with drab greys under Admiral Fisher.

The quality of the drafting on the original plans was almost invariably superb (with the exception of the earlier rigging and sail plans, which look hurried and rather sketchy). Considering that the draftsmen of the day were using ruling pens and large numbers of French curves and ships’ curves for their work and had to do all the lettering by hand, it is remarkable how handsome and decorative their final drawings appeared. Paul A Webb’s two drawings for the book were done using CAD, but the remainder employed Rapidograph ruling pens, numerous circle and oval templates, a set of ships’ curves hand-made by a distant relative just about a century ago – and several magnifying glasses and an ever-busy electric eraser.

Dr Friedman photocopied hundreds of period photo prints and also took numerous photos of ship models during his visits to archives in the United Kingdom and the USA; these were of immense help in interpreting the original drawings. Many friends contributed material from their own collections, including Robin Bursell in the UK, Christopher C Wright (editor of the quarterly Warship Internationalth of an inch to the foot scale.

Finally, I would like to add my deepest and heartfelt thanks to my wife, Anne, who patiently endured for a year and a half my several thousand hours hunched over the drafting table in our office. Without her constant support and encouragement, the work could not have been accomplished.

A D BAKER III

INTRODUCTION

It used to be said of the Royal Navy that its battleships brought it command of the sea, but that its cruisers – the ships described in this book – exercised that control. Cruisers were expected to protect British trade in wartime and to run enemy commerce off the sea. In peacetime they and their lesser cousins, sloops, guaranteed what is now called ‘good order at sea’, dealing with pirates and other maritime criminals. They also provided a good deal of the power exerted by local British colonial governments and by British political officers in quasi-colonies. Historians often emphasize the accelerating rate at which technology changed. What is much less appreciated is how radically the British strategic situation changed between the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the beginning of the twentieth century, which is about when the last of the ships described in this book were designed.

The Changing Strategic Environment

Geography and context remained remarkably constant from the early eighteenth century down to the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, France always being the main enemy. France presented two different principal threats: direct invasion across the Channel and trade warfare prosecuted mainly by waves of privateers operating out of French ports. French colonies abroad could also support trade warfare, as in the Indian Ocean campaign during the Napoleonic Wars. French fleets could also attack valuable British colonies, as Villeneuve threatened to do in the Caribbean during the run-up to Trafalgar. Such threats were generally intended to force the British to relax their blockade of French or allied ports.

What did the Victorian Royal Navy consider a cruiser? At the upper end of the scale were battleship-size ships like HMS Powerful, seen here steaming at 18kts, probably as newly completed. She wears the classic Victorian livery of black hull, white superstructure (and gun mountings), and buff funnels. Ships assigned to hotter climates had white hulls. The cruiser classification appeared, perhaps for the first time, in the 1 January 1878 edition of Classification of the Armoured and Unarmoured Ships and Vessels Constituting the Fighting and Sea-Going Divisions of the British Navy. It divided unarmoured cruisers into three classes, the first of which were frigates (new and old) and the Bacchantes. The second class were the big new corvettes. The third were smaller corvettes. The official 1880 armament list included not only unarmoured ships described as cruisers, but also armoured cruisers. As might be expected, the latter included the five belted cruisers, but also the ironclads Warrior and Black Prince as well as Achilles and Repulse and the smaller Hector, Valiant, Defence, and Resistance. The 1886 list split armoured cruisers into two classes, the first including the new Orlandos and the five earlier belted cruisers – and the big but obsolescent ironclads. This classification may reflect an abortive project to re-engine the big ironclads to make them into large fast cruisers. It is more difficult to understand inclusion of the smaller ironclads (the 1886 list omitted Resistance), which in 1886 were second-class armoured cruisers. The ironclad cruiser categories had been dropped by 1888 in favour of a distinction between first-, second-, and third-class cruisers (whether or not protected). Earlier lists, at least as late as 1875, distinguished armoured ships from unarmoured ships retained for sea service, the latter including the old screw frigates.

The most valuable British overseas asset (not yet a colony) was India, from which the British had only recently, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, largely ejected the French. Throughout the nineteenth century, the two poles of British policy were the need to maintain security in Europe and the need to maintain access to, and control of, India (and hence of valuable possessions and connections further east).

India was too large to attack by sea. The route from Britain to India was another story. The quickest route was by sea to Egypt through the Mediterranean, overland to the Red Sea, and thence by sea to India. This route made the Mediterranean a vital British interest, even before the Suez Canal made the route far more efficient. Thus the closest Napoleon came to threatening British control of India was his campaign in Egypt, which was intended to distract the British from intervening against France in Europe.

In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat, the world changed. The British gained bases in the Mediterranean (Malta and, more temporarily, the Ionian Islands) which gave them a permanent naval presence there; previously they only had Gibraltar, near the French end of that sea. The sea/land/sea route to India became more important, as the British consolidated their rule and began to use India as a base for operations further east. British interest in the Mediterranean, and therefore in the Ottoman Empire, which (at least nominally) controlled the eastern end of the sea, including Syria (meaning present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel) increased. For decades the Russian Empire had been moving south towards and beyond the Black Sea at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. It became a staple of British policy to maintain the Ottoman Empire despite its increasingly decrepit state, both to maintain a balance of power in Europe and to keep the Russians from direct access to the Mediterranean, hence to the sea route to India. By 1840 the Admiralty considered the Mediterranean second in importance only to the Channel.

The French were the principal threat to the route to India via the Mediterranean. In 1830 they established themselves on its southern shore in Algeria. At its eastern end they became involved in Syria and Egypt in 1840. They also became involved in Italian politics leading to the consolidation of that country. The British could see these steps as moves towards French domination of the Mediterranean. By 1840 the largest active British fleet was in the Mediterranean, not the Channel.

The Spanish colonies in South America became independent countries which could, for the first time, trade openly with Britain. The United States began to expand, and it too was an enormous market. The combination of finance provided by the City of London, the British-based industrial revolution, and British shipping created an explosive increase in British ocean trade. In the past, colonies producing particular materials or goods (such as spices or sugar) had been key to national prosperity. Now colonies, except for India and connections further east, became less important economically, particularly after slavery (which had made Caribbean sugar production lucrative) was abolished in the British Empire. Trade itself coupled with manufacturing became much more important. As the centre of the industrial revolution, Britain had goods the world increasingly wanted. The British Government increasingly saw free trade as key to national prosperity.

The British Government adopted free trade policies, abandoning protective tariffs. Perhaps the most important case was the Corn Law, protecting British farmers, abolished in 1846. In addition, in 1849 the British Government abandoned the Navigation Acts, which had limited shipping between Britain and her colonies to British ships. The latter had been tolerated as a way of maintaining a large merchant fleet. British policy had been to keep a large fleet of ships in reserve, expecting to activate the ships in an emergency largely with crews of merchant seamen. In effect, abandoning the Navigation Acts favoured British shipbuilders and engine-makers, because in the 1840s and 1850s Britain absolutely dominated world shipbuilding in the new primary material, iron, and also the engine-building industry. The effect of abolishing the Corn Laws was gradually to move British food production offshore, an early example of what is now called globalization. Those who voted to abolish the Corn Laws expected that corn (wheat) would be imported mainly from Russia (Poland, which Russia controlled, was then the main productive region), but with the collapse of shipping costs, it turned out that Britain was fed mainly from North America and, to a lesser degree, Australasia.

This development changed the meaning of wartime trade protection. During and before the Napoleonic Wars, British merchant ships mainly carried manufactured goods and the raw materials to make them, such as cloth and cotton. Sinking or seizing the ships would certainly affect the British economy, but it could not destroy Britain, which was largely self-sufficient in food. Once Britain relied heavily on foreign sources of food, cutting British seaborne trade threatened starvation: the imported food had to reach Britain by sea. Furthermore, the new industries relied heavily on raw materials brought by sea from abroad. Cutting that traffic could destroy the ability to produce the weapons needed to defend the British Isles. The Victorian Royal Navy found it difficult to arouse public interest in so abstract an issue as trade defence. Too many in the United Kingdom equated defence simply to defence (by army and militia) against invasion.

During the same period, Russia became the greatest wheat-exporting country in Europe. Before about the 1850s grain production was centred in the Baltic. By the 1850s, however, the Ukraine, with its rich black soil, was growing three times as much as the Baltic. This grain was exported through the Bosporus, the Turkish straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Quite aside from the exports, the Russians had long sought control of the straits. However, by the latter part of the nineteenth century exports through the Bosporus were their chief source of foreign exchange. That certainly sharpened Russian determination to control the straits, inevitably at the expense of Turkey. The situation was further complicated by the Russians’ position as the centre of Orthodox Christianity, hence as the protectors of many Christians living in Turkish territories in the Balkans on the edges of the Black Sea. The Russians viewed themselves as successors to the Byzantine Empire (‘the third Rome’), hence chosen to reverse the Turks’ victory over Byzantium (Constantinople) four centuries earlier. Byzantium had been a maritime empire controlling the eastern Mediterranean. Thus Russian interests made collision with the British inevitable, given British sensitivity to any challenge in the Mediterranean, on the other side of the Turkish straits.

Further down the scale were second-class cruisers like HMS Minerva. By the late 1890s they were by far the most numerous British cruisers. Minerva was placed in Chatham Reserve upon completion, then used for boiler trials in 1899-1903 as part of the Cruiser Training Squadron. She was later assigned to Devonport (1903-4), and then attached to the Mediterranean Fleet battle squadron in 1904-12 (during which she underwent a 1908 refit). She was then assigned to the new Third (reserve) Fleet’s 11th Cruiser Squadron. serving as temporary depot ship for the 6th Destroyer Flotilla in 1912-13. On the outbreak of war the 11th Cruiser Squadron was mobilized for the West Coast of Ireland patrol (Minerva captured an Austrian merchant ship off Cape Finisterre in September 1914). She was assigned to the East Indies and then to Egypt in 1914-15, serving at the Dardanelles (she sank the Turkish torpedo boat Demirhissar off Chios on 17 April 1915). She remained in Egyptian waters through 1916, helping to defend the Suez Canal against a Turkish attack. Once that threat had gone, she served in East African waters in 1916-18, and at the Cape in 1918. She was sold in 1920.

In the 1890s speed became the great distinction between cruisers – ships which could operate with the fleet – and the mass of cruising ships which maintained good order at sea and in British possessions. Until about 1885, however, many cruisers (corvettes) were not very fast at all. The corvette HMS Rapid was originally classified as a sloop, then rerated as a corvette, illustrating the fluid state of warship designations in the 1880s. The formal distinction was that a cruiser was a Captain’s command, a sloop a Commander’s.

(Allan C Green via State Library of Victoria)

Probably because Russia was a key grain exporter, the Russians particularly well understood how dependent the British were on grain imports. It was the nineteenth-century equivalent of a key OPEC member contemplating the vulnerability of Western oil-consuming states to an interruption in the flow of oil. As early as 1863 (in the context of a crisis over Russian suppression of a revolt in Poland), the Russians saw commerce warfare as a natural part of any war against the British. That year Russian squadrons visited New York and San Francisco. Americans saw the visit as valuable support during the Civil War. However, the point of the visit was to show the British that Russian warships could leave the Baltic (to attack their commerce) without the British observing them at all (the British seem not to have gotten this point). Once outside Russian waters, moreover, the squadrons could raid British commerce despite any blockade the British imposed (Russian geography, then and later, made it relatively easy to block access to the open sea). During the 1877-78 crisis the Russians sought to evade British blockade altogether by assembling the Russian Volunteer Fleet of commerce-raiding merchant ships in foreign ports.

There was a counter-current to British fears of trade warfare: by the 1850s British governments increasingly interested in commerce were less and less anxious to seize private property on the high seas. That applied particularly to the greatest free-trade country of all, the United Kingdom. For example, during the Crimean War – which contemporaries called the Great Russian War – no blockade was imposed. (It might, however, be suggested that the main goods the Russians imported by sea were manufactured goods from England, and that the British government of the day was not anxious to damage its own economy.)

The great scourge of previous wars had been privateers, privately-owned ships carrying special authorizations (letters of marque). Any civilian ship could be used in this way, so the number of commerce raiders could be immense. Similarly, all existing ports could be used as privateer bases. In 1859 the Treaty of Paris, signed by all the major sea powers except the United States, outlawed privateers. The potential scale of the commerce-raiding problem was dramatically reduced; navies had to choose between devoting resources to battle fleets and devoting them to war against trade.

The Treaty of Paris might even be read as abandonment of blockade. The British surrendered their ‘ancient right’ to seize enemy cargo carried in neutral ships. It seemed that shipowners could protect themselves in wartime simply by fleeing to other flags (as many did in 1914). Many in the Royal Navy thought this abandonment of the ancient rights of the maritime power had rendered sea power almost pointless. The treaty also limited what goods could legitimately be interdicted, food being an important exception. As the nineteenth century wore on, few British naval officers continued to believe that a ruthless enemy would care about either new rule – for them, enemy attacks on commerce increasingly carried the threat of starvation. The First World War showed that they were entirely correct.

Liberals led by William Gladstone sometimes argued that there was no point in planning for trade protection because the threat had been so dramatically reduced. At the least that made Gladstone, no friend of the Royal Navy, inclined against a fleet designed for blockade operations. Gladstone’s first administration spanned the period 1868-74, which was exactly when the presence role of cruisers was far more important than the trade protection role. Naval officers pointed to the depredations of raiders operated by the Confederates during the American Civil War to show that the threat to trade – to British food – was still very real. Alabama and other successful Confederate raiders showed just how effectively a steam-powered cruiser could attack merchant shipping, which in the 1860s was still overwhelmingly sail-powered.

Meanwhile the geography of British sea power changed. British naval dominance of Europe depended largely on the fact that the British Isles blocked the exits from the Channel and from the North Sea and, by extension, the Baltic. Fleets based in the British Isles could blockade enemy bases in all these places, as indeed they had during the Napoleonic Wars. Once Britain had Gibraltar, she gained control (at least in theory) of the outlet of the Mediterranean. Any potential enemy with bases outside the area blocked by the British Isles and Gibraltar presented a new and potentially devastating threat, particularly to British trade. At the least it was a much more expensive threat to counter. That was certainly the case with the United States, whose naval policy through most of the nineteenth century was to be prepared to counter Britain, her traditional enemy, with a combination of trade warfare and coast defence. The United States had to be taken seriously as a danger because of its potential threat to Canada, which it had exercised (albeit not successfully) in 1812. Once the United States reached the Pacific, the British also had to deal with threats associated with the US–British Columbia border there.

Russian expansion into East Asia similarly brought them outside European geography. During the Crimean War, the Royal Navy raided the sole Russian Pacific base, Petropavlovsk. It had only limited value, as it was not large and also as it was closed by ice for much of the year. In 1860, however, the Russians set up an ice-free Asian port, Vladivostok, which posed a year-round threat to British Pacific trade.

Once the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the route to India and points east through the Mediterranean became far more important. The opening of the Suez Canal unfortunately roughly coincided with Russian denunciation of the clauses of the Crimean War settlement barring them from recreating a Black Sea Fleet. The two guarantors had been the two wartime allies, Britain and France, and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) paralysed France. The British alone were unwilling to enforce what the Czar of the time considered a gross humiliation. Grain exports did not figure in the Czar’s comments, and the Russians did not immediately build up the Black Sea Fleet. However, it must have been obvious that once they did they could exert considerably more pressure on the British in the Mediterranean.

The Suez Canal was a Franco-Egyptian venture, but once in office in 1874 Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli saw it as a vital British interest; he bought a controlling share by buying up the Egyptian Government’s holdings. Although nominally part of the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire, Egypt was effectively independent, its government constantly in need of money.

Not too long after Disraeli bought the Canal shares, the Russo-Turkish crisis of 1875-77 threatened to place a Russian satellite state (Bulgaria) on the Mediterranean, within range of the Canal.¹ In 1878, with Russian troops threatening Constantinople, a British battle squadron made the dangerous ascent of the Bosporus in a snowstorm. The Russians had no real Black Sea Fleet, but the British ironclads were placing themselves to shell the Russian troops if necessary (the threat forced a Russian withdrawal). This fleet was commanded by Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps Hornby, who had commanded the Flying Squadron, and who would be a key figure in the agitation leading to the Naval Defence Act of 1889.

Although the ascent of the Turkish straits was a great success, other aspects of the British response were not. In addition to the standing Mediterranean Fleet, the Admiralty decided to assemble a fleet to penetrate the Baltic. To so do without removing the Channel Fleet (i.e., without presenting the French with the opportunity to invade), it tried to mobilize reserve ships and form them into a Baltic fleet. Mobilization proved difficult and far too slow. Intelligence had been collected, but at the crucial moment it could not be found. It proved impossible to maintain contact with Russian cruisers, which would have preyed on British trade had war broken out.

Ultimately the need to secure the Canal helped draw the British into making Egypt a quasi-colony.² At this time British colonies (apart from India) were generally fairly distant from anyone else’s, approachable only by sea. Egypt was a very different proposition. It was close to other European colonies in North Africa, and it could be approached through Africa. Britain and France almost went to war in 1898 because French troops probing north met British troops at Fashoda in southern Egypt, suggesting that some larger thrust was planned (war orders were drafted, and one consequence of the war scare was a supplemental naval program). In this sense Egypt was analogous to India; in both cases defence included the defence of land frontiers. In both cases the land frontiers were considerably less approachable than maps suggested to governments in London.

British seizure of Egypt without French involvement made it difficult for the British to resist attempts by other European powers to seize parts of Africa. This scramble for Africa provided colonies the Germans, previously without colonial possessions, hoped to use as bases for cruisers during the First World War. The British found themselves seizing the German colonies not because they had enormous inherent value, but to deny them as bases for use against vital British trade.

The Mediterranean became so vital that the Mediterranean Fleet became the most important British naval formation of the late nineteenth century. With French bases circling much of the Mediterranean, it faced unusual conditions which brought forth special tactical solutions, not least for cruisers. As CinC of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fisher conceived many of his key ideas, which led in turn to the revolutions he pushed through at the Admiralty at the close of the period covered by this book.

HMS Egeria was a Fantome class sloop, the size just below corvettes (which were later rated as cruisers). This class introduced the composite construction which DNC Sir Nathaniel Barnaby later applied to the Satellite class corvettes. Built at Pembroke, Egeria was launched on 1 November 1873. Designed displacement was 894 tons, but the ships displaced 949 as completed; the difference may have been due to miscalculation involving the new type of construction (dimensions: 160ft × 31¼ft × 12½ft). Armament comprised two 7in 90cwt and two 64pdr, all muzzle-loading rifles on slides (these were the largest British warships with an all-traversing armament). One 7in was between funnel and mainmast and one on the quarterdeck, both with ports so that they could fire on the broadside. The only major armament modification was to replace wooden with iron slides after the first commission (Egeria later had her armament reduced as a surveying ship). Ships like this needed sail power for endurance. As a sloop, Egeria was slower than Barnaby’s corvettes: on trial she made 11.303kts on 1011 IHP. The class was rated at 1000nm at 10kts. Machinery comprised three cylindrical boilers and a two-cylinder compound engine (these were the first sloops with compound engines). Ballard described the class as easily handled under sail, free from yaw when running before a heavy sea, buoyant when lying-to, and stiff enough not to require any ballast. They did not hold a good lee, however. They were never faster than 11½kts even when scudding before a high wind. These sailing qualities mattered; like other Victorian sloops, they made their long passages under sail. Complement was 125. Egeria served initially on the China station (1874-81, receiving a relief crew in 1878). She grounded badly off Hainan in a fog in 1879, but was refloated successfully (she lost most of her false keel in the process). On her return she went into reserve for two years, and was then selected as a surveying ship, her 64pdrs and 7in guns replaced by four 20pdrs (to deal with pirates). She was ready in 1886, and she was not brought home until she had to be reboilered (in 1894). She was paid off at Esquimault in 1911.

Through the mid-nineteenth century the Russians drove south into Central Asia towards India. It might not be possible to overthrow British power in India by sea; the country was just too large. However, the British thought that the Russians planned to turn both Persia (Iran) and Afghanistan into vassal states, and it was conceivable that Afghans pouring across the northern frontier of India might have begun its conquest. This land threat was the substance of the ‘Great Game’ celebrated by Kipling and others. The naval aspect was that the best way for the British to counter Russian moves in Central Asia was to apply naval pressure in the one place most vital to the Russians: the Baltic.

The next Anglo-Russian crisis after 1878 (1885) was prompted not by a thrust towards the Turkish straits, but by a Russian probe into Afghanistan, which bordered India.³ Without a large standing army, the only response available to the British was naval. In 1878 a fleet was sent up the Bosporus while another was mobilized to enter the Baltic. In 1885 there was no Mediterranean response, but a Baltic squadron was again mobilized, this time commanded by Admiral Phipps Hornby. When the immediate threat dissipated, the squadron was retained for manoeuvres, which were intended to test new technology. By this time the Russians had invested heavily in torpedo craft, and some of the exercises tested the fleet’s ability to seize and maintain a base in the Baltic in the face of torpedoes and mines. Lessons learned deeply affected cruiser development. The 1885 exercises were considered so valuable a test of tactics and technology that they were made a nearly annual event. As in 1877-78, mobilization was not entirely successful, although there were notable improvements. For example, this time the navy was able to shadow Russian ships, precluding a major Russian offensive against British trade.

HMS Penguin was an Osprey class composite screw sloop, Barnaby’s follow-on to the Egeria class. She had another two 64pdr guns. The embrasures for stern fire ran about half way along her poop. They are barely visible in this photograph because the hull was painted black. These ships came out light, the surplus of 35 tons being used for more coal. In effect these ships were half-scale models of contemporary composite corvettes, with the same kind of profile and embrasures at bow and stern (for end-on fire) and with the corvettes’ sharp end lines and full midsections. Like Barnaby’s corvettes, they had knee bows. The sharp tapering to the ends was accompanied by sharp rise of floor. This combination made them handy (as intended) but did not confer the desired speed. The lines did, however, make them remarkably suitable for meeting weather from any direction. In the worst gale they would rise or scud equally well under steam or sail. They did, however, roll too quickly to be efficient gun platforms, which suggests that metacentric height was greater than expected due to too low a centre of gravity (underestimated weights). Initially the ships had a light poop and forecastle, both open at the break, the poop covering two cabins with a chaser between them, and the forecastle covering the heads and another chaser. After the first commission both were strengthened and fully enclosed and machine guns mounted on top. Machinery divided the hull in two lengthwise, a narrow communication passage running along the starboard side through the upper part of the boiler and engine rooms, with a watertight door at each end. This was the first class to have glass scuttles in place of the older square hanging ports or ‘rat hole’ plug scuttles. Like the larger cruisers, these ships started out with two heavy guns, in this case 7in 4½-tonners on slides, one between funnel and mainmast and the other on the quarterdeck, both intended to fire on the broadside. They had two 64pdrs on the broadside and two more under the forecastle and poop as chasers. This combination gave them a heavy broadside, but using it put so much weight on one side (the heavy guns would be traversed to bear) that the ship heeled. Of this class, Wild Swan and Pelican were rearmed with breech-loaders. They were given two 6in at quarterdeck broadside ports, four 5in at broadside ports, and two 5in chasers firing through embrasures at bow and stern. Penguin received a pair of 5in breech-loaders on her poop instead of the single 64pdr below it. Osprey and Cormorant were never rearmed, because new guns were not available until they were too old. Due to the unusual hull form, space for the horizontal engines could be found just half-way between bow and stern, so the engines were, unusually, forward of the mainmast rather than abaft as in other threemasted Royal Navy ships of this period. That made for an unusually long propeller shaft, a source of trouble, and the mainmast had to be stepped on the main deck instead of the keel. Like Egeria, Penguin was relatively slow (she was the slowest of the class, making 9.875kts with 666 IHP; her Devonport-built sister Pelican made 12.241kts on 1056 IHP). After her first commission her machinery was replaced by Devonport-built compound engines. Built under contract (by Robert Napier and Sons), Penguin was launched on 25 March 1876. Displacement was 1130 tons (170ft pp × 36ft × 15ft 9in). Complement was 150. Penguin went to the Pacific on completion in 1877, returning in 1881 to have her machinery replaced. Unlike her sister Wild Swan, which went into the yard at the same time, she was not rearmed at this time with breech-loaders due to a shortage of guns. She went into reserve, recommissioning in 1886 for the East Indies. On return in 1889, she was selected for conversion to a survey ship, all her guns except a pair of broadside 64pdrs being removed. Space left vacant by the 7in guns was used for deckhouses and her boat complement was increased. In this form she commissioned in January 1890, not being paid off until March 1907, in Sydney, where she was reduced to harbour depot ship – the last of her class to remain at sea. She was transferred to the new RAN.

HMS Doterel was the name ship of a class very similar to the Penguins, distinguishable by their vertical stems. They displaced 1130 tons (170ft pp × 34ft × 15ft) and were armed with two 7in 90cwt guns plus four 64pdrs, all on pivoted slides, plus four machine guns. They had three cylindrical boilers feeding a horizontal compound engine: Doterel made 11kts on 900 IHP. Endurance under steam was 1480nm at 10kts. Doterel was launched at Chatham on 2 March 1880. She was lost on her maiden voyage, exploding and sinking off Sandy Point, Punta Arenas on 26 April 1881.

(Allan C Green, courtesy of State Library of Victoria)

The French gained an ability to operate outside blockadable waters as they seized colonies in East Africa (such as Madagascar) and in Asia (Vietnam). Among other things, in the 1860s both the Russians and the French built second-rate armoured ships specifically to operate in Eastern waters, far from their concentrated fleets. Viable British presence in the Pacific required that cruisers be backed by armoured ships. This requirement created the first ships rated by the Royal Navy as armoured cruisers (though quite unrelated to the armoured cruisers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries).

Given the emergence of foreign colonies as potential raider bases, British war planners of the late nineteenth century envisaged attacks on them. This was not the colonial warfare of the past, in which colonies were worth seizing for their rich resources; rather it was a coldly strategic counter to commerce raiding. Thus when the British contemplated war against France in 1898 their arrangements included convoys of troops (escorted by cruisers) to seize French naval bases abroad. This anti-raider mission is why, for example, the British were so anxious to seize Tsingtao in China and German East Africa in the opening phase of the First World War. Without bases, enemy raiders at sea would not last for very long, whether or not they were sucked into a focal area. The German squadron based at Tsingtao certainly caused considerable havoc when it was forced to sea, but it seems unlikely that it could have remained at sea for very long with limited resources – many of which the Admiralty indirectly controlled.

It was bad enough to face the French or the Russians, but beginning in the 1880s the two threats merged, particularly in the Mediterranean.⁴

In the 1850s and 1860s the British also faced the possibility of conflict with the United States due, among other reasons, to disagreements over the border with Canada. For example, in 1858 there was a considerable scare as the French seemed about to match or even to surpass British naval strength. First Naval Lord Admiral Sir Richard Dundas pointed to the possibility that the United States would feel encouraged to attack British possessions in North America in the event of a war with France.⁵ Second Naval Lord Admiral Martin considered that the United States might fight if the Royal Navy imposed a blockade against France. At this time the French navy nearly equalled the Royal Navy in size, and France had more frigates (though fewer smaller cruisers). Thus it could be argued that France could blockade England (which was already importing much of her food) quite aside from the usual threat of a direct invasion by the large French army.

The US Navy had a long-standing war policy of raiding British commerce, as it had no hope of challenging the British fleet. In the past it had built unusually large fast frigates like USS Constitution in hopes of overwhelming British convoy escorts. In 1854 it announced plans for five new fast screw frigates and a screw corvette. The British were led to design their own fast screw frigates as answers to these ships; in the process they pushed wood hull construction as far as it could go. It turned out that the British frigates were much faster than their US counterparts, but also that their powerful engines overstrained their hulls. There was a real possibility of war against the United States several times during and immediately after the American Civil War, but it was always averted. The United States disappeared as a naval threat only when the large fleet built up to fight the Civil War was allowed to decline precipitously in the early 1870s.

Trade Protection

During the centuries leading up to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy relied heavily on convoy to protect seaborne trade. Convoy Acts forced merchant ship owners to submit to Royal Navy orders and to join convoys with escorts. Many historians have observed that this apparently successful policy was discarded after 1815, and it is often suggested that the Royal Navy’s failure to protect vital shipping from U-boats in 1914-17 could be traced to a lack of interest in trade protection and to the abandonment of a previously successful policy in favour of an emotionally satisfying offensive (rather than defensive) strategy. None of this seems to match reality. For the Royal Navy, perhaps the most interesting lesson of the American Civil War was the striking success of Confederate raiders. Blockade could not deal with them, because they were built and armed abroad (British connivance in Confederate raiding was a major source of post Civil War tension). The closest approach to blockade, which netted the very successful CSS Alabama, was to station the cruiser USS Kearsage off the port of Cherbourg, in the expectation that the Confederate ship would have to put into port for resupply. There was no hope whatever of patrolling the open Atlantic, and the Union Navy lacked resources for any kind of convoy strategy

It is difficult to trace the evolution of British thinking about trade protection, because responsible officers only rarely had to explain themselves to civilians, such as the First Lord of the Admiralty, who were not already familiar with their thinking. The considerable volume of the program to build small cruisers (frigate down to gun-vessel) during the 1840s and 1850s suggests an attempt to maintain the small-ship force which in the past had escorted convoys. In 1858 Surveyor Captain Walker commented that the size of the French steam frigate force, roughly equal to the British, suggested an intent to conduct trade warfare, and he decried the inability of the Royal Navy to concentrate its forces in the Channel due to the need to protect British trade as well as British possessions overseas.

In two cases British cruisers were built specifically to run down fast cruisers built by the United States explicitly to operate as raiders in wartime, in accordance with settled US naval policy. In 1854 the US Navy announced plans to build five large steam frigates and one large steam corvette, and the Royal Navy responded with large fast frigates of its own. It turned out that the US ships were not nearly as fast as had been expected. The British ships were not repeated because they were so expensive; commerce protection, certainly as then understood, demanded numbers. During the American Civil War, Confederate raiders like CSS Alabama devastated Union merchant shipping. The Union response was a series of what were expected to be very fast cruisers capable of running such raiders down. They were also potential commerce raiders, and again they demanded a British response. It came in the form of a program for six large fast steam frigates, only three of which were ultimately built (Inconstant, Raleigh, and Shah). Again they were too expensive to be constructed in any numbers.

It is not clear when British naval officers realized that the combination of an explosion in the sheer number of British merchant ships and the nature of steam power (in the 1870s and early 1880s cruisers could not match the endurance of merchant steamers) made the old convoy policy obsolete. Nor was the lesson of the Napoleonic Wars entirely clear. One witness before the Carnarvon Commission, an experienced and thoughtful shipowner, explained that a convoy attacked by overwhelming force would be annihilated – as had happened on several occasions. An effective convoy defence would have required that each convoy be escorted by a force capable of beating off the most powerful enemy ships. It may be that the ability simply to crush an enemy’s ports seemed for a time a sufficient guarantee against large-scale commerce raiding.

The first internal document formally laying out the desired cruiser force seems to have been a statement prepared by First Naval Lord Admiral Milne in December 1874 for the First Lord, in connection with the First Lord’s attempt to frame a rational naval program.⁶ Milne’s paper on unarmoured ships was written to help the First Lord frame estimates. It is impossible to say whether it reflected widely-accepted ideas, which were not expressed on paper because they were not worth writing down. Explaining the navy’s thinking to a civilian First Lord was a different proposition.

Milne mentioned both the need to protect the trade on which the country relied, and also what might now be called presence missions, such as suppressing the slave trade and piracy. Milne distinguished between the main fleet, which for him included fast frigates and corvettes, for general war and also for commerce protection, and smaller unarmoured ships for foreign and home service, surveying, despatch duty, and coast guard service. He also produced a paper on trade protection, perhaps the earliest one formally to advocate what was later called a policy of patrolling focal areas. ‘It is well known to foreign nations that our trade is our great point of weakness, and that it is open to the attack of the cruizers of any enemy.’ Recent intelligence showed that the Russians had planned to attack the Australasian trade during the 1863 crisis.

Milne argued that any seaman trying to destroy British trade would know the main trade routes, and would seek targets in particular places where they were concentrated. He identified eighteen such places, Each of these eighteen stations should be occupied by two or three ships, making a total of forty to fifty cruisers. Adding reliefs ‘and separate ships for obtaining information’ gave the total of fifty to sixty cruisers he sought.⁷ By cruisers Milne meant frigates and corvettes, which he thought would soon be rerated as cruisers of the first, second, and third classes. Only a few of them were really fast.

Milne proposed a fleet of 20 frigates, 25 to 30 first-class corvettes, and 30 second-class corvettes, aside from lesser craft (sloops and gunboats). He considered this a low estimate, and pointed out that a quarter would probably always be under repair or defective at any time. However, the figures seem to have been unaffordably high, so in a marginal note Milne called for a war establishment of 30 frigates and 25 corvettes, a total of 55 such ships. Actual numbers were falling rapidly. Of 26 frigates on the Navy List, 14 were fit only for harbour service, and of the remaining 12, 6 would have to be repaired or replaced within four years. Against a wartime requirement for 30 corvettes, 32 were on the list, but 11 had already been condemned. Of the remaining 21, 14 were in commission, and Milne expected three to be found unfit within three years. Another seven sloops had been commissioned as second-class corvettes, six of which had recently been repaired. No frigates were building, but three first-class and nine second-class corvettes were under construction, in addition to nine sloops and lesser vessels not considered in this book.

Milne pointed to the destruction of US commerce by Confederate raiders, most famously CSS Alabama, only about a decade before. He pointed to the failure of the US Navy to find sufficient ships to run down this Confederate raider. The British cruiser force was shrinking as the wooden ships of the 1850s and 1860s were being condemned much faster than they were replaced. Since 1 January 1868, 19 frigates had been stricken, and 3 built; 16 corvettes had been stricken, and 12 built; and 19 sloops had been stricken, and 12 built. As a minimum, Milne wanted an immediate program of six Boadicea class frigates to be laid down in 1875, another six following in 1876. The 1875 proposal was apparently vetoed by the Cabinet.

Focal area defence was part of a larger strategy. French bases abroad would be attacked so that they could not be used as bases for commerce raiders. The troopships used for such attacks would be convoyed, and some other unusually valuable ships might also be protected directly. The issue of convoy was whether such protection could be or would be extended to the mass of merchant shipping. The conclusion was clearly that such extension was impossible and unaffordable.

The enemy force which got to the focal areas had to be restricted; the British had to neutralize the French battleships. That was not too difficult in European waters, but it became far more difficult as the French gained colonies in Africa and in Asia. The British had to station their own armoured ships in the Far East specifically because a single French armoured ship could destroy the unarmoured cruisers which would execute the trade protection mission in wartime. Hence the British (and French) policy of building second-class armoured ships, many of them classed as armoured cruisers, for foreign service. The nature of these ships is obvious partly because their Ships’ Covers are clearly marked ‘second-class ironclad’ rather than ‘armoured cruiser’.

Milne also pointed to the varied peacetime (presence) roles of unarmoured British warships, such as presence missions for the Foreign Office and suppression of piracy and of the slave trade. He was embarrassed that he could not provide ships; there was no reserve apart from the Channel Squadron and the Detached Squadron.

It is not clear to what extent Iris and Mercury were intended to meet Milne’s needs. Certainly he did not get the large cruiser program he wanted. The British cruiser program continued to consist mainly of relatively slow corvettes through the early 1880s.

In the aftermath of the 1878 crisis with Russia the Carnarvon Committee met to examine the ability of the