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Excerpts from a talk by John "Jackie" Fisher, on "the Great Gun":



"...a mere two years hence, we were hearing a great deal of talk about the shot-proof ship, based upon our own belief in the great strength of armour fitted to the sides of the new armoured frigates. This talk was based upon how the guns fitted to our ships of 1861 were not so different from the guns of our ships of 1841, but already there were more and better guns being produced by Armstrong and other gun-makers. Now we have the Somerset gun coming into service, which may pierce the Warrior, but it is already to be superseded by the sixty-four pounder rifled muzzle loader; but this is to be superseded in turn by a new and better gun before it has even reached all the ships that could carry it.
For this is the lesson of the age of the ironclad: that the development of the great gun was stymied only by a lack of need for improvement, and that now that a need is found then guns shall improve faster and faster...


...the value of iron is not to make a ship invulnerable but to make it less vulnerable - in addition to the Martin's Shell, then a few inches of iron will keep out common shell; enough inches will keep out the Palliser shell for any gun one cares to name. This means that a gun must be more powerful, or closer, to make an impression, and that it cannot make the same impression that was once made; nevertheless there will always be a gun that can damage your ship under the right conditions. I do not mean this to diminish the value of armour in any sense, of course - a whole enemy fleet with not a gun that may pierce your armour can be compelled to withdraw, or destroyed with ease; an enemy designer may be compelled to replace a dozen thirty-two-pounders firing shell with a single Somerset gun firing bolts, and then his ship has become far less effective a combatant against the smaller ships...


...in mounting any great gun, care must be taken to give the most command possible. By command I mean not just the position of the gun upon the ship but where it may fire - if a gun may not hit below the waterline, or even below the armoured belt for some of the ships with a shallow belt, then it has a far lesser chance of letting in water to sink an enemy vessel; if a gun is hard to aim owing to a difficult system of training, then the few shots a great gun allows may be wasted for no effect purely by this difficulty...


...the ideal ship would be one which has armour and guns better than an opponent, and speed sufficient to hold open the range, so that it may pick a distance at which its own guns are effective and the guns of the enemy are ineffective. I do not think such a ship is practical as a target for a designer, because the advances in gun and armour would shortly put it upon the other end of the comparison, but instead I think it is an ideal that should inform design for guns, for armour and for ships. A gun should be as powerful and accurate as possible at as long a range as possible, and the whole design of an armoured vessel must be such that it may resist damage not simply in the armoured belt but throughout the ship. I speak of measures such as the hiding of engines and magazines below the level of the waterline, and of the double bottom and subdivision built into the Warrior - but also of others, such as removing protetion from a less vital space so that the areas of the ship vital to fighting her are preserved...



...the ram will never be a weapon of the same immediacy as the great gun. The ram has the great flaw that the enemy must see it coming and be able to dodge aside, or even to turn and catch the foe in their own side; the ability to steer and steam at a speed similar to the enemy vessel is quite protection enough in most cases. The great gun's bolt or shell travels at such a speed that no ship may possibly match it - now or, I would venture to say, the future - and may reach out so far compared to the ram as to not be in the same class at all...



...what would I say was the battleship of the future? I would say that the power of guns will increase, the number of guns will reduce, the armour will thicken and the size may increase, but that there will be no single battleship or even any single type that remains a front line ship of battle for very long; that is, until or unless the advancement of guns reaches a point where they may pierce through whatever thickness of armour can feasibly be floated at any range which a hit can be scored. Once this day has come, then the design of the battleships will stabilize - armoured very heavily over their vital parts and not at all otherwise, with great guns to pierce the vitals of the enemy and perhaps smaller guns to strike where their enemy cannot armour. As to their form or size, I cannot speculate."