alternatehistory.com

Piercing the Skin - to sink an iron-clad
(John "Jackie" Fisher)


In olden times, the days of Napoleon and Nelson and Collingwood, to sink a ship with shot was of tremendous difficulty - the wooden walls of the fleet stymied any attack from a long range, and so the order was close-in and pour in fire. There were splinters aplenty, and many men died, but the final defeat of a ship was reserved for surrender, for boarding or for running aground. Rare indeed was the ship of any size sunk by enemy fire, and action against forts was a danger for the risk of hot-shot.
Since then, in the Russian War and in the American War, we have had ships of steam and shell - and we have had Martin's Shell. That fine weapon has given us a grand success, and allowed for more sinking of ships than was the case before - so much the good! A ship sunk is a ship which may not return to trouble us again, though the loss of a prize is an irritant. Thus, we have sunk many enemy vessels; but now comes the armour of iron, and that has made things harder once more.

It is no discredit to Mr. Palliser that his shell is a very weak weapon, compared to the comparative might of the common shell. It must be hard-walled to endure contact at speed with hard iron. But it means that we may not be sure of sinking an enemy ship with ease with but a few shells or even a few dozen; the strength of the armour means that it must take great efforts to produce a small hole, and that the hole may be easily stopped. Apart from ships of minimal buoyancy - I speak of the "Monitor" type - then the most proficient fire with shells will only strike a few times between wind and wave, and a few holes cannot sink a ship with an alert crew. Thus, to truly "take" a ship we must once more batter at her until she is silenced, then board her or batter her waterline afresh until the job is too much for her crew; that or we must force her crew to abandon. And either of these is a great difficulty for a ship that may, at most times, simply go away and decide to return home (for the boilers of any competently designed warship of the modern day are behind armour and below the waterline both).

But what is the solution? Well, there is more than one solution; there are several, though they differ in their applicability.
One is the answer which many have clamored for since the introduction of steam - the ram, the weapon of the ancient Trireme, striking an enemy vessel far below the waterline (where the pressure of the water is greater and the speed of entry faster) and ripping a great hole, too large to patch. But the difficulty of this technique is the same as that of the boarding-action or the bombardment - that the enemy vessel may simply move out of the way. It is true that no ship hammered and battered by Palliser's shells will be in perfect shape, not if the armour is being pierced, but to hope for a loss of power is unreliable at best.
Another solution, one which is being discussed in Austria, is the idea of a weapon which strikes beneath the water at a range of hundreds of yards - an automatic bomb ship. This may be a thing of the future, but it is not a thing of now.
For myself, I think the best chance is in the use of ship's launches armed with the spar-torpedo - the weapon which saw use against the Royal Oak at Charleston. Once the great guns of a target ship have been disabled, the steam launches and ship's boats may close in and detonate their explosives under the keel - below the armour and tamped by the water around them - and make a great hole in the side of the iron-clad ship, or strike at the bow or especially stern and by these means force an enemy to slow.

In the light of this, it would be appropriate for an ironclad fleet - like an army corps on land - to contain a line element and a pursuit element. The pursuers would be fast cruising vessels with many steam launches and with spar torpedoes of their own, intended to get between an enemy fleet and their succor so as to force them to run a gauntlet of torpedoes - or to chase after a fleet in retreat, forcing them to abandon their slower ships or remain to fight our own battle-line.