To be fair they weren't the only ones to have this happen, I mean only a few years later there was HMS Vanguard in Scapa Flow:
en.wikipedia.org
Let me guess, the ignition event was overage cordite propellant charges? Yup, after reading the wiki.
Helped a lot that they were up against the Spanish Navy and, not, say, the Royal Navy.
Not a claim that I think is provable. Cervera was a TOUGH wily bastard who had a good plan and by the time of Santiago de Cuba, unlike the Russian
Zinovy Rozhestvensky, had trained his crews .
The difference was Vilaamil. the great Spanish torpedo boat expert, was a damned fool who disobeyed pre-battle orders during the breakout and wasted his destroyers in an independent glory charge instead of supporting the cruiser line as Cervera intended, and Schley was just too good an admiral to be surprised. The real villain in the piece was PM. Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, the incompetent and thoroughly corrupt stooge for Admiral Segismundo Bermejo y Merelo, the Spanish navy minister of war and his equally incompetent army counterpart; Miguel Correa y García who Tojoed this war on the Spanish side, unnecessarily and who insisted that Spanish honor required combat before the inevitable defeats.
You know, reading about the Spanish in 1892 is a LOT like reading about the Japanese in 1933? The outrages, insubordination and mutiny within the Spanish Army of the era reads, method for method, a lot like the Kwantung Army, with the colonels and majors getting entirely out of hand. It even features an anarchist murdering
Canovas at just the right time for the military to completely usurp Spanish foreign policy. Eerily similar to the McKinley parallel where a crazed office seeker did him in a moment, and how T. Roosevelt, as the Potus by succession, used that opportunity to kind of usurp American traditional isolationist foreign policy to go all 19th century imperialist with gusto.
But let's stick to the topic . Here are two ships, that many people think never, should have been built, that come to mind. But were they all that bad?
(US Navy)
Cristobol Colon (1898) Public Domain (US Navy), Photo: Maybe Sao Vincente, Cape Verde Islands April 1898?
These two ships are curious.
The IMT was built according to British pattern by
Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company. Popular history has her being a design disaster with weak belt armor and an open gun deck that allowed the American gunnners a shoot-ex. Her wooden furnishings all covered with weatherproofing lacquer was supposed to have caused the fires that caused her loss. American records show, that Cervera, after Captain Concas bungled the attempted ramming of the USS Brooklyn turned west late and drew immediate fire from USS Iowa, Texas, the aforesaid Brooklyn and even the armed yacht, Vixen.
Source:
Clerk of the Joint Committee on Printing, The Abridgement of the Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress. Vol. IV. (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1899).
As can be seen, she took a beating. The shots are along the belt armor. Those are dents or partials penexs that dislodged plate. Her armor (turtleback scheme and I believe French Cruesot steel plate.):
- Belt: 30.5–25.4 cm (12–10 in)
- Barbettes: 22.9 cm (9 in)
- Conning tower: 30.5 cm (12 in)
- Deck: 5.1–7.6 cm (2–3 in)
stopped US 15.2 cm shell and below COLD. The critical kill-shots are into the engine and aft compartments, which started fires in her after barbette magazines that moved forward into the gun gallery amidships. Those shots are credited to USS Texas and USS Iowa which started the fires on her quarterdeck and aft magazines. She had enormous float reserve and had her French designed artillery and mismatched British fire control system not failed her, she would have lasted longer and given out much more harm. Unlike the Russians at Tsushima 6 years later, the Spaniards remained steady under fire and were very well trained by the naval standard of the day. Their equipment failed them, not their courage or their ship's captains.
The Cristobol Colon was a slightly different proposition. She was not built in Spain, but in Italy and to an Italian pattern with mostly British derived tech.
Source:
Clerk of the Joint Committee on Printing, The Abridgement of the Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress. Vol. IV. (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1899).
She was fast and barely hit when Captain
Emilio Díaz-Moreu y Quintana decided that she had to be beached as Schley's ships closed to killing range. Her Harvey plate stood up rather well to the US gunfire.
General characteristics:
Class and type: Giuseppe Garibaldi-class armored cruiser
Displacement:6,840 long tons (6,950 t) normal (7,972 long tons (8,100 t) full load)
Length: 366 ft 8 in (111.76 m)
Beam: 59 ft 10 1⁄2 in (18.250 m)
Draft: 23 ft 3 1⁄2 in (7.099 m) maximum
Installed power: 13,655–14,713 ihp (10.183–10.971 MW)
Propulsion: Vertical triple expansion, 24 boilers
Speed: 19.3–20.02 knots (35.74–37.08 km/h)
Range: 4,400 nmi (8,100 km) at 10 kn (19 km/h)
Endurance: 1,050 long tons (1,070 t) coal (normal)
Complement: 510 to 559 officers and enlisted
Armament: 2 × single 254 mm (10 in)/40 cal. gun (never installed)
……………….10 × single 152 mm (6 in) guns
…………………6 × single 120 mm (4.7 in) guns
……………….10 × single 57 mm (2.2 in) guns
……………….10 x single 37 mm (1.5 in) guns
…………………2 x Maxim machine guns
…………………4 × single 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armor: Harvey armor (US plate?)
………….Belt: 5.9 in (150 mm)
………….Ends: 3.1 in (79 mm)
………….Conning tower: 5.9 in (150 mm)
………….Deck: 1.5 in (38 mm)
………….Turrets: 5.9 in (150 mm)
………….Deck gunshields 2 in (51 mm)
Notes: Armor was Harvey plate possibly Ansaldo made, but more likely imported. Guns were British clones manufactured by Ansaldo and were export knockoffs. British fire control, also an export knockoff. Engines were Italian. The 25.4 cm MA was not fitted due to breech block defects COMMON with many navies’ ships of the era. The Americans, for example, had no end of trouble with the Fletcher breech blocks they used at Santiago de Cuba and were forced to use reduced charges and shoot slowly. The Spanish used full charges in their Vickers 15.2 cm clones and in their Schneider Canet 14.0 cm quick-fires and the heat burden from the mismatched metal alloys of breech and barrel caused the breech blocks to expand into the screw seers. To get the guns open, Spanish gun crews had to beat on the breech plugs or wait for the damned guns to cool down. Then they found the brass cartridges jammed in the in the rapid fire guns' breeches, which they had to mechanically back out manually as the extractors failed. NTG for them when the Americans did not seem to have that problem at all. (John Long was as incompetent as Bermejo, but he at least insisted the American navy be able to shoot!).
As with the Infanta Maria Teresa the primitive British type gunsights, even when zero-bored to "British" guns, had a fault which caused the Spanish gunners to shoot high and miss the Americans with longs that sailed over the Americans’ masts. The Fiske telemeters on the American ships did not have this defect. Reduced charges and the slow rate of American fire in local control explains the 1% PH for US light guns. US hits with heavier ordnance 15.2 cm and up was around 3%-5% which was REMARKABLE for the era. Maybe the Spanish should have used German A.G. Vulcan or French Lodzhou telemeters?
=============================================================================
Anyway, the myth that the Spanish naval crews were incompetent or badly led or that an equivalent British squadron with those same fuel and similar gunnery faults would have done any better is probably false.
Now a proper British fleet of 4 battleships and 2 torpedo boat destroyers? (Vice Admiral Sir
Jackie Fisher 1897-1899 commander of the North American Station.) THAT would have been interesting. I would not like to see that happen! Probably would have seen both squadrons destroyed as the known defects of both navies' materials would have been revealed and forced a close ranged parallel order fight to achieve any effective hits or penexs. Victor is the last one afloat. YMMV.
==============================================================================
Perhaps something McKinley should have reflected on a little longer before allowing the yellow press to stampede him into war. But I digress!
Pulitzer and that other news paper owner, Hearst, might have stirred popular opinion, but the American govt. had long prepared for an opportunity to intervene in Cuba at least since the
SS Virginius Affair. This was their opportunity handed to them by actual unfortunate events. McKinley, I doubt, could have stopped that long term policy train.