The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-26 00:00:00

IRON-CLAD SHIPS,

The following letters appear in the Times :
Sir,—Cordially concurring as I do with your
leading article of Saturday last, upon the import-
ance of our navy possessing more iron-clad ships,
allow me to point to important testimony in sup-
port of their value as engines of war. I saw the
French floating batteries after the capture of Kin•
burn forts in the Black Sea; they took the brunt
of the fight there, and I was told did their work
uncommonly well. The Russians had more than
one heavy hard-hitting gun, yet they had not
penetrated a single plate of the French ships. The
only loss of life experienced by our Allies was
owing to shot passing through the gun-ports.
Mechanical means can be invented to prevent this
occurring for the future in close action. Hearing
what I did of the ship attack on Sebastopol in
1854, and seeing what I did of the trifling effect of
the Russian guns on the iron floating batteries in
1855, I felt convinced that the French Emperor had
hit the right nail on the head in producing ships
coated with iron, as the only means of laying land
batteries sufficiently close on board to be
breached, of breaking a line-of-battle in a sea-fight,
and of scouring out such roadsteads as the Sound,
Portland, Spithead, and the Downs, unless you are
able to meet such invulnerable vessels with others
of exactly a similar character.
The experiments which Capt. Halsted writes of
seem to have arisen from some misgivings as to the
well-known fact that with patience and perseve-
rance you may puneh a hole through any metal
of any thickness. I should have thought that any
of the master-blacksmiths in our dockyards
would have reassured us upon that head, and I
must say I think the French Government has been
far more profitably employed in perfecting the
form of their iron vessels, and improving the tex-
ture of the plates covering the sides. I do not
take all for Gospel that we hear about the Glorie,
but there is no doubt upon the minds of all those
who have seen anything of modern warfare, and
who are unprejudiced enough to accept innova-
tions, even though they come from a French-
man, that the days of wooden ships of the line
are numbered, and that in a close, fair fight,
iron frigate against wooden two-decker, the latter
would be knocked into lucifer matches, or, if they
were both armed with rifled guns, probably blow
up after a round or two. However, in spite of pre-
sent disbelief, the fact will one day dawn on intel-
lects still becalmed in the smoke of Trafalgar. We
sailors of this generation have lived to see old pre-
judices mastered in which wood and rope made a
hard fight against iron tanks, iron cables, iron an-
chor stocks, iron ballast, iron messengers, iron
rigging, iron collars, and iron block straps. Iron
has carried the day on all these points, and I am
sanguine enough to think if yon and the public
keep the pressure on, that some morning the good
old souls will rub their eyes over the Times and
exclaim, " God bless us ! then, after all, these people
are right, and iron does stop shot and shell better
than wood." Yours faithfully,
SIIERARD OSBORNE, Captain.

Dover, Sept. 24.

Sir,—CaptainHalsted's letter in the Times of Sa
turas.), will be read with great interest by all ac
quainted with naval matters, although upwards o
12 months after date, and considerably varying with
the reports on the Trusty at the time of the experi-
ments and those recently made a§ to her present
state. But the value of the document to the public
is considerable for two reasons—for containing, as
it does, the experience and opinions of an officer of
Captain Halsted's rank and acknowledged standing
in the service upon a question so important to the
interests of the country, and as a first instalment
of information of an official character. Captain
Halsted having spoken out on the " Whitworth"
and " Armstrong," it remains for Captain Hewlett
to speak as plainly and frankly, not only on the
merits of those weapons, but also on those of the 95
cwt. solid shot gun. There is little need for any
future experiments to demonstrate the powers of
this smooth bore upon metalplates at a short range,
nor the Armstrong and Whitworth at longer
ranges. No man in England is, however, entitled
to more respect for his opinion on these matters,
either as affecting a ship's defensive armour or the
best weapon for destroying it, than Capt. Hewlett,
and were his opinion freely given I believe it would
at once put an end to that feeling of doubt and in-
decision now prevailing in the public mind, and
point out the proper course to be taken in the con-
struction of iron-cased ships.
Captaia Halsted concludes that an iron-cased
ship with sufficient steam speed to maintain a fight-
ing distance of 1,000 yards must be invulnerable.
With this I fully agree, but how shall we obtain
that speed—a speed exceeding that of our fastest
frigates? Can we clap 1,000 tons of iron plates on
a ship's back, and give her this required 14 knots,
not at the measured mile, but at sea ? Still, they
must have the speed if they are to maintain a fight
at 1,000 yards' distance. The French know this,
and tell us their La Gloire does her 13 knots. I
believe speed to be of greater importance than even
the thickness of the protecting plates. La Gloire
with the Mersey for a foe would, I fully believe,
require to keep a thousand yards distant if she
wished to keep her plates above water ; but no one
imagines that the present gallant captain of the
Mersey would allow her to do so. It is more likely
that his object would be to close with her, damage
her screw, or break her iron shell, when she would
lie at his mercy. These liabilities must be consi-
dered in the construction of any future iron-cased
ships, and the moral they give is that speed is the
one imperative necessity for all such vessels. La
Gloire, however, with her 13 knots, and ports
barely six feet from the water, suggests some curi-
ous doubts and ideas. The Normandie, to which
Captain llalsted alludes in his letter as " now re-
ceiving her plates in the basin at Cherbourg," is
known to be a failure. With her it is armament
versus armour. If she carries her plates she can
carry no guns. To insure success in our next ex-
periment of this kind, to build an invulnerable ship
with a certain rate of speed, we must know on whom
the responsibility rests—on the Admiralty or on
the contractor, if built in a private yard—or we
shall have neither security or speed. With regard
to the discrepancies in the results of the experi-
ments at Portsmouth and Shoeburyness, I cannot
but think that Captain Halsted has jumped to
conclusions too quickly ; but, as you observe, he
is speaking of " bolts," not cannon balls. The
accounts which have been published of the firing
from the rifled and solid shot smooth-bore guns
would appear to prove that the former cuts or
" gouges ' its path through the opposing object,
while the latter " smashes" its way through. I my-
self have seen shots fired at short range from the
smooth-bore upon iron plates. The first and se-
cond and sometimes the third and fourth shots have
been broken into innumerable small pieces, but the
plate has been eventually cracked, and then the
work of destruction goes on comparatively easy
and rapid.
The flight of a solid shot from a 94-cwt. gun is,
I think, 1,600 feet per second on leaving the mouth
of the gun, but decreasing its speed every foot it
flies. The rifled gun's " bolt" leaves the gun at
about 940 feet per second, and maintains nearly
the same velocity to the end. This will show the
increased battering power the round shot has at
close quarters, and may help to account for the
discrepancies in the results at Portsmouth and
Shoeburyness. One cause pointed at by Captain
Halsted -I
cannot agree with. The Sirius has not
" been brought by old age to the verge of the break-
ing up dock." On the contrary, no ship in Ports-
mouth ordinary could show sounder planking or
timbers than did the Sirius when the first target
was bolted on her sides. The whole question rests
between Captains Hewlett and Halsted. It is
a question, as you observe, of so vitally important
a nature that not a single point should be blinked,
es and
,e t
and the Admiralty and Captain Hewlett are iu pos-
session
at o factsfrt. Let these figures
b
thate
producedcan set theand
gwholeive given
question
to the public. In their present dark abodes they
have produced no results; place them in broad
daylight, and much of their doubtful surroundings
will vanish. Captain Halsted, •in conclusion,
speaks of the " stern chase" in which
the country
is now engaged, and which, he says, " can no
longer be delayed." Whose fault is it that the
country now finds itself engaged' in a " stern
chase ?" Would there have been any stern
chase" had the "press" been allowed to witness
these experiments at Shoeburyness and Ports-
mouth ? Has not the exclusion of the "press" led
to much of the seeming contradictions in what is
known of the experiments, and to the mystery
which is so stupidly endeavoured to be thrown
around them ? The egg has been stowed away so
carefully by "my Lords" that it has become
addled, and " no chicken" is the result.
I shall conclude my letter by quoting the obsor-
tions made in the beginning of the present year by
a gentleman writing under the well-known signa-
ture of "W. 11. It." He says—
"Without any detriment to the public service,
every military and naval question can be argued in
the columns of a newspaper with advantage to the
profession ; every theory can be discussed, every
proposition ventilated," &c.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Sept.BSERVER.
ept. 24.
he

Sir,—Are single shots against iron cased ships
any fair test of their powers of resistance ? Ought
we not to have concentrated broadsides ?
A ship might stand a hundred successive shots
which would be sunk by a dozen delivered together.
Sept, 21, Yours obediently, L, L.