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The ramming fad of the 1860s had profound implications for ship design in the 40 years that followed. Every self-respecting warship, from the tiny gunboat to the towering pre-dreadnought flagship, had to have a sharp ram bow. These trends are examined in some detail in our ramming article; the outward-curving line of the stem, in a form known as the exponential ease-in bezier curve, will be evident to even the casual observer on nearly every warship photo presented in this site. This shape was remarkably daring and counter-intuitive in the 19th century, accustomed as it was to the clipper bow with its exponential ease-out bezier shape.
Ramming tactics were particularly advocated for small harbor-defense warships constructed in the time, chiefly in Britain and France. This page deals with five of these novel and impractical vessels made for the Royal Navy in the 1870s and 80s, and a two-ship battleship class loosely based on Conqueror, the most advanced of these coast defense rams. As our narrative makes clear, these were experimental vessels; and the experiment was not a success. In an 1878 report to the Admiralty, Capt. W.E. Gordon opined in marginal comments, "Good in theory, but not practicable supposing enemy has 14 - 15 knots and Rupert [only] 11 - 12". Ultimately, these rams were too slow to catch their quarry, making them ineffective warships. This peculiarity does not diminish their charm as doomed experiments of the mechanical age. Although rated as Second Class Battleships, these freaks spent most of their careers as guard ships, calmly swinging to the moorings, or rusting silently along the dockyard wall: another oddity of the pioneering age of steam and armour. Most were still lingering when Jacky Fisher took over at the Admiralty and (speaking of the vast inventory of ancient and obsolete warships on the roster) growled, "Scrap the lot!"
So toss a few shovels of coal on the boiler-room fires; draw some boiling water from the drain cocks for a pot of engine-room coffee; ease the throttle to Dead Slow Ahead ... and enjoy our narrative of those rambunctiously rolling Royal Navy Rams.
HMS Hotspur after her refit in a cut taken from the Illustrated London News of July 8, 1882. The flying bridge from fo'c'sle head to foremast was added in her 1881 refit. Main guns were already masked by the mast and raised fo'c'sle head, unable to fire straight ahead; but machine-guns were mounted on the flying bridge to cover this bearing in case of a hot action.
A one-off ram design, Hotspur joined the fleet in 1871, five years after the Battle of Lissa gave legitimacy to the tactic. Hotspur's design was problematic from a number of standpoints. She was small, and her engines were too underpowered to move her at the speed required to outmaneuver the battle fleets she would be expected to ram, or indeed to operate as part of her own fleet (she could make 12½ kts when new, or a fraction more; British battleships of the time were about 2 knots faster). To those in the know, this handicap made the ship something of an embarrassment almost as soon as she was commissioned; but the penny press lionized the ship nevertheless. She was sent to the Sea of Marmara during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. This was to be her only military duty anywhere close to an arena of combat. She spent much of her 33-year career laid up in reserve.
Another of Hotspur's problems was her gun siting. Because of the perceived need for auxiliary sail, Reed had planted the foremast squarely in front of the forward heavy gun position, rendering direct-ahead fire impossible. Since the only logical target for a ram would be straight-ahead, tactical doctrine was modified to mandate firing on an enemy only after making an unsuccessful ramming attempt. At the time she was designed, the doctrine laid down that the shock of collision would jam the delicate training gear for a turret, so no turret was fitted. Instead, as originally built, the ship carried one 12"/25 SB weapon in a heavily-armored, stationary cupola forward. The cupola had four ports from which to fire in different directions; see photo.
In 1881-3 the ship was withdrawn from reserve and entirely rebilt at Laird & Sons, Birkenhead. She had new cylindrical boilers and additional armor installed at this time. She also emerged with a real, rotating turret forward, armed with two of the 12" muzzle-loaders; but the foremast was left in its place directly before the turret. It seems likely the mast and its rigging would have been destroyed by blast had the guns been used in a hot action, and they certainly restricted the firing arcs of the guns; but no blazing action was in Hotspur's future. However, her forthcoming duties were as guardship at Holyhead, and later, at Hamilton, Bermuda -- highly suitable uses for the Hotspur, consisting mostly of looking formidable without often having to stir from her mooring. She was scrapped in 1904.
Specifications for the Hotspur:
Dimensions: 235' x 50' x 19' Displacement: 4,331 tons. Armament (1872): (2) 12"/25 RML, (2) 64-pdr RML, (1) armored ram. Armament (1883): (2) 12"/25 RML (1x2), (2) 6" QF, and (8) 3" QF; (8) MG. Armor: 11"/8" belt, 10"/6" conning tower, 8" breastwork, 10"/8½ turret, 2.75"/1" deck. Fuel capacity: unavailable. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Napier reciprocating engines developing 3,500 ihp, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 12.65 kts. Crew: 209.
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 72m x 15m x 6.3m Displacement: 4,331 tons. Armament (1871): (1) 305 mm/25 RML, (2) 64-pdr RML, (1) armored ram. Armament (1883): (2) 305 mm/25 RML (1x2), (2) 6" Mk II, and (8) 3" QF; (8) MG. Armor: 280/203 mm belt, 250/154 mm conning tower, 203 mm breastwork, 250/250 mm turret, 70/25 mm deck. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Napier reciprocating engines developing 2,610 kW/hr, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 23.43 km/hr. Crew: 209.
Hotspur's single 12"/25 gun as originally outfitted. Shell is suspended in the loading position. You can see the thickness of the cupola walls at the gunport. View a similar 11" muzzle-loader in action here.
The Rupert was very similar to the Hotspur, except that she was fitted with a turret as originally built; the fear of turret gear jamming in a ramming attack evidently having been overcome. Rupert's turret contained two 10" RML. Slightly longer and deeper than Hotspur, she carried a two-masted schooner sail rig. As in Hotspur, placement of the foremast just before the turret meant the mast and shrouds masked her guns at certain angles, although the turret still allowed for wide arcs of coverage on either beam, and the short, maneuverable ship could be turned to assist in pointing at a target. Whereas Hotspur's deckhouse extended to the sides of the hull, Rupert's was cut away and the upper deck cantilevered overhead as in the Devastation, to provide a wider arc for the turret guns when firing aft. Like her predecessor, Rupert was disappointingly slow and so unsuited to the task for which she had been designed.
As with the other rams, Rupert's armor was concentrated forward and carried all the way to the stem to reinforce her beaklike ram. She was also noteworthy for having a unique and unsatisfactory arrangement of pilothouses. Instead of a conning tower in the center of her bridge, she had two armored "pilot towers", one on either side just abaft the waist. These gave a good view over the beam, but very limited visibility forward. The ship's first captain irritably described them as "almost useless." Furthermore, Rupert's performance under sail was so poor that the same commander judged her sails "not worth the inconvenience of keeping them up."
At left, crewmen cat the anchor using the ship's prominent anchor cranes. Note that the time-honored fluke anchor with its heavy wooden stock was still in use at the time of this photo. In the British fleet, it was succeeded by the Admiralty model in the 1880s and then the modern, stockless anchor in the mid-Nineties.
Rupert's career was noteworthy for far more sea-time than was common among the British rams. She was commissioned at Devonport for the Mediterranean, and served there from 1876 to 1880, spending much time up beside the dockyard wall since she was too slow to maneuver with the fleet. Thereafter she was read into the Portsmouth reserve fleet. During the Russian war scare of summer 1885, Rupert was assigned to service in the Particular Service Squadron. She was then assigned as guard ship at Hull until 1890. After reconstruction and rearmament between 1891 and 1893, she was ordered to become guard ship at Pembroke until 1895, and then did the same duty at Gibraltar between 1895 and 1902. Thereafter she was placed in Fleet Reserve until 1904, and finally served as guard ship at Hamilton, Bermuda until being sold out of the service in 1907.
Specifications for the Rupert:
Dimensions: 250' x 53' x 23' Displacement: 5,527 tons. Armament (1872): (2) Mk II 10"/15 RML (1x2), (2) 64-pdr SB, (1) armored ram. 1887: (2) 10"/25 RML (1x2), (2) 6"/30 QF, and (8) 3" QF guns; (4) MG; (4) torpedo carriages; (1) armored ram. 1891: (2) 9.2" BLR (1x2), (2) 6/"30 QF, (4) 6-pdr QF, and (8) smaller guns; (4) TT; (1) armored ram. Armor: 11"/9"/3" belt, 14"/12" turret and conning tower, 3"/2" deck. breastwork, 10"/8½ turret, 2.75"/1" deck. Fuel capacity: unavailable. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Napier reciprocating engines developing 4,630 ihp, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 13.5 kts (trials), 11 kts (service). Crew: 217.
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 76m x 16m x 6.86m, 5.92m deep Displacement: 4,991 tons. Armament: (2) Mk II 254 mm/15 RML, (2) 64-pdr SB; (1) armored ram. (1887) (2) Mk II 254 mm/15 RML, (2) 152 mm/30, and (8) 3" QF guns; (4) MG; (4) torpedo carriages; (1) armored ram. (1891) (2) 234 mm BLR (1x2), (2) 152 mm/30 QF, (4) 6-pdr QF, and (8) smaller guns; (4) TT; (1) armored ram. Armor: 305/280/76 mm belt, 360/305 mm turret, 360/300 mm conning tower, 76/50 mm deck. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Laird engines developing 3,453 kW, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 25.2 km/hr (trials), 20.4 km/hr (service). Crew: 217.
Edward J. Reed, the distinguished Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, wrote in his memoirs that he was asked to design the Glatton according to a narrow and predetermined set of specifications given him by the Admiralty. The rationale for strategic use was outlined as harbor defense (with her low freeboard it would have been suicide to attempt an oceangoing voyage) and attacking the harbors of an enemy -- presumably France.
From the rigid design parameters, it appears that Glatton was intended as an experimental gunnery ship. She was classed as a "breastwork monitor" with one turret forward, no masts or sails, and a high but narrow superstructure, angled and cut out so that the turret could theoretically fire one gun dead astern on any bearing, and otherwise could fire uninterruptedly around the compass. In reality firing too close to the deckhouse caused severe blast damage; in time marks were discretely made slightly abaft both beam bearings to discourage firing on bearings that caused blast damage. This practice clearly was not sanctioned by the Admiralty. The 360-degree arc of fire was an obsession of turret pioneer John Ericsson; it is possible the ship was built to test or counter some part of his argument with empirical data. The ship was very heavily protected, making her slow and ungainly with her underpowered engines. After assessing her performance, the Admiralty opted not to pursue this model for the moment.
Glatton's impressive armor, though an impediment to speed, did make her rate as the best-armored ship of her time: 35 percent of her weight was devoted to armor. However, this was of little use on a vessel whose freeboard was but three feet (.91 meters) amidships and nowhere more than 4'6" (her bow measurement) or 1.37 m. She was commissioned in 1872 immediately into the Dockyard reserve, as tender to the gunnery school HMS Excellent.
Glatton was a part of the 1878 Particular Service Squadron. In July of that year, she was fired upon by her sister British ironclads in live fire trials (see illustration ) and the results studied by the Admiralty and by the public, via the Illustrated London News and other publications with a science and technology interest. In 1881 Glatton was fitted with 14-inch (360 mm) torpedo launching cradles (drop frames), a rather unsuccessful predecessor to the compressed-air torpedo tube. At the same time three QF 6-pounder Hotchkiss guns and 4 machine guns were added to her armament. In 1887, she was specially commissioned for the Home Fleet maneuvers and, together with the turret ship Prince Albert of 1864, was assigned to defend the Thames estuary. This was her only recorded operational sea time. Thereafter she passed through second class reserve, fleet reserve and dockyard reserve status, until she was sold in 1903.
Glatton's career was noteworthy for an accidental explosion in 1881 that killed her entire turret crew. This was instrumental in the belated adoption of breech-loading ordnance in the Royal Navy. The accident had happened because one muzzle-loading gun was double-loaded following a misfire. Since this manifestly would have been impossible with a breech-loading gun (the debris of the misfire would have been visible in the breech), the Board of Enquiry charged with investigating the mishap recommended adoption of breech-loading guns with an interrupted-screw type breech mechanism. HMS Colossus and Edinburgh of 1885 were the first British battleships to be so equipped.
Specifications for the Glatton:
Dimensions: 245"9" x 54' x 18'5", 19'5" deep Displacement: 4,991 tons. Armament: (2) 12"/25 25-ton RML (1x2); (1) armored ram. Armor: 12"/10"/3" belt, 14"/12" turret, 9"/6" conning tower, 12" breastwork, 3" deck. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Laird engines developing 2,870 ihp, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 12.11 kts. Crew: 185.
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 74.9m x 16m x 5.61m, 5.92m deep Displacement: 4,991 tons. Armament: (2) 305 mm/25 25-ton RML (1x2); (1) armored ram. Armor: 305/254/76 mm belt, 356/305 mm turret, 229/152 conning tower, 305 mm breastwork, 76 mm deck. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Laird engines developing 2,140 kW, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 22.43 km/hr. Crew: 185.
HMS Hero, second of the Conqueror class, heads into wind and chop, with spindrift sheeting off her decks. No doubt this would feel exhilarating when one was warmly dressed and muffled on the bridge; another of W. Fred Mitchell's chromolithographic illustrations. It is notable how these ships that were so marginally seaworthy that they spent most of their lives tied up along the dockyard wall, were pictured slicing imperiously through the waves; Mitchell was foremost among the maritime flatterers; his take on HMS Victoria is the all-time maritime whitewash. To judge from this illustration, you'd think the Hero was coming into harbor at Murmansk after a safe trip around the North Cape, a bit windblown but barely deviating from an even keel, with not a stitch of canvas or rope's end out of place.
The Conquerors were almost the last gasp of the armored ram in the British fleet; they originated at the same time as the "monster gun" competition was raging. The huge 16- and 17-inch guns involved in this competition clearly could crack through the compound armor of the time. This negated the reason rams had been built in the first place, back during the ironclad frenzy of the 1860s. Enlarge
Conqueror's breech-loading guns were the same 12"/25 model as her predecessor rams' armament. Their barrels extended 25 feet and they fired a shell weighing 714 pounds (324 kg) with a muzzle velocity of 1,910 ft/second (582 m/second). This could penetrate 10 inches (254 mm) of compound armour if the shell struck at or near a ninety-degree angle; much less, however, in the more likely event of an oblique impact. The guns were sited unusually low to the deck, and it was soon found that a discharge over the bow caused marked blast damage to the deck and its many fittings, while firing abaft the beam caused blast damage to the bridge and superstructure. Although in theory the turret should have an almost restricted arc forward to abaft either beam, in practice the guns could only fire on the beam through an arc of some 45 degrees. The Conqueror's heavy artillery was only intended to be used against a target which had evaded a ramming attack, per Royal Navy ramming doctrine; such a target perforce would be positioned on the ram's beam.
In 1890-93 the ships were overhauled and refitted with many secondary weapons. The proliferation of smaller guns coincided with the same phenomenon in battleships and cruisers as the pre-dreadnought era got underway. The "lead-squirters", Maxim guns and 4- to 6-inch quick firing weapons developed in the 1880s, were intended for use against small targets which could evade the ram and were not worth using the heavy artillery for. The six torpedo tubes -- the greatest number carried to date by a battleship -- were mounted aft and intended for use against a target placed by accident or design astern of Conqueror, so that she should not be toothless when running, although her guns could not bear astern.
Laid down in 1879, the Conqueror was commissioned on July 5, 1887 in time for the Queen's Gold Jubilee Review. After that gala event the ship went into reserve at Devonport, becoming tender to the gunnery schoolship Cambridge in 1889. The ram took part in fleet maneuvers on six occasions, but was never otherwise out of sight of land. She paid off in July 1902, and remained swinging at anchor at Rothesay until being sold in 1907. Her career thus nicely encapsulated the entire pre-dreadnought era and just over a year after the advent of the Dreadnought signaled the growing seriousness of naval rivalries.
Hero was commissioned at Portsmouth in May 1888 and spent her entire career as as tender to the gunnery schoolship Excellent. Hero remained there until February 1905, when she passed into Dockyard Reserve. She took part in the annual maneuvers of 1888 - 1891, but saw no other active service. In November 1907, she was designated as a target and was sunk off the Kentish Knock on February 18, 1908. The ship lives on, however, as an advertising icon: On the cover illustration for Players Navy Cut cigarettes, the bearded sailor wears a cap bearing the ship's name, and an ironclad resembling the ship appears in the right background, together with a sailing ship at the left. Scholars believe the latter to be the training ship Britannia and the ironclad, either the Hero or the 1876 Dreadnought. Presumably the locale was meant to be Dartmouth, where Hero spent her entire career and Britannia most of hers, albeit with only the foremast fully set up. More info on the Players logo
This article contains minimally edited material from Wikipedia.
Specifications for the Conqueror class:
Dimensions: 270' x 21'7" x 21'6"; 25'7" deep laden. Displacement: 6,540 tons. Armament: (2) 305 mm/30 BLR, (6) 152 mm/45 Mk VII QF, (7) 6-pdr and (6) 14" submerged torpedo tubes; (1) armored ram. Armor: 12"/10" belt, 14"/12" turret, breastwork 12"/10½", conn 12"/6", bulkhead 11½"/10½", deck 2½"/"1¼". Propulsion: Coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) Rennie inverted compound engines developing 4,500 ihp, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 14 kts. Crew: 330.
Ships in Class: Conqueror · Hero
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 82m x 18m x 6.6m; 7.8m deep laden. Displacement: 6,540 tons. Armament: (2) 305 mm/30 BLR, (6) 152 mm/45 Mk VII QF, (7) 6-pdr and (6) 36 cm submerged torpedo tubes; (1) armored ram. Armor: 305/254 belt, 360/305 mm turret, breastwork 305/270, conn 305/152, bulkhead 292/270, deck 127/76 mm. Propulsion: Coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) Rennie inverted compound engines developing 3,400 kW, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 26 km/hr. Crew: 330.
The two ships of the Victoria class were not rams, but full-size battleships of their time; the Victoria was constructed to be flagship of the Mediterranean fleet. This was Britain's most prestigious post still as the 19th century wound into its last decade. Even so, a comparison of the Victoria and the photo directly above it shows without a doubt that she was derived from the Conqueror class design, blown up to double size and armed with 16¼" guns. Like the rams, she had remarkably low freeboard, not as serious a problem in the Med as it would have been on the Atlantic or North Sea stations.
The Victoria and her sister Sans Pareil suffered from low freeboard and an unbalanced design, with the great preponderance of weight at the bow -- in the turret with its outsize guns. In the rams with their much smaller 12" guns, and in-harbor seaworthiness expectations, this was not such a liability, but the enormous size and weight of the 16" installation magnified the effect. True, in their contemplated arena of operations, the Mediterranean, seaworthiness issues were not as worrisome as they might have been for, say, a prolonged blockade service in the Bay of Biscay. The Victorias were the first Royal Navy battleships purpose built with triple-expansion engines, whose performance was "most gratifying"; their complete success in the Victorias smoothed the way to universal adoption of the engines in subsequent Royal Navy warships. The original issue, short chimneys on the Victorias were found to provide inadequate draft to the furnaces for performance steaming, and the funnels were lengthened to remedy this deficiency.
These problems were not insurmountable, and the Royal Navy's officers and engineers dug into their kit bag of nautical tricks to minimize Victoria's seaworthiness issues. The ships were considered a success other than from an aesthetic viewpoint; especially after the funnels were lengthened they had something of the look of an overgrown ferry or riverboat with spindly smokestacks and an outsize turret plopped incongruously on the foredeck. This encouraged the draftsmen already laboring on the engineering of the Royal Sovereign class of 1892, much larger ships with more powerful triple-expansion engines. Apart from the obvious design similarities to the Conquerors, it seemed appropriate to include the Victorias here because ramming played such a prominent part in their history. Victoria had a short and tragic career, writing a page of infamy in the annals of the Victorian navy. Read a full description here.
Specifications for the Victoria class:
Dimensions: 340' x 70' x 26'9" Displacement: 11,020 tons. Armament: (2) 16¼"/30 (1x2), (1) 10", (12) 6"/40 QF, and (12) 6-pdr guns; (6) 14" torpedo tubes. Armor: Compound type. 18"/16" belt, 18" redoubt, 17" turret, 16" bulkheads, 6"/3" battery screens, 3" deck. Propulsion: Coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) Humphreys & Tennant vertical inverted triple expansion engines developing 15,000 ihp f.d., 8,000 ihp normal, shafted to twin Griffith screws. Maximum speed: 16 kts, 17 f.d. Crew: 430; 583 as flagship.
Ships in Class: Victoria · Sans Pareil
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 100m x 21m x 8.15m Displacement: 11,200 tons. Armament: (2) 413 mm/30 (1x2), (1) 254 mm, (12) 152 mm/40 QF, and (12) 6-pdr guns; (6) 36 cm torpedo tubes. Armor: Compound type. 46/42 cm belt, 43 cm turret, 36/5 cm conning tower, 46 cm bulkheads, 46 cm redoubt, battery screens 152/76 mm, deck 76 mm. Propulsion: Coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) Humphreys & Tennant vertical inverted triple expansion engines developing 11,186 kW f.d., 5,966 kW normal, shafted to twin Griffith screws. Maximum speed: 29.6 km/hr, 31.5 f.d. Crew: 430; 583 as flagship.
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