IN WHICH we trace the evolution of the turret ship in its first decades, from armored battery to self-propelled, oceangoing battleship.
Comparative drawings of the Coles and Ericsson turret systems, independently developed during the 1850s and mass-produced beginning 1860-1862 and far into the 1880s. The Ericsson turret -- named for its Swedish-born inventor -- predominated in the U.S., Russian, Danish, and Swedish navies, while the Coles turret, developed by Capt. Cowper Coles, RN, dominated in the British navy and British-built turret ships made for empire and export. Coles got his idea from improvised artillery barges constructed for Black Sea service during the Crimean War. These barges mounted guns on turntables for easy training by sight; outward-sloped parapets were added to the turntable sides to protect the gunners. Coincidentally, the first modern ironclad vessels were stationary batteries designed for French navy service in the same conflict, towed into position by tugs, and proved in battle at Kinburn, Crimea -- to the overstated glee of Emperor Napoléon III, who claimed the ironclad as his own invention. Napoléon's claims were not entirely fraudulent; he was a big promoter of the ironclad batteries, although the idea was not his originally; the history of protected ships can be traced back to Korea in its wars with the Mongol hordes in the 1590s. Its turtle ships had a spiked metal shield overhead and patches of armor on the sides. More recently, Robert Fulton was an advocate of metal armor to protect his paddle wheels during the Napoleonic Wars. Given the growth of industrial technology and the long-running naval rivalry between the British and French, it was not surprising that the three innovations -- iron armor, steam propulsion, and the rotating gun turret -- were combined in experimental warships soon after the Crimean conflict concluded (1858). Ironclad frigates Warrior and La Gloire were laid down that year and completed in 1860-61. The first ironclad turret ships were commissioned in the British and U.S. navies in 1862.
Both Coles and Ericsson were classic 19th-century inventors, with egos to match and the necessary knack for self-promotion. Of the two, Ericsson (right) had the more abrasive personality. He had a long history with his Number One client, the U.S. Navy, going back to the 1840s and the experimental screw sloop the Princeton. On this frigate's debut trip, with a who's-who of naval brass and politicians embarked, a new shell gun (incompetently designed by the then-Secretary of the Navy) exploded, killing and wounding a number of dignitaries; shamefully, the Navy attempted to foist all the blame off on Ericsson, although his own cannon and engines developed for the ship performed flawlessly. Nor was this the end of the prewar "history". Ericsson sued the USN for multiple infringements of his patents, and won. After Fort Sumter, with news of Confederate ironclad-building ventures in the air, the inventor found a ready market for his ideas in Washington. Ericsson encountered friction when he tried to rigorously control application of his turret in USN warships during the Civil War. Ericsson wanted to restrict deployment to single-turret installations -- in his view, the ideal deployment, since it provided an all-round training arc. Naval commanders retorted that double turrets would give twice the volume of fire and ensure battleworthiness even in the case of one turret's being knocked out in combat. Ericsson lost that battle, and many double turreted ships were built, and even one with three turrets. However, the inventor could take comfort in being enriched by the war; he lived out his days in a U.S. grown indifferent to naval developments.
Coles had his own ideas about the idea of of his turrets in an ironclad battleship -- ideas that were at variance with those of Sir Edward Reed, the Royal Navy's chief constructor. Reed built a large oceangoing ironclad with Coles turrets, HMS Monarch, in the late 1860s; the high-freeboard Monarch was considered a successful vessel and survived well past the year 1900 in a humble rôle. Coles preferred a more radical design, however, and cultivated influence in Parliament in support of his own contentions, resulting in the construction of a lower-riding turret ship, HMS Captain of 1868. This project was poorly managed and the engineering botched, due largely to Coles' own illness during construction. The resulting ship promptly proved fatal to the inventor and most of her crew, as you can appreciate from a close reading of BBB's HMS Captain article.
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USS Monitor - First Armored Turret Ship, 1862 |
HMS Royal Sovereign, 1864 |
USS Onondaga - Double Turret Monitor, 1864 - 1903 |
USS Roanoke - First Three-Turret Ship - Wooden Frigate Conversion |
Union Ironclads of the American Civil War |
HMS Wyvern - Ex-Confederate Turret Ship by Laird's, 1863 |
Peruvian/Chilean Ironclad Huáscar - Lairds Ironclad Export, 1865 |
The Affondatore - Thames-Built Turret Ram, 1866 |
Dutch Coast-Defense Ironclad Schorpioen - French-Built Turret Ram, 1868 |
HNLMS Buffel - Lairds-Built Turret Ram, 1868 |
HMS Monarch - Masted Turret Ship, 1868 |
HMS Captain - Experimental Masted Turret Ship, 1870 |
Germany's Masted Turret Ships, 1870s |
HMVS Cerberus - Pioneer Breastwork Ironclad, 1868 |
Turret Rams of the Royal Navy - 1870s-80s |
HMS Devastation - The Shape of Things to Come, 1871 |
Russian Turret Ship Peter the Great, 1876 |
Italian Turret Ship Caio Duilio, 1878 |
USS Monadnock and Later American Monitors: 20-Year Build Time |
Turret interior, monitor USS Passaic: Classic Ericsson turret design for U.S. Civil War monitor. The ship carried one Dahlgren 11" and one 15" in each turret; the guns could not fire simultaneously. In order to turn the turret, the entire assembly had to be jacked up, moved, and dropped on deck again, unlike the Coles turret, which turned on a roller bearing race. The Passaic class of ten monitors, completed late 1862, was the first to follow the prototype Monitor and closely followed the model of the original. The Imperial Russian Navy built ten identical copies of the Passaic, armed with Russian-made copies of the Dahlgren guns: the Hurricane class, completed 1864. The Russians rearmed these ships with rifled 9" Krupp guns in 1873; by then the U.S. had sold or scrapped most of its monitors, and had foresworn the pursuit of naval innovations. Monitor style warships remained popular for the rest of the century, principally for harbor defense due to their dubious seaworthiness; the British, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, French, Ottoman Turkish, and Russian fleets all had sizable fleets. Isometric Cutaway of Monitor's Turret
Specifications for the Passaic class:
Dimensions: 201' x 46' x 11' Displacement: 1,653 tons std. Armament: (1) Dahlgren 11" and (1) Dahlgren 15" SB. Armor: Wrought iron type. 11" turret; 5"/3" hull sides; 1" deck, all built up from laminations of 2" and 1" plate. Propulsion: (2) coal-fired rectangular boilers; Ericsson vibrating lever engine, developing 460 IHP; single screw. Maximum speed: 6½ kts. Endurance: 1,400 nm @ 6 kts. Crew: 96.
The salvaged turret of the USS Monitor undergoing conservation at the Mariners Museum, Newport News, in 2011. The men are walking on the roof of the 149-year-old turret: the entire super-heavy assembly, with its foot-thick iron walls, was salvaged upside down as it sank. Held in place by gravity when on the surface, turret had lodged partway under the raftlike deck of the vessel when wreck hit the bottom. Guns were brought to the surface separately in a previous salvage operation. Enlarge (Photos: NOAA)
Above, breastwork monitor HMVS Cerberus: Pioneering 1870 turret ship was the first to raise a superstructure amidships, and the first seagoing turret ship with no sail rig -- innovations incorporated into the larger and more famous HMS Devastation immediately afterward, providing the immediate link to the armored ram and the pre-dreadnought battleship. Photo below shows the remains of Cerberus in Half Moon Bay, near Victoria, Australia today; courtesy Glen Agnew. Ship had two twin Coles turrets mounting 10" muzzle loading rifles. For a free downloadable cardstock model of the Cerberus from Paper Shipwright, click here.
Specifications for the HMVS Ceberus:
Dimensions: 225' x 45'1" x 15'6" Displacement: 3,3903 tons. Armament: (4) 10" RML and (2) 12-pdr howitzers; (4) 1" Nordenfelt MG. Armor: Wrought iron type. 10"/9" turret; 8"/6" belt (backed by 9"-11" of teak); breastwork 9"/8"; 1¼"/1" deck. Propulsion: (4) coal-fired rectangular boilers; (2) Maudslay horizontal return engines, developing 1,369 IHP; twin screw. Maximum speed: 9¾ kts. Service speed: 6 kts. Crew: 96 - 136.
