C.S.S. Mississippi (1863)
-Commissioned as H.M.S. Wyvern
The Wyvern and her sister Scorpion were built for the Confederacy by Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead (in Merseyside, near Liverpool), one of Britain's greatest shipbuilders, specializing in ironwork and modern warship construction. The two vessels were ordered covertly by Confederate agent James Bulloch in 1862 and would have completed near the end of 1863. Earlier in the war, Bulloch had contracted for the construction of the raiders Florida and Alabama, the latter vessel also built at Laird's. The British government had been able to shrug off Federal protests over the raiders because they had been classed as merchant vessels while building. They had been armed offshore only after completion, and only then received their crews of mostly British mercenaries. But when Federal agents in Britain uncovered the two ironclads being constructed by Laird's in 1863, under the subterfuge of being ships for Turkey, it was impossible to pretend the new ships were anything but men-of-war. U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams demanded immediate action from Britain's Foreign Office.
Adams had reason for concern. These two oceangoing ironclads -- known in Britain as the "Laird rams" -- could have shifted the balance in the naval war had they been delivered. Fast and maneuverable, each of these midsized ships carried a pair of 9" muzzle-loading guns in each of two Coles turrets. The turrets were carried in the waist of the ship, one before and one abaft the mainmast. The ships also had huge spur rams on their bows (see plans below). As with many Civil War era warships, hinged bulwarks folded down to permit the guns to train, or locked up when rollicking over the brine.
These two ironclads could have spelled serious trouble for the Union Navy, since they outmatched all but New Ironsides in the Union fleet. Originally the two rams were to have been called CSS Mississippi and CSS North Carolina, but they never sailed under those names. They were already fitting out (under their fictitious guise of ironclads for Turkey) when Adams and other Union diplomats took their case to the British government. The Americans engaged in their hardest-ever round of arm-twisting -- at least, the hardest before the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2002-3. H.M. government quarantined the two vessels in 1863 and purchased them for the Royal Navy in 1865. Below, the Mississippi and her sister North Carolina quarantined at Liverpool, guarded by the ship-of-the-line HMS Majestic (astern). Their loss was a body blow to the Confederacy, which was quite incapable of producing oceangoing ironclads for itself.
Renamed Wyvern and Scorpion for their Royal Navy service, the two were of a type which was known as "masted turret ships," vessels in which gun turrets coexisted uneasily with auxiliary sail rig. This arrangement was quite common in the 1860s and 1870s, extending the ships' voyaging range far beyond what their paltry bunkers could provide, and guaranteeing oceangoing mobility even in the event of engine breakdown. The top photo of Wivern shows her during her British service in the 1860s, with "tripod masts," their rigging simplified by using wooden struts from the first mast step to the deck instead of a web of hemp shrouds (traditional shrouds, the original rig, are seen in the plan below; these ships actually used metal wire for much of their standing rigging as first built). The intent of the struts was to widen the turret guns' arc of fire by reducing the areas where their aim was masked by the rigging.
These two accidental acquisitions proved high-quality, economical additions to the Queen's fleet. They roved the globe in a variety of duties in the 1860s. Laid up in ordinary for part of the 1870s, Wyvern was refitted and sent to Hong Kong in 1880. There she remained until she was scrapped in 1922.
Specifications for the Laird Rams (Mississippi/Wyvern, N.C./Scorpion):
Dimensions: 224'6" x 42'4" x 17', deep laden. Displacement: 2,750 tons. Armament: (4) 9" 250-pdr RML. Armor: Belt 4½/3½/2 inches; turret faces 10 inches; turret sides 5 inches. Engine: Single Lairds' Direct Acting steam engine developing 1450 IHP, shafted to single screw. Maximum speed under power: 10½ kts. Sail plan: 3-masted barque, changed to fore-and-aft with square foretopsail (topsail schooner), late 1870s. Crew: 153.
Metric Specifications:
Dimensions: 68.4m x 12.9m x 5.2m, deep laden. Displacement: 2,750 tons. Armament: (4) 229 mm 250-pdr RML. Armor: Belt 114/88/50 mm; turret faces 254 mm; turret sides 127 mm. Engine: Single Lairds' Direct Acting steam engine developing 1,081 kW, shafted to single screw. Maximum speed under power: 19.5 km/hr. Sail plan: Barque rig, changed to fore-and-aft with square foretopsail (topsail schooner), late 1870s. Crew: 153.
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