Battleships, Part Two - The Pre-Dreadnoughts

USS Connecticut (BB-18) on her speed trials in 1906 or 1907.

The day of the sailing ship was coming to a close during the American War of the Rebellion (1861-1865). Ships now had coal-fired boilers which produced steam to drive the ship through the water. While they still had towering masts and sails (for the most part), they relied more and more on steam. Having coaling stations around the world grew in importance.

Navies began to armor their warships as well. The British and the French both had designs on the books after the Crimean War. Better cannon and better explosive projectiles were signaling the death knell of the square-rigged, wooden ship of the line. The French man-of-war Gloire was the first ocean-going ironclad to enter service in 1859.

Gloire in 1860

Partial specifications for Gloire (Source):
Propulsion:
1 × Shaft
1 × Horizontal return connecting rod-steam engine
Sail plan: Barquentine rigged
Speed: 13 knots
Range: 2,500 mi at 8 knots
Crew: 570 officers and enlisted men
Armament:
As built:
36 × 164 mm (6.5 in) Mle 1858 rifled muzzle-loading guns
After 1868:
6 × 240 mm (9.4 in) Mle 1864 Breech-loading guns
2 × 192 mm (7.6 in) Mle 1866 Breech-loading guns
Armor:
Hull: 120 mm (4.7 in)
Conning tower: 100 mm (3.9 in)

Gloire had a wooden hull protected by armor plate, she was in service less than 20 years and was rendered obsolete shortly after she went into service by the Royal Navy's HMS Warrior. HMS Warrior was the first warship built with an iron hull. Though from a distance she didn't look much different than an old ship of the line. For what it's worth, HMS Warrior was actually classified as a 40-gun steam-powered frigate. Not a battleship at all.

(Source)

She still exists, preserved as a museum ship, and can be seen at Portsmouth, England, where she has been since 1987.

But all of these steam-and-sail-powered, old style broadside ships were not long for this world. Technology would soon send them all to the breaker's yard (well, except for HMS Warrior). But they did see action at the Battle of Lissa in 1866, a clash between the navies of the Austrian Empire (yes, they used to have a coastline and a navy) and Italy. The outnumbered Austrians actually defeated the Italians as apparently the Italian admirals in command didn't get along with each other.

Battle of Lissa, July 20th,1866
The RN Re d'Italia is sinking after being rammed by Tegetthoff's flagship, the SMS Ferdinand Max.

Yes, rammed.

Those ships to either side of the painting are starting to look like modern warships, aren't they? All that's missing are gun turrets. (For those keeping score at home, the flags of Italy and Austria in the painting look very much like their modern counterparts.)

Gun turrets, Sarge?

Commissioning ceremonies for USS Connecticut (BB-18), 29 September 1906.

Yup, gun turrets.

Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late 1880s and 1905, before the launch of HMS Dreadnought. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, and protected by hardened steel armor, pre-dreadnought battleships carried a main battery of very heavy guns in barbettes (open or with armoured gunhouses) supported by one or more secondary batteries of lighter weapons. They were powered by coal-fueled triple-expansion steam engines.

In contrast to the chaotic development of ironclad warships in preceding decades, the 1890s saw navies worldwide start to build battleships to a common design as dozens of ships essentially followed the design of the British Majestic class. The similarity in appearance of battleships in the 1890s was underlined by the increasing number of ships being built. New naval powers such as Germany, Japan, the United States, and – to a lesser extent – Italy and Austria-Hungary, began to establish themselves with fleets of pre-dreadnoughts, while the navies of Britain, France, and Russia expanded to meet these new threats. The decisive clash of pre-dreadnought fleets was between the Imperial Russian Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905. (Source)

Of course, before HMS Dreadnought was launched, these ships (like USS Connecticut) were not known as "pre-dreadnought battleships," but simply as battleships. These late 19th Century battleships saw action in a number of conflicts.

The United States started building its first battleships in 1891. These ships were short-range coast-defense battleships that were similar to the British HMS Hood except for an innovative intermediate battery of 8-inch guns. The US Navy continued to build ships that were relatively short-range and poor in heavy seas, until the Virginia class laid down in 1901–02. Nevertheless, it was these earlier ships that ensured American naval dominance against the antiquated Spanish fleet—which included no pre-dreadnoughts—in the Spanish–American War, most notably at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. The final two classes of American pre-dreadnoughts (the Connecticuts and Mississippis) were completed after the completion of the Dreadnought and after the start of design work on the USN's own initial class of dreadnoughts. The US Great White Fleet of 16 pre-dreadnought battleships circumnavigated the world from 16 December 1907, to 22 February 1909.

Japan was involved in two of the three major naval wars of the pre-dreadnought era. The first Japanese pre-dreadnought battleships, the Fuji class, were still being built at the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, which saw Japanese armoured cruisers and protected cruisers defeat the Chinese Beiyang Fleet, composed of a mixture of old ironclad battleships and cruisers, at the Battle of the Yalu River. Following their victory, and facing Russian pressure in the region, the Japanese placed orders for four more pre-dreadnoughts; along with the two Fujis these battleships formed the core of the fleet which twice engaged the numerically superior Russian fleets at the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima. After capturing eight Russian battleships of various ages, Japan built several more classes of pre-dreadnought after the Russo-Japanese War. (Source)

The Great White Fleet
USS Kansas (BB-21) sails ahead of USS Vermont (BB-20) as the fleet leaves Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 16 December 1907.

The most famous clash of these "pre-Dreadnought" battleships was the aforementioned Battle of Tsushima.

Admiral Tōgō on the bridge of Mikasa, at the beginning of the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.
The signal flag being hoisted is the letter Z, which was a special instruction to the Fleet.

On 8 February 1904 destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the Russian Far East Fleet anchored in Port Arthur; three ships – two battleships and a cruiser – were damaged in the attack. The Russo-Japanese war had thus begun. Japan's first objective was to secure its lines of communication and supply to the Asian mainland, enabling it to conduct a ground war in Manchuria. To achieve this, it was necessary to neutralize Russian naval power in the Far East. At first, the Russian naval forces remained inactive and did not engage the Japanese, who staged unopposed landings in Korea. The Russians were revitalized by the arrival of Admiral Stepan Makarov and were able to achieve some degree of success against the Japanese, but on 13 April Makarov's flagship, the battleship Petropavlovsk, struck a mine and sank; Makarov was among the dead. His successors failed to challenge the Japanese Navy, and the Russians were effectively bottled up in their base at Port Arthur.

By May, the Japanese had landed forces on the Liaodong Peninsula and in August began the siege of the naval station. On 9 August, Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft, commander of the 1st Pacific Squadron, was ordered to sortie his fleet to Vladivostok, link up with the Squadron stationed there, and then engage the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in a decisive battle.[11] Both squadrons of the Russian Pacific Fleet would ultimately become dispersed during the battles of the Yellow Sea (Admiral Vitgeft was killed by a salvo strike from the Japanese battleship Asahi) on 10 August and the Ulsan on 14 August 1904. What remained of Russian naval power would eventually be sunk in Port Arthur. (Source)

With Russian naval power practically erased in the Pacific, another squadron had to be dispatched to the theater of war. The only squadron available was in the Baltic Sea. Thus began the epic, and eventually disastrous, journey of the Second Pacific Squadron.

The Second Pacific Squadron sailed through the Baltic into the North Sea. The Russians had heard fictitious reports of Japanese torpedo boats operating in the area and were on high alert. In the Dogger Bank incident, the Russian fleet mistook a group of British fishing trawlers operating near the Dogger Bank at night for hostile Japanese ships. The fleet fired upon the small civilian vessels, killing several British fishermen and one trawler was sunk while another six were damaged. In confusion the Russians even fired upon two of their vessels, killing some of their men. The firing continued for twenty minutes before Rozhestvensky ordered firing to cease; greater loss of life was only avoided because the Russian gunnery was highly inaccurate.

The British were outraged by the incident and incredulous that the Russians could mistake a group of fishing trawlers for Japanese warships, thousands of kilometres from the nearest Japanese port. Britain almost entered the war in support of Japan, with whom it had a mutual defense agreement (but was neutral in the war, as their treaty contained a specific exemption for Japanese action in China and Korea). The Royal Navy sortied and shadowed the Russian fleet while a diplomatic agreement was reached. France, which had hoped to eventually bring the British and Russians together in an anti-German bloc, intervened diplomatically to restrain Britain from declaring war. The Russians were forced to accept responsibility for the incident, compensate the fishermen, disembark officers who were suspected of misconduct to give evidence to an inquiry, and banned from using the Suez Canal. Forced to take a much longer route to the Far East, the Russians sailed around Africa, and by April and May 1905 had anchored at Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina (now Vietnam). The voyage took several months in rough seas, with difficulty obtaining coal for refueling – as the warships could not legally enter the ports of neutral nations – and the morale of the crews plummeted. The Russians needed 500,000 short tons of coal and 30 to 40 re-coaling sessions to reach Cam Ranh Bay. This was provided by 60 colliers from the Hamburg-Amerika Line. (Source)

The trawlers fired upon!

Route taken by the Russian Squadrons to Tsushima
(Source)

Eventually they arrived in theater, and met disaster.

Want to know about a brilliant admiral?

Read about this fellow -

Marshal-Admiral The Marquis Tōgō Heihachirō
東郷 平八郎

Next time...

HMS Dreadnought
The beginning of the end...