Iron-Plated Vessels an American Invention (1862)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, June 7, 1862.

Now that it is obvious that the iron-plated vessels are destined to effect a complete revolution in naval and coast warfare-the greatest change in the art of war since the invention of gunpowder-it ought to be a source of national pride that the idea originated in our own country. The United States gave the world the steamboat, the cotton gin, the electric telegraph, the anesthetic chloroform, the reaping machine, the cylinder press, and many other of the grandest prizes of peace; it is now to be written that the same land of the free has furnished war with the most important appliance of modern time. 

The real inventor in this case is Robert L. Stevens, and so history will recognize it. He projected his iron-plated floating battery for the protection of New York harbor nearly twenty years ago. It was he whose representations stimulated the Emperor Napoleon to undertake the construction of the iron-clad batteries and frigates which are so rapidly becoming the most formidable part of the French navy. We do not make this statement simply on American authority. Sixteen months ago the London Quarterly Review, the Tory organ of England, ever bitter in its hostility to anything American, in an article on "Iron Sides and Wooden Walls," had the frankness to say:

"As long ago as 1845, the late Mr. Stevens, the designer and builder of some of the the best and speediest American steamers, made a long series of experiments at the expense of the American Government, to ascertain and measure the resistance of iron plates to shot and shell. The result then arrived at was that plates less than an inch in thickness would resist the impact of any shell then known, and that a thickness of six inches of iron was impenetrable to every projectile that was brought against it, no matter how great the velocity, or how short the distance at which it was fired. These results were freely communicated to scientific men, both in Paris and in London, by Mr. Stevens in his visits to those capitols. Here they fell on stony ground, BUT IN PARIS THEY WERE FOLLOWED UP, and when the Crimean War broke out Napoleon III, who, like his great Uncle, has always been a great artillerist, and is skilled in the theory of projectiles, brought his knowledge to bear on the subject, and designed a class of iron-plated vessels known as the floating batteries of 1854. The French built six of these, and as we were requested by our ally to do otherwise, we literally copied his design without any alteration, but we did so most unwillingly, and our vessels were not ready in time to be of service. The French batteries, however, were actually employed in the reduction of Kinburn, and with a degree of success which the most sanguine could hardly have anticipated. Although under the fire of heavy guns for a considerable time, they came out absolutely scatheless, having answered in every respect the purposes for which they were designed. We never used ours and did not like them, and they were left to rot. The case, however, was widely different in France, and it is most curious and should be most instructive to observe the opposite courses which naval architecture has since taken in the two countries. It might be imagined a priori that from the moment THIS GREAT DISCOVERY had been made in naval construction, and had been established by experience, our Admiralty would have known at once how enormous were the advantages we might promptly derive from it, and how much more the discovery was calculated to establish our supremacy at sea than to give any advantage to France."

The Emperor Napoleon followed up this demonstration of the superiority of iron-plated vessels with great energy, but the English were still incredulous. Up to the last year, the Admiralty and all the dockyard authorities insisted that iron vessels for war purposes could not succeed. Mr. Howard Douglas, the eminent author of "Naval Gunnery," considered the best authority in England, in the last edition of his work gave it as his opinion that wooden vessels are still to be preferred to iron for naval purposes. The Edinburgh Review, but one year ago declared, emphasizing it too with italics, that, "throughout the long series of experiments which have been made, no iron plate has yet been manufactured which effectively resists the impact of a 68-pounder fired with a charge of sixteen pounds of powder. The Monitor, the other day, received from the Merrimac the "impact" of scores of one-hundred pounders, from Armstrong guns, too, without feeling it. By her success in wounding the stern of the Merrimac she demonstrated that the Warrior, the only British iron-cased vessel yet afloat, would be no match for her; since the Warrior is heavily plated only on her broadsides-her bow and her stern, for a considerable distance fore and aft, being formed of plates of only 1 1-4 inch thickness.

But the English Admiralty have now fairly awakened to the necessity of going energetically into the work of building iron-plated ships of war. In the late debate on the naval estimates, Lord Paget stated that they had fifteen such ships now in the course of construction, of which eleven would be afloat in the course of the present year. Some are great of size, ranging from 3,688 to 6,621 tons; but their size only makes them the more unwieldy, and, as demonstrated in Hampton Roads the other day, will prove a positive disadvantage. The Merrimac was four times the size of the Monitor, and was all the sooner worsted. The English and French vessels thus far built and planned-so far at least as we know-have other inferior features. They lie high in the water, instead of just rising above the surface like the Monitor, and are more easily hit. Their plates are laid vertically or nearly so, and thus will receive to impact of the shot at right angles, instead of obliquely, as in the case of the Monitor. The they are not only more easily hit, but, when hit, the shot must fell upon them with vastly greater effect.

Americans, then, through Stevens, were the first to conceive and apply the principle of making vessels of war invulnerable by the use of iron; and, through Ericsson, they have been foremost in seizing upon all the conditions of that principle, and, in the quickest time, turning them to the best accounts. History will record this to their honor.-
N.Y. World.