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170-403: While the 19th-century battleship had evolved primarily with a view to engagements between armored warships with large-caliber guns , the invention and refinement of torpedoes from the 1860s onwards allowed small torpedo boats and other lighter surface vessels , submarines / submersibles , even improvised fishing boats or frogmen , and later light aircraft , to destroy large ships without

340-413: A differential gear to twin contra-rotating propellers. If one drum was rotated faster than the other, then the rudder was activated. The other ends of the wires were connected to steam-powered winding engines, which were arranged so that speeds could be varied within fine limits, giving sensitive steering control for the torpedo. The torpedo attained a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) using

510-489: A "torpedo" is an underwater self-propelled explosive, but historically, the term also applied to primitive naval mines and spar torpedoes . These were used on an ad hoc basis during the early modern period up to the late 19th century. In the early 17th century, the Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel , in the employ of King James I of England , invented the spar torpedo; he attached explosives to the end of

680-513: A British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on their terms: either to induce a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly minefields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds. This did not happen, however, due in large part to the necessity to keep submarines for

850-431: A batch of 50 as torpedo production at home and Rijeka could not meet demand. By World War I, Whitehead's torpedo remained a worldwide success, and his company was able to maintain a monopoly on torpedo production. By that point, his torpedo had grown to a diameter of 18 inches with a maximum speed of 30.5 knots (56.5 km/h; 35.1 mph) with a warhead weighing 170 pounds (77 kg). Whitehead faced competition from

1020-762: A beam affixed to one of his submarines. These were used (to little effect) during the English expeditions to La Rochelle in 1626. The first use of a torpedo by a submarine was in 1775, by the American Turtle , which attempted to lay a bomb with a timed fuse on the hull of HMS  Eagle during the American Revolutionary War , but failed in the attempt. In the early 1800s, the American inventor Robert Fulton , while in France, "conceived

1190-588: A boat's crew – Hardy had the crew flogged twice, once for the original offence and again for petitioning the lady. Nelson transferred his flag to the third-rate HMS  Foudroyant on 8 June 1799, taking Hardy with him. In June 1799, the main fleet, led by Foudroyant , landed marines at Naples to assist with the overthrow of the Parthenopean Republic so allowing Ferdinand's kingdom to be re-established. Hardy handed over command of Foudroyant to Sir Edward Berry on 13 October 1799, transferred to

1360-645: A demonstration in late 1869, and in 1870 a batch of torpedoes was ordered. In 1871, the British Admiralty paid Whitehead £ 15,000 for certain of his developments and production started at the Royal Laboratories in Woolwich the following year. In the 1880s, a British committee, informed by hydrodynamicist Dr. R. E. Froude , conducted comparative tests and determined that a blunt nose, contrary to prior assumptions, did not hinder speed: in fact,

1530-608: A depth just beneath the ship, relying on a magnetic exploder to activate at the appropriate time. Germany, Britain, and the U.S. independently devised ways to do this; German and American torpedoes, however, suffered problems with their depth-keeping mechanisms, coupled with faults in magnetic pistols shared by all designs. Inadequate testing had failed to reveal the effect of the Earth's magnetic field on ships and exploder mechanisms, which resulted in premature detonation. The Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy promptly identified and eliminated

1700-529: A factory at St Tropez in 1890 that exported torpedoes to Brazil, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Greece. Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope of Ludwig Obry in 1888 but it was not sufficiently accurate, so in 1890 he purchased a better design to improve control of his designs, which came to be called the "Devil's Device". The firm of L. Schwartzkopff in Germany also produced torpedoes and exported them to Russia, Japan, and Spain. In 1885, Britain ordered

1870-649: A large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single calibre main battery (twelve 12-inch [305 mm] guns), carrying 300-millimetre (12 in) belt armor , and capable of 24 knots (44 km/h). The Russo-Japanese War provided operational experience to validate the "all-big-gun" concept. During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, Admiral Togo of the Imperial Japanese Navy commenced deliberate 12-inch gun fire at

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2040-598: A large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in Queen Elizabeth and Warspite , which would be used in the new conning towers of the King George V -class fast battleships . External bulges were added to improve both buoyancy to counteract weight increase and provide underwater protection against mines and torpedoes. The Japanese rebuilt all of their battleships, plus their battlecruisers, with distinctive " pagoda " structures, though

2210-449: A less important role than had been expected in that conflict. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday. There were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected and used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Even in spite of their huge firepower and protection, battleships were increasingly vulnerable to much smaller and relatively inexpensive weapons: initially

2380-591: A mine laid by a German U-boat in October 1914 and sank. The threat that German U-boats posed to British dreadnoughts was enough to cause the Royal Navy to change their strategy and tactics in the North Sea to reduce the risk of U-boat attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing concern in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. As

2550-483: A mine laid by friendly forces, and sank with little loss of life. In May 1937, Jaime I was damaged by Nationalist air attacks and a grounding incident. The ship was forced to go back to port to be repaired. There she was again hit by several aerial bombs. It was then decided to tow the battleship to a more secure port, but during the transport she suffered an internal explosion that caused 300 deaths and her total loss. Several Italian and German capital ships participated in

2720-547: A mission to prevent the Spanish from interfering in the newly emerging republics of Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Promoted to rear admiral on 27 May 1825, Hardy hoisted his flag aboard the third-rate HMS  Wellesley and escorted 4,000 British troops to Lisbon, where they helped to quell a revolution by the eight-year-old queen's uncle in December 1826. He was subsequently given command of an experimental squadron in

2890-571: A mixed-caliber secondary battery amidships around the superstructure. An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British Devastation class of 1871. The slow-firing 12-inch (305 mm) main guns were the principal weapons for battleship-to-battleship combat. The intermediate and secondary batteries had two roles. Against major ships, it was thought a 'hail of fire' from quick-firing secondary weapons could distract enemy gun crews by inflicting damage to

3060-546: A naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia (9), the Ottoman Empire (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austria (1). The adoption of steam power

3230-537: A new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place: the long-range gunnery duel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904, the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (both during the Russo-Japanese War ) and the inconclusive Battle of Jutland in 1916, during the First World War . Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of dreadnoughts of

3400-462: A night-time approach so that the target ship would be less able to defend itself. Fiske determined that the notional torpedo bomber should descend rapidly in a sharp spiral to evade enemy guns, then when about 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 m) above the water the aircraft would straighten its flight long enough to line up with the torpedo's intended path. The aircraft would release the torpedo at a distance of 1,500 to 2,000 yards (1,400 to 1,800 m) from

3570-450: A number of 12-pound (3-inch, 76 mm) quick-firing guns for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. Her armor was heavy enough for her to go head-to-head with any other ship in a gun battle, and conceivably win. Dreadnought was to have been followed by three Invincible -class battlecruisers, their construction delayed to allow lessons from Dreadnought to be used in their design. While Fisher may have intended Dreadnought to be

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3740-473: A pair of 24.5-inch torpedoes from her port-side tube and claimed one hit. According to Ludovic Kennedy , "if true, [this is] the only instance in history of one battleship torpedoing another". The Royal Navy continued the development of oxygen-enriched air torpedoes with the 21 in. Mk. VII of the 1920s designed for the County-class cruisers although once again these were converted to run on normal air at

3910-717: A part in major engagements in Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theaters; in the Atlantic, the Germans used their battleships as independent commerce raiders. However, clashes between battleships were of little strategic importance. The Battle of the Atlantic was fought between destroyers and submarines, and most of the decisive fleet clashes of the Pacific war were determined by aircraft carriers . Sir Thomas Hardy, 1st Baronet Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, 1st Baronet , GCB (5 April 1769 – 20 September 1839)

4080-550: A pocket park. The baronetcy became extinct on his death. On 17 November 1807 Hardy married Louisa Emily Anna Berkeley, daughter of Admiral Sir George Cranfield Berkeley ; they had three daughters: Lady Hardy had "a kind of love affair on paper" with the poet Lord Byron , a distant relative of hers, in around 1822. The Hardy Monument is a 72-foot (22 m) high monument erected on Dorset 's Black Down hill in 1844 by public subscription in memory of Hardy. Admiral Hardy had lived in nearby Portesham , and his family owned

4250-534: A prize crew, and the three ships continued on towards Gibraltar. Before the night was out, Nelson ran into the Spanish fleet and only managed to get away when Hardy drew the Spanish away from Minerve and fought until being dismasted and captured. Hardy and Culverhouse were almost immediately exchanged for the captain of Santa Sabina , Don Jacobo Stuart, and were able to rejoin Minerve at Gibraltar on 9 February 1797. Three days later Minerve left Gibraltar to join

4420-594: A production facility at the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory, Greenock , in 1910. These are now closed. Whitehead opened a new factory adjacent to Portland Harbour , England, in 1890, which continued making torpedoes until the end of World War II . Because orders from the RN were not as large as expected, torpedoes were mostly exported. A series of devices was produced at Rijeka, with diameters from 14 in (36 cm) upward. The largest Whitehead torpedo

4590-569: A propeller, and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Gloire prompted further innovation from the Royal Navy , anxious to prevent France from gaining a technological lead. The superior armored frigate Warrior followed Gloire by only 14 months, and both nations embarked on a program of building new ironclads and converting existing screw ships of the line to armored frigates. Within two years, Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia had all ordered ironclad warships, and by

4760-631: A radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, it intended to use frequency-hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers . As radio guidance had been abandoned some years earlier, it was not pursued. Although the US Navy never adopted the technology, it did, in the 1960s, investigate various spread-spectrum techniques. Spread-spectrum techniques are incorporated into Bluetooth technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of Wi-Fi . This work led to their induction into

4930-484: A result of pressure from Admiral Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher , HMS Dreadnought rendered existing battleships obsolete. Combining an "all-big-gun" armament of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns with unprecedented speed (from steam turbine engines) and protection, she prompted navies worldwide to re-evaluate their battleship building programs. While the Japanese had laid down an all-big-gun battleship, Satsuma , in 1904 and

5100-480: A similar design in the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes . An American design, South Carolina , authorized in 1905 and laid down in December 1906, was another of the first dreadnoughts, but she and her sister, Michigan , were not launched until 1908. Both used triple-expansion engines and had a superior layout of the main battery, dispensing with Dreadnought ' s wing turrets. They thus retained

5270-459: A splinter took the buckle from Hardy's shoe, to which Nelson remarked, "This is too warm work Hardy, to last for long". Hardy was with Nelson when he was shot and, towards the end of the battle, as Nelson lay below dying, the two had a number of conversations together. Hardy was able to tell Nelson that 14 or 15 enemy ships had struck their flags: Nelson replied that he had "bargained for 20". In their last conversation, Nelson reminded Hardy to anchor

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5440-542: A success against an Austrian-Hungarian squadron , sinking the battleship SMS  Szent István with two torpedoes. The Royal Navy had been experimenting with ways to further increase the range of torpedoes during World War 1 using pure oxygen instead of compressed air, this work ultimately leading to the development of the oxygen-enriched air 24.5 in. Mk. I intended originally for the G3-class battlecruisers and N3 class battleships of 1921, both being cancelled due to

5610-492: A symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades were a major intimidation factor for power projection in both diplomacy and military strategy . A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought . The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced

5780-612: A torpedo against the Ottoman cruiser "Medjidieh". The end of the Russo-Japanese War fuelled new theories, and the idea of dropping lightweight torpedoes from aircraft was conceived in the early 1910s by Bradley A. Fiske , an officer in the United States Navy . Awarded a patent in 1912, Fiske worked out the mechanics of carrying and releasing the aerial torpedo from a bomber , and defined tactics that included

5950-600: A tubular device, designed to run underwater on its own, and powered by compressed air. The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff (mine ship), the first modern self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on 21 December 1866. The first trials were not successful as the weapon was unable to maintain a course at a steady depth. After much work, Whitehead introduced his "secret" in 1868 which overcame this. It

6120-633: A war scare with France and the build-up of the Russian navy gave added impetus to naval construction, and the British Naval Defence Act of 1889 laid down a new fleet including eight new battleships. The principle that Britain's navy should be more powerful than the two next most powerful fleets combined was established. This policy was designed to deter France and Russia from building more battleships, but both nations nevertheless expanded their fleets with more and better pre-dreadnoughts in

6290-505: A wire 1.0 millimetre (0.04 in) in diameter but later this was changed to 1.8 mm (0.07 in) to increase the speed to 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph). The torpedo was fitted with elevators controlled by a depth-keeping mechanism, and the fore and aft rudders operated by the differential between the drums. Brennan traveled to Britain, where the Admiralty examined the torpedo and found it unsuitable for shipboard use. However,

6460-463: Is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of large- caliber guns , designed to serve as capital ships with the most intense firepower . Before the rise of supercarriers , battleships were among the largest and most formidable weapon systems ever built. The term battleship came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship , now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships . In 1906,

6630-410: Is still in limited service in the 21st century. The improved Mark VIII** was used in two particularly notable incidents; on 6 February 1945 the only intentional wartime sinking of one submarine by another while both were submerged took place when HMS Venturer sank the German submarine U-864 with four Mark VIII** torpedoes and on 2 May 1982 when the Royal Navy submarine HMS  Conqueror sank

6800-578: The Hiei received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new Yamato class . Bulges were fitted, including steel tube arrays to improve both underwater and vertical protection along the waterline. The U.S. experimented with cage masts and later tripod masts , though after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some of the most severely damaged ships (such as West Virginia and California ) were rebuilt with tower masts, for an appearance similar to their Iowa -class contemporaries. Radar, which

6970-737: The King George V class . It was in the Mediterranean that navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes , and the Italians four Littorio -class ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The U.S. preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the South Dakota class . Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on three mammoth Yamato s (although

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7140-474: The American Civil War , the term torpedo was used for what is today called a contact mine , floating on or below the water surface using an air-filled demijohn or similar flotation device. These devices were very primitive and apt to prematurely explode. They would be detonated on contact with the ship or after a set time, although electrical detonators were also occasionally used. USS  Cairo

7310-480: The Battle of Tsushima , Admiral Rozhestvensky 's flagship , the battleship Knyaz Suvorov , had been gunned to a wreck by Admiral Tōgō 's 12-inch gunned battleline . With the Russians sunk and scattering, Tōgō prepared for pursuit, and while doing so ordered his torpedo boat destroyers (TBDs) (mostly referred to as just destroyers in most written accounts) to finish off the Russian battleship. Knyaz Suvorov

7480-575: The Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific War. Torpedo boats, such as MTBs , PT boats , or S-boats , enabled the relatively small but fast craft to carry enough firepower, in theory, to destroy a larger ship, though this rarely occurred in practice. The largest warship sunk by torpedoes from small craft in World War II was the British cruiser Manchester , sunk by Italian MAS boats on

7650-565: The Battle of the North Cape in December 1943, torpedo hits from British destroyers Savage and Saumarez slowed the German battleship Scharnhorst enough for the British battleship Duke of York to catch and sink her, and in May 1945 the British 26th Destroyer Flotilla (coincidentally led by Saumarez again) ambushed and sank Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro . During World War II , Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed

7820-579: The British Empire for more than fifteen years. The Royal Navy frigate HMS  Shah was the first naval vessel to fire a self-propelled torpedo in anger during the Battle of Pacocha against rebel Peruvian ironclad Huáscar on 29 May 1877. The Peruvian ship successfully outran the device. On 16 January 1878, the Turkish steamer Intibah became the first vessel to be sunk by self-propelled torpedoes, launched from torpedo boats operating from

7990-634: The Danes to withdraw from the League of Armed Neutrality . On the night of 1 April 1801, Hardy was sent in a boat to take soundings around the anchored Danish fleet. Hardy's ship drew too much water and so took no part in the Battle of Copenhagen the following day, though his work proved to be of great value. The only two ships that went aground, the third-rates HMS  Agamemnon and HMS  Bellona , were taken in by local pilots and did not follow Hardy's recommended route. Hardy stayed on as flag captain to

8160-885: The First Geneva Naval Conference (1927), the First London Naval Treaty (1930), the Second Geneva Naval Conference (1932), and finally the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which all set limits on major warships. These treaties became effectively obsolete on September 1, 1939, at the beginning of World War II , but the ship classifications that had been agreed upon still apply. The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched in 1919–1939 than in 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by imposing upper limits on

8330-543: The First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. At this time torpedo attacks were still very close range and very dangerous to the attackers. Several western sources reported that the Qing dynasty Imperial Chinese military, under the direction of Li Hongzhang , acquired electric torpedoes, which they deployed in numerous waterways, along with fortresses and numerous other modern military weapons acquired by China. At

8500-464: The Gulf War in 1991, and then struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. Many World War II-era American battleships survive today as museum ships . A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades , which came to prominence with the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and

8670-531: The National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Because of improved submarine strength and speed, torpedoes had to be given improved warheads and better motors. During the Cold War torpedoes were an important asset with the advent of nuclear-powered submarines , which did not have to surface often, particularly those carrying strategic nuclear missiles . Battleship A battleship

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8840-563: The Royal Navy was able to use her imposing battleship and battlecruiser fleet to impose a strict and successful naval blockade of Germany and kept Germany's smaller battleship fleet bottled up in the North Sea : only narrow channels led to the Atlantic Ocean and these were guarded by British forces. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would be likely to result in

9010-643: The Tientsin Arsenal in 1876, the Chinese developed the capacity to manufacture these "electric torpedoes" on their own. Although a form of Chinese art, the Nianhua , depict such torpedoes being used against Russian ships during the Boxer Rebellion , whether they were actually used in battle against them is undocumented and unknown. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was the first great war of

9180-750: The War Office proved more amenable, and in early August 1881, a special Royal Engineer committee was instructed to inspect the torpedo at Chatham and report back directly to the Secretary of State for War, Hugh Childers . The report strongly recommended that an improved model be built at government expense. In 1883 an agreement was reached between the Brennan Torpedo Company and the government. The newly appointed Inspector-General of Fortifications in England, Sir Andrew Clarke , appreciated

9350-644: The War of 1812 broke out, the Royal Navy established a blockade of the East Coast of the United States . During the war, American forces unsuccessfully attempted to destroy the British ship of the line HMS Ramillies while it was lying at anchor in New London, Connecticut 's harbor with torpedoes launched from small boats. This prompted the captain of Ramillies , Sir Thomas Hardy, 1st Baronet , to warn

9520-549: The Washington Naval Treaty . Initially, the Imperial Japanese Navy purchased Whitehead or Schwartzkopf torpedoes but by 1917, like the Royal Navy, they were conducting experiments with pure oxygen instead of compressed air. Because of explosions they abandoned the experiments but resumed them in 1926 and by 1933 had a working torpedo. They also used conventional wet heater torpedoes. In

9690-501: The inter-war years , financial stringency caused nearly all navies to skimp on testing their torpedoes. Only the British and Japanese had fully tested new technologies for torpedoes (in particular the Type 93 , nicknamed Long Lance postwar by the US official historian Samuel E. Morison ) at the start of World War II. Unreliable torpedoes caused many problems for the American submarine force in

9860-522: The torpedo and the naval mine , and later attack aircraft and the guided missile . The growing range of naval engagements led to the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with the last battleship to be launched being HMS  Vanguard in 1944. Four battleships were retained by the United States Navy until the end of the Cold War for fire support purposes and were last used in combat during

10030-443: The "unsinkable" German World War I battleship SMS  Ostfriesland and the American pre-dreadnought Alabama . Although Mitchell had required "war-time conditions", the ships sunk were obsolete, stationary, defenseless and had no damage control. The sinking of Ostfriesland was accomplished by violating an agreement that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of various munitions: Mitchell's airmen disregarded

10200-457: The 102nd Regiment of Foot and a company of Royal Artillery against Fort Sullivan in Eastport, Maine . The American defending force of 70 regulars and 250 militiamen gave up without a fight. Hardy and Pilkington issued a proclamation making it clear Great Britain considered Eastport and the several nearby islands to be British territory. Townspeople were required to take an oath of allegiance to

10370-451: The 1890s. In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the escalation in the building of battleships became an arms race between Britain and Germany . The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorized a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power. Britain answered with further shipbuilding, but by the end of the pre-dreadnought era, British supremacy at sea had markedly weakened. In 1883,

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10540-541: The 20th century. During the war the Imperial Russian and Imperial Japanese navies launched nearly 300 torpedoes at each other, all of them of the "self-propelled automotive" type. The deployment of these new underwater weapons resulted in one battleship, two armored cruisers, and two destroyers being sunk in action, with the remainder of the roughly 80 warships being sunk by the more conventional methods of gunfire, mines, and scuttling . On 27 May 1905, during

10710-468: The 8-inch battery being completely unusable, and the inability to train the primary and intermediate armaments on different targets led to significant tactical limitations. Even though such innovative designs saved weight (a key reason for their inception), they proved too cumbersome in practice. In 1906, the British Royal Navy launched the revolutionary HMS  Dreadnought . Created as

10880-604: The American Lieutenant Commander John A. Howell , whose design , driven by a flywheel , was simpler and cheaper. It was produced from 1885 to 1895, and it ran straight, leaving no wake. A Torpedo Test Station was set up in Rhode Island in 1870. The Howell torpedo was the only United States Navy model until an American company, Bliss and Williams secured manufacturing rights to produce Whitehead torpedoes. These were put into service for

11050-453: The Americans to cease using this "cruel and unheard-of warfare" or he would "order every house near the shore to be destroyed". The fact that Hardy had been previously so lenient and considerate to the Americans led them to abandon such attempts with immediate effect. Torpedoes were used by the Russian Empire during the Crimean War in 1855 against British warships in the Gulf of Finland . They used an early form of chemical detonator. During

11220-524: The Argentine cruiser ARA  General Belgrano with two Mark VIII** torpedoes during the Falklands War . This is the only sinking of a surface ship by a nuclear-powered submarine in wartime and the second (of three) sinkings of a surface ship by any submarine since the end of World War II). The other two sinkings were of the Indian frigate INS  Khukri and the South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan . Many classes of surface ships, submarines, and aircraft were armed with torpedoes. Naval strategy at

11390-483: The Atlantic campaign. Submarines were the only vessels in the Imperial German Navy able to break out and raid British commerce in force, but even though they sank many merchant ships, they could not successfully counter-blockade the United Kingdom; the Royal Navy successfully adopted convoy tactics to combat Germany's submarine counter-blockade and eventually defeated it. This was in stark contrast to Britain's successful blockade of Germany. The first two years of war saw

11560-492: The British and French blockade. And in the Mediterranean , the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli . In September 1914, the threat posed to surface ships by German U-boats was confirmed by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine SM  U-9 in less than an hour. The British Super-dreadnought HMS  Audacious soon followed suit as she struck

11730-415: The British fleet. Less than two months later, the Germans once again attempted to draw portions of the Grand Fleet into battle. The resulting Action of 19 August 1916 proved inconclusive. This reinforced German determination not to engage in a fleet to fleet battle. In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea , engagement between Russian and Ottoman battleships

11900-457: The British government to employ his 'catamaran' against the French. An April 1804 torpedo attack on French ships anchored at Boulogne, and a follow-up attack in October, produced several explosions but no significant damage and the weapon was abandoned. Fulton carried out a demonstration for the US government on 20 July 1807, destroying a vessel in New York's harbor. Further development languished as Fulton focused on his "steam-boat matters". After

12070-407: The Channel, moving his flag from the fifth-rate HMS Sybille to the sixth-rate HMS  Pyramus before going ashore for the last time on 21 October 1827. Hardy became First Naval Lord in the Grey ministry in November 1830 and was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 13 September 1831. As first Naval Lord he refused to become a Member of Parliament and encouraged

12240-634: The Dardanelles Campaign and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS  Szent István by Italian motor torpedo boats in June 1918. In large fleet actions, however, destroyers and torpedo boats were usually unable to get close enough to the battleships to damage them. The only battleship sunk in a fleet action by either torpedo boats or destroyers was the obsolescent German pre-dreadnought SMS  Pommern . She

12410-726: The French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798. Afterwards, Nelson's flag captain, Edward Berry was sent home with dispatches and Hardy was promoted to captain of Nelson's flagship, HMS  Vanguard , in his place on 2 October 1798. HMS Vanguard carried King Ferdinand IV and the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton and his wife Emma from Naples to safety in Sicily in December 1798: Hardy did not altogether approve of Lady Hamilton who had once tried to intervene on behalf of

12580-513: The German Navy, and prevented Germany from building or possessing any capital ships . The inter-war period saw the battleship subjected to strict international limitations to prevent a costly arms race breaking out. While the victors were not limited by the Treaty of Versailles, many of the major naval powers were crippled after the war. Faced with the prospect of a naval arms race against

12750-538: The High Seas Fleet be disarmed and interned in a neutral port; largely because no neutral port could be found, the ships remained in British custody in Scapa Flow , Scotland. The Treaty of Versailles specified that the ships should be handed over to the British. Instead, most of them were scuttled by their German crews on June 21, 1919, just before the signature of the peace treaty. The treaty also limited

12920-590: The Moray Firth. Whilst the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower at Jutland was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers successfully turning away the British battleships, the German attempt to rely on U-boat attacks on the British fleet failed. Torpedo boats did have some successes against battleships in World War I, as demonstrated by the sinking of the British pre-dreadnought HMS  Goliath by Muâvenet-i Millîye during

13090-594: The North Sea were battles including the Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank and German raids on the English coast, all of which were attempts by the Germans to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet in an attempt to defeat the Royal Navy in detail. On May 31, 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on German terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland . The German fleet withdrew to port after two short encounters with

13260-596: The Portesham estate which stretched from the middle of Portesham to Black Down. The monument's site was chosen because the Hardy family wanted a monument which could be used as a landmark for shipping. The monument has been shown on navigational charts since 1846 and is visible from a distance of 60 miles (97 kilometres). Letitia Elizabeth Landon 's poetical illustration [REDACTED] Sir Thomas Hardy . to Richard Evans' portrait, describes aspects of Hardy's career. This

13430-550: The Republic, killed their officers, who apparently supported Franco's attempted coup, and joined the Republican Navy. Thus each side had one battleship; however, the Republican Navy generally lacked experienced officers. The Spanish battleships mainly restricted themselves to mutual blockades, convoy escort duties, and shore bombardment, rarely in direct fighting against other surface units. In April 1937, España ran into

13600-501: The Royal Navy's battleships and battlecruisers regularly "sweep" the North Sea making sure that no German ships could get in or out. Only a few German surface ships that were already at sea, such as the famous light cruiser SMS  Emden , were able to raid commerce. Even some of those that did manage to get out were hunted down by battlecruisers, as in the Battle of the Falklands , December 7, 1914. The results of sweeping actions in

13770-506: The Russian flagship Tzesarevich at 14,200 yards (13,000 meters). At the Battle of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, Russian Admiral Rozhestvensky's flagship fired the first 12-inch guns at the Japanese flagship Mikasa at 7,000 meters. It is often held that these engagements demonstrated the importance of the 12-inch (305 mm) gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view that secondary batteries were just as important as

13940-694: The Spaniards who checked their own progress, allowing Hardy to return to his ship and make good his escape. Hardy remained with Minerve until May 1797 when, following a successful cutting out expedition of which he was in charge, he was promoted to master and commander of the newly captured corvette HMS  Mutine . Under Hardy's command, Mutine joined a squadron under Captain Thomas Troubridge which met up with Nelson off Toulon in June 1798, located Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt and destroyed

14110-616: The U.S. Navy in 1892. Five varieties were produced, all 18-inch diameter. The Royal Navy introduced the Brotherhood wet heater engine in 1907 with the 18 in. Mk. VII & VII* which greatly increased the speed and/or range over compressed air engines and wet heater type engines became the standard in many major navies up to and during the Second World War. Ships of the line were superseded by ironclads , large steam-powered ships with heavy gun armament and heavy armor, in

14280-496: The U.S. Navy's nascent aircraft carrier program. The Royal Navy , United States Navy , and Imperial Japanese Navy extensively upgraded and modernized their World War I–era battleships during the 1930s. Among the new features were an increased tower height and stability for the optical rangefinder equipment (for gunnery control), more armor (especially around turrets) to protect against plunging fire and aerial bombing, and additional anti-aircraft weapons. Some British ships received

14450-551: The USN twenty-one months into the Pacific War. British submarines used torpedoes to interdict the Axis supply shipping to North Africa , while Fleet Air Arm Swordfish sank three Italian battleships at Taranto by a torpedo and (after a mistaken, but abortive, attack on Sheffield ) scored one crucial hit in the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck . Large tonnages of merchant shipping were sunk by submarines with torpedoes in both

14620-505: The United Kingdom and Japan, which would in turn have led to a possible Pacific war , the United States was keen to conclude the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess, and required Britain to accept parity with the U.S. and to abandon the British alliance with Japan. The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, including

14790-700: The United Kingdom had 38 battleships, twice as many as France and almost as many as the rest of the world put together. In 1897, Britain's lead was far smaller due to competition from France, Germany, and Russia, as well as the development of pre-dreadnought fleets in Italy, the United States and Japan . The Ottoman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway , the Netherlands , Chile and Brazil all had second-rate fleets led by armored cruisers , coastal defence ships or monitors . Pre-dreadnoughts continued

14960-570: The banners at Nelson's funeral procession on 9 January 1806. Hardy was created a baronet on 29 January 1806 and was given command of the third-rate HMS  Triumph on the North American Station in May 1806. While in Nova Scotia , he married Anna Louisa Berkeley, the daughter of his commander-in-chief, Sir George Cranfield Berkeley . When Admiral Berkeley was sent to Lisbon, Hardy went with him as his flag captain in

15130-474: The blunt nose provided a speed advantage of approximately one knot compared to the traditional pointed nose design. This discovery allowed for larger explosive payloads and increased air storage for propulsion without compromising speed. In 1893, RN torpedo production was transferred to the Royal Gun Factory . The British later established a Torpedo Experimental Establishment at HMS  Vernon and

15300-446: The commissioning of HMS  Dreadnought into the United Kingdom 's Royal Navy heralded a revolution in the field of battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought , were referred to as " dreadnoughts ", though the term eventually became obsolete as dreadnoughts became the only type of battleship in common use. Battleships dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were

15470-499: The concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, it had yet to be validated in combat. Dreadnought sparked a new arms race , principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial element of national power. Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with steep changes in armament, armor and propulsion. Ten years after Dreadnought ' s commissioning, much more powerful ships,

15640-661: The construction of the first purpose-built operational torpedo aircraft, the Short Type 184 , built-in 1915. An order for ten aircraft was placed, and 936 aircraft were built by ten different British aircraft companies during the First World War . The two prototype aircraft were embarked upon HMS  Ben-my-Chree , which sailed for the Aegean on 21 March 1915 to take part in the Gallipoli campaign . On 12 August 1915 one of these, piloted by Flight Commander Charles Edmonds ,

15810-415: The crown or leave. Two-thirds of the inhabitants took the oath, while 500 departed. For the few weeks he remained at the place, Hardy became a favourite of the locals, gaining great respect and popularity. However, Hardy's next venture, the 9–11 August bombardment of Stonington, Connecticut was a defeat; Royal Navy cannonading set 20 buildings on fire while killing a horse and a goose, while reports indicate

15980-656: The decks with Hardy, and as he lay dying, Nelson's famous remark of "Kiss me, Hardy" was directed at him. Hardy went on to become First Naval Lord in November 1830 and in that capacity refused to become a Member of Parliament and encouraged the introduction of steam warships. Born the second son of Joseph Hardy and Nanny Hardy (née Masterman) at Kingston Russell House in Long Bredy (or according to some sources in Winterborne St Martin ), Hardy joined

16150-495: The defenses at the Battle of Kinburn . Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 Battle of Lissa , where the modern Austrian steam two-decker SMS  Kaiser ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one 300-pound shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she

16320-580: The early years of the war, primarily in the Pacific Theater . One possible exception to the pre-war neglect of torpedo development was the 45-cm caliber, 1931-premiered Japanese Type 91 torpedo , the sole aerial torpedo ( Koku Gyorai ) developed and brought into service by the Japanese Empire before the war. The Type 91 had an advanced PID controller and jettisonable, wooden Kyoban aerial stabilizing surfaces which released upon entering

16490-618: The end of World War I, aircraft had successfully adopted the torpedo as a weapon. In 1921 the Italian general and air theorist Giulio Douhet completed a hugely influential treatise on strategic bombing titled The Command of the Air , which foresaw the dominance of air power over naval units. In the 1920s, General Billy Mitchell of the United States Army Air Corps , believing that air forces had rendered navies around

16660-402: The end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'. The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull , knocking down masts , wrecking her rigging , and killing her crew. However, the effective range of

16830-402: The factory was exporting torpedoes to ten other countries. The torpedo was powered by compressed air and had an explosive charge of gun-cotton . Whitehead went on to develop more efficient devices, demonstrating torpedoes capable of 18 knots (33 km/h) in 1876, 24 knots (44 km/h) in 1886, and, finally, 30 knots (56 km/h) in 1890. Royal Navy (RN) representatives visited Rijeka for

17000-485: The fifth-rate HMS Minerve in August 1796 and Hardy went with him, subsequently becoming his first lieutenant . Horatio Nelson , then a commodore , moved his broad pennant to Minerve in December 1796. While en route to Gibraltar , in the action of 19 December 1796 , Minerve and her consort, the fifth-rate HMS  Blanche , engaged two Spanish frigates and forced Santa Sabina to surrender. Lieutenants Hardy and Culverhouse were sent aboard Santa Sabina with

17170-550: The fifth-rate HMS  Princess Charlotte and returned to England. After a year ashore, Hardy went to Plymouth Dock in December 1800 to take command of the first-rate HMS  San Josef , which had just been refitted. He transferred to the second-rate HMS  St George and became Nelson's flag captain once more in February 1801. Nelson was appointed second in command of the Baltic fleet, which had been sent to force

17340-476: The first practical guided missile was patented by Louis Brennan , an emigre to Australia, in 1877. It was designed to run at a consistent depth of 12 feet (3.7 m), and was fitted with an indicator mast that just broke the surface of the water. At night the mast had a small light, only visible from the rear. Two steel drums were mounted one behind the other inside the torpedo, each carrying several thousand yards of high-tensile steel wire. The drums connected via

17510-487: The first self-propelled torpedo. Torpedo-like weapons were first proposed many centuries before they were successfully developed. For example, in 1275, Arab engineer Hasan al-Rammah – who worked as a military scientist for the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt – wrote that it might be possible to create a projectile resembling "an egg", which propelled itself through water, whilst carrying "fire". In modern language,

17680-454: The first shots of World War II with the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte ; and the final surrender of the Japanese Empire took place aboard a United States Navy battleship, USS  Missouri . Between those two events, it had become clear that aircraft carriers were the new principal ships of the fleet and that battleships now performed a secondary role. Battleships played

17850-422: The fleet , was obliged to remain in England and Hardy unofficially replaced him in addition to serving as flag captain. As Victory approached the enemy line on the morning of 21 October 1805, Hardy urged Nelson to transfer to another ship to avoid the inevitable melee, but Nelson refused. Victory , leading the weather column, came under heavy fire in the opening stages of the Battle of Trafalgar . At one point,

18020-458: The fleet. Nelson went on to say "take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy, take care of poor Lady Hamilton" and then when the moment came for the two men to part for the last time, Nelson then very close to death, asked Hardy to kiss him. Hardy kissed him on the cheek; "Now I am satisfied," said Nelson, "Thank God I have done my duty". Hardy stood up and then having spent a few moments looking down silently at his friend, knelt and kissed him again on

18190-589: The forehead. "Who is that?" asked Nelson, now barely able to see. "It is Hardy" Hardy replied. "God bless you Hardy" was Nelson's last response. Victory was towed to Gibraltar, arriving on 28 October 1805, where she underwent major repairs, before setting set sail for England on 4 November 1805 and arriving at Portsmouth on 5 December 1805. There Nelson's body was transferred to the Sheerness Commissioner, Sir George Grey, 1st Baronet 's yacht Chatham to proceed to Greenwich . Hardy carried one of

18360-402: The guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind. Over time, ships of the line gradually became larger and carried more guns, but otherwise remained quite similar. The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system . Steam power was gradually introduced to

18530-485: The idea of destroying ships by introducing floating mines under their bottoms in submarine boats". He employed the term "torpedo" for the explosive charges with which he outfitted his submarine Nautilus . However, both the French and the Dutch governments were uninterested in the submarine. Fulton then concentrated on developing the torpedo-like weapon independent of a submarine deployment, and in 1804 succeeded in convincing

18700-548: The introduction of 8-inch shell guns as part of the standard armament of French and American line-of-battle ships in 1841. In the Crimean War , six line-of-battle ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. Later in the war, French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against

18870-501: The introduction of steam warships. He resigned in August 1834 to become Governor of Greenwich Hospital . Hardy was promoted to vice admiral on 10 January 1837. He died at Greenwich on 20 September 1839. He is buried in the officers vault in Greenwich Hospital Cemetery, just west of National Maritime Museum . The grave lies in the enclosed railed area of the now mainly cleared graveyard, which now serves as

19040-481: The larger weapons when dealing with smaller fast-moving torpedo craft. Such was the case, albeit unsuccessfully, when the Russian battleship  Knyaz Suvorov at Tsushima had been sent to the bottom by destroyer -launched torpedoes. The 1903–04 design also retained traditional triple-expansion steam engines . As early as 1904, Jackie Fisher had been convinced of the need for fast, powerful ships with an all-big-gun armament. If Tsushima influenced his thinking, it

19210-412: The last Royal Navy battleship, the design was so successful he found little support for his plan to switch to a battlecruiser navy. Although there were some problems with the ship (the wing turrets had limited arcs of fire and strained the hull when firing a full broadside, and the top of the thickest armor belt lay below the waterline at full load), the Royal Navy promptly commissioned another six ships to

19380-458: The main fleet off the south-east coast of Spain under Sir John Jervis . With two enemy ships pursuing him, Cockburn ordered more sail. During this operation, a topman fell overboard. The ship hove to and a boat with Hardy in it was lowered to search for the missing mariner. As the enemy ships were closing fast, Cockburn thought it prudent to withdraw, but Nelson overruled him crying "By God, I'll not lose Hardy, back that mizzen topsail!" This confused

19550-451: The mid 19th century. Ultimately this line of development led to the dreadnought category of all-big-gun battleships, starting with HMS  Dreadnought . Although these ships were incredibly powerful, the new weight of armor slowed them down, and the huge guns needed to penetrate that armor fired at very slow rates. The development of torpedoes allowed for the possibility that small and fast vessels could credibly threaten if not sink even

19720-415: The mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's Redoutable , laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a central battery and barbette warship which became the first battleship in the world to use steel as the principal building material. The term "battleship" was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in the re-classification of 1892. By the 1890s, there

19890-422: The most powerful battleships. While such attacks would carry enormous risks to the attacking boats and their crews (which would likely need to expose themselves to artillery fire which their small vessels were not designed to withstand) this was offset by the ability to construct large numbers of small vessels far more quickly and for a much lower unit cost compared to a capital ship. The first boat designed to fire

20060-428: The navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for frigates . The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850 —the first true steam battleship. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h), regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in

20230-472: The navy with his entry aboard the brig HMS  Helena on 30 November 1781 as a captain's servant, but left her in April 1782 to attend Crewkerne Grammar School . During his time at school his name was carried on the books of the sixth-rate HMS  Seaford and the third-rate HMS  Carnatic . Hardy joined the fifth-rate HMS  Hebe on 5 February 1790 as a midshipman; he later transferred to

20400-447: The need of large guns, though sometimes at the risk of being hit by longer-range artillery fire. Modern torpedoes are classified variously as lightweight or heavyweight; straight-running, autonomous homers, and wire-guided types. They can be launched from a variety of platforms. In modern warfare, a submarine-launched torpedo is almost certain to hit its target; the best defense is a counterattack using another torpedo. The word torpedo

20570-471: The new fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Charles Pole , until August 1801 when he took command of the fourth-rate HMS Isis . In July 1802, Hardy was appointed to the fifth-rate HMS  Amphion which after taking the new British ambassador to Lisbon , returned to Portsmouth . Nelson was in Portsmouth, as he was due to hoist his flag in the first-rate HMS  Victory in May 1803, but on finding

20740-422: The night of 12/13 August 1942 during Operation Pedestal . Destroyers of all navies were also armed with torpedoes to attack larger ships. In the Battle off Samar , destroyer torpedoes from the escorts of the American task force "Taffy 3" showed effectiveness at defeating armor. Damage and confusion caused by torpedo attacks were instrumental in beating back a superior Japanese force of battleships and cruisers. In

20910-465: The non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship Deutschland outside Ibiza , causing severe damage and loss of life. Admiral Scheer retaliated two days later by bombarding Almería , causing much destruction, and the resulting Deutschland incident meant the end of German and Italian participation in non-intervention. The Schleswig-Holstein —an obsolete pre-dreadnought —fired

21080-551: The plans of the Salvacoste ("Coastsaver"), a floating weapon driven by ropes from the land that had been dismissed by the naval authorities due to the impractical steering and propulsion mechanisms. In 1866, Whitehead invented the first effective self-propelled torpedo, the eponymous Whitehead torpedo , the first modern torpedo. French and German inventions followed closely, and the term torpedo came to describe self-propelled projectiles that traveled under or on water. By 1900,

21250-653: The problems. In the United States Navy (USN), there was an extended wrangle over the problems plaguing the Mark 14 torpedo (and its Mark 6 exploder ). Cursory trials had allowed bad designs to enter service. Both the Navy Bureau of Ordnance and the United States Congress were too busy protecting their interests to correct the errors, and fully functioning torpedoes only became available to

21420-470: The rules, and sank the ship within minutes in a coordinated attack. The stunt made headlines, and Mitchell declared, "No surface vessels can exist wherever air forces acting from land bases are able to attack them." While far from conclusive, Mitchell's test was significant because it put proponents of the battleship against naval aviation on the defensive. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett used public relations against Mitchell to make headway toward expansion of

21590-439: The same broadside, despite having two fewer guns. In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by HMS  Dreadnought , the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and 50 over Germany. From the 1906 launching of Dreadnought , an arms race with major strategic consequences was prompted. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts. Possession of modern battleships

21760-482: The second-rate HMS  Barfleur . Hardy was made a commodore in the Portuguese Navy in 1811. In August 1812, Hardy was given command of the third-rate HMS  Ramillies and was sent back to North America at the outbreak of the War of 1812 . On 11 July 1814, Hardy in his flagship, assisted by Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pilkington , led four other warships and several transports carrying 2,000 men of

21930-493: The self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was HMS  Lightning , completed in 1877. The French Navy followed suit in 1878 with Torpilleur No 1 , launched in 1878 though she had been ordered in 1875. The first torpedo boats were built at the shipyards of Sir John Thornycroft and gained recognition for their effectiveness. At the same time, inventors were working on building a guided torpedo. Prototypes were built by John Ericsson , John Louis Lay , and Victor von Scheliha, but

22100-665: The ship not ready for him, transferred his flag to the Amphion and set sail for the Mediterranean . Nelson and Hardy finally transferred to Victory off Toulon on 31 July 1803. Nelson's fleet continued to blockade Toulon until April 1805, when the French escaped and were pursued to the West Indies and back. After a brief stop at Spithead between 20 August and 14 September 1805, they set sail for Cádiz arriving on 29 September 1805. George Murray , Nelson's captain of

22270-640: The sixth-rate HMS  Tisiphone under Captain Anthony Hunt , and then followed Hunt to the sixth-rate HMS  Amphitrite in May 1793, going out to the Mediterranean in her. Hardy served off Marseilles and Toulon and was commissioned second lieutenant of the fifth-rate HMS  Meleager under Captain Charles Tyler on 10 November 1793. Command of Meleager passed to Captain George Cockburn in June 1794; Cockburn took command of

22440-666: The sizeable American defending force killed 21 and wounded 50 British attackers. Hardy was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on 2 January 1815. Hardy was given command of the royal yacht HMS Princess Augusta in July 1816 and, then having been promoted to commodore , became Commander-in-Chief on the South America Station , hoisting his broad pennant in third-rate HMS  Superb in August 1819, with

22610-428: The start of World War II. Around this time too the Royal Navy were perfecting the Brotherhood burner cycle engine which offered a performance as good as the oxygen-enriched air engine but without the issues arising from the oxygen equipment and which was first used in the extremely successful and long-lived 21 in. Mk. VIII torpedo of 1925. This torpedo served throughout WW II (with 3,732 being fired by September 1944) and

22780-472: The strategic position had changed. In Germany , the ambitious Plan Z for naval rearmament was abandoned in favor of a strategy of submarine warfare supplemented by the use of battlecruisers and commerce raiding (in particular by Bismarck -class battleships). In Britain, the most pressing need was for air defenses and convoy escorts to safeguard the civilian population from bombing or starvation, and re-armament construction plans consisted of five ships of

22950-659: The super-dreadnoughts, were being built. In the first years of the 20th century, several navies worldwide experimented with the idea of a new type of battleship with a uniform armament of very heavy guns. Admiral Vittorio Cuniberti , the Italian Navy's chief naval architect, articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903. When the Regia Marina did not pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in Jane ' s proposing an "ideal" future British battleship,

23120-528: The superstructure, and they would be more effective against smaller ships such as cruisers . Smaller guns (12-pounders and smaller) were reserved for protecting the battleship against the threat of torpedo attack from destroyers and torpedo boats . The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era coincided with Britain reasserting her naval dominance. For many years previously, Britain had taken naval supremacy for granted. Expensive naval projects were criticized by political leaders of all inclinations. However, in 1888

23290-510: The target. Fiske reported in 1915 that, using this method, enemy fleets could be attacked within their harbors if there was enough room for the torpedo track. Meanwhile, the Royal Naval Air Service began actively experimenting with this possibility. The first successful aerial torpedo drop was performed by Gordon Bell in 1914 – dropping a Whitehead torpedo from a Short S.64 seaplane . The success of these experiments led to

23460-487: The technical innovations of the ironclad. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were also introduced. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes , experimented with all or part of the 8-inch intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch primary. Results were poor: recoil factors and blast effects resulted in

23630-667: The tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin under the command of Stepan Osipovich Makarov during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 . In another early use of the torpedo, during the War of the Pacific , the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar commanded by captain Miguel Grau attacked the Chilean corvette Abtao on 28 August 1879 at Antofagasta with a self-propelled Lay torpedo only to have it reverse course. The ship Huascar

23800-433: The term no longer included mines and booby-traps as the navies of the world added submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers to their fleets. Whitehead was unable to improve the machine substantially, since the clockwork motor, attached ropes, and surface attack mode all contributed to a slow and cumbersome weapon. However, he kept considering the problem after the contract had finished, and eventually developed

23970-555: The third, Shinano , was later completed as a carrier) and a planned fourth was cancelled. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , the Spanish navy included only two small dreadnought battleships, España and Jaime I . España (originally named Alfonso XIII ), by then in reserve at the northwestern naval base of El Ferrol , fell into Nationalist hands in July 1936. The crew aboard Jaime I remained loyal to

24140-406: The threat posed to dreadnought battleships proved to have been largely a false alarm. HMS Audacious turned out to be the only dreadnought sunk by a submarine in World War I. While battleships were never intended for anti-submarine warfare, there was one instance of a submarine being sunk by a dreadnought battleship. HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank the German submarine U-29 on March 18, 1915, off

24310-596: The time of the famous clash of the USS ; Monitor and the CSS ; Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads at least eight navies possessed ironclad ships. Navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in turrets (like the USS Monitor ), central-batteries or barbettes , or with the ram as the principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. By

24480-485: The time was to use torpedoes, launched from submarines or warships, against enemy warships in a fleet action on the high seas. There were concerns torpedoes would be ineffective against warships' heavy armor; an answer to this was to detonate torpedoes underneath a ship, badly damaging its keel and the other structural members in the hull, commonly called "breaking its back". This was demonstrated by magnetic influence mines in World War I. The torpedo would be set to run at

24650-558: The tug. Without the weight of the torpedo Dacre was able to take off and return to Ben-My-Chree . Torpedoes were widely used in World War I , both against shipping and against submarines. Germany disrupted the supply lines to Britain largely by use of submarine torpedoes, though submarines also extensively used guns. Britain and its allies also used torpedoes throughout the war. U-boats themselves were often targeted, twenty being sunk by torpedo. Two Royal Italian Navy torpedo boats scored

24820-593: The value of the torpedo and in spring 1883 an experimental station was established at Garrison Point Fort , Sheerness , on the River Medway , and a workshop for Brennan was set up at the Chatham Barracks , the home of the Royal Engineers. Between 1883 and 1885 the Royal Engineers held trials and in 1886 the torpedo was recommended for adoption as a harbor defense torpedo. It was used throughout

24990-484: The war wore on however, it turned out that whilst submarines did prove to be a very dangerous threat to older pre-dreadnought battleships, as shown by examples such as the sinking of Mesûdiye , which was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine and HMS  Majestic and HMS  Triumph were torpedoed by U-21 as well as HMS  Formidable , HMS  Cornwallis , HMS  Britannia etc.,

25160-452: The war, and it was the last major battle in naval history fought primarily by battleships. The Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played

25330-481: The water, making it a formidable anti-ship weapon; Nazi Germany considered manufacturing it as the Luftorpedo LT 850 after August 1942 . The Royal Navy's 24.5-inch oxygen-enriched air torpedo saw service in the two Nelson class battleships although by World War II the use of enriched oxygen had been discontinued due to safety concerns. In the final phase of the action against Bismarck , Rodney fired

25500-546: The weapon was apt to cause as much harm to its user as to its target. Rear Admiral David Farragut 's famous/apocryphal command during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, " Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! " refers to a minefield laid at Mobile, Alabama . On 26 May 1877, during the Romanian War of Independence , the Romanian spar torpedo boat Rândunica attacked and sank the Ottoman river monitor Seyfi . This

25670-642: The weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3-class battleship, the first American South Dakota class , and the Japanese Kii class —all of which continued the trend to larger ships with bigger guns and thicker armor—never got off the drawing board. Those designs which were commissioned during this period were referred to as treaty battleships . As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott predicted that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aircraft . By

25840-468: The world obsolete, testified in front of Congress that "1,000 bombardment airplanes can be built and operated for about the price of one battleship" and that a squadron of these bombers could sink a battleship, making for more efficient use of government funds. This infuriated the U.S. Navy, but Mitchell was nevertheless allowed to conduct a careful series of bombing tests alongside Navy and Marine bombers. In 1921, he bombed and sank numerous ships, including

26010-493: Was 18 in (46 cm) in diameter and 19 ft (5.8 m) long, made of polished steel or phosphor bronze , with a 200-pound (91 kg) gun-cotton warhead. It was propelled by a three-cylinder Brotherhood radial engine, using compressed air at around 1,300  psi (9.0  MPa ) and driving two contra-rotating propellers, and was designed to self-regulate its course and depth as far as possible. By 1881, nearly 1,500 torpedoes had been produced. Whitehead also opened

26180-556: Was a British Royal Navy officer. He took part in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in February 1797, the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 and the Battle of Copenhagen in April 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars . He served as flag captain to Admiral Lord Nelson , and commanded HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars . Nelson was shot as he paced

26350-414: Was a mechanism consisting of a hydrostatic valve and pendulum that caused the torpedo's hydroplanes to be adjusted to maintain a preset depth. After the Austrian government decided to invest in the invention, Whitehead started the first torpedo factory in Rijeka. In 1870, he improved the devices to travel up to approximately 1,000 yards (910 m) at a speed of up to 6 knots (11 km/h), and by 1881

26520-462: Was an increasing similarity between battleship designs, and the type that later became known as the 'pre-dreadnought battleship' emerged. These were heavily armored ships, mounting a mixed battery of guns in turrets, and without sails. The typical first-class battleship of the pre-dreadnought era displaced 15,000 to 17,000  tons , had a speed of 16 knots (30 km/h), and an armament of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns in two turrets fore and aft with

26690-411: Was effective beyond visual range and effective in complete darkness or adverse weather, was introduced to supplement optical fire control. Even when war threatened again in the late 1930s, battleship construction did not regain the level of importance it had held in the years before World War I. The "building holiday" imposed by the naval treaties meant the capacity of dockyards worldwide had shrunk, and

26860-478: Was first used as a name for electric rays (in the order Torpediniformes ), which in turn comes from the Latin word torpēdō ("lethargy" or "sluggishness"). In naval usage, the American inventor David Bushnell was reported to have first used the term as the name of a submarine of his own design, the "American Turtle or Torpedo." This usage likely inspired Robert Fulton 's use of the term to describe his stationary mines , and later Robert Whitehead 's naming of

27030-425: Was not only seen as vital to naval power, but also, as with nuclear weapons after World War II , represented a nation's standing in the world. Germany , France , Japan , Italy , Austria , and the United States all began dreadnought programmes; while the Ottoman Empire , Argentina , Russia , Brazil , and Chile commissioned dreadnoughts to be built in British and American yards. By virtue of geography,

27200-399: Was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad : powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells . Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons quickly became widespread after

27370-400: Was ready for action again the very next day. The development of high-explosive shells made the use of iron armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859 France launched Gloire , the first ocean-going ironclad warship. She had the profile of a ship of the line, cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most journeys, Gloire was fitted with

27540-402: Was restricted to skirmishes. In the Baltic Sea , action was largely limited to the raiding of convoys, and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons there was the Battle of Moon Sound at which one Russian pre-dreadnought was lost. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet remained bottled up by

27710-423: Was saved when an officer jumped overboard to divert it. The Chilean ironclad Blanco Encalada was sunk on 23 April 1891 by a self-propelled torpedo from the Almirante Lynch , during the Chilean Civil War of 1891 , becoming the first ironclad warship sunk by this weapon. The Chinese turret ship Dingyuan was purportedly hit and disabled by a torpedo after numerous attacks by Japanese torpedo boats during

27880-434: Was set upon by 17 torpedo-firing warships, ten of which were destroyers and four torpedo boats. Twenty-one torpedoes were launched at the pre-dreadnought , and three struck home, one fired from the destroyer Murasame and two from torpedo boats No. 72 and No. 75 . The flagship slipped under the waves shortly thereafter, taking over 900 men with her to the bottom. On December 9, 1912, the Greek submarine "Dolphin" launched

28050-425: Was sunk by destroyers during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland. The German High Seas Fleet, for their part, were determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were needed more for raiding commercial traffic, the fleet stayed in port for much of the war. For many years, Germany simply had no battleships. The Armistice with Germany required that most of

28220-416: Was the first aircraft in the world to attack an enemy ship with an air-launched torpedo. On 17 August 1915 Flight Commander Edmonds torpedoed and sank an Ottoman transport ship a few miles north of the Dardanelles. His formation colleague, Flight Lieutenant G B Dacre, was forced to land on the water owing to engine trouble but, seeing an enemy tug close by, taxied up to it and released his torpedo, sinking

28390-450: Was the first instance in history when a torpedo boat sank its targets without also sinking. A prototype of the self-propelled torpedo was created on a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis , an Austro-Hungarian naval officer from Rijeka (modern-day Croatia ), at the time a port city of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Robert Whitehead , an English engineer who was the manager of a town factory. In 1864, Luppis presented Whitehead with

28560-419: Was the first warship to be sunk in 1862 by an electrically-detonated mine. Spar torpedoes were also used; an explosive device was mounted at the end of a spar up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long projecting forward underwater from the bow of the attacking vessel, which would then ram the opponent with the explosives. These were used by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley to sink USS  Housatonic although

28730-441: Was to persuade him of the need to standardise on 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Fisher's concerns were submarines and destroyers equipped with torpedoes, then threatening to outrange battleship guns, making speed imperative for capital ships . Fisher's preferred option was his brainchild, the battlecruiser : lightly armored but heavily armed with eight 12-inch guns and propelled to 25 knots (46 km/h) by steam turbines . It

28900-447: Was to prove this revolutionary technology that Dreadnought was designed in January 1905, laid down in October 1905 and sped to completion by 1906. She carried ten 12-inch guns, had an 11-inch armor belt, and was the first large ship powered by turbines. She mounted her guns in five turrets; three on the centerline (one forward, two aft) and two on the wings , giving her at her launch twice the broadside of any other warship. She retained

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