Criticism of the Inflexible
While the Inflexible was building there was born the idea whose present maturity enforces the abandonment of the pure monitor, except for vessels comparatively small and for special purposes. Machine guns, the Gatling, and the mitrailleuse were already known, and the principle was being applied to throw projectiles of a pound weight and over, which were automatically loaded and fired, requiring only to be aimed. Upon these followed the rapid-fire gun, of weight greatly exceeding theirs, the principle of which may be said to be that it is loaded by hand, but with ammunition so prepared and mechanism for loading so simple and expeditious as to permit a rate of firing heretofore unparalleled. The highest extension of this principle is reached in the five-inch gun, up to which size the cartridge and the projectile make a single package called fixed ammunition, which is placed by one motion. Together they weigh ninety-five pounds, about as much as an average man can handle in a seaway, the projectile itself weighing fifty pounds. There are, it is true, six-inch rapid-fire guns, but in them the cartridge and shell are placed separately, and it is questionable whether such increase of effect, through greater weight, as they give is not gained at a loss of due rapidity.
The Inflexible exemplified in an extreme form the elements of offensive and defensive strength and weakness. Four guns of enormous calibre and no other battery, except pieces so light as to be useless against the thinnest armor, an impenetrable wall, covering a very limited area, and the remainder of the hull exposed, to be cut to pieces by a battery of numerous light cannon. When to the latter the rapid-fire idea was successfully applied, multiplying their efficiency three or fourfold, her position, as an example to be followed, became untenable. The monitor idea, which refused to utilize the broadside for developing fire, and aimed chiefly at minimizing the target, evidently needed qualification after a certain moderate limit of size was passed; and that limit of size was when the entire weight of battery the ship could carry sufficed only for two, or, at the most, four guns of power great enough to pierce heavy armor. Strictly, in the opinion of the writer, the monitor type should not prevail beyond the size that can bear only one turret.
In the strife of guns with armor, therefore, increase of power in guns, outstripping continually the increase of resistance in armor, called for bigger ships to bear the increased armor weight, till the latter could not possibly be placed all over the ship’s body. Hence the exposed target, upon which plays the smaller battery of rapid-fire guns.
To comprehend fundamentally the subsequent development, we must recur to the rudimentary idea that a ship of war possesses two chief factors, motive force and fighting force, the latter being composed of guns mainly and of men. Corresponding to these two chief powers there were of old, and there are still, two vulnerable elements, two targets, upon one or the other of which hostile effort logically and practically must be directed. A century ago the French, aiming at sails and spars, sought the destruction of the motive force; the British directed their fire upon the guns and men. In strict analogy now, the heavy guns seek the motive power, over which the heaviest armor is concentrated; the rapid-fire guns, searching the other portions of the ship, aim at the guns and men there stationed.