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Individual ships and "naval contingents," however, have taken part in operations of more or less importance, and the first action in which a British vessel was opposed to an ironclad, took place in 1877, when the cruiser Shah engaged for some hours the Peruvian turret-ship Huascar.
No one who admires a real ship, be it of wood or of iron a stately frigate in full sail before a favouring wind can at the same time admire a monitor. Many persons, in truth, will refuse to regard a turret-ship as a ship at all. It overturns our every notion of what a ship should look like.
The Huascar was a small, low, turret-ship of the Devastation type, with only one ten-inch gun mounted in her turret, but she was thickly armoured, and obtained a great advantage by taking up such a position that the Shah had frequently to cease fire for fear of sending her shot into the adjacent town of Ylo.
The following very graphic description of the interior of a turret-ship was written by an eye-witness of the scene described. It is an extract from a narrative supplied to the author of "The Sea: its Stirring Story of Adventure and Peril," from which we take it. The vessel described was the Miantonoma, an American ironclad turret-ship.
The vessels we have been describing are of rather more than two thousand tons burden, as compared with the five thousand tons of the larger sea-going ships; and, speaking roughly, the expense of construction is proportionate to the tonnage. The Glatton turret-ship has several characteristics in which it differs from the above class of monitors.
For the duties of this situation I am to receive no salary, but am at liberty to pay my own expenses. The honour of the thing is deemed more than sufficient compensation. "In virtue of this appointment I went recently to see and take notes of Her Majesty's famous ironclad turret-ship, the Thunderer.
Then came the Ping-Yuen, of 2850 tons, a coast-defence armour-clad; a turret-ship, the Tsi-Yuen, of 2320 tons; the Chih-Yuen, Ching-Yuen, Kwang-Kai and Kwang-Ting, all of 2300 tons, deck-protected cruisers; and the Chao-Yung and Yang-Wei, each of 1400 tons, unprotected cruisers. I have forgotten to say that we took a Chinese agent on board at Tientsin for the trip.
Meanwhile, the others had razeed a frigate, the Merrimac, and upon an angular roof laid railroad-iron to make her shot-proof. Stories of her likelihood to be a terror, especially as she was stated by spies to be seaworthy, inspired the Americanized Swedish naval engineer, Ericsson, to build a turret-ship. The Naval Construction Board unanimously rebuffed the innovator.
One would say that the singer must be endowed in no ordinary degree with the sacred fire whom such a theme as a modern ironclad turret-ship should move to lyric utterance.
She was the first ship of what was called the "Admiral class," several sister ships named after famous admirals. The four heavy guns of the Devastation type of turret-ship were retained, mounted fore and aft, but instead of placing them in turrets, the turret armour was fixed to the deck, forming what is known as a "barbette," or breastwork, over the upper edge of which the gun fired.
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