I was wondering what the last ships of the age of sail were like. I’m guessing they would have been built in the 1850’s or so. Was there one paticular battleship that stood out as the pinacle of that type? And while we’re at it, what about sail/steam hybrids? And what were the last warships before iron plating was introduced? There’s this transition period from the Napoleonic wars to WWI that i know nothing about except the Merimac and the Monitor. I guess what I’m really after is the identity of the most bad-assed sail-powered battleship of all time.
One example of a hybrid ship with an intersting history would be the Danish Rolf Krake, much feared by the Germans in the German-Danish war of 1864. However it was neither the first nor the last of anything, as far as I know.
I would say the HMS Warrior. http://www.hmswarrior.org/
The * USS Constitution* aka “Old Ironsides,” is still a commissioned naval vessel in the United States Navy.
The USS Constitution was built 60 years prior to the HMS Warrior. It is without a doubt technologically inferior to the HMS Warrior.
The HMS Warrior was both a first of its kind and last of its kind. It was a first in that it used iron plating for protection. It was also the largest warship built at the time by leaps and bounds. It was a last in that after its construction by and large steam powered ships became all the craze.
Its sister ships the HMS Dreadnaught and HMS Nautilus, could also be argued to be the pinnacle of sail powered battleships.
Here is one ship, and it looks like you were near to the right period.
What you might try to look for are first rate ships, or ships of the line.
These would be ships that took their place in the line of battle, the oldest surviving would be HMS Victory - Nelsons flagship at the battle of Trafalgar.
There was not a sudden switch from exclusively sail to exclusively steam, rather there was a changeover period, HMS Victoria was the last of the Royal Navy 3 decker warships, launched in 1859, and HMS Warrior launched a year later had both sail and steam.
By 1860 wooden hulled battleships were made obsolete with the launch of HMS Warrior but such was the pace of developments, that she too was obsolete in 10 years.
Development was so fast that some battleships were obsolete before they were even launched
I would say that HMS Warrior would be right on the edge between the two eras.
As for the most powerful sailship ?
Well due to the overlap of steam and sailships, the most powerful sailship built undoubtedly was not the most powerful vessel on the sea at the time.
http://www.btinternet.com/~philipr/woodmanowar.htm
Perhaps this runs a little bit beneath the intent of the question, but hybridization lasted long after the advent of steel-hulled turreted battleships.
Take for example the USS Kearsarge, commissioned in 1900. It has two observation/auxiliary sail masts.
The USS Nevada, the first of the American “superdreadnoughts” and laid down in 1912, was originally built with “basket” masts which may have provided an auxiliary sail capability. They were removed during modernization in 1927-1930, and the Nevada which so nearly blocked the channel at Pearl Harbor was not capable of using sails. You can view the before and after shots here.
Obviously, a 28,000 ton battleship would not be combat functional under sail power. But it was a fuel-free source of emergency power which continued to be considered important well into the 20th Century.
HMS Severn would be a candidate for sail powered only btw. The Severn was a 50-gun frigate compared to Constellations “mere” 38.
For some reason I had thought the HMS Warrior was sail-only, but I was wrong. I think it is definitely the candidate of choice for sail/steam though.
I think it would be hard to say with any real certainty that there were only one or two specific examples of warships that were exemplary in all respects, but there were some developments that might be considered turning points in design.
The types of sailing warships used in the Napoleonic wars became larger in the 1820 -1840’s, but followed the same general arrangement. Guns grew larger and I recall reading somewhere that the ship-of-the-line of 1840 would have thrown a broadside close to double the weight of a first-rate ship at Trafalgar. I believe that the ultimate limiting factor of these ships was the use of wood for their construction, which simply couldn’t be used in very large ships (by modern standards).
Steam propulsion in warships took the early form of side paddlewheels on otherwise standard wooden vessels. Sidewheels allowed a ship to move itself against the wind or in no-wind conditions, but the sidewheels were very vulnerable to battle damage and they masked part of what otherwise would have been a large part of the broadside battery. Still, there were still some of these ships in use by the time of the Civil War, although by then the main armament of these types of warships consisted of a few larger guns than many small ones.
Screw (propeller) propulsion solved some of the disadvantages of the paddlewheeler since the screw was out of harm’s way underwater and the broadside was unmasked. Some of the larger wooden warships of the period that were originally only sail powered were retrofitted with steam engines and they were very formidable. Even so, these early steam ships didn’t use their engines all the time. They used sails when possible and steam in calms and in action. The machinery was large, heavy and not too reliable.
Sometime in the 1840’s or 50’s the use of guns that fired exploding shells rather than solid shot came into use. Serious navies all wanted shell guns and also began applying themselves to the challenge of armoring their vessels to prevent explosive shells from penetrating them. Metal armor was applied to parts of the exterior of wooden ships and larger guns with more penetrating power became more desirable. Ships like the Monitor and the Virginia in the Civil War were very innovative, being heavily armed and armored, but neither ship was really seaworthy and both were underpowered. The Virginia demonstrated how a heavily armed and armored ship had a huge advantage over an unarmored one, but it had the advantage of attacking a stationary target. The Monitor was even less seaworthy than the Virginia, I think, but it did make successful use of the rotating turret, which eventually became the standard mounting for large guns and in a large part dictated the layout of later warships.
The HMS Warrior was the first iron, steam powered, really seaworthy warship that I can think of. The trick seems to have been to combine seaworthiness, steaming endurance, speed, large shell guns, armor and iron construction into one ship. By the 1890’s most navies had settled on designs that pretty much resemble modern battleships with main armament mounted on centerline turrets, secondary batteries distributed around the ship, steel armor, decent endurance, and good (for the time) speed. I believe that the battleships in use by the US Navy during the Spanish - American war were all capable of 15 - 18 knots and had 12 inch guns. Interestingly, a few of the ships built for the US Navy of the 1890’s still had masts and yards for sails, although I’m not sure of they were really intended to ever propel the ships or were just there for exercising the crew.
A really interesting web site on a representative warship of the period can be found here
http://spanamwar.com/olympia.htm
Follow the link to the virtual tour.
Curate
According to this timeline The HMS Severn was converted to a steam screw in 1862. But from 56-62 she was sail-only.
Yes, it was converted but it was originally built as sail only, and was a viable sail only ship. It was converted solely to try to keep it from becoming obsolete.
Also, the British converted quite a few of their final sail only ships to steam/sail. For example, the HMS Hood, another of the last sail only ship was converted to steam/sail as well. So excluding any ship that was converted, I guess you’d be left with the USS Constellation.
I seriously doubt that the masts on the early battleships were ever used for sails, auxiliary, propulsion, or otherwise. They were turn-of-the-century radio antennae. Perhaps you have a cite? I’d like to calculate the sail area/displacement ratio.
I didn’t mean to exclude the Severn. I just wanted to point out it was both a hybrid and a sail only ship at various times.
Sorry, my misunderstanding.
The big basket masts were primarily gun targeting masts. Observers would call corrections to the gunnery stations below.
They were also convenient for radio antennae, but that was not their primary purpose.
Re: sails in use at a late date, here’s a link to an American ship that seems to have all the necessary equipment:
http://spanamwar.com/boston.htm
No sails are visible, but the tackle seems to be there --There are lifts, footropes under the yards, and the yards themselves don’t seem to have any use other than to support sails. I believe that the ship preceedes the use of wireless radios and the number of spars would seem excessive for signal flags alone.
There’s a photograph on page 109 of Conway’s “Steam, Steel, and Shellfire” that shows a French contemporary of the Boston , the Sfax , that has a similar arrangement of yards with sails present.
This being said, I can’t imagine that a 3000 ton ship would have been very responsive to such a suit of sails. One thing that seems to be absent from the Boston’s rigging is any provision for fore-and-aft sails, and with all that high superstructure I can’t image that the ship would ever be able to sail to windward.
Curate
HMS Severn was a frigate, and the criteria here is for a battleship.
This would make HMS Victoria the last RN all sail battleship, the largest wooden battleship ever built.
HMS Warrior herself was not a ship of the line and therefore not a battleship but one on one she was more than a match for anything as there was no gun afloat that could damage her.
She carried the largest guns available - with her speed, armour, and guns she would have been used to harry enemy fleets, probably in ‘sail past’ attacks. She was not manoeverable enough for close quarter operations in cooperation with a fleet.
Here is an excellent article, and it states that the first steam powered screw battleship was built by the French Le Napoleon
From this page :
-First iron-padded armed boat : the east india company gunboat “Nemesis”, build in 1839
-First iron not seaworthy vessels : the french and british floating batteries used during the Crimea war (1854-1856)
-First military paddle-propelled vessel : the british light frigate “Terrible”, build in 1845
-First steam-propelled vessel with a screw (which allowed for larger warships) : the french two-deckers “Napoleon” build in 1852. The site mention this engaged an arm race and during the next 10 years, 100 steam-propelled warships were launched by Britain and France. It also states that they were quickly made obsolete by the introduction of iron in hull design.
-First steam-propelled and armor padded (over a wooden hull) ironclad : the french “Gloire” build in 1859
-First steam-propelled and full iron ship : the british “Warrior”, build in 1861 which tough only a frigate (due to its limited number of guns) was the larger ship of its time, but also too costly to be produced in large number.
-First guns mounted on turrets : the british “Captain”, built in 1870, who sank some months later
-First seaworthy, mastless capital ship : the british “Devastation” built in 1873, and which, according to the article, was the ancestor of modern 20th century battleships
So, it seems that the main navies undertook a complete change with a very quick evolution in a relatively short time, between at most 1845 and 1873, from the classical napoleonic era wooden and sail propelled ships to modern steam-propelled, iron ships with turret-mounted guns.
It must have been astonishing for sailors and navy officers of this era, by the way : beginning your carrer in 1840 on a three deckers and ending it in 1875 on a battleship was probably quite a change.