sent up the Bosporus while another was mobilized to enter the Baltic. In 1885 there was no Mediterranean response, but a Baltic squadron was again mobilized, this time commanded by Admiral Phipps Hornby. When the immediate threat dissipated, the squadron was retained for manoeuvres, which were intended to test new technology. By this time the Russians had invested heavily in torpedo craft, and some of the exercises tested the fleet’s ability to seize and maintain a base in the Baltic in the face of torpedoes and mines. Lessons learned deeply affected cruiser development. The 1885 exercises were considered so valuable a test of tactics and technology that they were made a nearly annual event. As in 1877-78, mobilization was not entirely successful, although there were notable improvements. For example, this time the navy was able to shadow Russian ships, precluding a major Russian offensive against British trade.
The French gained an ability to operate outside blockadable waters as they seized colonies in East Africa (such as Madagascar) and in Asia (Vietnam). Among other things, in the 1860s both the Russians and the French built second-rate armoured ships specifically to operate in Eastern waters, far from their concentrated fleets. Viable British presence in the Pacific required that cruisers be backed by armoured ships. This requirement created the first ships rated by the Royal Navy as armoured cruisers (though quite unrelated to the armoured cruisers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries).
HMS Penguin was an Osprey class composite screw sloop, Barnaby’s follow-on to the Egeria class. She had another two 64pdr guns. The embrasures for stern fire ran about half way along her poop. They are barely visible in this photograph because the hull was painted black. These ships came out light, the surplus of 35 tons being used for more coal. In effect these ships were half-scale models of contemporary composite corvettes, with the same kind of profile and embrasures at bow and stern (for end-on fire) and with the corvettes’ sharp end lines and full midsections. Like Barnaby’s corvettes, they had knee bows. The sharp tapering to the ends was accompanied by sharp rise of floor. This combination made them handy (as intended) but did not confer the desired speed. The lines did, however, make them remarkably suitable for meeting weather from any direction. In the worst gale they would rise or scud equally well under steam or sail. They did, however, roll too quickly to be efficient gun platforms, which suggests that metacentric height was greater than expected due to too low a centre of gravity (underestimated weights). Initially the ships had a light poop and forecastle, both open at the break, the poop covering two cabins with a chaser between them, and the forecastle covering the heads and another chaser. After the first commission both were strengthened and fully enclosed and machine guns mounted on top. Machinery divided the hull in two lengthwise, a narrow communication passage running along the starboard side through the upper part of the boiler and engine rooms, with a watertight door at each end. This was the first class to have glass scuttles in place of the older square hanging ports or ‘rat hole’ plug scuttles. Like the larger cruisers, these ships started out with two heavy guns, in this case 7in 4½-tonners on slides, one between funnel and mainmast and the other on the quarterdeck, both intended to fire on the broadside. They had two 64pdrs on the broadside and two more under the forecastle and poop as chasers. This combination gave them a heavy broadside, but using it put so much weight on one side (the heavy guns would be traversed to bear) that the ship heeled. Of this class, Wild Swan and Pelican were rearmed with breech-loaders. They were given two 6in at quarterdeck broadside ports, four 5in at broadside ports, and two 5in chasers firing through embrasures at bow and stern. Penguin received a pair of 5in breech-loaders on her poop instead of the single 64pdr below it. Osprey and Cormorant were never rearmed, because new guns were not available until they were too old. Due to the unusual hull form, space for the horizontal engines could be found just half-way between bow and stern, so the engines were, unusually, forward of the mainmast rather than abaft as in other three-masted Royal Navy ships of this period. That made for an unusually long propeller shaft, a source of trouble, and the mainmast had to be stepped on the main deck instead of the keel. Like Egeria, Penguin was relatively slow (she was the slowest of the class, making 9.875kts with 666 IHP; her Devonport-built sister Pelican made 12.241kts on 1056 IHP). After her first commission her machinery was replaced by Devonport-built compound engines. Built under contract (by Robert Napier and Sons), Penguin was launched on 25 March 1876. Displacement was 1130 tons (170ft pp × 36ft × 15ft 9in). Complement was 150. Penguin went to the Pacific on completion in 1877, returning in 1881 to have her machinery replaced. Unlike her sister Wild Swan, which went into the yard at the same time, she was not rearmed at this time with breech-loaders due to a shortage of guns. She went into reserve, recommissioning in 1886 for the East Indies. On return in 1889, she was selected for conversion to a survey ship, all her guns except a pair of broadside 64pdrs being removed. Space left vacant by the 7in guns was used for deckhouses and her boat complement was increased. In this form she commissioned in January 1890, not being paid off until March 1907, in Sydney, where she was reduced to harbour depot ship – the last of her class to remain at sea. She was transferred to the new RAN.
HMS Doterel was the name ship of a class very similar to the Penguins, distinguishable by their vertical stems. They displaced 1130 tons (170ft pp × 34ft × 15ft) and were armed with two 7in 90cwt guns plus four 64pdrs, all on pivoted slides, plus four machine guns. They had three cylindrical boilers feeding a horizontal compound engine: Doterel made 11kts on 900 IHP. Endurance under steam was 1480nm at 10kts. Doterel was launched at Chatham on 2 March 1880. She was lost on her maiden voyage, exploding and sinking off Sandy Point, Punta Arenas on 26 April 1881.
(Allan C Green, courtesy of State Library of Victoria)
Given the emergence of foreign colonies as potential raider bases, British war planners of the late nineteenth century envisaged attacks on them. This was not the colonial warfare of the past, in which colonies were worth seizing for their rich resources; rather it was a coldly strategic counter to commerce raiding. Thus when the British contemplated war against France in 1898 their arrangements included convoys of troops (escorted by cruisers) to seize French naval bases abroad. This anti-raider mission is why, for example, the British were so anxious to seize Tsingtao in China and German East Africa in the opening phase of the First World War. Without bases, enemy raiders at sea would not last for very long, whether or not they were sucked into a focal area. The German squadron based at Tsingtao certainly caused considerable havoc when it was forced to sea, but it seems unlikely that it could have remained at sea for very long with limited resources – many of which the Admiralty indirectly controlled.
It was bad enough to face the French or the Russians, but beginning in the 1880s the two threats merged, particularly in the Mediterranean.4
In the 1850s and 1860s the British also faced the possibility of conflict with the United States due, among other reasons, to disagreements over the border with Canada. For example, in 1858 there was a considerable scare as the French seemed about to match or even to surpass British naval strength. First Naval Lord Admiral Sir Richard Dundas pointed to the possibility that the United States would feel encouraged to attack British possessions in North America in the event of a war with France.5 Second Naval Lord Admiral Martin considered that the United States might fight if the Royal Navy imposed a blockade against France. At this time the French navy nearly equalled the Royal Navy in size, and France had more frigates (though fewer smaller cruisers). Thus it could be argued that France could blockade England (which was already importing much of her food) quite aside from the usual threat of a direct invasion by the large French army.
The US Navy had a long-standing war policy of raiding British commerce, as it had no hope of challenging the British fleet. In the past it had built unusually large fast frigates like USS Constitution in hopes of overwhelming British convoy escorts. In 1854 it announced plans for five new fast screw frigates and a screw corvette. The British were led to design their own fast screw frigates as answers
