I do not believe it is possible to fully appreciate Jules Verne’s prophetic masterpiece without having some understanding of where things stood with warship design during the period Verne set his story. It’s against that backdrop that the Nautilus really shines. Which is not to say that the reality wasn’t pretty damn amazing.
In Part One of this blog we engaged in a cursory examination of the naval armaments of Verne’s day. So let us now examine the naval technology of the day—and we’ll begin with the sister ship (and by far the more famous of the two) of the HMS Black Prince. A word of caution first: This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive study of mid 19th century warship development.
The steam-powered frigates, HMS Warrior and her sister ship the HMS Black Prince, which figures prominently in my novel I, Nemo, were both iron hulled and protected by a belt of tongue and grove iron plating that covered the middle 213 feet and rose 16 feet above the waterline and descended six feet below it. With iron plates 4.5 inches thick, backed by 18 inches of shock absorbing teak, the new British ironclads were impervious to the naval guns of the day making them the most formidable warships afloat. They were further protected with a double-bottomed hull and thirty-five watertight compartments, a feature found on some British civilian passenger ships, such as the SS Scotia mentioned in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.
The new British armoured frigates were a technological leap forward, with retractable screw propellers that could be hoisted up into the hull to reduce drag whilst under sail, and telescopic funnels that could be lowered down to deck level. Both ships also had a water distillation machine, but this technology was by then fairly common on English warships. It was not found on contemporary American warships, with the exception of the British designed and built Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama.
The Warrior class frigates were also the first warships to be outfitted with washing machines, an innovation much appreciated by the crew, since they would have otherwise had to rely on the time honoured method of laundering clothing with seawater, resulting in stiff uniforms that were abrasive like sandpaper—especially on the delicate bits.
England’s ironclads were swifter and better armoured than any other warship afloat at that time. American ironclads by comparison were primitive and with two exceptions ill suited for blue-water operations. The ironclad USS New Ironsides was plagued with a low speed of eight knots tops and extremely poor maneuverability—her armour, though, was quite good and she survived two spar-torpedo attacks and successfully withstood a great deal of withering Confederate gunfire. The USS Galena was an ironclad sloop of war. When she was launched in 1862, the newspapers declared her armour would be impregnable to confederate gunfire. This was soon proven to be untrue. During the battle of Drew’s bluff, the Galena’s hull was pierced thirteen times.
The USS Monitor with it heavily armoured eighteen-inch freeboard and armoured turret was unsuited for blue water operations, especially in heavy seas, which eventually led to her loss during a storm off Cape Hatteras. But her armoured revolving turret was the crucis experimentum that was to lead to a profound change in naval design that soon made the ironclad broadside warship obsolete. Her famous opponent during the battle of Hampton Roads, CSS Virginia, was in truth nothing more than a mobile steam-powered heavy battery, only suited to inland waterways operations.
Whilst the Union warships’ armament was indeed comparable to British naval artillery, they would not have fared fell against their better-armoured and swifter British counterparts. It’s not an exaggeration to say that had Britain chosen to side with the Confederacy, the British ironclads would have handily brushed aside the Union warships blockading the South. Not exactly a cheering thought in Lincoln’s cabinet.
Iron hulls also had the added benefit of making it possible for naval architects to design ships with watertight bulkheads adding to a warship’s survivability. Yet, wooden hulled warships were built well into the late 1870s, since iron had an unfortunate tendency to become fouled with marine life. This was remedied by the addition of copper sheathing beneath the waterline as was done on wooden hulls.
So when the Nautilus attacks the USS Abraham Lincoln, she is dealing with a wooden hulled steam frigate. Captain Nemo comments to Arronax that he could have easily sunk the Lincoln, but, as he admired the Americans for fighting a bloody civil war to free the slaves, he merely contented himself with damaging its rudder.
And notice how in chapter one of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea when Nemo attacks the iron-hulled passenger steamer PS Scotia, the best he can manage is to poke a hole below its waterline. The steamer takes on water but is saved by her watertight bulkheads and is able to limp back to its homeport in Liverpool.
And here it is worthwhile to share this tidbit from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea: “The engineers visited the Scotia, which was put in dry-dock. They could scarcely believe their eyes: at two and a half meters below the waterline was a regular rent, in the form of an isosceles triangle. The broken place in the iron plates was so perfectly defined, that it could not have been more neatly done by a punch. It was clear, then, that the instrument producing the perforation was not of a common stamp! And after having been driven with prodigious strength, piercing iron plate one and a half inches, had withdrawn itself by a retrograde motion truly inexplicable.”
This then was a portent of things to come, for it was only a matter of time before Captain Nemo would be forced to deal with an ironclad warship. But you’ll have to read I, Nemo and its soon-to be released sequel to discover what he comes up with.
J. Dharma Windham
Aboard the Nautilus