British Cruisers of the Victorian Era. Norman Friedman

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      To absent friends: Antony Preston, David Lyon, and David Topliss

      Copyright © Norman Friedman 2012

      Plans © A D Baker III 2012

      (except those on pages 172 and 261 © Paul Webb 2012)

      First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

      Seaforth Publishing

      An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

      47 Church Street, Barnsley

      South Yorkshire S70 2AS

       www.seaforthpublishing.com

      Email [email protected]

      The right of Norman Friedman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      Published and distributed in the United States of America and Canada by

      Naval Institute Press

      291 Wood Road

      Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5034

      This edition is authorized for sale only in the United States of America, its territories and possessions and Canada.

      First Naval Institute Press eBook edition published in 2015.

      ISBN 978-1-61251-956-2 (eBook)

       British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A CIP data record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

      Typeset and designed by Roger Daniels

      Contents

Acknowledgements

Illustrator’s Notes

INTRODUCTION

      1. STEAM, SAIL AND WOODEN HULLS

      2. IRON HULLS

      3. THE FIRST ARMOURED CRUISERS

      4. FAST STEEL CRUISERS

      5. THE TORPEDO AND SMALL CRUISERS

      6. BIG CRUISERS TO PROTECT COMMERCE

      7. THE FAST WING OF THE BATTLE FLEET

       Appendix: Vickers Designs

      8. EPILOGUE: FISHER’S REVOLUTION

       Bibliography

       Notes

       Data List (specifications)

       List of Ships

       Abbreviations

       Index

       Acknowledgements

      My wife Rhea made this book possible. She helped me think through some of the key issues concerning dramatic changes in British exposure to trade warfare, which are vital to its thesis. As the scope of this book expanded to embrace the whole Victorian era (and a few years afterwards), I had to go back to various archives again and again, and Rhea encouraged me to do so. I could not have written this book without Rhea’s loving support and encouragement.

      Any project like this book benefits enormously from the help friends can provide. This one particularly benefited as its time scope grew from the late Victorian era (beginning with HMS Iris and Mercury). Anyone who has worked in the documents of this period will recognize that the extent and quality of documentation declines dramatically for the period before about 1870. For example, no policy documents explain the dramatic cut in cruiser construction in 1863-64. None of the Covers for the big iron frigates appear to have survived (it is as though Edward Reed decamped with all of his design documentation when he stepped down as DNC). I am therefore particularly grateful to those who helped with what documentation has survived. Dr Stephen S Roberts generously provided British material he had collected many years ago for his thesis on French naval development. Professor John Beeler, who is collecting and publishing the Milne papers, provided some key letters. Professor Andrew Lambert, who has specialized in the Victorian Royal Navy, generously provided several papers, one of them unpublished. Chris Wright, editor of Warship International, provided his thesis on the Royal Navy of this period, which greatly helped clarify the policy context. I benefited enormously from a lengthy conversation with Colin Jones and with John Houghton, and the latter generously provided a copy of his book on world navies of the early Victorian period.

      For both the early and the later eras, I am grateful to Jeremy Michell and to Andrew Choong of the Brass Foundry outstation of the National Maritime Museum for their enormous help with plans and photos. I am also grateful to Bob Todd, photo curator at the Brass Foundry. For photos held by the US Navy, I would like to thank my friend Charles Haberlein, curator emeritus at the Naval Historical and Heritage Command, and his assistants Ed Finney and Robert Hanshew (who is Mr Haberlein’s successor). I would like to thank the photo library staff of the US Naval Institute. I am grateful to the State Library of Victoria (Australia), which has made available the superb photography of Allan C Green which it holds. I am also grateful to the staff of the Public Record Office (now called the National Archives) at Kew and to Jennie Wraight, Admiralty Librarian at the Royal Navy Historical Branch in Portsmouth. I would like to thank Dr David Stevens of the Royal Australian Navy Historical Branch and Dr Josef Strazcek, formerly his assistant and an avid photo collector. Both supplied very useful photographs. Stephen McLaughlin very generously provided material on Vickers designs. I can only regret that no comparable record of Armstrong designs seems to have survived. That is particularly unfortunate because Armstrong built the great bulk of the export cruisers of the period covered by this book. I was fortunate to be permitted to use the Vickers collection at Cambridge University Library.

      My good friend A D Baker III is listed as illustrator, but he is much more than that. As he painstakingly created drawings of British cruisers, he pointed out their many СКАЧАТЬ