Elswick Cruisers - First of the Class

[Music] [Music] this was a video requested by a subscriber quite some time ago so apologies for the delay autumn Yeol Neshoba if you're still watching this is what you want wanted to set the context for the ships we're going to talk about let's go back in time a bit further in the age of sail and wooden steam era the role of Cruiser didn't really exist as a ship class their worship suitable for long-range cruises but these could be of many types Briggs and sloops were small enough to operate almost indefinitely hopping along between ports some frigates could make hugely long voyages from point to point and many were used for exploration in times of peace burn even smaller ships the lines such as third rates weren't too bad at extended operations but most commonly the kind of ship used for long duration patrols would have been something along the lines of a small sixth rate frigate or similar as the 1860's rolled around the capital warship the ship-of-the-line was being replaced by the ironclad in many different sizes shapes and layouts but the ships below this the ships that scouted for the fleet protected an attack trade and did a lot of the show the flag emissions was still unarmored and quite often wooden in part this was because even when HMS devastation heralded the end of the need for sails in a battle fleet the ranges covered by cruising ships were still far beyond the capacity of existing engine technology and so these ships were still largely or at least partially sail powered which meant keeping the hull relatively light in order to have the speed to be able to avoid or outlast the heavier ironclads at first attempts to build a liked ironclad were tried but this led to such an increase in weight and decrease in speed that progressive attempts lengthened the ship's further and further to the point they actually became longer than most battle line units and ended up semi accidentally producing the armored Cruiser which was both powerful and long ranged but still far too slow to catch other smaller and lighter cruisers as these ships were gradually becoming known these armored cruisers had belt Armour additional protection from their coal reserves whilst these lasted an armored deck keeping coming shells away from the guns completing the Citadel box and on many another lower armored deck outside the Citadel to try and keep the worst of enemy fire away from the below the waterline parts of the ship which are the most important since letting air into the top of a ship is nowhere near as bad as letting in water to the bottom of a ship technology however continued to advance very rapidly and a number of iron hold ships began to make an appearance without armored belts but with low mounted armored decks of varying degrees of coverage the Italia class battleships being one example and a number of Corvettes including the British Comus and Calypso glosses being others in these cases extra coal storage was again used as impromptu armor with the deck itself being somewhat curved in places on certain ship glasses largely to be fair in an attempt to get the belt as low as possible in the ship whilst still covering the rise of the ship's machinery but introducing a degree of Turtleback style protection at the same time more intentionally in some designs are than in others but of course italia was supposed to be a battle unit and the British Corvettes were closer to colonial gunboats and peacekeepers than what we might envisage as a cruiser one of the biggest issues was guns smaller guns of course meant less weight on a ship and you could have more guns as a result but their rate of fire was not that much greater than the larger guns and the larger guns gave ships more range and hitting power per shot but if you use too many of these large guns people started talking about second class battleships and you ended up with a huge bill along with the reluctance to send such powerful units far from home which kind of defeated the object of a cruiser somewhat of course the continuing development of guns which was making them more and more powerful or wasn't helping matters either on the flip side engines were also gradually becoming more efficient the breakthrough came with a combination of all of these factors along with the emergence of the first quick-firing naval guns at lower calibers and the start of this process of quick firing modification beginning to take hold at these small to medium calibers which increase their rate of fire as well although not too full quick firing levels until later in the century the ship that came together as a result of all this was the Chilean vessel esmeralda built by armstrong whitworth on the river tyne in their Elswick shipyard this particular ship would take all the elements that had percolated through other earlier designs and fuse them into a single unit she would dispense with sails entirely but still had a long enough range to operate on a cruising mission her speed of just over 18 knots was more than enough to stay ahead of the battleships of her era her armament consisted of a couple of large 10 inch guns for shooting at small iron clads and large cruisers a secondary battery of half a dozen 6-inch guns that let her lay into ships closer to her own size at a bit of a faster rate of fire and a mixture of quick firing 6 and 2 pounder guns that gave her a close range and anti torpedo boat broadside which was becoming more and more important in the 1880s and 1890s finally her armor would show a full Turtleback configuration with coal piled onto what was otherwise a relatively thin but full-length armored deck there was no armor belt and our hull was otherwise fully exposed to the effects of gun fire but with the magazines and machinery below the deck itself the only really exposed part that could cause serious damage to the ship if it was hit was the main and secondary gun emplacements and these carried gun shields to protect them from splinters and blast all this on a displacement of just under 3,000 tons not half bad really for the effort the arrival of this ship would almost immediately lead to a flood of orders for Armstrong for numerous cruisers to approximately this layout leading to ships that had a single heavy gun forward and another aft with a secondary battery of broadside lighter guns and a sloped armored deck low in the ship becoming commonplace a very quickly amongst major and minor navies all across the world as they rushed to adopt them the Armstrong company would also licensed out designs when the elsewhere guards were at full capacity and of course the inevitable copies of the layout in other yards around the world would come along sooner or later this would see the protected Cruiser come into being almost simultaneously across the planet it may come as little surprise to naval historians that the man are largely responsible for all of this was Sir William Henry white who had spent most of his life as a Royal Navy naval architect and was taking a short break in the private sector at the time before rejoining the Royal Navy in 1885 to invent the Royal sovereign class of battleships which compete with the later majestic class for the title of first true pre dreadnaughts given that effectively inventing the modern Cruiser and inventing the pre-dreadnought is only part of his resume which included a direct hand in designing over 240 individual warships it is perhaps to be expected that the Elswick yards under his guidance would produce the ultimate cruisers and that these would really take off in naval circles whilst Esmeralda herself would eventually be sold to the Japanese Navy in the mid 1890s as Japan sought to boost its rate during its war with China the Elswick yards would continue to set the standard protected Cruiser design almost immediately afterwards commencing on building the larger and more powerful nanny work class as well as Yoshino and Tiger saga for Japan the Ventus Cinco de Mayo whoever - Julio and Buenos Aires for Argentina the four chacabuco class for Brazil which in something of a foreshadowing of the South American dreadnought race ended out all over the place except for Brazil with the first one being sold to Chile before completion as Minister Rose n-channel the second unbelievably actually made it to Brazil as almiranta Barroso and the third and fourth ended up in the United States Navy as the USS New Orlean and the USS Albany as they happen to be sitting idle for sale right as tensions that would eventually lead to the spanish-american war were ramping up and the Spanish were looking at them with interest hence the USA gret dropped in and snagged them up very quickly so if you world of warships players out there who happen to have it you can blame the Brazilians for the Albany the Chileans was also a later order the chacabuco Oh at the end not a very important distinction and Blanco enchilada with the Italians picking up the giovanni mouse in' and Pyrmont a directly and the de gaulle II after the Greek Navy had been forced to abandon it yet another ship called Salamis China would collect the Chi UN chi-ching UN height yen and high Chi the Romanians ordered Elisabetta Spain would buy Isla de Luzon and isla de Cuba and the Ottomans bought Hamady a weirdly the British would not buy any single class from Armstrong although the Elswick guilds would produce a number of protected cruisers for the Royal Navy as part of larger classes whose orders had been distributed to a number of different British yards including Elswick as you might be able to tell from that list it was a bit of a busy old time for the Elswick yards along with other business being found building multiple armored cruisers and battleships for both foreign and domestic use at the same time during this period the designs would vary wildly according to the customer with some ships being much larger vessels carrying improved 10-inch main guns whilst others being much smaller and only using the smaller guns with no larger weapons and everything in between and of course as time went on the introduction of 4.7 inch and 6 inch quick-firing guns changed things up again by the time the Elswick yard built its last protected cruisers the tertiary armament for use against torpedo boats was substantially larger and torpedo tubes themselves were beginning to make an appearance on else with Cruiser designs for all the excitement and that impressive build list as a design these ships didn't actually last that long the protected Cruiser was built for a shorter period even than the armored Cruiser the last few being built in the early 1900's as advances in armored guns and engines began to leave the protected Cruiser behind and a new breed of oil fueled turbine driven cruisers with light armored belts exploiting the advances in armour technology as well as protective decks began to appear with quick-firing guns giving significant advantages and battleships are sending to levels where 8 and 10 inch guns didn't really pose any real threat these ships would exhibit a uniform main battery of medium caliber guns usually somewhere around the 6-inch mark these so-called light armoured cruisers or Scout cruisers would then be developed through World War one eventually seeing their final form in the Hawkins Emerald Omaha and Sendai classes immediately after World War one these would in turn give way to ships with their guns in double or triple turrets instead of theme mainly single guns of the earlier ships and these would in turn become the treaty cruisers of the interwar period and eventually the light and heavy cruisers of world war ii so all things considered the Elswick cruisers could be said to have been the starting point of practically all modern gun cruisers in the age of steam and steel not a bad legacy for what started out as a small 3,000 ton export cruiser that just happened to solve almost all the problems that had been vexing every major navy on the planet up until that point that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for drydock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 185,956

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Elswick cruisers, Royal Navy, 19th century, Esmerelda, protected cruisers, ironclad, armoured cruiser

Id: G6MXsdGxUF0

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019