Naval Action Steam

Features:Exciting bugs - Because its still alpha we have an interesting selection of annoying, strange, and sometimes wonderful bugs. We are squashing them one by one, but its Caribbean - they will keep coming for quite some time.Enormous open world - Large open world, recreated based on 18th Century maps, historical harbors, positions, and town names. We do not believe in the various modern hand-holding markers, thus player position is not shown on the map: you will have to navigate yourself using compass, sun or landmarks.

This product is a brand new and unused Naval Action CD Key for Steam. This product is a unique and unused CD Key which can be activated on Steam. After your payment, you will be instantly sent a unique activation code by our automatic delivery system, called 'Autokey'. An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most. STEAM CHARTS An ongoing analysis of Steam's concurrent players. Naval Action.

Battles are instanced to allow extremely complex sailing and fighting calculations for 50 ship battles.Freedom - Build ships, trade, sink enemies of your nation. You can attack anyone almost everywhere. Remember that every action could have consequences. So dont attack everyone - or you will become a pirate. Conquer almost every port in the Caribbean, but remember! Other adventurous captains will try to ruin your plans.Beautiful ships - Accurate hull models, sail plans, guns, internal upgrades, historical speed, turning and heel performance.

Ships from small cutters to large 100+ gun 1st rates will allow the player to experience every possible role of the Age of Sail period.Realistic sailing - Advanced wind and physics model provides for realistic portrayal of ships performance in the age of sail. Yard angles, ship angle to wind, fittings and ship condition affects speeds and turning rates.

Correct tacking, boxhauling, clubhauling and other elements of the age of sail sailing are possible. Hidden ship characteristics will allow to gradually uncover potential of the vessel - every ship in game will be unique.Historical gunnery - Realistic ballistics and cannon performance of the period. Every cannonball is tracked in the air and after it hits the target. One shot can hit the stern, damage the rudder, then hit the cannon carriage, injure crew, ricochet from the floor and hit the opposite side. Listing and wind affects the shooting distance and will require change of tactics.Weapons - All major types of naval artillery are implemented: from long guns to carronades. Fort and land batteries will provide support during port battles. Mortars are coming soon.Damage model - Leaks, structural damage, torn sails, demasting, raking, fires and all other hazards that were possible in that era.

Damage is positional: hit the gun and you might destroy it. Gunnery crews are placed deck by deck. Shot can pass through the balcony, ricochet of the gun, hit a crew member and then fly out of the gunport splashing into the water. Armor thickness and wood type is implemented and at extreme angles cannonballs will ricochet from the hulls.Community driven development - Players actively participate in development and many elements of the game have already been implemented based on the player feedback. Content is immediately given out to players for testing and improvement. Share your thoughts in comments or on the forums.How to get1 - First step is to register as the member2 - Choose an offer available and make sure you choose the one that's giving you lots of coins3 - Complete the offer you have chosen, you must use real information to complete an offer / survey4 - Get coins instantly to your account5 - Unlock Naval Action cd keySource.

The first battle between ironclads: (left) vs., in the March 1862An ironclad is a protected by or used in the early part of the second half of the 19th century. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary.

The first ironclad battleship, was launched by the in November 1859. The British had been considering armored warships since 1856 and prepared a draft design for an armored in 1857; in early 1859 the started building two iron-hulled armored frigates, and by 1861 had made the decision to move to an all-armored battle fleet. After the (both with wooden ships and with one another) took place in 1862 during the, it became clear that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored as the most powerful warship afloat. This type of ship would come to be very successful in the American Civil War.Ironclads were designed for several roles, including as high seas, defense ships, and long-range. The rapid development of warship design in the late 19th century transformed the ironclad from a wooden-hulled vessel that carried sails to supplement its steam engines into the steel-built, turreted battleships and cruisers familiar in the 20th century. This change was pushed forward by the development of heavier naval guns (the ironclads of the 1880s carried some of the heaviest guns ever mounted at sea at the time), more sophisticated steam engines, and which made steel shipbuilding possible.The quick pace of change meant that many ships were obsolete as soon as they were finished, and that naval tactics were in a state of flux.

Many ironclads were built to make use of the or the, which a number of naval designers considered the important weapons of naval combat. There is no clear end to the ironclad period, but towards the end of the 1890s the term ironclad dropped out of use.

New ships were increasingly constructed to a standard pattern and designated battleships. Contents.Ironclad The ironclad became technically feasible and tactically necessary because of developments in shipbuilding in the first half of the 19th century.

According to naval historian: 'The (ironclad) had three chief characteristics: a metal-skinned hull, steam propulsion and a main armament of guns capable of firing explosive shells. It is only when all three characteristics are present that a fighting ship can properly be called an ironclad.' Each of these developments was introduced separately in the decade before the first ironclads.Steam propulsion. Model of the French (1858), the first ocean-going ironcladBy the end of the 1850s it was clear that France was unable to match British building of steam warships, and to regain the strategic initiative a dramatic change was required. The result was the first ocean-going ironclad, begun in 1857 and launched in 1859.Gloire 's wooden hull was modelled on that of a steam ship of the line, reduced to one deck, sheathed in iron plates 4.5 inches (110 mm) thick. She was propelled by a steam engine, driving a single screw propeller for a speed of 13 knots (24 km/h). She was armed with thirty-six 6.4-inch (160 mm) rifled guns.

France proceeded to construct 16 ironclad warships, including two more sister ships to Gloire, and the only two-decked broadside ironclads ever built,. (1860), Britain's first seagoing ironclad warshipThe Royal Navy had not been keen to sacrifice its advantage in steam ships of the line, but was determined that the first British ironclad would outmatch the French ships in every respect, particularly speed. A fast ship would have the advantage of being able to choose a range of engagement which could make her invulnerable to enemy fire. The British specification was more a large, powerful than a ship-of-the-line. The requirement for speed meant a very long vessel, which had to be built from iron. The result was the construction of two ironclads;. The ships had a successful design, though there were necessarily compromises between 'sea-keeping', strategic range and armor protection; their weapons were more effective than those of Gloire, and with the largest set of steam engines yet fitted to a ship they could steam at 14.3 knots (26.5 km/h).

Yet the Gloire and her sisters had full iron-armor protection along the waterline and the battery itself. Warrior and Black Prince (but also the smaller and ) were obliged to concentrate their armor in a central 'citadel' or 'armoured box', leaving many main deck guns and the fore and aft sections of the vessel unprotected.

The use of iron in the construction of Warrior also came with some drawbacks; iron hulls required more regular and intensive repairs than wooden hulls, and iron was more susceptible to fouling by marine life.By 1862, navies across Europe had adopted ironclads. Britain and France each had sixteen either completed or under construction, though the British vessels were larger. Austria, Italy, Russia, and Spain were also building ironclads. However, the first battles using the new ironclad ships involved neither Britain nor France, and involved ships markedly different from the broadside-firing, masted designs of Gloire and Warrior.

The use of ironclads by both sides in the American Civil War, and the clash of the Italian and Austrian fleets at the, had an important influence on the development of ironclad design.First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War. United States Navy ironclads off, during the.The first use of ironclads in action came in the. Navy at the time the war broke out had no ironclads, its most powerful ships being six unarmored steam-powered frigates. Since the bulk of the Navy remained loyal to the Union, the Confederacy sought to gain advantage in the naval conflict by acquiring modern armored ships. In May 1861, the Confederate Congress appropriated $2 million for the purchase of ironclads from overseas, and in July and August 1861 the Confederacy started work on construction and converting wooden ships.On 12 October 1861, became the first ironclad to enter combat, when she fought Union warships on the Mississippi during the. She had been converted from a commercial vessel in New Orleans for river and coastal fighting.

In February 1862, the larger joined the Confederate Navy, having been rebuilt at. Constructed on the hull of, Virginia originally was a conventional warship made of wood, but she was converted into an iron-covered gunship, when she entered the. By this time, the Union had completed seven ironclad gunboats of the, and was about to complete, an innovative design proposed by the Swedish inventor. The Union was also building a large armored frigate, and the smaller.The first battle between ironclads happened on 9 March 1862, as the armored Monitor was deployed to protect the Union's wooden fleet from the ironclad ram Virginia and other Confederate warships. In this engagement, the second day of the, the two ironclads repeatedly tried to ram one another while shells bounced off their armor. The battle attracted attention worldwide, making it clear that the wooden warship was now out of date, with the ironclads destroying them easily.The Civil War saw more ironclads built by both sides, and they played an increasing role in the naval war alongside the unarmored warships, commerce raiders and blockade runners. The Union built a large fleet of fifty modeled on their namesake.

The Confederacy built ships designed as smaller versions of Virginia, many of which saw action, but their attempts to buy ironclads overseas were frustrated as European nations confiscated ships being built for the Confederacy – especially in Russia, the only country to openly support the Union through the war. Only was completed, and she arrived in American waters just in time for the end of the war.Through the remainder of the war, ironclads saw action in the Union's attacks on Confederate ports.

Seven Union monitors, including, as well as two other ironclads, the ironclad frigate New Ironsides and a light-draft, participated in the failed; one was sunk. Two small ironclads, and participated in the defence of the harbor. For the later attack at, the Union assembled four monitors as well as 11 wooden ships, facing the, the Confederacy's most powerful ironclad and the gunboats,.On the western front, the Union built a formidable force of river ironclads, beginning with several converted riverboats and then contracting engineer of, to build the City-class ironclads. These excellent ships were built with twin engines and a central paddle wheel, all protected by an armored casement. They had a shallow draft, allowing them to journey up smaller tributaries, and were very well suited for river operations. Eads also produced monitors for use on the rivers, the first two of which differed from the ocean-going monitors in that they contained a paddle wheel ( and ).

An example of a City-class ironclad gunboatThe Union ironclads played an important role in the Mississippi and tributaries by providing tremendous fire upon Confederate forts, installations and vessels with relative impunity to enemy fire. They were not as heavily armored as the ocean-going monitors of the Union, but they were adequate for their intended use. More Western Flotilla Union ironclads were sunk by than by enemy fire, and the most damaging fire for the Union ironclads was from shore installations, not Confederate vessels. Lissa: First fleet battle. Cartoon from May 1876 showing dressed in the armor of an ironclad with the word Inflexible around her collar and addressing the sea god Neptune. Note the ram sticking out of Britannia's breast plate.

The caption reads: OVER-WEIGHTED. 'Look here, Father Nep! I can't stand it much longer! Who's to 'rule the waves' in this sort of thing?' From the 1860s to the 1880s many naval designers believed that the development of the ironclad meant that the was again the most important weapon in naval warfare.

With steam power freeing ships from the wind, and armor making them invulnerable to shellfire, the ram seemed to offer the opportunity to strike a decisive blow.The scant damage inflicted by the guns of Monitor and Virginia at and the spectacular but lucky success of the Austrian flagship sinking the Italian at gave strength to the ramming craze. From the early 1870s to early 1880s most British naval officers thought that guns were about to be replaced as the main naval armament by the ram. Those who noted the tiny number of ships that had actually been sunk by ramming struggled to be heard.The revival of ramming had a significant effect on naval tactics.

Since the 17th century the predominant tactic of naval warfare had been the, where a fleet formed a long line to give it the best fire from its guns. This tactic was totally unsuited to ramming, and the ram threw fleet tactics into disarray. The question of how an ironclad fleet should deploy in battle to make best use of the ram was never tested in battle, and if it had been, combat might have shown that rams could only be used against ships which were already stopped dead in the water.The ram finally fell out of favour in the 1880s, as the same effect could be achieved with a, with less vulnerability to quick-firing guns. Development of naval guns The armament of ironclads tended to become concentrated in a small number of powerful guns capable of penetrating the armor of enemy ships at range; and weight of guns increased markedly to achieve greater penetration. Throughout the ironclad era navies also grappled with the complexities of versus guns and versus. Breech-loading 110-pounder oncarried a mixture of and more traditional smoothbore guns. Warrior highlighted the challenges of picking the right armament; the breech-loaders she carried, designed by, were intended to be the next generation of heavy armament for the Royal Navy, but were shortly withdrawn from service.Breech-loading guns seemed to offer important advantages.

A breech-loader could be reloaded without moving the gun, a lengthy process particularly if the gun then needed to be re-aimed. Warrior 's also had the virtue of being lighter than an equivalent smoothbore and, because of their rifling, more accurate.

Nonetheless, the design was rejected because of problems which plagued breech-loaders for decades.The weakness of the breech-loader was the obvious problem of sealing the breech. All guns are powered by the explosive conversion of a solid into gas. This explosion propels the shot or shell out of the front of the gun, but also imposes great stresses on the gun-barrel.

If the breech—which experiences some of the greatest forces in the gun—is not entirely secure, then there is a risk that either gas will discharge through the breech or that the breech will break. This in turn reduces the of the weapon and can also endanger the gun crew. Warrior 's Armstrong guns suffered from both problems; the shells were unable to penetrate the 4.5 in (118 mm) armor of Gloire, while sometimes the screw which closed the breech flew backwards out of the gun on firing. Similar problems were experienced with the breech-loading guns which became standard in the French and German navies.These problems influenced the British to equip ships with muzzle-loading weapons of increasing power until the 1880s. After a brief introduction of 100-pounder or 9.5-inch (240 mm) smoothbore Somerset Gun, which weighed 6.5 (6.6 t), the Admiralty introduced 7-inch (178 mm) rifled guns, weighing 7 tons. These were followed by a series of increasingly mammoth weapons—guns weighing 12, 25, 25, 38 and finally 81 tons, with increasing from 8-inch (203 mm) to 16-inch (406 mm).The decision to retain muzzle-loaders until the 1880s has been criticised by historians. However, at least until the late 1870s, the British muzzle-loaders had superior performance in terms of both range and rate of fire than the French and Prussian breech-loaders, which suffered from the same problems as had the first Armstrong guns.

The invented by allowed the effective sealing of breeches in breech-loading guns.From 1875 onwards, the balance between breech- and muzzle-loading changed. Captain invented a method of reliably sealing a breech, adopted by the French in 1873. Just as compellingly, the growing size of naval guns made muzzle-loading much more complicated. With guns of such size there was no prospect of hauling in the gun for re-loading, or even re-loading by hand, and complicated hydraulic systems were required for re-loading the gun outside the turret without exposing the crew to enemy fire. In 1882, the 81-ton, 16-inch (406 mm) guns of fired only once every 11 minutes while bombarding during the.

The 100-ton, 450 mm (17.72 inch) guns of could each fire a round every 15 minutes.In the Royal Navy, the switch to breech-loaders was finally made in 1879; as well as the significant advantages in terms of performance, opinion was swayed by an explosion on board caused by a gun being double-loaded, a problem which could only happen with a muzzle-loading gun.The calibre and weight of guns could only increase so far. The larger the gun, the slower it would be to load, the greater the stresses on the ship's hull, and the less the stability of the ship. The size of the gun peaked in the 1880s, with some of the heaviest calibres of gun ever used at sea. Carried two, each weighing 110 tons—no British battleship would ever carry guns as large. The Italian 450 mm (17.72 inch) guns would be larger than any gun fitted to a battleship until the armament of the Japanese of.

One consideration which became more acute was that even from the original Armstrong models, following the Crimean War, range and hitting power far exceeded simple accuracy, especially at sea where the slightest roll or pitch of the vessel as 'floating weapons-platform' could negate the advantage of rifling. American ordnance experts accordingly preferred smoothbore monsters whose round shot could at least 'skip' along the surface of the water. Actual effective combat ranges, they had learned during the Civil War, were comparable to those in the Age of Sail—though a vessel could now be smashed to pieces in only a few rounds. Smoke and the general chaos of battle only added to the problem. As a result, many naval engagements in the 'Age of the Ironclad' were still fought at ranges within easy eyesight of their targets, and well below the maximum reach of their ships' guns.Another method of increasing firepower was to vary the projectile fired or the nature of the propellant. Early ironclads used, which expanded rapidly after combustion; this meant had relatively short barrels, to prevent the barrel itself slowing the shell. The sharpness of the black powder explosion also meant that guns were subjected to extreme stress.

One important step was to press the powder into pellets, allowing a slower, more controlled explosion and a longer barrel. A further step forward was the introduction of chemically different which combusted more slowly again.

It also put less stress on the insides of the barrel, allowing guns to last longer and to be manufactured to tighter tolerances.The development of, based on nitroglycerine or nitrocellulose, by the French inventor in 1884 was a further step allowing smaller charges of propellant with longer barrels. The guns of the of the 1890s tended to be smaller in calibre compared to the ships of the 1880s, most often 12 in (305 mm), but progressively grew in length of barrel, making use of improved propellants to gain greater muzzle velocity.The nature of the projectiles also changed during the ironclad period. Initially, the best armor-piercing projectile was a solid cast-iron shot. Later, shot of, a harder iron alloy, gave better armor-piercing qualities. Eventually the was developed. Positioning of armament Broadside ironclads. The conventional of on of 1860The first British, French and Russian ironclads, in a logical development of warship design from the long preceding era of wooden, carried their weapons in a single line along their sides and so were called ' ironclads'.

Both and were examples of this type. Because their armor was so heavy, they could only carry a single row of guns along the main deck on each side rather than a row on each deck.A significant number of broadside ironclads were built in the 1860s, principally in Britain and France, but in smaller numbers by other powers including Italy, Austria, Russia and the United States. The advantages of mounting guns on both broadsides was that the ship could engage more than one adversary at a time, and the rigging did not impede the field of fire.Broadside armament also had disadvantages, which became more serious as ironclad technology developed. Heavier guns to penetrate ever-thicker armor meant that fewer guns could be carried. Furthermore, the adoption of ramming as an important tactic meant the need for ahead and all-round fire.

These problems led to broadside designs being superseded by designs that gave greater all-round fire, which included central-battery, turret, and barbette designs. Turrets, batteries and barbettes. Barbette of the French ironclad Vauban (1882–1905)There were two main design alternatives to the broadside. In one design, the guns were placed in an armored casemate amidships: this arrangement was called the 'box-battery' or 'centre-battery'. In the other, the guns could be placed on a rotating platform to give them a broad field of fire; when fully armored, this arrangement was called a and when partially armored or unarmored, a.The was the simpler and, during the 1860s and 1870s, the more popular method. Concentrating guns amidships meant the ship could be shorter and handier than a broadside type.

The first full-scale centre-battery ship was of 1865; the French laid down centre-battery ironclads in 1865 which were not completed until 1870. Centre-battery ships often, but not always, had a recessed freeboard enabling some of their guns to fire directly ahead.The turret was first used in naval combat on the USS Monitor in 1862, with a type of turret designed by the Swedish engineer. A competing turret design was proposed by the British inventor with a prototype of this installed on in 1861 for testing and evaluation purposes. Ericsson's turret turned on a central spindle, and Coles's turned on a ring of bearings.

Turrets offered the maximum arc of fire from the guns, but there were significant problems with their use in the 1860s. The fire arc of a turret would be considerably limited by masts and rigging, so they were unsuited to use on the earlier ocean-going ironclads. The second problem was that turrets were extremely heavy. Ericsson was able to offer the heaviest possible turret (guns and armor protection) by deliberately designing a ship with very low freeboard.

The weight thus saved from having a high broadside above the waterline was diverted to actual guns and armor. Low freeboard, however, also meant a smaller hull and therefore a smaller capacity for coal storage—and therefore range of the vessel. In many respects, the turreted, low-freeboard Monitor and the broadside sailer HMS Warrior represented two opposite extremes in what an 'Ironclad' was all about. The most dramatic attempt to compromise these two extremes, or 'squaring this circle', was designed by Captain Cowper Phipps Coles:, a dangerously low freeboard turret ship which nevertheless carried a full rig of sail, and which subsequently capsized not long after her launch in 1870.

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Her half-sister was restricted to firing from her turrets only on the port and starboard beams. The third Royal Navy ship to combine turrets and masts was of 1876, which carried two turrets on either side of the centre-line, allowing both to fire fore, aft and broadside.A lighter alternative to the turret, particularly popular with the French navy, was the barbette. These were fixed armored towers which held a gun on a turntable. The crew was sheltered from direct fire, but vulnerable to, for instance from shore emplacements. The barbette was lighter than the turret, needing less machinery and no roof armor—though nevertheless some barbettes were stripped of their armor plate to reduce the top-weight of their ships. The barbette became widely adopted in the 1880s, and with the addition of an armored 'gun-house', transformed into the turrets of the pre-Dreadnought battleships. Torpedoes The ironclad age saw the development of explosive as naval weapons, which helped complicate the design and tactics of ironclad fleets.

The first torpedoes were static, used extensively in the American Civil War. That conflict also saw the development of the, an explosive charge pushed against the hull of a warship by a small boat. For the first time, a large warship faced a serious threat from a smaller one—and given the relative inefficiency of shellfire against ironclads, the threat from the spar torpedo was taken seriously. Navy converted four of its monitors to become turretless armored spar-torpedo vessels while under construction in 1864–5, but these vessels never saw action. Another proposal, the towed or 'Harvey' torpedo, involved an explosive on a line or outrigger; either to deter a ship from ramming or to make a torpedo attack by a boat less suicidal.A more practical and influential weapon was the self-propelled.

Invented in 1868 and deployed in the 1870s, the Whitehead torpedo formed part of the armament of ironclads of the 1880s like HMS Inflexible and the Italian Caio Duilio. The ironclad's vulnerability to the torpedo was a key part of the critique of armored warships made by the school of naval thought; it appeared that any ship armored enough to prevent destruction by gunfire would be slow enough to be easily caught by torpedo. In practice, however, the Jeune Ecole was only briefly influential and the torpedo formed part of the confusing mixture of weapons possessed by ironclads. Armor and construction. The French (1876), the first battleship to use steel as the main building materialThe first ironclads were built on wooden or iron hulls, and protected by wrought iron armor backed by thick wooden planking. Ironclads were still being built with wooden hulls into the 1870s.Hulls: iron, wood and steel Using iron construction for warships offered advantages for the engineering of the hull.

However, unarmored iron had many military disadvantages, and offered technical problems which kept wooden hulls in use for many years, particularly for long-range cruising warships.Iron ships had first been proposed for military use in the 1820s. In the 1830s and 1840s, France, Britain and the United States had all experimented with iron-hulled but unarmored gunboats and frigates. However, the iron-hulled frigate was abandoned by the end of the 1840s, because iron hulls were more vulnerable to solid shot; iron was more brittle than wood, and iron frames more likely to fall out of shape than wood.The unsuitability of unarmored iron for warship hulls meant that iron was only adopted as a building material for battleships when protected by armor.

However, iron gave the naval architect many advantages. Iron allowed larger ships and more flexible design, for instance the use of watertight bulkheads on the lower decks. Warrior, built of iron, was longer and faster than the wooden-hulled Gloire. Iron could be produced to order and used immediately, in contrast to the need to give wood a long period of. And, given the large quantities of wood required to build a steam warship and the falling cost of iron, iron hulls were increasingly cost-effective.

The main reason for the French use of wooden hulls for the ironclad fleet built in the 1860s was that the French iron industry could not supply enough, and the main reason why Britain built its handful of wooden-hulled ironclads was to make best use of hulls already started and wood already bought.Wooden hulls continued to be used for long-range and smaller ironclads, because iron nevertheless had a significant disadvantage. Iron hulls suffered quick by marine life, slowing the ships down—manageable for a European battlefleet close to, but a difficulty for long-range ships. The only solution was to sheath the iron hull first in wood and then in copper, a laborious and expensive process which made wooden construction remain attractive.

Iron and wood were to some extent interchangeable: the Japanese and ordered in 1875 were sister-ships, but one was built of iron and the other of composite construction.After 1872, steel started to be introduced as a material for construction. Compared to, allows for greater structural strength for a lower weight. The French Navy led the way with the use of steel in its fleet, starting with the, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876. Redoutable nonetheless had wrought iron armor plate, and part of her exterior hull was iron rather than steel.Even though Britain led the world in steel production, the Royal Navy was slow to adopt steel warships. The for steel manufacture produced too many imperfections for large-scale use on ships.

French manufacturers used the to produce adequate steel, but British technology lagged behind. The first all-steel warships built by the were the dispatch vessels Iris and Mercury, laid down in 1875 and 1876.Armor and protection schemes. The iron-and-wood armor ofIron-built ships used wood as part of their protection scheme. HMS Warrior was protected by 4.5 in (114 mm) of backed by 15 in (381 mm) of, the strongest shipbuilding wood. The wood played two roles, preventing and also preventing the shock of a hit damaging the structure of the ship. Later, wood and iron were combined in 'sandwich' armor, for instance in.Steel was also an obvious material for armor.

It was tested in the 1860s, but the steel of the time was too and disintegrated when struck by shells. Steel became practical to use when a way was found to fuse steel onto wrought iron plates, giving a form of. This compound armor was used by the British in ships built from the late 1870s, first for turret armor (starting with HMS Inflexible) and then for all armor (starting with of 1882). The French and German navies adopted the innovation almost immediately, with licenses being given for the use of the 'Wilson System' of producing fused armor.The first ironclads to have all-steel armor were the Italian. Though the ships were laid down in 1873 their armor was not purchased from France until 1877.

The French navy decided in 1880 to adopt compound armor for its fleet, but found it limited in supply, so from 1884 the French navy was using steel armor. Britain stuck to compound armor until 1889.The ultimate ironclad armor was nickel-steel. In 1890, the U.S. Navy tested steel armor hardened by the and found it superior to compound armor. For several years 'Harvey steel' was the state of the art, produced in the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, Austria and Italy.

In 1894, the German firm developed, which further hardened steel armor. The German, laid down in 1895, was the first ship to benefit from the new 'Krupp armor' and the new armor was quickly adopted; the Royal Navy using it from, laid down in 1896. By 1901 almost all new battleships used Krupp armor, though the U.S. Continued to use Harvey armor alongside until the end of the decade.The equivalent strengths of the different armor plates was as follows: 15 in (381 mm) of wrought iron was equivalent to 12 in (305 mm) of either plain steel or compound iron and steel armor, and to 7.75 in (197 mm) of Harvey armor or 5.75 in (146 mm) of Krupp armor.Ironclad construction also prefigured the later debate in battleship design between tapering and 'all-or-nothing' armor design.

Warrior was only semi-armored, and could have been disabled by hits on the bow and stern. As the thickness of armor grew to protect ships from the increasingly heavy guns, the area of the ship which could be fully protected diminished. Inflexible 's armor protection was largely limited to the central citadel amidships, protecting boilers and engines, turrets and magazines, and little else. An ingenious arrangement of cork-filled compartments and watertight bulkheads was intended to keep her stable and afloat in the event of heavy damage to her un-armored sections.

Propulsion: steam and sail. Under sailThe first ocean-going ironclads carried masts and sails like their wooden predecessors, and these features were only gradually abandoned. Early steam engines were inefficient; the wooden steam fleet of the Royal Navy could only carry '5 to 9 days coal', and the situation was similar with the early ironclads. Warrior also illustrates two design features which aided hybrid propulsion; she had retractable screws to reduce drag while under sail (though in practice the steam engine was run at a low throttle), and a telescopic funnel which could be folded down to the deck level. French armored.Ships designed for coastal warfare, like the floating batteries of the Crimea, or and her sisters, dispensed with masts from the beginning. The British, started in 1869, was the first large, ocean-going ironclad to dispense with masts. Her principal role was for combat in the English Channel and other European waters; while her coal supplies gave her enough range to cross the Atlantic, she would have had little endurance on the other side of the ocean.

The Devastation and the similar ships commissioned by the British and Russian navies in the 1870s were the exception rather than the rule. Most ironclads of the 1870s retained masts, and only the Italian navy, which during that decade was focused on short-range operations in the Adriatic, built consistently mastless ironclads.During the 1860s, steam engines improved with the adoption of steam engines, which used 30–40% less coal than earlier models. The Royal Navy decided to switch to the double-expansion engine in 1871, and by 1875 they were widespread. However, this development alone was not enough to herald the end of the mast. Whether this was due to a conservative desire to retain sails, or was a rational response to the operational and strategic situation, is a matter of debate. A steam-only fleet would require a network of coaling stations worldwide, which would need to be fortified at great expense to stop them falling into enemy hands.

Just as significantly, because of unsolved problems with the technology of the boilers which provided steam for the engines, the performance of double-expansion engines was rarely as good in practice as it was in theory. After the replacement of her sailing masts with 'military masts'During the 1870s the distinction grew between 'first-class ironclads' or 'battleships' on the one hand, and 'cruising ironclads' designed for long-range work on the other. The demands on first-class ironclads for very heavy armor and armament meant increasing displacement, which reduced speed under sail; and the fashion for turrets and barbettes made a sailing rig increasingly inconvenient., launched in 1876 but not commissioned until 1881, was the last British battleship to carry masts, and these were widely seen as a mistake. The start of the 1880s saw the end of sailing rig on ironclad battleships.Sails persisted on 'cruising ironclads' for much longer. During the 1860s, the French navy had produced the and as small, long-range ironclads as overseas cruisers and the British had responded with ships like of 1870. The Russian ship, laid down in 1870 and completed in 1875, was a model of a fast, long-range ironclad which was likely to be able to outrun and outfight ships like Swiftsure. Even the later, often described as the first British armored cruiser, would have been too slow to outrun General-Admiral.

While Shannon was the last British ship with a retractable propellor, later armored cruisers of the 1870s retained sailing rig, sacrificing speed under steam in consequence. It took until 1881 for the Royal Navy to lay down a long-range armored warship capable of catching enemy commerce raiders, which was completed in 1888. While sailing rigs were obsolescent for all purposes by the end of the 1880s, rigged ships were in service until the early years of the 20th century.The final evolution of ironclad propulsion was the adoption of the triple-expansion steam engine, a further refinement which was first adopted in, laid down in 1885 and commissioned in 1891. Many ships also used a to get additional power from their engines, and this system was widely used until the introduction of the in the mid-1900s (decade).

Fleets While ironclads spread rapidly in navies worldwide, there were few pitched naval battles involving ironclads. Most European nations settled differences on land, and the struggled to maintain a deterrent parity with at least France, while providing suitable protection to Britain's commerce and colonial outposts worldwide. Ironclads remained, for the British Royal Navy, a matter of defending the British Isles first and projecting power abroad second. Those naval engagements of the latter half of the 19th century which involved ironclads normally involved colonial actions or clashes between second-rate naval powers. The, where Peruvian ironclad sunk the Chilean wooden corvette.The US Navy ended the Civil War with about fifty -type coastal ironclads; by the 1870s most of these were laid up in reserve, leaving the United States virtually without an ironclad fleet. Another five large monitors were ordered in the 1870s.

The limitations of the monitor type effectively prevented the US from projecting power overseas, and until the 1890s the United States would have come off badly in a conflict with even Spain or the Latin American powers. The 1890s saw the beginning of what became the, and it was the modern pre-Dreadnoughts and armored cruisers built in the 1890s which defeated the Spanish fleet in the of 1898.

This started a new era of naval warfare. The Confederacy's French-built last ironclad was also Japan's first:.Ironclads were also used from the inception of the (IJN). (Japanese: 甲鉄, literally 'Ironclad', later renamed Azuma 東, 'East') had a decisive role in the in May 1869, which marked the end of the, and the complete establishment of the.

The IJN continued to develop its strength and commissioned a number of warships from British and European shipyards, first ironclads and later. These ships engaged the Chinese which was superior on paper at least at the. Thanks to superior short-range firepower, the Japanese fleet came off better, sinking or severely damaging eight ships and receiving serious damage to only four. The naval war was concluded the next year at the, where the strongest remaining Chinese ships were surrendered to the Japanese. End of the ironclad warship. Main article:There is no clearly defined end to the ironclad, besides the transition from wood hulls to all-metal.

Ironclads continued to be used in World War I. Towards the end of the 19th century, the descriptions ' and ' came to replace the term 'ironclad'.The proliferation of ironclad battleship designs came to an end in the 1890s as navies reached a consensus on the design of battleships, producing the type known as the. These ships are sometimes covered in treatments of the ironclad warship.

The next evolution of battleship design, the, is never referred to as an 'ironclad'.Most of the ironclads of the 1870s and 1880s served into the first decades of the 1900s. For instance, a handful of US navy monitors laid down in the 1870s saw active service in World War I. Pre-Dreadnought battleships and cruisers of the 1890s saw widespread action in World War I and in some cases through to World War II.Legacy. 1904 illustration of ' December 1903, showing huge armored land vessels, equipped with Pedrail wheels.coined the term in a short story published in 1903, to describe fictional large moving on.A number of ironclads have been preserved or reconstructed as museum ships. Parts of have been recovered and are being conserved and displayed at the in.

is today a fully restored museum ship in, England. is berthed at the port of Talcahuano, Chile, on display for visitors. The ironclad is currently on display in,. in Newport News constructed a full-scale replica of. The replica was laid down in February 2005 and completed just two months later. The Dutch Ramtorenschip (coastal ram) is currently under display in the.

The Dutch Ramtorenschip (coastal ram) is a museum ship at. The complete, recovered wooden hull of, a casemate ram ironclad, is on view in, and, in another part of town on the, the recreated ship, named CSS Neuse II, is nearly built and can be visited. The hull of the casemate ironclad can be seen in the at Port Columbus, Georgia. The was rebuilt in 2003 as a floating museum at Weihai.Lists.Ships by navy Americas.