Talk:Prince Consort-class ironclad

Numbers of Battleships completed by different dates

From User talk:67th Tigers

You made an edit to Prince Consort class battleship. The list of ships you used to make a new table is incomplete, and at least some of the dates you quote are launch dates not completion dates.

DK Brown, Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860-1905, footnotes name the ships in order of completion. French: 1859: Gloire, 1860: Normandie, 1861: Invincible, Couronne, Magenta, Solferino, 1863: Provence, Savoie, Heroine, 1864: Flandre, Valeuruse, Magnanime, Surveillante, 1865: Gauloise, Guyenne and Revanche. British: 1860: Warrior, 1861: Black Prince, Defence, Resistance, 1863: Valiant, Achilles, Minotaur, 1864: Royal Alfred, Zealous, Lord Clyde, Royal Sovereign, Research, Enterprize, 1865: Favourite, Scorpion, Wivern, Lord Warden and Agincourt. Brown excludes Turret Ships and Armoured Corvettes (which have been reinstated) and Coastal Ironclads (which remain excluded)

In addition it is difficult to justify counting Scorpion and Wivern as sea-going ships; published Channel Fleet reports make it clear that they were not sea-going.--Toddy1 (talk) 04:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

There is much confusion arising about the status of ships at the time. Much of this has to do with different meanings of the word "Commissioned", which then simply meant assigned to an active squadron. Most of the early ironclads went straight into Steam Reserve and were only Commissioned several years after they were effective fighting units. Thus taking launch dates is a far better metric for assessing actual strength. Once a vessel was launched it could be a Commissioned fighting ship 4-6 weeks later if required (as indeed happened to HMS Defence during the Trent Crisis). As Parke's notes in British Battleships, there was no sense of urgency in Britain, they simply Commissioned vessels as needed.

As for Scorpion and Wivern, they certainly were seagoing, even if they rolled heavily and sailed poorly. 67th Tigers (talk) 11:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

From the point of view of understanding part of a procurement programme in an arms race, two numbers seem particularly useful. The number of sea-going ironclads started (laid down as ironclads, commenced conversion to ironclads, or purchased), and the number completed. This is not to deny that the number launched is also a useful number. There were a variety of reason for delays in commissioning ships - in some cases it was because of questions about what to arm them with, and how the armament was to be mounted.

The following is a table showing which ships were counted against which dates. In the process of doing it, I found a mistake in the original article, which I have corrected.

Year		Cumulative Ironclads Laid Down or Commenced Conversion					Cumulative Ironclads Completed
		France		Britain			France		Britain
1858		3	Gloire Invincible Normandie	0			0		0
1859		6	Couronne Magenta Solverino	4	Warrior Black Prince Defence Resistance		0		0
1860		6		4			1	Gloire	0
1861		16	Flandre Gauloise Guyenne Magnanime Provence Revanche Savoie Surveillante Valeureuse Héroïne	15	Hector Valiant Achilles Minotaur Agincourt Northumberland Royal Oak Prince Consort Caledonia Ocean Royal Alfred		1		2	Warrior Defence
1862		16		18	Research Enterprise Favourite		6	Invincible Normandie Couronne Magenta Solverino	4	Black Prince Resistance
1863		17	Belliqueuse	22	Lord Clyde Lord Warden Pallas Bellorophon		6		5	Royal Oak
1864		17		23	Zealous		6		10	Hector Achilles Prince Consort Research Enterprise
1865		27	Ocean Marengo Friedland Alma Armide Atalante Jeanne D'Arc Montcalm Reine Blanche Thetis	24	Penelope		11	Flandre Magnanime Provence Savoie Héroïne	11	Caledonia

Scorpion and Wivern were laid down for sale abroad, but were purchased for the Royal Navy in 1864, and commissioned in 1865. It is debatable whether to count them as 'sea-going'.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I assume we're excluding Turret Ships, since Royal Sovereign (which was armed and at sea 18 months before her "completed" date) isn't on the list. Also, in 1865, 5 of the RN Crimean Ironclads remain on the effective list (one with an overseas squadron). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67th Tigers (talk • contribs) 12:00, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

In a bit of a PS, the same page of the book that includes the list about (Brown, pg16) also has two pictures of Achilles. One is her under construction in 1862, the other is her at sea, armed with a full rig in 1863..... 67th Tigers (talk) 12:40, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The wikipedia article is about the Prince Consort class battleships. The reason for the table is to understand the context of the decisions about converting them from partly-finished steam 2-deckers to ironclads. As the Prince Consorts were sea-going ironclads, a table listing numbers of coastal service ships such as Royal Sovereign, Prince Albert and the various French and British steam-powered armoured 'floating batteries' does not seem helpful.

The photograph of Achilles under sail on page 16 of Brown cannot possibly have been taken in 1863. It shows Achilles with 3 masts. Achilles was built with 4 masts, and was changed to 3 masts in 1865.

As for Scorpion and Wivern. Reed in Our Iron-Clad Ships (1869) page 138-9 says: "the turret-ship 'Wivern', belonging to the Royal Navy, has a low free-board (about 4 feet), and is very lightly armoured, while her armament is also very light. Yet on one occasion her behaviour at sea was so bad that she had to be brought head to wind in order to prevent her shipping large, and, of course, dangerous, quantities of water, the extreme angle of roll rising to 27 degrees each way." King in The Warships and Navies of the World (1881) listed them as coast defence ships. Parkes in British Battleships (1957) described them in a chapter entitled The Genesis of the Coast Defence Ship. It does not seem unreasonable to count Scorpion and Wivern as coast defence ships even though they carried a sailing rig.

Regarding the commissioned versus completed issue. Appendix A of G.A. Ballard's The Black Battlefleet (1980) has a list of construction dates. The columns he quotes are:

• Name
• Where built
• Date of order to build
• Date of order to convert to ironclad
• Date laid down
• Date launched
• Date completed
• Date commissioned

As you would expect, the last two columns are not identical.--Toddy1 (talk) 15:57, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

More on Scorpion and Wivern: Page 253 David Lyon and Rif Winfield The Sail & Steam Navy List, All the Ships of the Royal Navy 1815-1889 (2004) states "purchased in 1864 for the RN, who used them in a coast-defence role."--Toddy1 (talk) 18:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

References

Original Research?

Is the reference to ADM 1/5980 from a published source? --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 14:39, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

No comments? If not I'll remove it in a day or two. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 14:28, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not know why you are making a fuss about this. There have been a number of published collections of Robinson's papers. I have added a link to a website that has it. I expect that the document is also in the collection published by Portsmouth Council a few years ago, but have not checked this. Other sources such a Reed tell much the same story. Wikipedia does not actually require that non-contentious points be cited at all - which is why Wikipedia has huge numbers of articles full of wrong information.

My impression is that people who do something good get beaten up, and those who produce opinionated crap get a pat on the back.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:37, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Find the published version then. I don't think that old-style Microsoft Word documents on a Yahoo Group count as a "reliably published" primary source. OpenOffice can't open it anyway without it being hopelessly corrupted, so for me, at any rate, it isn't even verifiable. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 07:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have a life. So I will not be able to do anything about this until mid-July.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:11, 16 June 2011 (UTC)