Re:What did British officers think of the American civil war...
by Manuel_D on Friday May 20, 2022 @07:08PM
(#31453672)
For a visual example, this was an American Civil-War era ironclad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Baron_DeKalb.jpg
This was a British oceangoing ironclad, launched in 1860: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HMSWarrior.JPG
The difference in seaworthiness is abundantly clear. These American ironclads were more akin to gunboats, and mostly used on rivers (fighting for control of the Mississippi was a huge deal in the war). They were built comparatively cheaply, for a specific, immediate conflict. They often only had steam engines and lacked the endurance for transoceanic travel.
The British ironclads were built to project imperial power across the globe. The continued use of sail was important to extend endurance to reach far away places.
These were very different sorts of ironclads. The British and French ironclads mostly resembled traditional ships, at least at first glance. They had steam engines but also retained their masts, and had broadside guns rather than turrets (except for the ill-fated HMS Captain..)
The American ironclads were more bizarre, superficially resembling submarines, and weren't particularly seaworthy (unlike the European ironclads.) The USS Monitor in particular was a novel design; mastless and steam powered with an armored turret, a shallow draft and low freeboard (similar to earlier ironclad floating batteries, but a lot lower). European navies subsequently started building their own 'monitors'.
The monitor class of ships were eventually pushed to the side by pre-dreadnought battleships that derived more from the traditional and seaworthy European ironclads than from monitors, with some lessons learned from monitors. See the HMS Devastation particularly; mastless and steam powered with armored turrets, but with a hull that was actually seaworthy unlike monitors.