During the period of the Civil War, the United States Navy attained a size and efficiency which, in a world Predominately at peace, made it a force of noteworthy power and potential. With the close of that War, the Navy went into eclipse. In the space of a year, it was reduced to one-fifteenth of its wartime size. With twenty-nine ships the Navy was forced to meet commitments which were becoming, increasingly, those of a major world power. Both materially and intellectually, the Navy tell into a decline. The Government tended to regard a strong Navy as a force that could be conjured out of the midnight mists at the approach of any crisis. For the maintenance of national power, the era of the Credit Mobiliér and the carpet bag had little time and small money.
This national indifference to the Navy persisted generally for a period of nearly fifteen years. It was then, through the efforts of such men as Luce and Mahan, the “passionate few” of the Navy, and a rekindled political interest, that the first, hesitant steps towards a renewed naval greatness were begun. For the first time in twenty-four years a Democratic administration was in office. It was an administration anxious to prove its vigor and ability to produce. To this end, the Navy was more than willing to be used. There was much to be done. The day of the mechanical renaissance was at high pitch; the day of the extemporaneous naval force had passed.
In the late 1880’s naval leaders were casting about for the ships and professional methods which would form a new Navy. The approach to the problem was cautious, for though impatient to begin, this progressive element was not anxious to make haste in the wrong direction. Interest in progress ran high, but little patience existed for projects which did not bear directly on the Problems at hand, or which did not offer promise of continued progress along the lines of proved conventional development.
In the naval appropriations act of August 3, 1886, among the provisions for new construction there is the following item:
Section 9. That the Secretary of the Navy is hereby authorized to contract with the Pneumatic Dynamite-Gun Company of New Jersey for one dynamite-gun cruiser as follows: said cruiser is not to be less than two hundred and thirty feet long, twenty-six feet breadth of beam, seven and one-half feet draft, 3200 horsepower, and is guaranteed to obtain a speed of twenty knots an hour and to be equipped with three pneumatic dynamite-guns of ten and one-half inches caliber and guaranteed to throw shells containing two hundred pounds of dynamite or other high explosive at least one mile, each gun to be capable of being discharged once in two minutes, at a price not to exceed $350,000; said contract to be made only on condition that there shall be a favorable report made by the existing Naval Board on the system, to be paid for as the work progresses, and upon the report of such board or boards of inspectors as the Secretary of the Navy may for that purpose appoint, reserving thirty per cent on all such payments until the whole work is complete and accepted by the Secretary of the Navy.
The boards mentioned in this triumph of “officialese” did report favorably. The Pneumatic Dynamite-Gun Company engaged the Cramp Shipbuilding company of Philadelphia to construct the vessel.
This ship was an experimental vessel, its sole purpose being the deep sea test of the pneumatic gun. Its appearance was not hailed with any great show of enthusiasm on the part of the Navy. Practically no one in the Navy had an interest in the development of such a vessel. The Department regarded the appropriated funds and required effort with some misgivings. Considering the good purpose to which these might have been put in developing conventional ordnance and the then embryonic “Squadron of Evolution,” we can believe that their objections were well taken.
The main impetus for the development of the pneumatic gun was a by-product of the tremendous strides which had been made in the development of high explosives in the period 1850–1880. Dynamite, guncotton, and blasting gelatine brought a destructive potential to ordnance that made all previous explosives pale to insignificance. As bursting charges in a shell of eight inches or upwards, such compounds seemed capable of inflicting a death-wound on any ship afloat. There was only one major obstacle to such utilization. These explosives were not at all the relatively stable compounds which we possess today. They were uneven in quality, undependable in storage, and dangerously sensitive to shock. Attempts to use them in conventional artillery invariably resulted with a shell finally exploded in the barrel by the shock of firing. The chief cause of such disasters was the lack of a satisfactory propellant. The only chemical propellants then available were of a black (blasting type) powder of a rapid and relatively uncontrolled burning rate. The search for a proper grade of propellant was being carried out. This search culminated late in the century in a development of smokeless powder. This was the first propellant to give a projectile a “push” rather than a “kick,” and it was only this combined with an improvement in the reliability of high explosives, that made possible the safe use of such compounds in conventional weapons.
In an attempt to circumvent the chemical propellant’s difficulty, it was perhaps inevitable that someone should conceive the method of controlling the propulsive shock by using compressed air. This method of propulsion was by no means new in history. All previous devices based on the principle were of a small scale, however, and tended to be merely curiosities. The first person to carry such a method to any practical end was—we are told—a “Mr. Melford of Ohio.” Mr. Melford developed a small pneumatic propelling device in which he interested the United States government. Lt. E. L. G. Zalinski, “a Polish born army officer” of considerable inventive ability and reputation, was assigned to test and develop the weapon. The main reason for the weapon is best illustrated graphically as below:
Zalinski’s work developed through successive models of shore-located pneumatic guns. His models progressed from the two-inch diameter original, up to guns of eight and fifteen inches. Their explosive charges varied from less than ten pounds to as much as a thousand. In this work he was ably abetted by a Russian inventor, Rapieff, and the officials of the Pneumatic Dynamite-Gun Company—a concern which had been formed for the purpose of producing the device. Zalinski experienced a satisfying degree of success with the gun. The models he developed, though large and unwieldy (as compared to conventional artillery) were capable of train and elevation, and in a series of tests gave results which showed that within their range limitations (0–2 miles) the weapons were of value. They were consistent in behavior and possessed of a scale of accuracy that compared favorably with rifled artillery.
The development of the weapon was actively commenced early in the eighties. It was first tested at Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor in 1884. This was the scene of nearly all subsequent shore-based tests. At tests in June, 1886, before the Navy Board, five shells were fired at a stationary “mock-up” at a range of 1,613 yards. Four of these could be counted as hits, and the fifth fell some seven yards beyond the “hitting space” of the target. The maximum lateral deflection observed was 6.2 yards or a little more than three mils. Further tests in range on August 17, 1877, proved to be about 98% effective. On the 20th of September, of the same year, Zalinski sank a moored schooner, the Silliman, with four 55-pound shells. The range was 2,200 yards. This event was a cause of much comment in the popular press. Many reporters were led by their enthusiasm to compose somewhat premature obituaries of conventionally armed fleets.
One of the qualities of the projectiles which recommended them to naval use was an inherent fluke in their construction. On striking water they would be deflected out of their trajectory, running along the line of fire for some fifty yards, at a depth of about ten feet before sinking.
The projectiles ran through three designs of fuzes during their development. The first type was Zalinski’s design and employed two separate battery-powered electrical impulse firing circuits. One set fired immediately on impact with a solid, and the second incorporated a three-second delay and was activated by contact with salt water. The Zalinski fuzes were used during the shore development of the weapons. These proved to be quite satisfactory.
The fuzes used during the first sea tests of the weapons were Merriam mechanical-time fuzes, which gave excellent service. These fuzes had to be set prior to being assembled in the projectiles. The drawback to their continued use is obvious. The fuzes used in later tests and in service were of a design by Rapieff. They incorporated the solid impact instantaneous, and water impact delay, detonation features of the Zalinski fuzes, and also provided for detonation upon striking a glancing blow at a solid target. The Rapieff fuzes gave considerable trouble in service. It was only after a long period of modification that they were developed to a service standard of dependability.
The projectiles themselves were designed by Rapieff, and were of three sizes:
1. The full caliber projectile would carry 500 lbs. of high explosive.
2. One sub-caliber size would carry 200 lbs.
3. Another sub-caliber size would carry 50 lbs.
The two sub-caliber types were fitted to the barrel by wooden “filling pieces” or sabots which fell away as the projectile left the gun tube. The lighter shells were, of course, capable of a greater range. The projectiles, which Zalinski preferred to call “air torpedoes,” were stabilized in flight by the spin produced by helical tail surfaces. They were prevented from actual contact with the gun tube by use of wood or fiber buffer devices which were placed (as illustrated) on the body section and on alternate tail fins.
The guns used were smoothbores. Zalinski had investigated the possibility of rifling but had concluded that it was impractical on the guns used. The nature of the projectiles would have necessitated an extreme “twist” (from 11 to 1, to 13 to 1) and the increase in firing shock might have caused the detonation of the shells or a rupturing of the projectile cases. In any event it would have required a strengthening of the construction. This would have added so much weight as to have made shipboard installation impractical.
The explosive loads used in the shells were generally “wet” guncotton, or blasting gelatine. Although the popular term used in connection with the guns was dynamite, it is unlikely that this particular explosive was used in a projectile. Guncotton was the most favored compound. The blasting gelatine was powerful enough but it had a rather disquieting tendency to exude nitroglycerin on cold mornings.
The guns developed for use in the Vesuvius were of fifteen inches in diameter. They were drawn brass tubing, half an inch in thickness, and were fifty-five feet, approximately 44 calibers in length. Three were installed. They were mounted forward in the ship. The muzzles came out of the main deck some thirty feet aft of the stem, protruding approximately fifteen feet into the air. They were mounted at a fixed angle of 18°, and were incapable of train and elevation. The gun tubes extended down through the ship to the projectile handling room on the lowest deck level. Here were arranged thirty projectiles, ten per gun, along with the compressed air tanks and other paraphernalia necessary to firing. The projectiles were arranged in revolving sections, not unlike the cartridge of the gun in the manner illustrated:
The admission of air was controlled by the operation of firing valves from the conning tower. Range was varied by controlling either the amount of air admitted, or by the duration of air admission at constant pressure. To this end, the engineer, Rapieff, had constructed valves which could time the admission of air to a thousandth of a second. The only method of training the guns was by pointing the entire vessel. In order to obtain a fair chance of successful target practice, it was necessary to fire when the target bore most favorably. Firing “by Command” was therefore impractical.
In construction and design the vessel was unique. She had the lines of a fast pleasure yacht and an engineering plant that was, for her day, remarkable. She was constructed of “low” steel and her plates were butt-jointed and perfectly smooth. During construction her plans underwent many changes and modifications, and she was some two years in the building.
Her launching and commissioning soon brought out many serious defects in her design. The first of these to become apparent was difficulty in steering. Because of the extremely high length-to-breadth ratio of design, her propellor shafts were placed at an angle which caused their prolongations to meet at a point within the hull of the ship. Consequently she had no turning moment in using her propellers! To further complicate this situation, her steering engine was found to be underpowered and there was no practical way to remedy the defect. She had, therefore, a larger turning circle, by far, than any other unit of the fleet. Thus, she was dangerous to handle in inland waters, and at sea was incapable of joining the fleet in tactical evolutions.
When launched early in the autumn of 1888, the Vesuvius had been nearly twenty months in construction. As completed, she differed somewhat in size from the specifications laid down in the appropriations bill. The approximate ratio of her dimensions had been adhered to. It was not the intention of the Navy Department to hamper alterations which bade fair to improve the ship, while not exceeding the sum appropriated. In that era, the specifications were always somewhat elastic; and it was not uncommon for bonuses to be paid if the performance of the ship exceeded those laid down in the specifications.
Her launching was observed with some interest in naval circles. An English engineering publication stated, “The event attracts much attention, being regarded as the beginning of a regenerated American Navy, for the building of which Congress is expected to grant liberal supplies.”
The Vesuvius' principal dimensions were:
Length, ..................... 246 feet 3 inches.
Beam, ...................... 26 feet 6 inches.
Draft, mean ................. 9 feet 3 inches.
Displacement at mean draft, ... 805 tons.
The vessel had twin-screws and vertical, triple expansion engines. They were four marine locomotive (“straight through”) boilers which worked at a pressure of 160 pounds. Preliminary trials on October 16, and November 26, 1888, revealed slight mechanical difficulties in the engineering plant. These were easily remedied.
The first official trial was made on December 8, 1888, over a course 4.57 miles long. She made a speed of 21.47 knots. On the return trip one of the blower engines sprang a bed plate. The resulting reduction in speed caused the average for the two runs to fall below the twenty knots specified. On the second trial, December 27, 1888, an air pump beam broke and she again failed to make the required speed. Both of these tests were held in the Delaware River.
The acceptance board composed of Commander Goodrich, Lieutenant Schroeder, and Lieutenant Fiske, determined that the next test should be held in deeper water. Accordingly a course of 2.5 miles was laid out off the Delaware Breakwater. This final test took place January 11, 1889. The Vesuvius attained a speed of 21.646 knots, developing some 4,295 effective horsepower.
It was next necessary to ready the ship for a trial of her guns. This work took a period of nearly nine months. Further shore tests of weapons were necessary. The guns had been increased to a size of fifteen inches, and it was not until October 9, 1889, that she was ready for her final sea trials.
The speed obtained in her engineering trials was the highest ever attained for vessels of the Vesuvius’ class. The event was hailed with great enthusiasm throughout the nation. The Vesuvius had captured the imagination of the country. Despite the scoffing of professional military men, she came to be regarded as the world’s most powerful warship. At this time the country was embroiled in considerable diplomatic difficulties with Italy. As a result of the “Mafia Lynchings” in New Orleans, Italy had threatened to send units of her fleet to “show the flag” off our ports. This practise, common to European nations when dealing with the natives of backward territories, did not set too well with Americans. The Vesuvius was widely regarded as the weapon which would “put the elephantine battleships of Italy in their place if they were to appear off Sandy Hook.”
The ship was an endless source of speculation to the press. There was even a novel called “The Dynamite Ship.” The Vesuvius, no whit disturbed by her fame, proceeded to the sea trials of her main battery.
The air valves were perfected, the regulation of air admitted being apparently well under control, and the vessel was taken down the river for a firing trial to test the ranging and the exceedingly complex fuzes required to meet the peculiar elements of the problem. One shell was fired from each of the three guns; they were shells carrying one-hundred pound loads of dynamite and were fitted with fuses set to different lengths of delay action, one having no delay and the other two having delays of different numbers of seconds. When fired the detonations appeared to be complete, and stopwatches indicated the time between splash and detonation as correct to as close a degree as it was possible to observe. In the shot where no delay action was introduced, the flash of the detonation was seen above the water.
The vessel was then considered complete and was placed in commission in June, 1890. Lieutenant Seaton Schroeder of the trial board was given command. As commissioned her armament was:
3 pneumatic dynamite guns of 15″ caliber.
2 3-inch powder cannon.
2 37 mm. revolving cannon.
2 Gatling Guns.
The ship was given no further opportunity to develop range tables and was issued no projectiles for its main battery!
This state of affairs was allowed to continue for nearly two years. The “Baltimore Affair” war scare of 1891 brought the facts to light and further trials of her armament were ordered. These trials were conducted at Hampton Roads on the 19th and 20th of May, 1891. Among the observers were Army and Navy officials, as well as a number of interested foreign officials.
Dummy shells of cast iron and steel were used, of the same size and weight as the dynamite shells for which the guns were made. The first three shells were fired at fixed buoys at one mile, ¾ mile, ½ mile distant, the vessel being in motion. The worst difficulty in this test was the instruction that firing must be by word of command. As only the man at the firing lever could be certain that the ship was properly aligned, the man giving the command was often to give it at a time when the vessel was slightly off her heading, giving an unfair impression that the guns were liable to a larger error in deflection than was actually the case.
Despite this handicap, reasonably good practice was obtained. Of nine shots fired at ranges from 880 yards to 1,750 yards, one was a “bull’s eye.” Three others would have struck a target of three hundred feet in length, and twenty feet in beam, if she had been on a collision course.
“Three shots were next tried at a moving target, the Vesuvius herself moving at seventeen knots.” In this case a cutter was towed at ten knots on a course normal to that of the Vesuvius at a speed of ten knots. Of these three shots one would have been a hit. Schroeder points out that the scale of accuracy obtained was greater than that required of a “fish torpedo” fired in still water from a fixed platform.
The Naval Board present reported: “This the Board considers a favorable showing under the circumstances.” By this time Schroeder was becoming somewhat disenchanted as to the suitability of the Vesuvius as a vehicle for the guns. Her general unhandiness, her ability to roll 40° each way twelve times a minute, and her general poor sea-keeping qualities did nothing to endear her to her crew. It was at about this time that Schroeder formed the opinion that “the individual ship was designed simply to carry the guns and to satisfy the popular and somewhat erratic desire for speed.”
Because only thirty shells could be carried on board and because these could not be accurately placed when fired under service conditions, Schroeder wrote, “It may be bluntly stated that had the Vesuvius been designed for less speed, she would have been a much more efficient and formidable vessel. . . . There is no use in being able to go fast and far if you cannot do anything when you get there.”
Schroeder’s quarrel was with the ship. Of the ultimate value of the guns, he still remained convinced. Not so, the bulk of the Navy. The service, in general, still regarded the vessel as a regrettable waste of money. Due to a change in administration, the Navy Department also looked on the ship with disfavor. Funds which had been voted for use in a sister ship were diverted to other uses, and the project indefinitely shelved.
Following this test the Vesuvius took her place on duty with the other ships of the Navy. These duties, which were common to other ships of her day, consisted in the main of assisting at the service trials of other new vessels and in attending days of local and national celebration at various ports on our eastern seaboard. Attendance at these “flower shows” was a major part of the Navy’s occupation. The Vesuvius was particularly suited to such work because of her shallow draft and high place in public favor. The former enabled her to visit almost any city in the East, and the latter assured her of a hearty welcome when she arrived. These activities, along with several rather sad attempts to act as a unit of a squadron, formed her main occupation until she was ordered for further tests of her guns. These tests took place at Port Royal, South Carolina, in January, 1893. On paper, they appear to be rather less successful than the first. The use of the new and improperly tested Rapieff fuzes caused considerable malfunctioning of the projectiles, and the general impression of the tests was poor. There were suggestions made at the time that the Vesuvius be converted to a conventional torpedo boat. She had tumbled from her place in the public’s favor, and as Schroeder said, “had been fairly laughed out of the court of service opinion.”
One of the most commonly aired criticisms of the Vesuvius was of her design. Her critics maintained that the best traits of her weapons were of advantage in shore bombardment and in coast defence work. For such tasks, her design was totally unsuitable. Despite her shallow draft, she was incapable of the “handy” behavior required of bombardment vessels. Again, her limited ammunition capacity and totally unprotected hull construction rendered her unfit for use as a floating battery. A half inch of armor on her conning tower was her only protective feature. Her magazines were vulnerable. As her critics maintained, it is not unlikely that she could have been destroyed by the lightest of automatic weapons.
The Vesuvius returned to her duties with the fleet. She served there uneventfully until 1898. Then, under command of Lieutenant Commander J. E. Pillsbury, she proceeded to Key West, and thence to Santiago, to serve as one of the ships blockading that port.
At night, when the blockade tightened about the channel mouth, she was occasionally used to liven things up for the Spaniards. She would stand in towards the harbor mouth and fire shells on estimated bearings at the fortresses around the harbor and at the ships in it. She, of course, had no accurate plot of targets, no means of observing them, and no serviceable reference point from which to plot her own position. As one may imagine, the practise was poor. In daylight, it is probable that she could have accomplished a great deal. Unfortunately, the state of the coast defenses made it unwise for her to attempt to maintain her firing position at such times.
That she did have some worthwhile effect is attested to by the Spaniards themselves. Certain of these imaginative gentlemen worked themselves into quite a state of nerves, by taking the helical tail fins for air screws and conceiving that they were being bombarded from the air,—a bit early in history for the guided missile to appear.
The shells of the Vesuvius had a considerable morale effect on the Spaniards. Fired blind though they were, they landed uncomfortably close aboard some of the Spanish vessels. The cruiser Reina Mercedes was drenched by the splash from one of the Vesuvius’ shells. Certain of the observations of a Spanish naval lieutenant who witnessed the Vesuvius’ work are quoted as follows: “She threw two shells, destroying the house of a lightkeeper, and seriously damaging the Fortress (El Morro), wounding three sailors of the Reina Mercedes.”
Of one shell which landed on a mountain side the lieutenant says:
It looked as though a road had been plowed through the mountain ... for a distance of twenty meters.
Another fell, and while the excavation was not deep, twenty horses could easily be contained.
Another fell in the water close to the Mercedes and a destroyer, and both were shaken badly.
The shells used were the sub-caliber type with 200 pound loads. The blast effect of these shells seems to be all that was claimed. It is not unlikely that these nightly bombardments were a contributing factor in Cervera’s opinion that the harbor was no longer tenable, and that he might as well go out and fight.
In his official report of June 22, 1898, Admiral Sampson wrote: “The Vesuvius has done almost nightly firing since she has been here. There is no doubt that shells of this character have a very important effect.”
The day of the Vesuvius was past. The idea was good, but developments in chemical propellants and the explosive shell had made her obsolete. The Pneumatic Dynamite Gun Company had failed. The Maxims attempted to continue and expand the work, but their only success was to have two guns of the same principle, but modified type, mounted on our first submarine, the Holland.
The Navy’s opinion of the continuing worth of the Vesuvius is given by Secretary of the Navy John D. Long. He wrote:
Under the protection of the guns of the North Atlantic fleet she threw dynamite shells into the harbor. The effect produced was materially unimportant though morally great. This experience confirmed the view that the ship was of limited usefullness, and she is now in ordinary awaiting transformation into a torpedo boat.
In the field of mechanical progress the Vesuvius gave admirable service. The perfection of shipboard air compression techniques, and the experience gained in the use of subsonic projectiles, are of an order of value far exceeding the cost of the ship herself. As a test stand for the equipment of an adolescent Navy, she was ideal. As a fighting vessel, she was an awkward thousand-in-one shot.