Chatham's Ironclad

HMS Achilles, the first ironclad built at a Royal Dockyard

If you are one of the amazing people who has signed up to this then firstly - thanks! But secondly I made mention in the “Often Overlooked” post on overlooked ship designs of the Iron clad HMS Achilles and about her importance but didn’t go into too much detail. 

Well…

The French ironclad Gloire concerned the Royal Navy and her very existence had created a bow wave of issues, the main one being that she made all other warships afloat obsolete. Her thirty-six 6.5” muzzle loaded rifled guns fired exploding shot which would decimate the wooden hulls of her contemporaries coupled with 4.7”thick iron plates on top of the 17” thick timber hull made her somewhat impervious to British 65 pounder cannon balls. This one French ship could decimate a British squadron without really blinking and from the moment she touched the water on 24th November 1859 steps had to be taken to redress the balance and calm yet another wave of fear of a French invasion.

The Admiralty needed to commission a similar vessel or two as quickly as possible but the Royal Dockyards had no experience of working with Iron, nor the facilities and had full workloads so they were forced to look for private contractors to build their first Ironclads. Warrior and Black Prince were the first to be built followed by the Defence class Resistance  and Defence but this was not a long term solution.

Chatham Dockyard was chosen as the first Royal Dockyard to build the third vessel, the Achilles was to be an improvement on the previous two but there needed to be some changes at the Yard before she could be built. 

The first step was that many of the dockyard workers needed retraining to work with iron rather than wood and this was an easier thing said than done as the existing Smitheries (No.1 and No.2) were the least favoured workplaces due to the manual hard labour, the heat and noise and even the bonus of six pints of strong ale a day was not always enough. Still, employment was necessary and with the number of sawyers being stood down idle hands were pressed elsewhere.

The 1911 map of Chatham Dockyard showing the Machinery shop No.1, the Armoured plate shop and the surgeryalongside dock No. 2

Achilles was to be laid down in No.2 dock, where Victory had been built a century beforehand and had been made larger in 1845 but still more needed to be done. No.1 dock was filled in and the new Machine shop was built alongside No.2 dock to assist with the machinery necessary for the construction and another building, the armoured plate shop was built nextdoor to provide the plates necessary for the vessel’s belt armour. Another new building was the onsite surgery built behind the Admiral’s offices for the new injuries that were encountered in metal working especially more head injuries and burns compared to the hand injuries and blunt force trauma caused by wood working. They also built a mortuary attached to the surgery.

Edward G Dalziel’s wood engrving of the “Building of HMS Achilles”

Charles Dickens wrote about the construction of the ship in his “Uncommercial Traveller”

Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG! What on earth is this! This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers! Yet all this stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the full work is in hand for which this is but note of preparation — the day when the scuppers that are now fitting like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall do work here of another kind in smoke and fire, that day. These steam-worked engines alongside, helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron plates about, as though they were so many leaves of trees, would be rent limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute then. To think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and oaken chest, can ever swim or roll! To think that any force of wind and wave could ever break her! To think that wherever I see a glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from within — as I do now, there, and there, and there! — and two watching men on a stage without, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the ship! To think that the difficulty I experience in appreciating the ship's size when I am on board, arises from her being a series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so that internally she is ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of her might be smashed, and yet the remaining half suffice and be sound. Then, to go over the side again and down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulging out against the upper light, and tapering down towards me, is, with great pains and much clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of realising that this is a ship at all, and to become possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet what would even these things be, without the tributary workshops and the mechanical powers for piercing the iron plates — four inches and a half thick — for rivets, shaping them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of the ship's lines, and paring them away, with knives shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the design! These machines of tremendous force, so easily directed by one attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me to have in them something of the retiring character of the Yard. 'Obedient monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at equal distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all round.' Monster looks at its work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies, "I don't particularly want to do it; but if it must be done —!" The solid metal wriggles out, hot from the monster's crunching tooth, and it is done. 'Dutiful monster, observe this other mass of iron. It is required to be pared away, according to this delicately lessening and arbitrary line, which please to look at." Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings down its blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the line — very closely, being somewhat near-sighted. "I don't particularly want to do it; but if it must be done —!" Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured piece writhes off, and falls, a hot, tight-twisted snake, among the ashes. The making of the rivets is merely a pretty round game, played by a man and a boy, who put red-hot barley sugar in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone of the great machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great country: "We don't particularly want to do it; but if it must be done —!"

How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be held by such comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and lying near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part, I should as soon have thought of tethering an elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin. Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of this ship's hollow iron masts. They are large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other appliances. I wonder why only her anchors look small

The Achilles was floated out of the dock on 23rd December 1863 and finally completed on 26th November 1864 but what was she like?

Well, the Achilles was the largest vessel ever built for the Royal Navy at this point, her length being 380 feet with a 15.5 foot beam, displaced 9820 tons and towered over the dock she was built in. She had three main masts and still holds the record for the largest Royal Navy vessel sail plan as well as the largest sail plan with the fore main sails being 4000 square feet in size and overall she carried 50,000 square foot of sail and over 29 miles of rope and wire for rigging. 

Engine wise Achilles’ had two 112” cylinders which had a four foot stroke and were on one side of the propeller shaft and drove a 24.5 foot propeller. On the other side of the shaft was the condensers. Feeding the engine was a group of ten fire tube boilers and could get this behemoth up to 14.3 knots on her trials. To feed the boilers her bunkers could carry 750 tons of coal which, on a good day, could give Achilles a range of 2500 miles. If anyone has visited Chatham Dockyard and had a look at HMS Gannet you’ve probably seen the glass plate in the Commander’s Cabin where the propeller would be hoisted up when she is under sail. This was quite common as the propeller could cause drag for the vessel and in Gannet’s case she was faster under sail anyway. In Achilles’ case the propeller was non-retractable.

Her armour was where she was really powerful. Unlike her predecessors who only really put armour around the machinery spaces as the Protected cruisers at the end of the century would and the gun batteries but Achilles had an all over Armoured belt. Running along and below the waterline and over the batteries the behemoth sported 4” armour plate which was impervious to solid shot at a distance of 1500 yards.

Her armament evolved as time went by and as newer, better guns became available but on her commissioning she had six 68 pounder smoothbore guns, sixteen 100 pounder smoothbore cannons and four 7” armstrong rifled breach loaders - the big boys that would actually do damage to other ironclads.

For the crew the conditions weren’t too bad though she was very dark below deck with thousands of candle lamps but there were also two large ports on the main deck which could provide a good amount of light and that is where they messed, between the guns. You’d think the officers would have it better but not so. The main wardroom was two decks down and their only light came from two small skylights and their cabins, which opened off the wardroom were quite small with only a 6” scuttle to provide light though there was room for a tin bath in each room which was more than the Captain could do. She was said to be awful in bad weather and there was an accusation that one man a month was killed in a fall from the rigging but there was a period where 12 men were lost over a forty two month period which is in itself disconcerting.

One final mention of her size - the total compliment was 450 officers and men and it took 100 to heave the anchors up!

She never saw action though was part of a squadron sent through the Dardanelles in 1878 and eventually lay derelict from 1885-1901 and after a spell in Malta she was brought home to Chatham as a depot ship eventually being scrapped in 1923.