Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, during the First World War. The battle unfolded in extensive manoeuvring and three main engagements, from 31 May to 1 June 1916, off the North Sea coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula, it was the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war. Jutland was the third fleet action between steel battleships, following the smaller but more decisive battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War. Jutland was the last major battle in world history fought by battleships. Germany's High Seas Fleet intended to lure out and destroy a portion of the Grand Fleet, as the German naval force was insufficient to engage the entire British fleet; this formed part of a larger strategy to break the British blockade of Germany and to allow German naval vessels access to the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Great Britain's Royal Navy pursued a strategy of engaging and destroying the High Seas Fleet, thereby keeping German naval forces contained and away from Britain and her shipping lanes.
The Germans planned to use Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper's fast scouting group of five modern battlecruisers to lure Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's battlecruiser squadrons into the path of the main German fleet. They stationed submarines in advance across the routes of the British ships. However, the British learned from signal intercepts that a major fleet operation was so on 30 May Jellicoe sailed with the Grand Fleet to rendezvous with Beatty, passing over the locations of the German submarine picket lines while they were unprepared; the German plan had been delayed, causing further problems for their submarines, which had reached the limit of their endurance at sea. On the afternoon of 31 May, Beatty encountered Hipper's battlecruiser force long before the Germans had expected. In a running battle, Hipper drew the British vanguard into the path of the High Seas Fleet. By the time Beatty sighted the larger force and turned back towards the British main fleet, he had lost two battlecruisers from a force of six battlecruisers and four powerful battleships—though he had sped ahead of his battleships of 5th Battle Squadron earlier in the day losing them as an integral component for much of this opening action against the five ships commanded by Hipper.
Beatty's withdrawal at the sight of the High Seas Fleet, which the British had not known were in the open sea, would reverse the course of the battle by drawing the German fleet in pursuit towards the British Grand Fleet. Between 18:30, when the sun was lowering on the western horizon, back-lighting the German forces, nightfall at about 20:30, the two fleets—totalling 250 ships between them—directly engaged twice. Fourteen British and eleven German ships sank, with a total of 9,823 casualties. After sunset, throughout the night, Jellicoe manoeuvred to cut the Germans off from their base, hoping to continue the battle the next morning, but under the cover of darkness Scheer broke through the British light forces forming the rearguard of the Grand Fleet and returned to port. Both sides claimed victory; the British succeeded in containing the German fleet. The British press criticised the Grand Fleet's failure to force a decisive outcome, while Scheer's plan of destroying a substantial portion of the British fleet failed.
The British strategy of denying Germany access to both the United Kingdom and the Atlantic did succeed, the British long-term goal. The Germans' "fleet in being" continued to pose a threat, requiring the British to keep their battleships concentrated in the North Sea, but the battle reinforced the German policy of avoiding all fleet-to-fleet contact. At the end of 1916, after further unsuccessful attempts to reduce the Royal Navy's numerical advantage, the German Navy accepted that its surface ships had been contained, subsequently turning its efforts and resources to unrestricted submarine warfare and the destruction of Allied and neutral shipping, which—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—by April 1917 triggered the United States of America's declaration of war on Germany. Subsequent reviews commissioned by the Royal Navy generated strong disagreement between supporters of Jellicoe and Beatty concerning the two admirals' performance in the battle. Debate over their performance and the significance of the battle continues to this day.
With 16 dreadnought-type battleships, compared with the Royal Navy's 28, the German High Seas Fleet stood little chance of winning a head-to-head clash. The Germans therefore adopted a divide-and-conquer strategy, they would stage raids into the North Sea and bombard the English coast, with the aim of luring out small British squadrons and pickets, which could be destroyed by superior forces or submarines. In January 1916, Admiral von Pohl, commander of the German fleet, fell ill, he was replaced by Scheer, who believed that the fleet had been used too defensively, had better ships and men than the British, ought to take the war to them. According to Scheer, the German naval strategy should be: to damage the English fleet by offensive raids against the naval forces engaged in watching and blockading the German Bight, as well as by mine-laying on the British coast and submarine attack, whenever possible. After an equality of strength had been realised as a result of these operations, all our forces had been made ready and concentrated, an attempt was to be made with our fleet to seek battle under circumstanc
Conning tower
A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine armored, from which an officer in charge can conn the vessel, controlling movements of the ship by giving orders to those responsible for the ship's engine, rudder and ground tackle. It is located as high on the ship as practical, to give the conning team good visibility of the entirety of the ship, ocean conditions, other vessels; the verb "conn" stems from the verb "conduct" rather than another plausible precedent, the verb "control". On surface ships, the conning tower was a feature of all battleships and armored cruisers from about 1860 to the early years of World War II. Located at the front end of the superstructure, the conning tower was a armored cylinder, with tiny slit windows on three sides providing a reasonable field of view. Designed to shield just enough personnel and devices for navigation during battles, its interior was cramped and basic, with little more than engine order telegraphs, speaking tubes or telephones, a steering wheel.
At all other times than during battles, the ship would be navigated from the bridge. Conning towers were used by the French on their floating batteries at the Battle of Kinburn, they were fitted to the first ironclad the French battleship La Gloire. The first Royal Navy conning tower appeared on HMS Warrior. In the Royal Navy, the conning tower became a massive structure reaching weights of hundreds of tons on the Admiral-class battlecruisers, formed part of a massive armoured citadel on the mid-1920s Nelson-class battleships, which had armour over a foot thick; the King George V class, in contrast to the Nelson class, had comparatively light conning tower protection with 4.5-inch sides, 3-inch front and rear, 2-inch roof and deck. The RN's analysis of World War I combat revealed that command personnel were unlikely to use an armoured conning tower, preferring the superior visibility of unarmoured bridge positions. Older RN battleships that were reconstructed with new superstructures had their armoured conning towers removed and replaced with much lighter structures.
These new conning towers were placed much higher in the ship, for superior visibility. There is no evidence that RN captains and admirals used the armoured conning towers on those ships that did have them during World War II, for example, Vice-Admiral Holland and Captain Kerr commanding Hood during the Battle of the Denmark Strait from her unarmoured bridge. In the United States Navy, battleship captains and admirals preferred to use the unarmoured bridge positions during combat; the USN had mixed opinions of the conning tower, pointing out that its weight, high above the ship's center of gravity, did not contribute directly to fighting ability. Beginning in the late 1930s, as radar surpassed visual sighting as the primary method of detecting other ships, battleships began reducing or eliminating the conning tower; the battle of Guadalcanal during World War II slowed this trend: when the Japanese battleship Kirishima hit USS South Dakota on the superstructure, many exposed crewmen were killed or wounded yet Admiral Lee and Captain Davis of USS Washington declined to use the armoured conning tower during the battle.
Soon the heavy battleship conning towers were removed from USS Pennsylvania, USS Tennessee, USS California, USS West Virginia during their post-Pearl Harbor attack reconstructions and replaced with much lighter cruiser-style conning towers. By the end of World War II, US ships were designed with expanded weather bridges enclosing the armored conning towers. On Iowa-class battleships, the conning tower is a 17.3-inch thick vertical armor-plated cylinder with slit windows located in the middle of the bridge, climbing from deck 03 all the way up to the flying bridge on 05. With the demise of battleships after World War II, along with the advent of missiles and nuclear weapons during the Cold War, modern warships no longer feature conning towers; the conning tower of a submarine was a small watertight compartment within its sail equipped with instruments and controls and from which the periscopes were used to direct the boat and launch torpedo attacks. It should not be confused with the submarine's control room, directly below it in the main pressure hull.
As improvements in technology allowed the periscopes to be made longer it became unnecessary to raise the conning station above the main pressure hull. USS Triton was the last American submarine to have a conning tower; the additional conning tower pressure hull was eliminated and its functions were added to the command and control center. Thus it is incorrect to refer to the sail of a modern submarine as a conning tower. "Conning Tower". The New Student's Reference Work. 1914
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire known as Imperial Russia or Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917. The third largest empire in world history, at its greatest extent stretching over three continents, Europe and North America, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires; the rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighboring rival powers: the Golden Horde, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. It played a major role in 1812–1814 in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe and expanded to the west and south; the House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, its matrilineal branch of patrilineal German descent the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov ruled from 1762. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean, into Alaska and Northern California in America on the east.
With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics and religion. There were numerous dissident elements. Economically, the empire had a predominantly agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs, Russian peasants; the economy industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways and factories. The land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that emerged, he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, laid the foundations of the Russian state. Emperor Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an huge empire into a major European power, he moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of St. Petersburg, led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a modern, Europe-oriented, rationalist system.
Empress Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. Emperor Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861, his policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. That connection by 1914 led to Russia's entry into the First World War on the side of France, the United Kingdom, Serbia, against the German and Ottoman empires; the Russian Empire functioned as an absolute monarchy on principles of Orthodoxy and Nationality until the Revolution of 1905 and became a de jure constitutional monarchy. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917 as a result of massive failures in its participation in the First World War. Though the Empire was only proclaimed by Tsar Peter I following the Treaty of Nystad, some historians would argue that it was born either when Ivan III of Russia conquered Veliky Novgorod in 1478, or when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552. According to another point of view, the term Tsardom, used after the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547, was a contemporary Russian word for empire.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonization of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was divided in the 1790 -- 1815 era, with much of the population going to Russia. Most of the 19th-century growth came from adding territory in Asia, south of Siberia. Peter I the Great played a major role in introducing Russia to the European state system. While the vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns; the class of kholops, close in status to slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation. Russian agricultural kholops were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks.
His attention turned to the North. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport, except at Archangel on the White Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him to make a secret alliance in 1699 with Saxony, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden, resulting in the Great Northern War; the war ended in 1721. Peter acquired four provinces situated east of the Gulf of Finland; the coveted access to the sea was now secured. There he built Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, to replace Moscow, which had long been Russia's cultural center. In 1722, he tur
Compound steam engine
A compound steam engine unit is a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. A typical arrangement for a compound engine is that the steam is first expanded in a high-pressure cylinder having given up heat and losing pressure, it exhausts directly into one or more larger-volume low-pressure cylinders. Multiple-expansion engines employ additional cylinders, of progressively lower pressure, to extract further energy from the steam. Invented in 1781, this technique was first employed on a Cornish beam engine in 1804. Around 1850, compound engines were first introduced into Lancashire textile mills. There are many compound systems and configurations, but there are two basic types, according to how HP and LP piston strokes are phased and hence whether the HP exhaust is able to pass directly from HP to LP or whether pressure fluctuation necessitates an intermediate "buffer" space in the form of a steam chest or pipe known as a receiver. In a single-expansion steam engine, the high-pressure steam enters the cylinder at boiler pressure through an inlet valve.
The steam pressure forces the piston down the cylinder. After the steam supply is cut off the trapped steam continues to expand, pushing the piston to the end of its stroke, where the exhaust valve opens and expels the depleted steam to the atmosphere, or to a condenser; this "cut-off" allows much more work to be extracted, since the expansion of the steam is doing additional work beyond that done by the steam at boiler pressure. An earlier cut-off increases the expansion ratio, which in principle allows more energy to be extracted and increases efficiency, but as the trapped steam expands its temperature drops; this temperature drop would occur if the cylinder were insulating so that no heat is released from the system. As a result, steam leaves at a lower temperature; the changing steam temperature alternately heats and cools the cylinder with every stroke and is a source of inefficiency which increases at higher expansion ratios. Beyond a certain point, further increasing the expansion ratio will decrease efficiency due to the increased heating and cooling.
A method to lessen the magnitude of this heating and cooling was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his Woolf high pressure compound engine in 1805. In the compound engine, high-pressure steam from the boiler first expands in a high-pressure cylinder and enters one or more subsequent lower pressure cylinders; the complete expansion of the steam occurs across multiple cylinders and, as there is less expansion in each cylinder, less heat is lost by the steam in each. This reduces the magnitude of cylinder heating and cooling, making higher expansion ratios practical and increasing the efficiency of the engine. There are other advantages: as the temperature range is smaller, cylinder condensation is reduced. Loss due to condensation is restricted to the LP cylinder. Pressure difference is less in each cylinder so there is less steam leakage at the piston and valves; the turning moment is more uniform, so balancing is easier and a smaller flywheel may be used. Only the smaller HP cylinder needs to be built to withstand the highest pressure, which reduces the overall weight.
Components are subject to less strain, so they can be lighter. The reciprocating parts of the engine are lighter; the compound could be started at any point in the cycle, in the event of mechanical failure the compound could be reset to act as a simple, thus keep running. To derive equal work from lower-pressure steam requires a larger cylinder volume as this steam occupies a greater volume. Therefore, the bore, in rare cases the stroke as well, are increased in low-pressure cylinders, resulting in larger cylinders. Double-expansion engines expand the steam in two stages, but this does not imply that all such engines have two cylinders, they may have four cylinders working as two LP-HP pairs, or the work of the large LP cylinder can be split across two smaller cylinders, with one HP cylinder exhausting into either LP cylinder, giving a 3-cylinder layout where the cylinder and piston diameter of all three are about the same, making the reciprocating masses easier to balance. Two-cylinder compounds can be arranged as: Cross-compound – the cylinders are side by side Tandem compound – the cylinders are end to end, driving a common connecting rod Telescopic-compound – the cylinders are one inside the other Angle-compound – the cylinders are arranged in a vee and drive a common crank.
The adoption of compounding was widespread for stationary industrial units where the need was for increased power at decreasing cost, universal for marine engines after 1880. It was not used in railway locomotives where it was perceived as complicated and unsuitable for the harsh railway operating environment and limited space afforded by the loading gauge. Compounding was never common on British railways and not employed at all after 1930, but was used in a limited way in many other countries; the first successful attempt to fly a heavier-than-air fixed-wing aircraft on steam power occurred in 1933, when George and William Besler converted a Travel Air 2000 biplane to fly on a 150 hp angle-compound V-twin steam engine of their own design instead of the usual Curtiss OX-5 inline or radial aviation gasoline engine it would have used. It is a logical extension of the compound engine to split the expansion into yet more
Mediterranean Fleet
The British Mediterranean Fleet known as the Mediterranean Station was part of the Royal Navy. The Fleet was one of the most prestigious commands in the navy for the majority of its history, defending the vital sea link between the United Kingdom and the majority of the British Empire in the Eastern Hemisphere; the first Commander-in-Chief for the Mediterranean Fleet was the appointment of General at Sea Robert Blake in September 1654 the Fleet was in existence until 1967. The Royal Navy gained a foothold in the Mediterranean Sea when Gibraltar was captured by the British in 1704 during the War of Spanish Succession, formally allocated to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Though the British had maintained a naval presence in the Mediterranean before, the capture of Gibraltar allowed the British to establish their first naval base there; the British used Port Mahon, on the island of Menorca, as a naval base. However, British control there was only temporary. In 1800, the British took Malta, to be handed over to the Knights of Malta under the Treaty of Amiens.
When the Napoleonic Wars resumed in 1803, the British kept Malta for use as a naval base. Following Napoleon's defeat, the British continued their presence in Malta, turned it into the main base for the Mediterranean Fleet. Between the 1860s and 1900s, the British undertook a number of projects to improve the harbours and dockyard facilities, Malta's harbours were sufficient to allow the entire fleet to be safely moored there. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Mediterranean Fleet was the largest single squadron of the Royal Navy, with 10 first-class battleships—double the number in the Channel Fleet—and a large number of smaller warships. On 22 June 1893, the bulk of the fleet, eight battleships and three large cruisers, were conducting their annual summer exercises off Tripoli, when the fleet's flagship, the battleship HMS Victoria, collided with the battleship HMS Camperdown. Victoria sank within fifteen minutes. Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, was among the dead.
Of the three original Invincible-class battlecruisers which entered service in the first half of 1908, two joined the Mediterranean Fleet in 1914. They and Indefatigable formed the nucleus of the fleet at the start of the First World War when British forces pursued the German ships Goeben and Breslau. A modernised Warspite became the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief and Second-in-Command, Mediterranean Fleet in 1926. Malta, as part of the British Empire from 1814, was a shipping station and was the headquarters for the Mediterranean Fleet until the mid-1930s. Due to the perceived threat of air-attack from the Italian mainland, the fleet was moved to Alexandria, Egypt shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Sir Andrew Cunningham took command of the fleet from Warspite on 3 September 1939, under him the major formations of the Fleet were the 1st Battle Squadron 1st Cruiser Squadron, 3rd Cruiser Squadron, Rear Admiral John Tovey, with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Destroyer Flotillas, the aircraft carrier Glorious.
In 1940, the Mediterranean Fleet carried out a successful aircraft carrier attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto by air. Other major actions included the Battle of Crete; the Fleet had to block Italian and German reinforcements and supplies for the North African Campaign. In October 1946, Saumarez hit a mine in the Corfu Channel, starting a series of events known as the Corfu Channel Incident; the channel was cleared in "Operation Recoil" the next month, involving 11 minesweepers under the guidance of Ocean, two cruisers, three destroyers, three frigates. In May 1948, Sir Arthur Power took over as Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, in his first act arranged a show of force to discourage the crossing of Jewish refugees into Palestine; when that year Britain pulled out of the British Mandate of Palestine, four destroyers, two frigates escorted the departing High Commissioner, aboard the cruiser Euryalus. The force stayed to cover the evacuation of British troops into the Haifa enclave and south via Gaza.
From 1952 to 1967, the post of Commander in Chief Mediterranean Fleet was given a dual-hatted role as NATO Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Mediterranean in charge of all forces assigned to NATO in the Mediterranean Area. The British made strong representations within NATO in discussions regarding the development of the Mediterranean NATO command structure, wishing to retain their direction of NATO naval command in the Mediterranean to protect their sea lines of communication running through the Mediterranean to the Middle East and Far East; when a NATO naval commander, Admiral Robert B. Carney, C-in-C Allied Forces Southern Europe, was appointed, relations with the incumbent British C-in-C, Admiral Sir John Edelsten, were frosty. Edlesten, on making an friendly offer of the use of communications facilities to Carney, who lacked secure communications facilities, was met with "I'm not about to play Faust to your Mephistopheles through the medium of communications!":261In 1956, ships of the fleet, together with the French Navy, took part in the Suez War against Egypt.
From 1957 to 1959, Rear Admiral Charles Madden held the post of Flag Officer Malta, with responsibilities for three squadrons of minesweepers, an amphibious warfare squadron, a flotilla of submarines stationed at the bases around Valletta Harbour. In this capacity, he had to employ considerab
Deck (ship)
A deck is a permanent covering over a compartment or a hull of a ship. On a boat or ship, the primary or upper deck is the horizontal structure that forms the "roof" of the hull, strengthening it and serving as the primary working surface. Vessels have more than one level both within the hull and in the superstructure above the primary deck, similar to the floors of a multi-storey building, that are referred to as decks, as are certain compartments and decks built over specific areas of the superstructure. Decks for some purposes have specific names; the main purpose of the upper or primary deck is structural, only secondarily to provide weather-tightness and support people and equipment. The deck serves as the lid to the complex box girder, it resists tension and racking forces. The deck's scantling is the same as the topsides, or might be heavier if the deck is expected to carry heavier loads; the deck will be reinforced around deck fittings such as cleats, or bollards. On ships with more than one level, deck refers to the level itself.
The actual floor surface is called the sole, the term deck refers to a structural member tying the ships frames or ribs together over the keel. In modern ships, the interior decks are numbered from the primary deck, #1, downward and upward. So the first deck below the primary deck will be #2, the first above the primary deck will be #A2 or #S2; some merchant ships may alternatively designate decks below the primary deck machinery spaces, by numbers, those above it, in the accommodation block, by letters. Ships may call decks by common names, or may invent fanciful and romantic names for a specific deck or area of that specific ship, such as the Lido deck of the Princess Cruises' Love Boat. Equipment mounted on deck, such as the ship's wheel, fife rails, so forth, may be collectively referred to as deck furniture. Weather decks in western designs evolved from having structures fore and aft of the ship clear. Eastern designs developed earlier, with efficient middle decks and minimalist fore and aft cabin structures across a range of designs.
In vessels having more than one deck there are various naming conventions, alphabetically, etc. However, there are various common historical names and types of decks: 01 level is the term used in naval services to refer to the deck above the main deck; the next higher decks are referred to as the 02 level, the 03 level, so on. Although these are formally called decks, they are referred to as levels, because they are incomplete decks that do not extend all the way from the stem to the stern or across the ship. Afterdeck an open deck area toward the stern-aft. Berth deck: A deck next below the gun deck, where the hammocks of the crew are slung. Boat deck: Especially on ships with sponsons, the deck area where lifeboats or the ship's gig are stored. Boiler deck: The passenger deck above the vessel's boilers. Bridge deck: The deck area including the helm and navigation station, where the Officer of the Deck/Watch will be found known as the conn An athwartships structure at the forward end of the cockpit with a deck somewhat lower than the primary deck, to prevent a pooping wave from entering through the companionway.
May refer to the deck of a bridge. Flight deck: A deck from which aircraft take off or land. Flush deck: Any continuous unbroken deck from stem to stern. Forecastle deck: A partial deck above the main deck under which the sailors have their berths, extending from the foremast to the bow. Freeboard deck: assigned by a classification society to determine the ship's freeboard. Gun deck: on a multi-decked vessel, a deck below the upper deck where the ships' cannon were carried; the term referred to deck for which the primary function was the mounting of cannon to be fired in broadsides. However, on many smaller and unrated vessels the upper deck and quarterdeck bore all of the cannons but were not referred to as the gun deck. Hangar deck: A deck aboard an aircraft carrier used to store and maintain aircraft. Half-deck: That portion of the deck next below the forecastle or quarterdeck, between the mainmast and the cabin. Helicopter deck: Usually located near the stern and always kept clear of obstacles hazardous to a helicopter landing.
Hurricane deck:, the upper deck a light deck, erected above the frame of the hull. Lido deck: Open area at or near the stern of a passenger ship, housing the main outdoor swimming pool and sunbathing area. Lower deck: the deck over the hold, orig. only of a ship with two decks. Synonym for berth deck. Alternative name for a secondary gun deck Main deck: The principal deck of a vessel. Middle or Waist deck the working area of the deck. Orlop deck: The deck or part of a deck where the cables are stowed below the waterline, it is the lowest deck in a ship. Poop deck: The deck forming the roof of a poop or poop cabin, built on the upper deck and extending from the mizzenmast aft. Promenade deck: A "wrap-around porch" found on passenger ships a
Armored cruiser
The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship and fast enough to outrun any battleship it encountered. Varying in size, it was distinguished from other types of cruiser by its belt armor—thick iron plating on much of the hull to protect the ship from shellfire much like that on battleships; the first armored cruiser, the Imperial Russian Navy's General-Admiral, was launched in 1873 and combined sail and steam propulsion. By the 1890s cruisers took on a modern appearance. For many decades naval technology had not advanced far enough for designers to produce a cruiser which combined an armored belt with the long range and high speed required to fulfill its mission, it was possible to build cruisers which were faster and better all-round using this type of ship, which relied on a lighter armored deck to protect the vital parts of the ship.
The invention of face-hardened armor in the mid-1890s offered effective protection with less weight than previously. In 1908 the armored cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser which, with armament equivalent to that of a dreadnought battleship and steam turbine engines, was faster and more powerful than armored cruisers. At around the same time, the term "light cruiser" came into use for small cruisers with armored belts. Despite the fact they were now considered second-class ships, armored cruisers were used in World War I. Most surviving armored cruisers from this conflict were scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which imposed limits on warships and defined a cruiser as a ship of 10,000 tons or less carrying guns of 8-inch caliber or less—rather smaller than many of the large armored cruisers. A handful survived in one form or another until World War II; the armored cruiser was developed in the 1870s as an attempt to combine the virtues of the armored ironclad warship and the fast and long-ranged, but unarmored, cruisers of the time.
Such a ship was desirable to protect overseas trade and for the French and British, to police their vast overseas empires. The concern within higher naval circles was that without ships that could fulfill these requirements and incorporate new technology, their fleet would become obsolete and ineffective should a war at sea arise. Concern over obsolescence in official circles was further fueled by the race between the increasing size of naval guns and of armor strong enough to withstand such fire. In 1860, one of the largest naval cannons in standard use had a bore of 8 inches and fired a 68-pound solid shot or 51 pound spherical shell. By 1884, guns with as wide a bore as 16.25 inches, firing an 1,800-pound exploding shell, were being mounted on naval vessels. This gun could penetrate up to 34 inches of the earliest form of naval armor; these were muzzle-loading guns. Breech-loading cannon, which were readopted into naval use in the 1870s, were more destructive than muzzle loaders due to their higher rate of fire.
The development of rifled cannon, which improved accuracy, advancements in shells were other factors. Although a cruiser would not face the largest-caliber guns of a battleship and many navies used smaller weapons as they did not wear out as fast as larger ones did, cruisers still needed some form of protection to preclude being shot to pieces; the adoption of rolled iron armor in 1865 and sandwich armor in 1870 gave ships a chance to withstand fire from larger guns. Both these protective schemes used wood as an important component, which made them heavy and limited speed, the key factor in a cruiser's ability to perform its duties satisfactorily. While the first ocean-going ironclads had been launched around 1860, the "station ironclads" built for long-range colonial service such as the British Audacious class and French Belliqueuse were too slow, at 13 and 11 knots to raid enemy commerce or hunt down enemy commerce raiders, tasks assigned to frigates or corvettes. Powered by both sail and steam but without the additional weight of armor, these ships could reach speeds of up to 16 or 17 knots.
The most powerful among them were the British Inconstant, the U. S. Navy's the French Duquesne; the British had hoped to rely on these vessels to serve the more distant reaches of its empire. In the aftermath of the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862, where United States wooden warships were defeated by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, the Admiralty realized that its ships could theoretically encounter an ironclad in any theater of operation. Ship propulsion was improving but was taking time to develop. Naval engines in the 1860s were single-expansion types, in which steam was expanded into a cylinder, pushed a piston and was released. Compounding, where steam is passed through a series of cylinders of increasing size before being released, was a more efficient process. With greater efficiency came complex machinery and the larger potential for breakdown. However, advances in metallurgy and engineering, the potential for smaller bunkerage and the successful use of compounding in commercial engines made it an attractive option for naval engines, as well.
By the 1870s, compound engines had become standard for warships. Compound
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