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Ironclad warship

An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship protected by steel or iron armor constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, FRENCH IRONCLAD Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in November 1859, narrowly preempting the British Royal Navy. However, Britain built the first completely iron-hulled warships.

They were first used in warfare in 1862 during the American Civil War, when ironclads operated against wooden ships and, in a historic confrontation, against each other at the Battle of Hampton Roads in Virginia. Their performance demonstrated that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored ship of the line as the most powerful warship afloat. Ironclad gunboats became very successful in the American Civil War.

Ironclads were designed for several uses, including as high-seas battleships, long-range cruisers, and coastal defense ships. Rapid development of warship design in the late 19th century transformed the ironclad from a wooden-hulled vessel that carried sails to supplement its steam engines into the steel-built, turreted battleships, and cruisers familiar in the 20th century. This change was pushed forward by the development of heavier naval guns, more sophisticated steam engines, and advances in ferrous metallurgy that made steel shipbuilding possible.

The quick pace of change meant that many ships were obsolete almost as soon as they were finished and that naval tactics were in a state of flux. Many ironclads were built to make use of the naval ram, the torpedo, or sometimes both (as in the case with smaller ships and later torpedo boats), which several naval designers considered the important weapons of naval combat. There is no clear end to the ironclad period, but toward the end of the 1890s, the term ironclad dropped out of use. New ships were increasingly constructed to a standard pattern and designated as battleships or armored cruisers.

Development
The ironclad became technically feasible and tactically necessary because of developments in shipbuilding in the first half of the 19th century. According to naval historian J. Richard Hill: "The (ironclad) had three chief characteristics: a metal-skinned hull, steam propulsion and a main armament of guns capable of firing explosive shells. It is only when all three characteristics are present that a fighting ship can properly be called an ironclad." Each of these developments was introduced separately in the decade before the first ironclads.

Steam propulsion
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, fleets had relied on two types of major warship, the ship of the line and the frigate. The first major change to these types was the introduction of steam power for propulsion. While paddle steamer warships had been used from the 1830s onward, steam propulsion only became suitable for major warships after the adoption of the screw propeller in the 1840s.

Steam-powered screw frigates were built in the mid-1840s, and at the end of the decade the French Navy introduced steam power to its line of battle. Napoleon III's ambition to gain greater influence in Europe required a sustained challenge to the British at sea. The first purpose-built steam battleship was the 90-gun FRENCH SHIP Napoléon in 1850. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 kn, regardless of the wind conditions: a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement.

The introduction of the steam ship-of-the-line led to a building competition between France and Britain. Eight sister ships to Napoléon were built in France over a period of ten years, but the United Kingdom soon managed to take the lead in production. Altogether, France built ten new wooden steam battleships and converted 28 from older ships of the line, while the United Kingdom built 18 and converted 41.

Explosive shells
The era of the wooden steam ship-of-the-line was brief, because of new, more powerful naval guns. In the 1820s and 1830s, warships began to mount increasingly heavy guns, replacing 18- and 24-pounder guns with 32-pounders on sailing ships-of-the-line and introducing 68-pounders on steamers. Then, the first shell guns firing explosive shells were introduced following their development by the French Général Henri-Joseph Paixhans. By the 1840s they were part of the standard armament for naval powers including the French Navy, Royal Navy, Imperial Russian Navy and United States Navy.

It is often held that the power of explosive shells to smash wooden hulls, as demonstrated by the Russian destruction of an Ottoman squadron at the Battle of Sinop, spelled the end of the wooden-hulled warship. The more practical threat to wooden ships was from conventional cannon firing red-hot shot, which could lodge in the hull and cause a fire or ammunition explosion. Some navies even experimented with hollow shot filled with molten metal for extra incendiary power.

Iron armor
The use of wrought iron instead of wood as the primary material of ships' hulls began in the 1830s; the first "warship" with an iron hull was the gunboat Nemesis, built by Jonathan Laird of Birkenhead for the East India Company in 1839. There followed, also from Laird, the first full-sized warship with a metal hull, the 1842 steam frigate Guadalupe for the Mexican Navy. The latter ship performed well during the Naval Battle of Campeche, with her captain reporting that he thought that there were fewer iron splinters from Guadalupe's hull than from a wooden hull.

Encouraged by the positive reports of the iron hulls of those ships in combat, the Admiralty ordered a series of experiments to evaluate what happened when thin iron hulls were struck by projectiles, both solid shot and hollow shells, beginning in 1845 and lasting through 1851. Critics like Lieutenant-general Sir Howard Douglas believed that the splinters from the hull were even more dangerous than those from wooden hulls and the tests partially confirmed this belief. What was ignored was that 14 in of wood backing the iron would stop most of the splinters from penetrating and that relatively thin plates of iron backed by the same thickness of wood would generally cause shells to split open and fail to detonate. One factor in the performance of wrought iron during these tests that was not understood by metallurgists of the day was that wrought iron begins to become brittle at temperatures below 20 °C. Many of the tests were conducted at temperatures below this while the battles were fought in tropical climates.

The early experimental results seemed to support the critics and party politics came into play as the Whig First Russell ministry replaced the Tory Second Peel Ministry in 1846. The new administration sided with the critics and ordered that the four iron-hulled propeller frigates ordered by the Tories be converted into troopships. No iron warships would be ordered until the beginning of the Crimean War in 1854.

Following the demonstration of the power of explosive shells against wooden ships at the Battle of Sinop, and fearing that his own ships would be vulnerable to the Paixhans guns of Russian fortifications in the Crimean War, Emperor Napoleon III ordered the development of light-draft floating batteries, equipped with heavy guns and protected by heavy armor. Experiments made during the first half of 1854 proved highly satisfactory, and on 17 July 1854, the French communicated to the British Government that a solution had been found to make gun-proof vessels and that plans would be communicated. After tests in September 1854, the British Admiralty agreed to build five armored floating batteries on the French plans.

The French floating batteries were deployed in 1855 as a supplement to the wooden steam battle fleet in the Crimean War. The role of the battery was to assist unarmored mortar and gunboats bombarding shore fortifications. The French used three of their ironclad batteries (Lave, Tonnante and Dévastation) in 1855 against the defenses at the Battle of Kinburn on the Black Sea, where they were effective against Russian shore defences. They would later be used again during the Italian war in the Adriatic in 1859. The British floating batteries HMS Glatton (1855) and HMS Meteor (1855) arrived too late to participate to the action at Kinburn. The British planned to use theirs in the Baltic Sea against the well-fortified Russian naval base at Kronstadt.

The batteries have a claim to the title of the first ironclad warships but they were capable of only 4 kn under their own power: they operated under their own power at the Battle of Kinburn, but had to be towed for long-range transit. They were also arguably marginal to the work of the navy. The brief success of the floating ironclad batteries convinced France to begin work on armored warships for their battlefleet.

Early ironclad ships and battles

By the end of the 1850s it was clear that France was unable to match British building of steam warships, and to regain the strategic initiative a dramatic change was required. The result was the first ocean-going ironclad, FRENCH IRONCLAD Gloire, begun in 1857 and launched in 1859. Gloire's wooden hull was modelled on that of a steam ship of the line, reduced to one deck, and sheathed in iron plates 4.5 in thick. She was propelled by a steam engine, driving a single screw propeller for a speed of 13 kn. She was armed with thirty-six 6.4 in rifled guns. France proceeded to construct 16 ironclad warships, including two sister ships to Gloire, and the only two-decked broadside ironclads ever built, FRENCH IRONCLAD Magenta and FRENCH IRONCLAD Solférino.

The Royal Navy had not been keen to sacrifice its advantage in steam ships of the line, but was determined that the first British ironclad would outmatch the French ships in every respect, particularly speed. A fast ship would have the advantage of being able to choose a range of engagement that could make her invulnerable to enemy fire. The British specification was more a large, powerful frigate than a ship-of-the-line. The requirement for speed meant a very long vessel, which had to be built from iron. The result was the construction of two Warrior-class ironclads; HMS Warrior (1860) and HMS Black Prince (1861). The ships had a successful design, though there were necessarily compromises between 'sea-keeping', strategic range and armor protection. Their weapons were more effective than those of Gloire, and with the largest set of steam engines yet fitted to a ship, they could steam at 14.3 knots (26.5 km/h). Yet the Gloire and her sisters had full iron-armor protection along the waterline and the battery itself.

The British Warrior and Black Prince (but also the smaller Defence and Resistance) were obliged to concentrate their armor in a central "citadel" or "armoured box", leaving many main deck guns and the fore and aft sections of the vessel unprotected. The use of iron in the construction of Warrior also came with some drawbacks; iron hulls required more regular and intensive repairs than wooden hulls, and iron was more susceptible to fouling by marine life.

By 1862, navies across Europe had adopted ironclads. Britain and France each had sixteen either completed or under construction, though the British vessels were larger. Austria, Italy, Russia, and Spain were also building ironclads. However, the first battles using the new ironclad ships took place during the American Civil War, between Union and Confederate ships in 1862. These were markedly different from the broadside-firing, masted designs of Gloire and Warrior. The clash of the Italian and Austrian fleets at the Battle of Lissa (1866), also had an important influence on the development of ironclad design.

First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War
The first use of ironclads in combat came in the U.S. Civil War. The U.S. Navy at the time the war broke out had no ironclads, its most powerful ships being six unarmored steam-powered frigates. Since the bulk of the Navy remained loyal to the Union, the Confederacy sought to gain advantage in the naval conflict by acquiring modern armored ships. In May 1861, the Confederate Congress appropriated $2 million dollars for the purchase of ironclads from overseas, and in July and August 1861 the Confederacy started work on construction and converting wooden ships.

On 12 October 1861, CSS Manassas became the first ironclad to enter combat, when she fought Union warships on the Mississippi during the Battle of the Head of Passes. She had been converted from a commercial vessel in New Orleans for river and coastal fighting. In February 1862, the larger CSS Virginia joined the Confederate Navy, having been rebuilt at Norfolk. Constructed on the hull of USS Merrimack (1855), Virginia originally was a conventional warship made of wood, but she was converted into an iron-covered casemate ironclad gunship, when she entered the Confederate Navy. By this time, the Union had completed seven ironclad gunboats of the City-class ironclad, and was about to complete USS Monitor, an innovative design proposed by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson. The Union was also building a large armored frigate, USS New Ironsides, and the smaller USS Galena (1862).

The first battle between ironclads happened on 9 March 1862, as the armored Monitor was deployed to protect the Union's wooden fleet from the ironclad ram Virginia and other Confederate warships. In this engagement, the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the two ironclads while shells bounced off their armor. The battle attracted attention worldwide, making it clear that the wooden warship was now out of date, with the ironclads destroying them easily.

The Civil War saw more ironclads built by both sides, and they played an increasing role in the naval war alongside the unarmored warships, commerce raiders and blockade runners. The Union built a large fleet of fifty monitors modeled on their namesake. The Confederacy built ships designed as smaller versions of Virginia, many of which saw action, but their attempts to buy ironclads overseas were frustrated as European nations confiscated ships being built for the Confederacy – especially in Russia, the only country to openly support the Union through the war. Only CSS Stonewall was completed, and she arrived in Cuban waters just in time for the end of the war.

Through the remainder of the war, ironclads saw action in the Union's attacks on Confederate ports. Seven Union monitors, including USS Montauk (1862), as well as two other ironclads, the armored frigate New Ironsides and a light-draft USS Keokuk (1862), participated in the failed attack on Charleston; one was sunk. Two small ironclads, CSS Palmetto State and CSS Chicora participated in the defense of the harbor. For the later attack at Mobile Bay, the Union assembled four monitors as well as 11 wooden ships, facing the CSS Tennessee, the Confederacy's most powerful ironclad, and three gunboats.

On the western front, the Union built a formidable force of river ironclads, beginning with several converted riverboats and then contracting engineer James Eads of St. Louis, Missouri to build the City-class ironclads. These excellent ships were built with twin engines and a central paddle wheel, all protected by an armored casemate. They had a shallow draft, allowing them to journey up smaller tributaries, and were very well suited for river operations. Eads also produced monitors for use on the rivers, the first two of which differed from the ocean-going monitors in that they contained a paddle wheel (USS Neosho (1863) and USS Osage (1863)).

The Union ironclads played an important role in the Mississippi and tributaries by providing tremendous fire upon Confederate forts, installations and vessels with relative impunity to enemy fire. They were not as heavily armored as the ocean-going monitors of the Union, but they were adequate for their intended use. More Western Flotilla Union ironclads were sunk by torpedoes (mines) than by enemy fire, and the most damaging fire for the Union ironclads was from shore installations, not Confederate vessels.

Lissa: first fleet battle
The first fleet battle, and the first ocean battle, involving ironclad warships was the Battle of Lissa in 1866. Waged between the Austrian and Italian navies, the battle pitted combined fleets of wooden frigates and corvettes and ironclad warships on both sides in the largest naval battle between the battles of Navarino and Tsushima.

The Italian fleet consisted of 12 ironclads and a similar number of wooden warships, escorting transports which carried troops intending to land on the Adriatic island of Lissa. Among the Italian ironclads were seven broadside ironclad frigates, four smaller ironclads, and the newly built ITALIAN IRONCLAD Affondatore – a double-turreted ram. Opposing them, the Austrian navy had seven ironclad frigates.

The Austrians believed their ships to have less effective guns than their enemy, so decided to engage the Italians at close range and ram them. The Austrian fleet formed into an arrowhead formation with the ironclads in the first line, charging at the Italian ironclad squadron. In the melée which followed both sides were frustrated by the lack of damage inflicted by guns, and by the difficulty of ramming—nonetheless, the effective ramming attack being made by the Austrian flagship against the Italian attracted great attention in following years.

The superior Italian fleet lost its two ironclads, ITALIAN IRONCLAD Re d'Italia and ITALIAN IRONCLAD Palestro, while the Austrian unarmored screw two-decker SMS Kaiser (1858) remarkably survived close actions with four Italian ironclads. The battle ensured the popularity of the ram as a weapon in European ironclads for many years, and the victory won by Austria established it as the predominant naval power in the Adriatic.

The battles of the American Civil War and at Lissa were very influential on the designs and tactics of the ironclad fleets that followed. In particular, it taught a generation of naval officers the (ultimately erroneous) lesson that ramming was the best way to sink enemy ironclads.

Armament and tactics
The adoption of iron armor meant that the traditional naval armament of dozens of light cannon became useless, since their shot would bounce off an armored hull. To penetrate armor, increasingly heavy guns were mounted on ships; nevertheless, the view that ramming was the only way to sink an ironclad became widespread. The increasing size and weight of guns also meant a movement away from the ships mounting many guns broadside, in the manner of a ship-of-the-line, towards a handful of guns in turrets for all-round fire.

Ram craze
From the 1860s to the 1880s many naval designers believed that the ram was again a vital weapon in naval warfare. With steam power freeing ships from the wind, iron construction increasing their structural strength, and armor making them invulnerable to shellfire, the ram seemed to offer the opportunity to strike a decisive blow.

The scant damage inflicted by the guns of Monitor and Virginia at Hampton Roads and the spectacular but lucky success of the Austrian flagship SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max sinking the Italian Re d'Italia at Lissa gave strength to the ramming craze. From the early 1870s to early 1880s most British naval officers thought that guns were about to be replaced as the main naval armament by the ram. Those who noted the tiny number of ships that had actually been sunk by ramming struggled to be heard.

The revival of ramming had a significant effect on naval tactics. Since the 17th century the predominant tactic of naval warfare had been the line of battle, where a fleet formed a long line to give it the best fire from its broadside guns. This tactic was totally unsuited to ramming, and the ram threw fleet tactics into disarray. The question of how an ironclad fleet should deploy in battle to make best use of the ram was never tested in battle, and if it had been, combat might have shown that rams could only be used against ships which were already stopped dead in the water.

The ram finally fell out of favor in the 1880s, as the same effect could be achieved with a torpedo, with less vulnerability to quick-firing guns.

Development of naval guns
The armament of ironclads tended to become concentrated in a small number of powerful guns capable of penetrating the armor of enemy ships at range; calibre and weight of guns increased markedly to achieve greater penetration. Throughout the ironclad era navies also grappled with the complexities of rifled versus smoothbore guns and breech-loading versus muzzle-loading.

HMS Warrior (1860) carried a mixture of 110-pounder 7 in breech-loading rifles and more traditional 68-pounder smoothbore guns. Warrior highlighted the challenges of picking the right armament; the breech-loaders she carried, designed by Sir William Armstrong, were intended to be the next generation of heavy armament for the Royal Navy, but were shortly withdrawn from service.

Breech-loading guns seemed to offer important advantages. A breech-loader could be reloaded without moving the gun, a lengthy process particularly if the gun then needed to be re-aimed. Warrior's Armstrong guns also had the virtue of being lighter than an equivalent smoothbore and, because of their rifling, more accurate. Nonetheless, the design was rejected because of problems which plagued breech-loaders for decades.

The weakness of the breech-loader was the obvious problem of sealing the breech. All guns are powered by the explosive conversion of a solid propellant into gas. This explosion propels the shot or shell out of the front of the gun, but also imposes great stresses on the gun-barrel. If the breech—which experiences some of the greatest forces in the gun—is not entirely secure, then there is a risk that either gas will discharge through the breech or that the breech will break. This in turn reduces the muzzle velocity of the weapon and can also endanger the gun crew. Warrior's Armstrong guns suffered from both problems; the shells were unable to penetrate the 4.5 in armor of Gloire, while sometimes the screw which closed the breech flew backwards out of the gun on firing. Similar problems were experienced with the breech-loading guns which became standard in the French and German navies.

These problems influenced the British to equip ships with muzzle-loading weapons of increasing power until the 1880s. After a brief introduction of the 100-pounder or 9.2 in smoothbore Somerset Gun, which weighed 6.5 LT, the Admiralty introduced 7-inch (178 mm) rifled guns, weighing 7 LT. These were followed by a series of increasingly mammoth weapons—guns weighing 12 LT, 18 LT, 25 LT, 38 LT and finally 81 LT, with caliber increasing from 8 inches (203 mm) to 16 inches (406 mm).

The decision to retain muzzle-loaders until the 1880s has been criticized by historians. However, at least until the late 1870s, the British muzzle-loaders had superior performance in terms of both range and rate of fire than the French and Prussian breech-loaders, which suffered from the same problems as the first Armstrong guns.

From 1875 onwards, the balance between breech- and muzzle-loading changed. Captain de Bange invented a method of reliably sealing a breech, adopted by the French in 1873. Just as compellingly, the growing size of naval guns and consequently, their ammunition, made muzzle-loading much more complicated. With guns of such size there was no prospect of hauling in the gun for reloading, or even reloading by hand, and complicated hydraulic systems were required for reloading the gun outside the turret without exposing the crew to enemy fire. In 1882, the 81-ton, 16-inch guns of HMS Inflexible (1876) fired only once every 11 minutes while bombarding Alexandria during the Urabi Revolt. The 102 LT, 450 mm (17.72 inch) guns of the Duilio-class ironclad could each fire a round every 15 minutes.

In the Royal Navy, the switch to breech-loaders was finally made in 1879; as well as the significant advantages in terms of performance, opinion was swayed by an explosion on board HMS Thunderer (1872) caused by a gun being double-loaded, a problem which could only happen with a muzzle-loading gun.

The caliber and weight of guns could only increase so far. The larger the gun, the slower it would be to load, the greater the stresses on the ship's hull, and the less the stability of the ship. The size of the gun peaked in the 1880s, with some of the heaviest calibers of gun ever used at sea. HMS Benbow (1885) carried two 16.25-inch (413 mm) breech-loading guns, each weighing 110 LT. A few years afterwards, the Italians used 450 mm (17.72 inch) muzzle-loading guns on the Duilio class ships. One consideration which became more acute was that even from the original Armstrong models, following the Crimean War, range and hitting power far exceeded simple accuracy, especially at sea where the slightest roll or pitch of the vessel as 'floating weapons-platform' could negate the advantage of rifling. American ordnance experts accordingly preferred smoothbore monsters whose round shot could at least 'skip' along the surface of the water. Actual effective combat ranges, they had learned during the Civil War, were comparable to those in the Age of Sail—though a vessel could now be smashed to pieces in only a few rounds. Smoke and the general chaos of battle only added to the problem. As a result, many naval engagements in the 'Age of the Ironclad' were still fought at ranges within easy eyesight of their targets, and well below the maximum reach of their ships' guns.

Another method of increasing firepower was to vary the projectile fired or the nature of the propellant. Early ironclads used black powder, which expanded rapidly after combustion; this meant cannons had relatively short barrels, to prevent the barrel itself slowing the shell. The sharpness of the black powder explosion also meant that guns were subjected to extreme stress. One important step was to press the powder into pellets, allowing a slower, more controlled explosion and a longer barrel. A further step forward was the introduction of chemically different brown powder which combusted more slowly again. It also put less stress on the insides of the barrel, allowing guns to last longer and to be manufactured to tighter tolerances.

The development of smokeless powder, based on nitroglycerine or nitrocellulose, by the French inventor Paul Vielle in 1884 was a further step allowing smaller charges of propellant with longer barrels. The guns of the pre-Dreadnought battleships of the 1890s tended to be smaller in caliber compared to the ships of the 1880s, most often 12 in (305 mm), but progressively grew in length of barrel, making use of improved propellants to gain greater muzzle velocity.

The nature of the projectiles also changed during the ironclad period. Initially, the best armor-piercing projectile was a solid cast-iron shot. Later, shot of chilled iron, a harder iron alloy, gave better armor-piercing qualities. Eventually the armor-piercing shell was developed.

Broadside ironclads
The first British, French and Russian ironclads, in a logical development of warship design from the long preceding era of wooden ships of the line, carried their weapons in a single line along their sides and so were called "broadside ironclads". Both FRENCH IRONCLAD Gloire and HMS Warrior (1860) were examples of this type. Because their armor was so heavy, they could only carry a single row of guns along the main deck on each side rather than a row on each deck.

A significant number of broadside ironclads were built in the 1860s, principally in Britain and France, but in smaller numbers by other powers including Italy, Austria, Russia and the United States. The advantages of mounting guns on both broadsides was that the ship could engage more than one adversary at a time, and the rigging did not impede the field of fire.

Broadside armament also had disadvantages, which became more serious as ironclad technology developed. Heavier guns to penetrate ever-thicker armor meant that fewer guns could be carried. Furthermore, the adoption of ramming as an important tactic meant the need for ahead and all-round fire. These problems led to broadside designs being superseded by designs that gave greater all-round fire, which included central-battery, turret, and barbette designs.

Turrets, batteries, and barbettes

There were two main design alternatives to the broadside. In one design, the guns were placed in an armored casemate amidships: this arrangement was called the 'box-battery' or 'center-battery'. In the other, the guns could be placed on a rotating platform to give them a broad field of fire; when fully armored, this arrangement was called a turret and when partially armored or unarmored, a barbette.

The centre-battery was the simpler and, during the 1860s and 1870s, the more popular method. Concentrating guns amidships meant the ship could be shorter and handier than a broadside type. The first full-scale center-battery ship was HMS Bellerophon (1865) of 1865; the French laid down centre-battery ironclads in 1865 which were not completed until 1870. Centre-battery ships often, but not always, had a recessed freeboard enabling some of their guns to fire directly ahead.

The turret was first used in naval combat on USS Monitor in 1862, with a type of turret designed by the Swedish engineer John Ericsson. A competing turret design was proposed by the British inventor Cowper Coles with a prototype of this installed on HMS Trusty (1855) in 1861 for testing and evaluation purposes. Ericsson's turret turned on a central spindle, and Coles's turned on a ring of bearings. Turrets offered the maximum arc of fire from the guns, but there were significant problems with their use in the 1860s. The fire arc of a turret would be considerably limited by masts and rigging, so they were unsuited to use on the earlier ocean-going ironclads. The second problem was that turrets were extremely heavy. Ericsson was able to offer the heaviest possible turret (guns and armor protection) by deliberately designing a ship with very low freeboard. The weight thus saved from having a high broadside above the waterline was diverted to actual guns and armor. Low freeboard, however, also meant a smaller hull and therefore a smaller capacity for coal storage—and therefore range of the vessel. In many respects, the turreted, low-freeboard Monitor and the broadside sailor HMS Warrior represented two opposite extremes in what an 'Ironclad' was all about. The most dramatic attempt to compromise these two extremes, or 'squaring this circle', was designed by Captain Cowper Phipps Coles: HMS Captain (1869). It was a dangerously low freeboard turret ship, which nevertheless carried a full rig of sail and subsequently capsized not long after her launch in 1870. Her half-sister HMS Monarch (1868) was restricted to firing from her turrets only on the port and starboard beams. The third Royal Navy ship to combine turrets and masts was HMS Inflexible (1876) of 1876, which carried two turrets on either side of the center-line, allowing both to fire fore, aft and broadside.

A lighter alternative to the turret, particularly popular with the French navy, was the barbette. These were fixed armored towers which held a gun on a turntable. The crew was sheltered from direct fire, but vulnerable to plunging fire, for instance from shore emplacements. The barbette was lighter than the turret, needing less machinery and no roof armor. Some barbettes were stripped of their armor plate to reduce the top-weight of their ships. The barbette became widely adopted in the 1880s, and with the addition of an armored 'gun-house', transformed into the turrets of the pre-dreadnought battleships.

Torpedoes
The ironclad age saw the development of explosive torpedoes as naval weapons, which helped complicate the design and tactics of ironclad fleets. The first torpedoes were static mines, used extensively in the American Civil War. That conflict also saw the development of the spar torpedo, an explosive charge pushed against the hull of a warship by a small boat. For the first time, a large warship faced a serious threat from a smaller one—and given the relative inefficiency of shellfire against ironclads, the threat from the spar torpedo was taken seriously. The U.S. Navy converted four of its monitors to become turretless armored spar-torpedo vessels while under construction in 1864–1865, but these vessels never saw action. Another proposal, the towed or 'Harvey' torpedo, involved an explosive on a line or outrigger; either to deter a ship from ramming or to make a torpedo attack by a boat less suicidal.

A more practical and influential weapon was the self-propelled or Whitehead torpedo. Invented in 1868 and deployed in the 1870s, it formed part of the armament of ironclads of the 1880s like HMS Inflexible and the Italian Duilio-class ironclad. The ironclad's vulnerability to the torpedo was a key part of the critique of armored warships made by the Jeune Ecole school of naval thought; it appeared that any ship armored enough to prevent destruction by gunfire would be slow enough to be easily caught by torpedo. In practice, however, the Jeune Ecole was only briefly influential and the torpedo formed part of the confusing mixture of weapons possessed by ironclads.

Armor and construction

The first ironclads were built on wooden or iron hulls, and protected by wrought iron armor backed by thick wooden planking. Ironclads were still being built with wooden hulls into the 1870s.

Hulls: iron, wood, and steel
Using wrought iron construction for warships offered advantages for the engineering of the hull. However, unarmored iron had many military disadvantages, and offered technical problems which kept wooden hulls in use for many years, particularly for long-range cruising warships.

Iron ships had first been proposed for military use in the 1820s. In the 1830s and 1840s, France, Britain and the United States had all experimented with iron-hulled but unarmored gunboats and frigates. However, the iron-hulled frigate was abandoned by the end of the 1840s, because iron hulls were more vulnerable to solid shot; iron was more brittle than wood, and iron frames more likely to fall out of shape than wood.

The unsuitability of unarmored iron for warship hulls meant that iron was only adopted as a building material for battleships when protected by armor. However, iron gave the naval architect many advantages. Iron allowed larger ships and more flexible design, for instance the use of watertight bulkheads on the lower decks. Warrior, built of iron, was longer and faster than the wooden-hulled Gloire. Iron could be produced to order and used immediately, in contrast to the need to give wood a long period of seasoning. And, given the large quantities of wood required to build a steam warship and the falling cost of iron, iron hulls were increasingly cost-effective. The main reason for the French use of wooden hulls for the ironclad fleet built in the 1860s was that the French iron industry could not supply enough, and the main reason why Britain built its handful of wooden-hulled ironclads was to make best use of hulls already started and wood already bought.

Wooden hulls continued to be used for long-range and smaller ironclads, because iron nevertheless had a significant disadvantage. Iron hulls suffered quick fouling by marine life, slowing the ships down—manageable for a European battlefleet close to dry docks, but a difficulty for long-range ships. The only solution was to sheath the iron hull first in wood and then in copper, a laborious and expensive process which made wooden construction remain attractive. Iron and wood were to some extent interchangeable: the Japanese JAPANESE IRONCLAD Kongō and JAPANESE IRONCLAD Hiei ordered in 1875 were sister-ships, but one was built of iron and the other of composite construction.

After 1872, steel started to be introduced as a material for construction. Compared to iron, steel allows for greater structural strength for a lower weight. The French Navy led the way with the use of steel in its fleet, starting with the FRENCH IRONCLAD Redoutable, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876. Redoutable nonetheless had wrought iron armor plate, and part of her exterior hull was iron rather than steel.

Even though Britain led the world in steel production, the Royal Navy was slow to adopt steel warships. The Bessemer process for steel manufacture produced too many imperfections for large-scale use on ships. French manufacturers used the Siemens-Martin process to produce adequate steel, but British technology lagged behind. The first all-steel warships built by the Royal Navy were the dispatch vessels Iris and Mercury, laid down in 1875 and 1876.

Armor and protection schemes

Iron-built ships used wood as part of their protection scheme. HMS Warrior was protected by 4.5 in (114 mm) of wrought iron backed by 15 in (381 mm) of teak, the strongest shipbuilding wood. The wood played two roles, preventing spalling and also preventing the shock of a hit damaging the structure of the ship. Later, wood and iron were combined in 'sandwich' armor, for instance in HMS Inflexible.

Steel was also an obvious material for armor. It was tested in the 1860s, but the steel of the time was too brittle and disintegrated when struck by shells. Steel became practical to use when a way was found to fuse steel onto wrought iron plates, giving a form of compound armor. This compound armor was used by the British in ships built from the late 1870s, first for turret armor (starting with HMS Inflexible) and then for all armor (starting with HMS Colossus (1882) of 1882). The French and German navies adopted the innovation almost immediately, with licenses being given for the use of the 'Wilson System' of producing fused armor.

The first ironclads to have all-steel armor were the two ships of the Duilio class. Though the ships were laid down in 1873 their armor was not purchased from France until 1877. The French navy decided in 1880 to adopt compound armor for its fleet, but found it limited in supply, so from 1884 the French navy was using steel armor. Britain stuck to compound armor until 1889.

The ultimate ironclad armor was case hardened nickel-steel. In 1890, the U.S. Navy tested steel armor hardened by the Harvey process and found it superior to compound armor. For several years 'Harvey steel' was the state of the art, produced in the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, Austria and Italy. In 1894, the German firm Krupp developed gas cementing, which further hardened steel armor. The German SMS Kaiser Friedrich III, laid down in 1895, was the first ship to benefit from the new 'Krupp armor' and the new armor was quickly adopted; the Royal Navy using it from HMS Canopus (1897), laid down in 1896. By 1901 almost all new battleships used Krupp armor, though the U.S. continued to use Harvey armor alongside until the end of the decade.

The equivalent strengths of the different armor plates was as follows: 15 in (381 mm) of wrought iron was equivalent to 12 in (305 mm) of either plain steel or compound iron and steel armor, and to 7.75 in (197 mm) of Harvey armor or 5.75 in (146 mm) of Krupp armor.

Ironclad construction also prefigured the later debate in battleship design between tapering and 'all-or-nothing' armor design. Warrior was only semi-armored, and could have been disabled by hits on the bow and stern. As the thickness of armor grew to protect ships from the increasingly heavy guns, the area of the ship which could be fully protected diminished. Inflexible's armor protection was largely limited to the central citadel amidships, protecting boilers and engines, turrets and magazines, and little else. An ingenious arrangement of cork-filled compartments and watertight bulkheads was intended to keep her stable and afloat in the event of damage to her un-armored sections.

Propulsion: steam and sail
The first ocean-going ironclads carried masts and sails like their wooden predecessors, and these features were only gradually abandoned. Early steam engines were inefficient; the wooden steam fleet of the Royal Navy could only carry "5 to 9 days coal", and the situation was similar with the early ironclads. Warrior also illustrates two design features which aided hybrid propulsion; she had retractable screws to reduce drag while under sail (though in practice the steam engine was run at a low throttle), and a telescopic funnel which could be folded down to the deck level.

Ships designed for coastal warfare, like the floating batteries of the Crimea, or USS Monitor and her sisters, dispensed with masts from the beginning. The British HMS Devastation (1871), started in 1869, was the first large, ocean-going ironclad to dispense with masts. Her principal role was for combat in the English Channel and other European waters; while her coal supplies gave her enough range to cross the Atlantic, she would have had little endurance on the other side of the ocean. The Devastation and the similar ships commissioned by the British and Russian navies in the 1870s were the exception rather than the rule. Most ironclads of the 1870s retained masts, and only the Italian navy, which during that decade was focused on short-range operations in the Adriatic, built consistently mastless ironclads.

During the 1860s, steam engines improved with the adoption of double-expansion steam engines, which used 30–40% less coal than earlier models. The Royal Navy decided to switch to the double-expansion engine in 1871, and by 1875 they were widespread. However, this development alone was not enough to herald the end of the mast. Whether this was due to a conservative desire to retain sails, or was a rational response to the operational and strategic situation, is a matter of debate. A steam-only fleet would require a network of coaling stations worldwide, which would need to be fortified at great expense to stop them falling into enemy hands. Just as significantly, because of unsolved problems with the technology of the boilers which provided steam for the engines, the performance of double-expansion engines was rarely as good in practice as it was in theory.

During the 1870s the distinction grew between 'first-class ironclads' or 'battleships' on the one hand, and 'cruising ironclads' designed for long-range work on the other. The demands on first-class ironclads for very heavy armor and armament meant increasing displacement, which reduced speed under sail; and the fashion for turrets and barbettes made a sailing rig increasingly inconvenient. HMS Inflexible (1876), launched in 1876 but not commissioned until 1881, was the last British battleship to carry masts, and these were widely seen as a mistake. The start of the 1880s saw the end of sailing rig on ironclad battleships.

Sails persisted on 'cruising ironclads' for much longer. During the 1860s, the French navy had produced the Alma-class ironclad and La Galissonnière-class ironclades as small, long-range ironclads as overseas cruisers and the British had responded with ships like HMS Swiftsure (1870) of 1870. The Russian ship RUSSIAN CRUISER General-Admiral, laid down in 1870 and completed in 1875, was a model of a fast, long-range ironclad which was likely to be able to outrun and outfight ships like Swiftsure. Even the later HMS Shannon (1875), often described as the first British armored cruiser, would have been too slow to outrun General-Admiral. While Shannon was the last British ship with a retractable propeller, later armored cruisers of the 1870s retained sailing rig, sacrificing speed under steam in consequence. It took until 1881 for the Royal Navy to lay down a long-range armored warship capable of catching enemy commerce raiders, HMS Warspite (1884), which was completed in 1888. While sailing rigs were obsolescent for all purposes by the end of the 1880s, rigged ships were in service until the early years of the 20th century.

The final evolution of ironclad propulsion was the adoption of the triple-expansion steam engine, a further refinement which was first adopted in HMS Sans Pareil (1887), laid down in 1885 and commissioned in 1891. Many ships also used a forced draught to get additional power from their engines, and this system was widely used until the introduction of the steam turbine in the middle of the first decade of the Twentieth Century.

Fleets
While ironclads spread rapidly in navies worldwide, there were few pitched naval battles involving ironclads. Most European nations settled differences on land, and the Royal Navy struggled to maintain a deterrent parity with at least France, while providing suitable protection to Britain's commerce and colonial outposts worldwide. Ironclads remained, for the British Royal Navy, a matter of defending the British Isles first and projecting power abroad second. Those naval engagements of the latter half of the 19th century which involved ironclads normally involved colonial actions or clashes between second-rate naval powers. But these encounters were often enough to convince British policy-makers of the increasing hazards of strictly naval foreign intervention, from Hampton Roads in the American Civil War to the hardening combined defences of naval arsenals such as Kronstadt and Cherbourg.

There were many types of ironclads:
 * Seagoing ships intended to "stand in the line of battle"; the precursors of the battleship
 * Coastal service and riverine vessels, including 'floating batteries' and 'monitors'
 * Vessels intended for commerce raiding or protection of commerce, called "armored cruisers"

Navies
The United Kingdom possessed the largest navy in the world for the whole of the ironclad period. The Royal Navy was the second to adopt ironclad warships, and it applied them worldwide in their whole range of roles. In the age of sail, the British strategy for war depended on the Royal Navy mounting a blockade of the ports of the enemy. Because of the limited endurance of steamships, this was no longer possible, so the British at times considered the risk-laden plan of engaging an enemy fleet in harbor as soon as war broke out. To this end, the Royal Navy developed a series of 'coast-defense battleships', starting with the Devastation class. These 'breastwork monitors' were markedly different from the other high-seas ironclads of the period and were an important precursor of the modern battleship. As long-range monitors they could reach Bermuda unescorted, for example. However, they were still armed with only four heavy guns and were as vulnerable to mines and obstructions (and enemy monitors) as the original monitors of the Union Navy proved to be during the Civil War.

The British prepared for an overwhelming mortar bombardment of Kronstadt by the close of the Crimean War, but never considered running the smoke-ridden, shallow-water gauntlet straight to St. Petersburg with ironclads. Likewise, monitors proved acutely unable to 'overwhelm' enemy fortifications single-handed during the American conflict, though their low-profile and heavy armor protection made them ideal for running artillery gauntlets. Mines and obstructions negated these advantages—a problem the British Admiralty frequently acknowledged but never countered throughout the period. The British never laid down enough Devastation-class 'battleships' to instantly overwhelm Cherbourg, Kronstadt or even New York City with gunfire. Although throughout the 1860s and 1870s the Royal Navy was still in many respects superior to its potential rivals, by the early 1880s widespread concern about the threat from France and Germany culminated in the Naval Defence Act, which promulgated the idea of a 'two-power standard', that Britain should possess as many ships as the next two navies combined. This standard provoked aggressive shipbuilding in the 1880s and 1890s.

British ships did not participate in any major wars in the ironclad period. The Royal Navy's ironclads only saw action as part of colonial battles or one-sided engagements like the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. Defending British interests against Ahmed 'Urabi's Egyptian revolt, a British fleet opened fire on the fortifications around the port of Alexandria. A mixture of centre-battery and turret ships bombarded Egyptian positions for most of a day, forcing the Egyptians to retreat; return fire from Egyptian guns was heavy at first, but inflicted little damage, killing only five British sailors. Few Egyptian guns were actually dismounted, on the other hand, and the fortifications themselves were typically left intact. Had the Egyptians actually utilised the heavy mortars that were at their disposal, they might have quickly turned the tide, for the attacking British ironclads found it easy (for accuracy's sake) to simply anchor whilst firing—perfect targets for high-angle fire upon their thinly armored topdecks.

The French navy built the first ironclad to try to gain a strategic advantage over the British, but were consistently out-built by the British. Despite taking the lead with a number of innovations like breech-loading weapons and steel construction, the French navy could never match the size of the Royal Navy. In the 1870s, the construction of ironclads ceased for a while in France as the Jeune Ecole school of naval thought took prominence, suggesting that torpedo boats and unarmored cruisers would be the future of warships. Like the British, the French navy saw little action with its ironclads; the French blockade of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War was ineffective, as the war was settled entirely on land.

Russia built a number of ironclads, generally copies of British or French designs. Nonetheless, there were real innovations from Russia; the first true type of ironclad armored cruiser, General-Admiral of the 1870s, and a set of unusual but moderately-successful circular battleships referred to as "popovkas" (for Admiral Popov, who conceived the design). The Russian Navy pioneered the wide-scale use of torpedo boats during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, mainly out of necessity because of the superior numbers and quality of ironclads used by the Turkish navy. Russia expanded her navy in the 1880s and 1890s with modern armored cruisers and battleships, but the ships were manned by inexperienced crews and politically appointed leadership, which enhanced their defeat in the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905.

The US Navy ended the Civil War with about fifty monitor-type coastal ironclads; by the 1870s most of these were laid up in reserve, leaving the United States virtually without an ironclad fleet. Another five large monitors were ordered in the 1870s. The limitations of the monitor type effectively prevented the US from projecting power overseas, and until the 1890s the United States would have come off badly in a conflict with even Spain or the Latin American powers. The 1890s saw the beginning of what became the Great White Fleet, and it was the modern pre-Dreadnoughts and armored cruisers built in the 1890s which defeated the Spanish fleet in the Spanish–American War of 1898. This started a new era of naval warfare.

Ironclads were widely used in South America. Both sides used ironclads in the Chincha Islands War between Spain and the combined forces of Peru and Chile in the early 1860s. The powerful Spanish SPANISH IRONCLAD Numancia participated in the Battle of Callao but was unable to inflict significant damage upon the Callao defences. Besides, Peru was able to deploy two locally built ironclads based on American Civil War designs, Loa (a wooden ship converted into a casemate ironclad) and BAP Victoria (a small monitor armed with a single 68-pdr gun), as well as two British-built ironclads: PERUVIAN IRONCLAD Independencia, a centre-battery ship, and the turret ship Huáscar. Numancia, was the first ironclad to circumnavigate the world under the command of Juan Bautista Antequera y Bobadilla de Eslava, arriving in Cádiz on 20 September 1867, and earning the motto: "Enloricata navis que primo terram circuivit" ["First ironclad ship to sail around the world"]). In the War of the Pacific in 1879, both Peru and Chile had ironclad warships, including some of those used a few years previously against Spain. While Independencia ran aground early on, the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar made a great impact against Chilean shipping, delaying Chilean ground invasion by six months. She was eventually caught by two more modern Chilean centre-battery ironclads, CHILEAN IRONCLAD Blanco Encalada and CHILEAN IRONCLAD Almirante Cochrane at the Battle of Angamos Point.

Ironclads were also used from the inception of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). JAPANESE IRONCLAD Kōtetsu (Japanese: 甲鉄, literally "Ironclad", later renamed Azuma 東, "East") had a decisive role in the Naval Battle of Hakodate Bay in May 1869, which marked the end of the Boshin War, and the complete establishment of the Meiji Restoration. The IJN continued to develop its strength and commissioned a number of warships from British and European shipyards, first ironclads and later armored cruisers. These ships engaged the Chinese Beiyang fleet which was superior on paper at least at the Battle of the Yalu River. Thanks to superior short-range firepower, the Japanese fleet came off better, sinking or severely damaging eight ships and receiving serious damage to only four. The naval war was concluded the next year at the Battle of Weihaiwei, where the strongest remaining Chinese ships were surrendered to the Japanese.

End of the ironclad warship
There is no clearly defined end to the ironclad, besides the transition from wood hulls to all-metal. Ironclads continued to be used in World War I. Towards the end of the 19th century, the descriptions 'battleship' and 'armored cruiser' came to replace the term 'ironclad'.

The proliferation of ironclad battleship designs came to an end in the 1890s as navies reached a consensus on the design of battleships, producing the type known as the pre-dreadnought. These ships are sometimes covered in treatments of the ironclad warship. The next evolution of battleship design, the dreadnought, is never referred to as an 'ironclad'.

Legacy
H. G. Wells coined the term The Land Ironclads in a short story published in 1903, to describe fictional large armored fighting vehicles moving on pedrail wheels.

A number of ironclads have been preserved or reconstructed as museum ships.
 * Parts of USS Monitor have been recovered and are being conserved and displayed at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia.
 * HMS Warrior (1860) is today a fully restored museum ship in Portsmouth, England
 * Huáscar is berthed at the port of Talcahuano, Chile, on display for visitors.
 * The City-class ironclad USS Cairo is currently on display in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
 * Northrop Grumman in Newport News constructed a full-scale replica of USS Monitor. The replica was laid down in February 2005 and completed just two months later.
 * The Dutch Ramtorenschip (coastal ram) HNLMS Buffel is currently under display in the Maritime Museum Rotterdam.
 * The Dutch Ramtorenschip (coastal ram) HNLMS Schorpioen is a museum ship at Den Helder.
 * The complete, recovered wooden hull of CSS Neuse, a casemate ram ironclad, is on view in Kinston, North Carolina, and, in another part of town on the Neuse River, the recreated ship, named CSS Neuse II, is nearly built and can be visited.
 * The hull of the casemate ironclad CSS Jackson can be seen in the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
 * A replica of the CHINESE IRONCLAD Dingyuan was rebuilt in 2003 as a floating museum at Weihai.
 * HMVS Cerberus, built 1867, has been partially sunk as a breakwater in Victoria, Australia, but is not preserved and is deteriorating in the elements.

title: Ironclad warship


text:
User:Peregrine

Hi all fellow wikipediasts. I'm Peregrine, an M.A. Student in Durban, South Africa. I'm an ex plant alkaloid biochemist now researching the relationships between philosophy of science and the martial arts of early modern Europe. cheers for now
 * Don't know where you want questions at so feel free to move this elsewhere. Just urious did you ever find more information about the bowie knife's brass backstop? Eno-Etile 05:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Peregrine


text:
Odalys García

Odalys García (born October 23, 1975) is a Cuban actress, model, singer and show host.

García, born in Havana, Cuba, started by participating in dance demonstrations by the age of eight. At nine, she was admitted to the Alicia Alonso School of Ballet.

When Odalys was 13, she arrived in Miami, where she began a career in modeling. In 1991, she was cast to host Noche de Gigantes (Night of the Giants) by Univision, alongside Don Francisco. Garcia and Don Francisco became friends during the two years she was in the show, and she started to become famous to Hispanic audiences with her voluptuous figure.

Soon, she was chosen to host De Pelicula, a Saturday afternoon movies show. But her biggest break came in 1993, when she was chosen to participate in Lente Loco (Crazy Lens), as Pupu Pirú, a show that was like a Spanish version of Candid Camera. Lente Loco became a big hit among Univision's target audiences, and Odalys' fame went off the roof. Within years, she was producing calendars, being the object of romance rumors by many magazines, and becoming the spokeswoman of Columbia House's Club Musica Latina. She also had the opportunity to act in a Spanish soap opera, named Morelia, and she was disc jockey at a morning radio show at Florida's station, WQBA. She is also a spokeswoman for Bally Total Fitness.

Odalys García is also an executive producer and singer. Her calendars have sold well over the years, her 2001 version selling 200,000 copies, and she also produces a video to accompany her calendars.

title: Odalys García


text:
Tauranga campaign

The Tauranga campaign was a six-month-long armed conflict in New Zealand's Bay of Plenty in early 1864, and part of the New Zealand Wars that were fought over issues of land ownership and sovereignty. The campaign was a sequel to the invasion of Waikato, which aimed to crush the Māori King (Kingitanga) Movement that was viewed by the colonial government as a challenge to the supremacy of the British monarchy.

British forces suffered a humiliating defeat in the Battle of Gate Pā on 29 April 1864, with 31 killed and 80 wounded despite outnumbering their Māori foe, but saved face seven weeks later by routing their enemy at the Battle of Te Ranga, in which more than 100 Māori were killed or fatally wounded, including their commander, Rawiri Puhirake.

Background
In late January 1864 British commander General Duncan Cameron—at the time still facing the intimidating Paterangi line of Māori defences in the Waikato campaign—despatched by sea an expedition to occupy Tauranga, through which he believed his enemy were transporting men and supplies from the East Coast. The local Ngāi Te Rangi Māori were hostile to the government, a major gunpowder store was known to be inland of Tauranga and the district was an important source of food for Māori fighting British forces in the Waikato. While Colonel Henry Greer was landed with his force at Te Papa, where they built two redoubts, Captain Robert Jenkins, commander of HMS Miranda, was ordered to blockade the harbour to prevent the arrival of more Māori reinforcements. Though Cameron's strategy gained the enthusiastic support of Premier Frederick Whitaker and his cabinet, who were keen to use the 1863 confiscations legislation to open fresh territory for European settlement, Governor George Grey was opposed, fearing it would raise rebellion in more Māori tribes, including those that had thus far refrained from supporting the Kingitanga movement. Grey withdrew his initial assent for Whitaker's orders to take an aggressive stance and instead directed the Tauranga expedition's commander, Brigadier George Carey, to remain strictly on the defensive, apart from intercepting armed bands en route to the Waikato.

Alerted to their arrival, Ngāi Te Rangi warriors returned from the Waikato battlefields and built a hilltop fort, or pā, on high ground at Te Waoku near the Waimapu Stream overlooking the Bay of Plenty, where they established a garrison of about 100 men. Ngāi Te Rangi chief Rawiri Puhirake taunted Carey in a letter, challenging him to fight, then in April 1864 moved closer to the British base to occupy to a new ridge-top position at Pukehinahina, a locality known to Europeans as "The Gate" because of the presence of a post-and-rail fence and gateway used by Māori to block Pākehā trespassers. The new fortification, which became known as the "Gate Pā", was built just 5 km from imperial troops, who were prohibited by Grey's orders from intervening. Puhirake, finding it increasingly difficult to keep his force together without a battle in prospect, again attempted to goad the British into action.

Meanwhile, fighting had already broken out nearby. A large contingent of East Coast Māori, possibly as many as 700 warriors, were making their way towards the conflict at Waikato. Their route took them through the territory of another tribe which saw themselves as allies of the Pākehā, the Arawa tribe based around Rotorua. Forewarned of this, the Arawa chiefs called back their tribesmen, many of whom were working in Auckland or further north. Pausing in Tauranga to borrow guns from the British, they hastened onward to Rotorua. Four hundred warriors of the tribe were mobilised and they met and held the East Coast Māori on 7 April in a two-day battle on the shores of Lake Rotoiti. On 27 April fighting broke out again on the coast, with Māori loyal to the Crown supported by the 43rd Regiment and British corvettes firing on Kingite Māori as they were pursued through the sand dunes.

Battle of Gate Pā
Still hoping to provoke an attack, the 250 Ngāi Te Rangi fighters at Pukehinahina enlarged the existing trench and banks and transformed the pā into a system of two redoubts, including a honeycomb of rua, or anti-artillery bunkers. Ngāi Te Rangi garrisoned the main redoubt, and about 30 members of the Ngāti Koheriki hapu and another 10 men from Piri-Rikau and other hapu manned the smaller redoubt. With timber scarce in surrounding swampland, palisading was frail, but the location of the redoubt on a hilltop, and the total span of the palisading gave their enemy the impression of greater strength than it actually possessed. In all, the total garrison of Gate Pā was about 230 men.

On 5 April, Cameron abandoned hope of pursuing Ngāti Hauā leader and prominent Kingite Wiremu Tamihana after his foe evacuated the besieged Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi pā near Lake Karapiro. Cameron switched his attention to Tauranga, arriving there on 21 April in HMS Esk (1854) and established his headquarters at Tauranga. In addition to the reinforcements on Esk, more from Auckland arrived on HMS Falcon (1854). Within days Cameron decided he had sufficient forces to finally march against Gate Pā.

On the afternoon of 28 April, Cameron launched an hour-long attack on the front of Gate Pā with four batteries of artillery placed at a range of between 350 and 800 metres. The battery—the heaviest used in the wars of 1863–1864—included a 110-pounder Armstrong gun, two 40-pounder and two six-pounder Armstrongs, two 24-pounder howitzers, two eight-inch mortars, and six Coehorn mortars. According to accounts by Hēni Te Kiri Karamū and Hōri Ngātai, the first victims of the British cannon shots were Church of England ministers conducting prayers.

Late in the night Greer moved his 700 men from the 68th Regiment across swamps to the east of Gate Pā under cover of darkness and rain to take up a position to the rear of the redoubt to cut off a Māori retreat. Those forces were joined by a detachment of the Naval Brigade from the warships Esk, Falcon and HMS Miranda (1851). By daybreak on 29 April Cameron had a total of about 1650 men surrounding the pā: 700 of the 68th Regiment, 420 from the Naval Brigade, 300 of the 43rd Regiment, 50 Royal Artillery, and another 180 members of the 12th, 14th, 40th and 65th Regiments.

At first light on 29 April the assembled guns and mortars opened fire again, this time maintaining the bombardment for more than eight hours. They destroyed the palisade and completely suppressed Māori gunfire. An estimated 30 tonnes of shell and shot were dropped on or near the Māori position, killing about 15 of the defenders.

At about 4pm, with no sign of life in the pā, Cameron ordered an assault by 300 men—a combined force of Naval Brigade under Commander Hay and the 43rd Regiment, led by Lieutenant-Colonel H.G. Booth—who ran in four abreast with fixed bayonets. Another 300 men followed at a distance as a reserve. Some in the initial British assault force were shot as they entered the main pā, and inside the redoubt more fell as they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Māori armed with shotguns and mere (short clubs). A lull of about five minutes occurred, during which time Captain G.R. Greaves, who was with the leading files of the assault party, left the pā and reported to Cameron that the redoubt had been captured and that British casualties were light.

But minutes later, as the rear of the pā was breached by the 68th Regiment, all changed. In a sequence of events that is still unclear, fierce fighting erupted, taking a heavy toll on the invaders and panicked British forces began streaming out of the pā. Historian James Cowan wrote: "More than a hundred of the assaulting column were casualties, and the glacis and the interior of the pā were strewn with dead or dying. The Maori suffered too, but not severely." Thirty-one of the British force died, including 10 officers, while 80 were wounded. At least 25-30 Māori were killed or missing.

Several theories exist to explain the British stampede from the pā. A contemporary report by a seaman in the pā suggested that the flood of soldiers from the 68th Regiment at the rear was mistaken for Māori reinforcements. Historian James Belich has postulated that the bulk of the Māori garrison remained concealed in camouflaged bunkers as the British forces stormed the pā, before unleashing waves of heavy volleys from close range on the British, who were almost standing on their hidden foes. Belich cites descriptions of the main redoubt as being "like ratholes everywhere, with covered ways and underground chambers" and notes that Rawiri Puhirake ordered defenders to "not utter a word or fire a shot till the proper time came for the order". Belich claims that by providing only a feeble defence from the garrison during the storming of the pā and keeping his garrison hidden, Rawiri Puhirake employed a "remarkable tactical ploy ... brilliantly implemented as well as brilliantly conceived" to lure the British into a deadly trap.

As night fell, the Gate Pā garrison, assuming the site would be stormed the next morning, evacuated their position, passing through the lines of the 68th Regiment and fleeing across surrounding swamps before dispersing.

Reaction to British defeat
Gate Pā was the single most devastating defeat suffered by the British military in the New Zealand Wars: while British casualties totalled more than a third of the storming party, Māori losses are generally unknown but thought to number at least 25-30, including Ngāi Te Rangi chiefs Te Reweti, Eru Puhirake, Tikitu, Te Kani, Te Rangihau, and Te Wharepouri, and Te Urungawera chief Te Kau. Te Moana-nui and Te Ipu were among the wounded, estimated at at least 25-30. To contemporaries Gate Pā was seen as a shattering and humiliating defeat, with one newspaper noting that the "gallant" force had been "trampled in the dust ... by a horde of half-naked, half-armed savages".

Grey, horrified by the disaster, began exploring ways to limit the extent of land confiscations and thus reduce Māori resistance. Grey visited Tauranga on 12 May to confer with Cameron and engaged some neutral Māori to act as intermediaries with the Kingites to negotiate a peace agreement.

Three days later, on 15 May, Cameron advised Grey he had decided to cease aggressive operations in Tauranga; the following day he left for Auckland with 700 men, leaving Greer in command of Te Papa with instructions to remain strictly on the defensive. On 20 May the Māori mediators reported that the Kingites were willing to surrender their arms "if they can have full claims over their lands and the Governor will promise to see that no harm befalls them". By early June several Ngāi Te Rangi warriors had handed in their guns and naval commodore William Wiseman reported to London that hostilities in the area had ceased.

Battle of Te Ranga
Despite government hopes of peace, Kingite forces—newly reinforced by hapu of Ngāti Pikiao, from Rotoiti, as well as a Ngati-Porou war party from the East Cape and commanded by Hoera te Mataatai—decided in June to again challenge the British forces. They selected Te Ranga, a steep but flat-topped ridge about 5 km from Gate Pā, and began working on entrenchments and rifle pits to cut off a bush track.

On 21 June Greer, leading a reconnaissance patrol of about 600 men of the 43rd and 68th Regiments and 1st Waikato Militia, came upon the 500-strong Māori force labouring on Te Ranga's defences. Knowing any delay would allow his foe to strengthen their defences, Greer chose to launch an immediate attack. He sent back to Te Papa for reinforcements, then deployed his men to fan out and open fire on the pā's outposts and trenches. As the reinforcements—220 men including cavalry and one Armstrong gun—arrived two hours later, he ordered a charge on Te Ranga. The Māori responded to the ferocity of the advance of British bayonets with double-barrelled shotguns, but had little time to reload and were forced to fight hand-to-hand with mere. Between 83 and 120 Māori were killed or fatally wounded, half of them with bayonets; Gate Pā commander Rawiri Puhirake was among the dead. His death prompted the survivors to flee. Thirteen privates of the 43rd and 68th Regiments were killed in the battle, and six officers and 33 non-commissioned officers and privates wounded.

Settlers celebrated the success at Te Ranga, the last serious engagement of the Tauranga campaign, as "by far the most brilliant achievement obtained throughout the whole war". Coming so soon after the humiliating defeat at Gate Pā, they viewed it as a satisfying act of revenge that reclaimed the honour of the troops. But Cameron, who was showing an increasing distaste for the war against a foe among whom he found more courage and chivalry than among the colonists, remained steadfast in his opposition to further aggressive actions.

One hundred and thirty-three Ngāi Te Rangi warriors surrendered to the British on 24 July. By 29 August the entire tribe with the exception of one hapu—36 members of Piri Rakau—had followed suit. The tribe gave up some 50000 acre of land and 81 guns, although they still retained a number of firearms in their possession.

Aftermath
Piri Rakau, the Waikato hapu that refused to surrender in 1864, fled into the hills behind Tauranga where they lived in hiding at Kuranui. With them were Ngati Porou followers of the Pai Mārire religious cult who arrived in exile about 1869 and Kuranui became a place of sanctuary for many people of different tribal origins. The community gave support to Te Kooti when he ventured north to Matamata in early 1870. Te Kooti, having been rebuffed by King Tāwhiao in western Waikato and the King Country, was trying to lay claim to the eastern Waikato. Two Arawa hapu also joined Te Kooti's rebels, but Tauranga Māori were anxious not to renew the war in Tauranga and distanced themselves from Te Kooti. Chief Tana Taingakawa, Wiremu Tamihana's son from Ngati Haua, wrote to Colonel Moule urging him not to fight Te Kooti in his land.

title: Tauranga campaign


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Peñuelas, Puerto Rico

Peñuelas is a town and municipality in Puerto Rico located in the Peñuelas Valley on the southern coast of the island, south of Adjuntas, east of Guayanilla, west of Ponce and north of the Caribbean Sea. Peñuelas is spread over 12 barrios and Peñuelas Pueblo (the downtown area and the administrative center of the city). It is part of the Yauco Metropolitan Statistical Area. Peñuelas is known as "La Capital del Güiro" (The Güiro Capital) and "El Valle de los Flamboyanes" (The Valley of the Royal Poinciana trees). In 2020, Peñuelas had a population of 20,399.

History
In 1754, a group of workers had settled over the Bay of Tallaboa. Later gradually retreated deeper into the valley, heading tobarrios the most fertile land which would then be part of the town of Peñuelas. For the year 1788, approximately 80 families inhabiting the valley, which focused mainly on agriculture and livestock. Peñuelas Township was founded August 25, 1793 by Diego de Alvarado.

By 1874, the town had been developed and had a population of 9,206, according to a census of that year. The town had four main roads, some streets, a brick church and the town hall, which also served as a prison, barracks and a cemetery.

On March 1, 1902 the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico approved a law to consolidate certain municipal districts, so Peñuelas neighborhoods were attached to the municipality of Ponce. In 1905, the same Assembly repealed the law and Peñuelas became once again a municipality.

The first incident of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolt of 1950 occurred during the early hours of October 29, 1950 in Peñuelas when the insular police of that town surrounded the house of the mother of Melitón Muñiz Santos, the president of the Peñuelas chapter of the Nationalist Party in the barrio Macaná, under the pretext that he was storing weapons for the Nationalist Revolt. Without warning, the police fired upon the Nationalists in the house and a firefight between both factions ensued, which resulted in the death of two Nationalists and the wounding of six police officers. Nationalists Melitón Muñiz Santos, Roberto Jaume Rodríguez, Estanislao Lugo Santiago, Marcelino Turell, William Gutiérrez and Marcelino Berríos were arrested and accused of participating in an ambush against the local insular police.''

On September 20, 2017 Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico. In Peñuelas, an estimated 1,500 homes were completely destroyed and 500 were partially destroyed. With its winds and rainfall, the hurricane triggered numerous landslides in northern Peñuelas.

Geography
Peñuelas is located on the southern coast, slightly west of the center.

Rivers near Peñuelas include:
 * Río Guayanés
 * Río Macaná
 * Río Tallaboa

Barrios
Like all municipalities of Puerto Rico, Peñuelas is subdivided into barrios. The municipal buildings, central square and large Catholic church are located in a barrio referred to as "el pueblo".

 * 1) Barreal
 * 2) Coto
 * 3) Cuebas
 * 4) Encarnación
 * 5) Jaguas
 * 6) Macaná
 * 7) Peñuelas barrio-pueblo
 * 8) Quebrada Ceiba
 * 9) Rucio
 * 10) Santo Domingo
 * 11) Tallaboa Alta
 * 12) Tallaboa Poniente
 * 13) Tallaboa Saliente

Within barrios are communities: For example, the Santo Domingo comunidad ('community') in Santo Domingo barrio and the Tallaboa community in the barrio of Encarnación.

Sectors
Barrios (which are, in contemporary times, roughly comparable to minor civil divisions) and subbarrios, are further subdivided into smaller areas called sectores (sectors in English). The types of sectores may vary, from normally sector to urbanización to reparto to barriada to residencial, among others.

Special Communities
Comunidades Especiales de Puerto Rico (Special Communities of Puerto Rico) are marginalized communities whose citizens are experiencing a certain amount of social exclusion. A map shows these communities occur in nearly every municipality of the commonwealth. Of the 742 places that were on the list in 2014, the following barrios, communities, sectors, or neighborhoods were in Peñuelas: Maldonado neighborhood (Los Chinos), Santo Domingo barrio, Comunidad Caracoles, and Comunidad La Moca in Tallaboa Alta.

Demographics
Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and became a territory of the United States. In 1899, the United States conducted its first census of Puerto Rico finding that the population of Peñuelas was 12,129.

Landmarks and places of interest
There are 15 beaches in Peñuelas. The main attractions in Peñuelas are:
 * Charco La Soplaera (a natural water pool)
 * El Convento Cave
 * Don Angel Pacheco Monument
 * Guilarte Forest
 * Unknown Soldier's Monument
 * Parque de Bombas (the old firehouse)
 * La Negra Cocola is an 0-4-2T Baldwin Steam Locomotive on display in the main town square
 * Peñuelas Museum of Art and History
 * Cancha Carlos Rentas Gallardo (Quebrada Ceiba)

Industry
Manufacturing, refinery.

Government
Like all municipalities in Puerto Rico, Peñuelas is administered by a mayor. The current mayor is Gregory Gonsález Souchet, from the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). Gonsález was elected at a special election in 2018 after the incumbent Walter Torres Maldonado stepped down from the mayoral position.

The city belongs to the Puerto Rico Senatorial district V, which is represented by two Senators. In 2012, Ramón Ruiz and Martín Vargas Morales, from the Popular Democratic Party, were elected as District Senators.

Symbols
The municipio has an official flag and coat of arms.

Flag
It has a rectangular bottom in canary yellow and stands for the sun, symbol of the physical life. In the center it has a purple or violet cross: symbol of Christianity and its ecclesiastical order; it represents the spiritual life. The cross purple extends to all the points of the yellow rectangle.

Coat of arms
The adornment above the shield, a stone wall, represents the perpetuity. The cross represents Santo Cristo de la Salud that "stopped the sea from flooding Peñuelas". The purple arm represents the priesthood and the town of Peñuelas. The canary yellow represents the sun. The blue and white symbolize the choppy sea and the regal ensign represents the faith in Christianity, "In God We Trust".

Festivals and events
Peñuelas celebrates its patron saint festival in late October / early November. The Fiestas Patronales de San Jose is a religious and cultural celebration that generally features parades, games, artisans, amusement rides, regional food, and live entertainment.

Other festivals and events celebrated in Peñuelas include:
 * Endless Fun Festival – April
 * Festival of the Cross – May
 * National Güiro Festival – May
 * Festival of the Flamboyan Tree – Summer
 * Children's Festival – August
 * Folk Festival – October
 * The Cantatas – December

Sports
Peñuelas AA Amateur Baseball team is called Los Petroleros de Peñuelas (The Peñuelas' Oilers.) The origin of this name dates back to the days when Peñuelas was home to a major petro-chemical complex known as CORCO. Although CORCO closed operations in 1980, the name stuck throughout the years.

Also known as Luis "Tite" Arroyo's hometown, a baseball hero. Another hometown hero is Ivelisse Echevarria, who was inducted into the International Federation Softball Hall of Fame in 2003 and is considered by many to be the greatest softball pitcher born in Puerto Rico. Myrian "Betty" Segarra, who was inducted into the International Federation Softball Hall of Fame in 2003 and the best first base in the woman softball in Puerto Rico.

Transportation
Peñuelas' public bus service ("la guagua") connects passengers to Ponce city (east) and Guayanilla (west).

There are 24 bridges in Peñuelas.

Education
6 Elementary schools, 4 Intermediate Schools, 1 High School

title: Peñuelas, Puerto Rico