England's Fighting Forces as against Germany (1864)

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Manchester, June 27

The incredible is taking place: England is threatening Germany with war. According to the United Service Gazette orders have already gone out to the depot in Pimlico (London) and the Arsenal at Woolwich to have the equipment and arms needed for thirty thousand men ready for immediate use, and we may expect to hear in a few days’ time that the Channel fleet has sailed for the Sound or the Belts.

The Army and Navy Gazette informs us of the fighting forces available to England at the moment. It says, in its June 25 issue:

“The naval force which we have at hand and which can weigh anchor immediately is as follows:

	Horse-power	Guns	Tonnage	Men
Edgar, wooden ship	600	71	3,094	810
Warrior, ironcased	1250	40	6,109	705
Black Prince, ironcased	1250	41	6,109	705
Prince Consort, ironcased	1000	35	4,045	605
Hector, ironcased	800	28	4,089	530
Defence, "	600	16	3,720	457
Aurora, wooden frigate	400	35	2,558	515
Galatea, "	800	26	3,227	515
Wolverene, wooden corvette	400	21	1,703	275
Research, ironcased	200	4	1,253	135
Enterprise, "	160	4	993	121
Geyser, paddle-wheel wooden steam vessel	280	6	1,054	175
Assurance, wooden steam vessel	200	4	681	90
Salamis, paddle-wheel wooden steam vessel	250	2	?	65
Trinculo, wooden gunboat	60	2	268	24

“ In addition, in order to have special vessels of smaller draught for the shallow and narrow waters of the Baltic and the Danish coasts, the Admiralty has ordered the following ships to be made ready for sea:

	Horse-power	Guns	Tonnage	Men
Cordelia, wooden corvette	150	11	579	130
Fawn, "	100	17	751	175
Racer, "	150	11	579	130

‘Moreover, the following new-built ships will be ready shortly:

	Horse-power	Guns	Tonnage	Men
Achilles, ironcased	1250	30	6121	705
Royal Sovereign, cupola ironcased ship	800	5	3963	500
Caledonia, ironcased	1000	35	4125	605
Ocean, "	1000	35	4047	605

“ In addition there are the numerous ships of the steamer reserve, and finally those of the Coast Guard , including 15 gunboats of 60 horsepower and mounting two heavy pieces of ordnance.“

The latter, the Army and Navy Gazette believes, would be as troublesome to an enemy as blow flies to a horse; it would be impossible to shake them off. (As if the Prussians did not have 22 such blow flies in the Baltic, too!)

So much for the Army and Navy Gazette on the fleet. We were on board several ships of the ironclad fleet last year and in addition have carefully followed their ups and downs and their test cruises. These have shown that none of these ironclads can hold the high seas in stormy weather; last winter the Prince Consort almost foundered in the Irish Channel during a storm, which all the wooden ships easily rode out. Thus, these ships are only usable in definite previously planned undertakings (sea battles or attacks against land fortifications), and will then have to return to port each time. They are of no use for blockades, etc. Their armour is usually a 4 1/2-irich rolled iron of varying quality and applied in varying ways; in every case with a wood backing two feet thick, even in the ships otherwise made entirely of iron. None of this armour resists the seventy-pound flat-nosed steel Whitworth shell, most of them not even the seventy-pound steel Whitworth bomb of the same form as the shell. Rifled guns are now being cast in Prussia with the bore of the old 48-pounders, which are more or less equivalent to the above-mentioned Whitworth cannon. Flatnosed cylindrical steel shells (without a conical point) from such guns will penetrate this armour, even if their rear half is hollow and carries an explosive charge. These explosive shells do not require a fuse (as Whitworth’s tests have shown) when they are fired against iron armour; penetrating the armour produces so much heat that the shells become white-hot and the powder inside them is ignited.

The armament of the ironclads usually consists of smooth-bore sixty-eight-pounders (eight-inch calibre) as broadside cannons and hundred-ten-pound Armstrongs (seven-inch calibre) as pivoted cannons on the bow and the stern. Some of these ships also had Armstrong forty-pounders and seventy-pounders on the broadside, but it may be that these are being replaced by sixty-eightpounders. The old sixty-eight-pounder is a very respectable, solid and, for its calibre, manageable cannon, very effective up to at least two thousand paces and certainly the best cannon of the entire English fleet. On the other hand, the Armstrong breechloading guns are very unreliable, since the rifling grooves soon become obstructed with lead by reason of the faulty attachment of the lead coating of the shell, and in particular because the breech block is useless. It consists of a quadrilateral piece of iron inserted from above extending to somewhat below the bottom of the bore, and screwed into place and secured from behind. If we consider that in the seven-inch calibre the shell weighs 110 pounds and the breech block only 135 pounds, we shall see that, after a few shots, the powder residues will prevent the block from fitting closely and it must fly out and high in the air as soon as the explosion gases work on it from below. This happens regularly, so that these Armstrong guns, despite their otherwise good effectiveness, have a very bad reputation in the navy.

The Royal Sovereign will carry five very heavy guns in her four cupolas or turrets; the nature of the ordnance is not yet known. Her armour has no wood backing. It remains to be seen whether this ship is of any value on the high seas.

The smaller ships, and the wooden ships in general, have as broadside guns mainly smooth-bore thirty-two-pounders 9 feet 6 inches and 10 feet in length, very good cannon which can take charges of up to 1/3 the weight of the shell, which the sixty-eight-pounders do not, and which therefore have very sure aim, for their length. Still, even on heavy ships there are some light eight-inch bomb-shell guns on the broadsides. The pivot guns are either eight-inch smooth-bore of lighter or heavier construction or Armstrong guns firing long shells weighing 40, 70 or 110 pounds.

The draught of the large ironclads is at least 25 feet, so that they are on a par with ships of the line and very heavy frigates in this respect. This makes them useless in narrow and shallow waters, but they could serve in the deep channels of narrow creeks and estuaries to attack shore batteries and coastal forts. There they are dangerous if the cannon of the defence are too light and their shells are not made of steel. It is doubtful whether the Prussian rifled twenty-four-pounder could penetrate their armour with steel shells. The rifled forty-eight-pounder can do it, in any event, if its shell is of steel and flattened at the nose, if it has a charge of a sixth to a fourth of the shell weight and if the shot can be fired at from six to eight hundred paces. Rifled guns of from seven to eight inches, which we could have made so easily of Krupp cast steel, if emplaced at suitable points, even in small numbers, would soon enough make the heavy English ironclads narmless to our coasts. Only, the shell must be of steel and cylindrical, and must not have a conical or rounded nose so that it will catch the iron armour with its sharp edge even if the impact is oblique. Whitworth has penetrated the armour with such shells even at an angle of incidence of over fifty degrees. Further, with such heavy guns it is best to leave any experiments with breech-loading quite out of consideration; beyond a certain calibre they are certainly worthless, and there is no more time for protracted tests.

So much concerning the navy; now let us hear what the Army and Navy Gazette can tell us about the available land forces:

“Cavalry. 4th, 5th, 6th regiments of Guards Dragoons; 1st and 2nd (Dragoon); 3rd, 4th, 8th (Hussar); 9th (Lancer); 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th (Hussar) regiments. Each has 650 men, including officers, a total of 10,700 men.

“Artillery. Ten batteries of horse-artillery (six guns each), 26 field batteries (horse-borne) also of six guns each and 25 fortress batteries. In all, 216 field guns and 13,700 men.

“Engineers. 20 companies and two train companies, in all 2,700 men.

“Infantry. The first battalions of the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 24th, 26th, 29th, 31st, 32nd, 37th, 41st, 45th, 49th, 53rd, 58th, 59th, 60th, 61st, 64th, 69th, 73rd, 74th, 75th, 83rd, 84th, 85th, 86th, 87th regiments; the second battalions of the 1st, 12th and 60th regiments. To this should be added the first battalions of the 21st, 39th, and 62nd regiments, now on the way from America, making a total of 39 battalions. Excluding the depot companies, about 780 men per battalion are left ready to turn out, or a total force of 30,000 trained men. In addition, there are the depots of the entire army, a total of 18,000 men as first reserves, and finally the Guards (1,300 men of the cavalry and 6,000 infantry).

“In all: cavalry 12,000; artillery 13,700; engineers 2,700; infantry 54,000. Grand total: 82,000 men. But in estimating the number of troops we could send into the field, we must first deduct the depots with 18,000 men and a further 25% for those not available for service, and those who must be employed at home. We should then have some 48,000 well-drilled and well-seasoned troops, ready to go anywhere and do anything, if properly aided by the auxiliary and administrative departments. A first reserve of recruits would come to about half this number. We do not know the actual strength of the militia assembled at the training which has just concluded, but it should be a larger number than in 1863, when it turned out 102.000 strong for inspection. Finally, the volunteers amount to about 160,000.”

This is what the Army and Navy Gazette reports. These statistics may suffice for today, since we plan to give your readers an exact report on the English forces on land anyway. However, your German troops should realise one thing: If they come up against Englishmen, they will be facing quite a different opponent than the brave, but badly-trained, slow Danes.