Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of" - Volume 2, Slice 6

ARMOUR PLATES. The earliest recorded proposal to employ armour for ships of war (for body armour, &c., see Arms and Armour) appears to have been made in England by Sir William Congreve in 1805. In The Times of the 20th Defence for ships. of February of that year reference is made to Congreves designs for an armoured, floating mortar battery which the inventor considered would be proof against artillery fire. Among Congreves unpublished papers there is also a suggestion for armour-plating the embrasures of casemates. Nothing, however, seems to have come of these proposals, and a similar lack of appreciation befell the next advocate of armour, John Stevens of New Jersey, U.S.A., who submitted the plans of an armoured vessel to Congress in 1812. The Stevens family, however, continued to work at the subject, and by 1841 had determined by actual experiment the thickness of wrought-iron armour which was proof against the projectiles then in use. The necessity for armouring ships as a protection against shell fire was again History. pointed out by General Paixhans in 1841, and in 1845 Dupuy de Lme had prepared the designs of an armoured frigate for the French government. During the period between 1827 and 1854, experiments in connexion with the proposed application of armour to both ships and forts were carried out in England, the United States and France, but the question did not get beyond the experimental stage until the latter year, when armoured floating batteries were laid down in all three countries, probably as the immediate outcome of the destruction of the Turkish fleet by shell fire at Sinope on the 30th of November 1853. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 34162
Author: Various
Release Date: Oct 29, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English