European Ironclads 1860–75: The Gloire sparks the great ironclad arms race (New Vanguard Book 269)

The French warship Gloire was launched in 1859, featuring a wooden hull protected by iron plates. The existing world of wooden warships, dominated by Britain's Royal Navy, was suddenly obsolete. Gloire triggered an arms race in ironclad ships, and a revolution in naval design.Veteran naval historian Angus Konstam does the honors in this Osprey New Vanguard Series book. The race to build ironclad ships took slightly different paths among the European naval powers, many of whom were constrained by lack of funds and/or shipyard capacity. Nevertheless, every European state with a serious navy attempted to field ironclads. A continuing design revolution would eventually see the ironclads replaced by all-metal warships, but not before at least one major European naval action involving ironclads. The text includes lots of period photographs and modern illustrations, along with technical details. Well recommended as a concise introduction to students of naval history.

Easy to read. Well researched and well written. A highly specialized endeavor. A must for all naval enthusiasts and naval wargamers. Of interest to general military historians. Not for the general public.

This is an interesting book. I enjoy learning about the Civil War and this book puts the Monitor and Merrimack battle in a different perspective.

Lacking in details, diagrams. This is a unique topic that could have been extremely impressive and interesting, but it's very shallow and thin on details. Will not buy anything from Osprey if this is typical of their work. Very disappointing and not worth the money.

A GREAT BOOK ABOUT A HISTORY I WAS NOT INFORMED ABOUT

great info

very good reading

Good info

It is fairly obvious that real justice cannot possibly done to the ships of nine navies in a small format 48 page book(let). Osprey do produce 96 page volumes and that would have been much more sensible for this one. Think of this volume as a ready-reference for established enthusiasts who, for example, cannot easily remember the names of all 10 ships in the French ‘Flandre’ class of 1861. It also, of course forms an introduction to the subject for the merely curious, and it’s this that concerns me, since these readers will be inclined to accept what is wrtten here as ‘gospel’ whereas, in various instances, it is not.For example, on page 10 the author describes the barbette mounting for heavy guns as ‘a dead end’ whilst turrets were ‘a much more flexible solution’. This is actually nonsense since the exact opposite was true. Later battleships through the 20th century were in fact barbette ships fitted with armoured gun houses - these mountings were entirely different from the heavy Ericson and Coles turrets of the 1860’s, which were anything but ‘flexible’ and often very problematic when fitted to low freeboard sea going ironclads. The author considers that the mastless turret ships ‘Devastation’ and ‘Petre Veliki’ (1869) marked the true end of the ironclad period, but that is a gross over simplification. In fact the latterday ‘battleship’ had to await introduction of ductile steels for hulls, armour, guns and boilers (especially boilers), and that did not take full effect until the 1880’s. For long distance voyages sailing ironclads were needed for nearly another two decades after 1869. The first fully fledged British steel ‘battleships’ commissioned in 1886.There is a good ‘exploded profile’ and technical description of the ‘Gloire’, but of course nothing like that detail is found in the ship listings. We are told where the ships were built, when laid down/ launched/ completed and ultimate fate. Mr Konstam has to restrict design detail to tonnage, speed, length, armour (maximum) and guns, moreover this data is in a reduced print size almost too small to read. He does indicate the type of gun - SML, RML, BL, etc., though there are many mistakes: for example the French 10.8 and 9.4 inch guns aboard the ‘Oceans’ and later classes were breech, not muzzle loaders. Similarly, the Krupp guns supplied to the Prussian/ German navy are also described as muzzle loaders, whereas they were cast steel wedge type breechloaders (refer Hovgaard, 1920).There are many other errors and also variances between the text and the data tables. For example the German ‘Preussen’ class were turret ships based on the British ‘Monarch’, not casemate ships based on ‘Custoza’; they are however correctly described in the data table (these tables were doubtless compiled by another person). There are errors amongst the illustrations also: for example the small broadside ironclad illustrated on page 33 is probably the ‘De Ruyter’ - it certainly isn’t the turret ship ‘Prins Hendrik der Nederlanden’ as claimed. The name of ‘Lutfi Djeli’, illustrated on page 41, is spelled quite differently in the text and tables. We are told that yet another person (Paul Wright) was responsible for illustrations but clearly nobody checked for consistancy or repetition: one consequence of this being that the ramming of ‘Re d’Italia’ is described three times over- a very wasteful use of valuable space!Each navy is covered alphabeticaly, starting with Austria- Hungary. The Scandinavian countries are not included, but Russia and Turkey are. The listings cover nearly all the most significant fighting ships, but they are not actually comprehensive. For example, the Italian ’Palestro’ and ‘Varese’ were present at the battle of Lissa (1866) and ‘Palestro’ was one of the two ships sunk, but though mentioned they are not included in the data listing. Probably the author was guided by Conways, 1860 - 1905, the ‘bible’ for this subject, which lists these two small vessels as coast defense ships. Nevertheless they were ironclads and were used as such in battle. For the French navy the ‘Belliquese’ plus the ‘Alma’ and ‘La Galissonniere’ classes (a total of no less then eleven ships) are omitted. Conways describes these as ‘armoured cruising ships’, but they were certainly ironclads, quite heavily armed and armoured, and were employed in Europe as well as overseas. Also, where are ‘Colbert’ and ‘Trident’? These two are mentioned in the text but excluded from the data listing. The appropriate dividing line should be between these French wooden hulled Ironclads and the steel hulled ‘ Redoubtable’. True, the pair did not complete for sea until 1876-8, but they were laid down in 1870. There are various other questionable exclusions across the nine navies, especially amongst the so called ‘coast defence’ ships: most of these are omitted, yet half a page is given to the little Prussian coast defence ‘Prinz Adalbert’. Very obviously space in a 48 page book obliged the author to take a conservative view of what to include, but there is no consistency here.There are positive attributes. As with Mr Konstams book on British ironclads, the text is quite interesting to read and towards the end, the description of the Battle of Lissa is refreshingly accurate, pointing out that the battle really demonstrated the failure of the ram as a weapon rather than its success. Photographic content is inevitably limited, though I would have liked to see a better mix - for example four Austro- Hungarian ships are shown but there is only one from Italy (good photos of these do exist). For some reason the two full page paintings in the British Ironclads book are, in my opinion, far better than the two in this one: the illustration showing the sinking of ‘Re D’Italia’ (also reproduced on the front cover) to me looks distrinctly amateur and unconvincing; moreover the scene depicted was in reality nearly completely shrouded in smoke, to the extent that the antagonists could scarcely even see each other.I know I seem heavily critical of a little soft back book, but that’s because, having studied this subject over more than 50 years, I am concerned that ‘new’ potential enthusiasts are not misled by it. The book is nicely produced, interesting to read and usefully informative (I learned something about the production of armour plate in France, for example), but there are far too many errors and omissions- and wasteful repetitions- hence the three star rating. It is a great pity that the longer 96 page format was not adopted: production would not have cost very much more and the author could have included more ships and much greater detail (as he was able to do in his British Ironclads book).

Very informative overview of a genre mostly populated by expensive books. Pictures are good and information has adden to my knowledge.

Good read. Lots of helpful information.

good

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