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Steam gunboats "Pictures"

ANSEL

ANSEL

Corsair
Storm Modder
Hearts of Oak Donator
Some nice gunboats stuff:
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These are great, @ANSEL! I hadn't come across the Naugatuck before so that's one to look into...I love how America really picked up the baton for steam, even before some of the European powers did. Some exciting stuff...'Karelia' is another interesting one; the first Steamer to be directly involved in military action. She was only sloop-sized but gave a good account of herself.

My steam models will hopefully be finished by end of February, so hopefully we can look forward to some of these making it into POTC at some point! Always good meeting a fellow Monitor enthusiast.
 
Thanks! I just love those early steam and Fullcraft ships. Those crazy Engineers.
Looking forward to see your model, and the comings to.
I will look after some more stuff time by time.
 
Thank you, I look forward to it!

Indeed! I think 'craziness' is something that's sorely missing in some engineering circles these days. Amongst a million other things, the Forth bridge, SS Great Eastern, the Panama Canal; even the locomotive would probably not exist if not for the 'crazy' ideas of certain historical engineers :cheers
 
HMS Rattler vs. HMS Alecto engaged in a tug of war. Alecto is the one on the right with the paddle wheel. This being a still photo, it doesn't show Alecto being pulled backwards by the screw-driven Rattler, settling pretty conclusively the question of whether screw or paddle was better.

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There's a larger picture of HMS Alecto here.
 
Would've loved to have been there to see it in the flesh...someone should re-enact this! Of course, they already knew the outcome; I think this was more to convince the 'people who mattered', as it were. They're both very handsome ladies, though I'm not sure the Rattler's name really said a lot for her; I should think she did anything but rattle with that lovely new screw :)

Going off topic everso slightly, the Battle of Lissa (1866) is a pretty interesting one if you're into this kind of thing. It's one of the only full-scale fleet actions of the ironclad period. Imagine the clanging of shot against metal there! :cheeky
 

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Robert Nutter said:
Going off topic everso slightly, the Battle of Lissa (1866) is a pretty interesting one if you're into this kind of thing. It's the only balanced full-scale fleet action of the ironclad period. Imagine the clanging of shot against metal there! :cheeky
Click to expand...
Austria vs. Italy? Yet that looks like a Dutch flag on there. :confused:
 
I think perhaps Italy had a similar one then, as the Austrian one is on the left...maybe you're right and there was a rogue Dutchman there, though it isn't documented there was...

Whilst we're on the topic of serious steamers...here's the queen of them all, Great Eastern...she was about 60 years ahead of her time and represented such a huge step in steel ship-building that she simply couldn't be maintained by the methods of the day, and as such had a comparatively short life. She did however lay the first Atlantic cable.

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@Pieter Boelen , I've done a little research and the Italian flag in 1866 was their modern standard, only with the royal coat of arms inside (like many other european flags of that time), so I think you're right; either the painting is inaccurate or there were actually Dutch ships present...:shrug exciting prospect if so...
 
Lissa... I've heard of that one. It's not the clanging of shot against metal you want to listen for, it's the clanging of metal against metal because ramming played a significant part. That led ship designers to incorporate rams into ships' bows for the next 50 years, a total waste of time as ramming never played a major role in large battles ever again. (Well, not unless you count ramming with an aircraft, i.e. kamikaze.)
 
Cool pics guys, thanks for sharing! :onya

One thing I loved about the Sea Dogs was the blueprints for the steam ship the inventor had, it's unfortunate that they did not actually make that a real quest in the game, but the hint of it was quite intriguing on my first play through.
 
That's an amazing painting, Ansel! 'The Rebel Fleet!'And I'm definitly going to steal the lower one...those Monitor guns always fascinated.

I bet this lot in the Crimea would've mopped those ironclads up pretty quickly, though.
All steamers, none of them iron! But they carried men of steel....and 1000s of very heavy shell-firing guns too, of course!

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Now those are some handsome, well-proportioned ships! And that's a pretty gorgeous painting. I like how they got longer and lower once steam was around. I guess possibly something to do with how the engine was configured inside. Maybe I'm totally wrong though. I know they lobbed decks off because guns and armour got much heavier, so maybe it's simply something to do with center of gravity or just the handyness of a self-powered ship of that size. All I know is, I wouldn't have wanted to be on the receiving end of the Danish navy back then!:pirate41:

I guess no steamship thread would be complete without the ship which hailed the dawn of the screw; SS Great Britain (1845); another Brunel gem! A passenger liner, but the first ship to successfully combine iron construction with screw power! With SS Archimedes being the first screw steamship in the world in 1838, GB was the first to cross an ocean by screw power.

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I promise my next post will be a non-British warship ;) Enough liners!
 
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The French built some of the finest ironclads of the period, so I agree it's a shame there havn't been more here!

Presenting the Amiral-Duperre. A quick search bought up these fine side elevations showing the first French Ironclad to feature barbettes. Though I dispute this, as L'Ocean class arguably had barbettes, albeit fixed, more than 15 years earlier, you can't deny she's a powerful looking class...

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