“Effective defense does not consist primarily in power to protect, but in power to injure.”—Mahan.
The name Vesuvius had been used for two earlier American Navy vessels before Congress in 1886 authorized the construction of a third. The earlier ships had been called simply “bomb brigs” but the new one was to be a “dynamite gun cruiser”! This new craft, by Act of Congress, was required to
attain a speed of twenty knots ... be equipped with three pneumatic dynamite guns of ten and one half inch caliber, and [be] guaranteed to throw shells containing two hundred pounds of dynamite or other high explosives at least one mile.
Laid down at Cramp’s yard in Philadelphia, she was launched on April 28, 1888, after many changes in her design and specifications. With a length of 252 feet, 26- foot beam and 9-foot draft, she displaced 725 tons. The quarter-inch plates of her hull were butt-jointed and finished perfectly smooth. Four-cylinder, triple-expansion engines of 3,795 hp. drove twin screws giving her a speed of 21.42 knots during her official trials. Excepting a few torpedo boats of much smaller size no warship had ever traveled so fast before. As Lieutenant Commander Seaton Schroeder wrote in the Proceedings Prize Essay in 1894, after three years in command of the Vesuvius, “The individual ship was designed simply to carry the guns and to satisfy the popular and somewhat erratic cry for great speed…”
When commissioned in 1890, the vessel carried three 15-inch guns instead of the l0 ½ -inch guns originally planned. These “aerial torpedo projectors” (also called “pop-guns”) were the invention of Lieutenant E. L. G. Zalinsky, a Polish-born officer of the United States Army. Fifty- four feet long and made of cast iron, the guns were mounted abreast at a fixed elevation of 18°, their muzzles projecting through the foredeck of the vessel, their breeches deep in the hold. Under the rear of each gun were placed two revolving chambers, each somewhat like the chamber of a pocket revolver, carrying 5 shells. The shells, or “torpedoes,” were 7 feet long and weighed 1,500 pounds when loaded with a full 600-pound charge of nitrogelatin. At a maximum air pressure of 1,000 pounds to the square inch these shells could be thrown a little more than a mile. Later, it was found that shells containing from 200 to 250 pounds of explosives would carry almost 2 miles. Instead of the guns being rifled, curved vanes on the tail of each projectile gave the necessary spin. “Pop-guns” seems an appropriate name when we read that the muzzle velocity of the projectiles was only 345 miles an hour.
The absolutely rigid mounting of the guns made it necessary to maneuver the ship for lateral aim, while the range was varied by a valve controlling the amount of compressed air used as a propellant. All of the ship’s activities were directed from a small circular conning tower, which also served as the fire-control station. This conning tower was protected by thin armor plate, and was the only part of the ship so fortified.
Because only 30 shells could be carried on board, and because these could not be accurately placed when fired under service conditions, Schroeder wrote:
It may be bluntly stated that had the Vesuvius been designed for less speed she would be a much more efficient and formidable vessel . . . There is no use in being able to go fast and far if you cannot do anything when you get there.
But if her commander doubted her, the press and the public did not. To them she was awe-inspiring and magnificently dreadful. We read in one popular journal of the day that “She can launch 1,800 pounds of nitrogelatin, the explosive energy of which equals that of about 3,400 pounds of dynamite, or more than 10 tons of gunpowder, and this can be repeated every 2 minutes,” and in another that “the submarine explosion of such a shell would destroy a ship 20 or more feet distant.” And the Vesuvius, with her cigar-shaped projectiles, didn’t really need armor, we read, for even if attacked by an ironclad, was it not probable “that after a few of these projectiles had exploded in her immediate vicinity, there would be no ironclad?”
It was suggested that the Vesuvius should throw linked projectiles, or shells containing poison gas, but dynamite, little known and much feared, was by far the favorite. There were lectures and articles, even a novel—The Dynamite Ship. So far as the public was concerned, the Vesuvius was a success.
And she looked the part, too. In a day when the typical warship was a forbidding, high-sided steamer, bristling with guns and carrying heavy spars for a great spread of canvas, the dynamite cruiser was particularly outstanding in appearance. Long and narrow, and lying low in the water, she attracted attention wherever she went.
When war with Spain was declared, she steamed south under the command of Lieutenant Commander John E. Pillsbury and operated off Key West, Florida. In June she was ordered to Santiago de Cuba, where she remained a month. Her performance at Santiago has received notice from many writers. I quote below from The Story of the Spanish-American War, by Lieutenant W. Nephew King, U. S. Navy:
At midnight on June the 15th, this little vessel, which many believe is destined some day to revolutionize the navies of the world, steamed close up to the harbor mouth, almost under the guns of the Morro, and lay there looking more like an innocent pleasure craft than a formidable engine of destruction. Out of the darkness there came a sound, a trifle louder than the popping of a huge cork. Then, there was a brilliant flash that illumined the heavens and tipped the distant mountains with fire. The earth trembled as though it were a live volcano—and darkness came again over land and sea. Two hundred and fifty pounds of the most powerful explosive known had torn away great masses of earth and masonry, spreading death and destruction in its radii of action.
In his official report of June 22, Admiral Sampson wrote, somewhat less ecstatically: “The Vesuvius has done almost nightly firing since she has been here. There is no doubt that the explosion of shells of this character has a very important effect.” But it was not only the explosions that frightened the Spaniards, for they found fragments of the curved tail- vanes, and believed the shells fitted with propellers. And 1898 was a little early for anti-aircraft precautions!
But regardless of corks and propellers, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long expressed the Navy’s opinion of the Vesuvius when he wrote of her:
Under the protection of the guns of the North Atlantic fleet, she threw dynamite shells into the harbor. The effect produced was materially unimportant though morally great. This experience confirmed the view that the ship was of limited usefulness, and she is now in ordinary, awaiting transformation into a torpedo boat . . .
This transformation was made in 1905, when she was assigned to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport. She was stricken from the Navy List in 1921, and in the following year was sold.
The Vesuvius has been marked down as a failure, because rapid development of ships and armament very soon made her obsolete. But throughout her period of service, she was unfortunate enough to be compared with a battleship firing shells, rather than with a torpedo boat throwing torpedoes. The submarine torpedoes of her day were not particularly efficient in operation, and in velocity, rate of discharge, number of rounds carried, and destructiveness of her shells, the Vesuvius with her “pop-guns” was superior to other torpedo boats. Had the circumstances of war been different she might well have justified her design, and helped in “revolutionizing naval warfare as did the famous Monitor.”
Against this “might have been” there are the very real benefits she rendered to the service. These were advertising and goodwill. It was of the Vesuvius, more than of any other ship of her era, that America boasted. The only one of her kind in the world, she was believed to be the most dangerous vessel of war and was known to be the fastest. Such an exceptional ship caused discussion and created interest in the Navy. The Navy was rebuilt, and when the time came to win a war, the war was won.
The Vesuvius shares the credit.
THE DESIGN of fighting ships must follow the mode of fighting instead of fighting being subsidiary to and dependent on the design of ships. —LORD FISHER.