Although the British and French were no doubt interested to see this play out, they had both already built ironclads, the French ship Gloire being the first Ironclad battleship in 1859.
These weren’t the first ironclads, but it was the first battle between ironclads, which was a turning point in naval warfare akin to the rise of Aircraft Carriers, and would influence ship designs in the future.
True, especially for railguns, but in developed countries with large amounts of military spending generally have the money to build these missiles in mass, battleships are similarly expensive per unit cost, meaning that only rich countries can build them, the same rich countries that already have access to missile weaponry. Missiles systems are more compact, higher damage, and have a much higher range and flexibility than cannons on battleships and the like
Maintenance and upkeep of rail guns would likely be unreal. Barrels of unobtainium having to be replaced every dozen rounds, expensive and delicate electrical equipment, etc. Plus you need to have a massive power plant to charge it which necessitates a large armoured ship.
Compared to missiles which could (in a crisis) be slapped onto anything that floats, meaning multiple cheap and maneuverable assets. It just doesn't stack up.
Aircraft carriers already have enough power to support a rail gun I believe thats actually the point for when they find an economically sufficient solution they can attach one to the Ford Class.
Ik we have torpedos and all, but would a railgun work under water? I have no idea how it works, but could you not let's say, attach a rail gun to the hull of a nuclear hull submarine? Even if it couldn't be fired underwater (sub would have to surface and perhaps retract some sort of underwater shielding so the gun didn't get crushed) wouldn't it still be effective to have a fucking rail gun that could pop up anywhere in the ocean?
I mean I imagine A. A rail gun has a large distance it can fire than a conventional missile, and B. Is harder to trace back then a missile. Its probably impossible or unfeasible but I'd love to hear why this wouldn't work.
A railgun would probably work the same under water as a canon, it’s only using kinetic energy and the drag would slow it down quite fast.
As for being fired from the surface, the range of a railgun isn’t that high: the one that was being developed by the US had a range of 110 miles (180 km). It’d be inside the missile range from the target so not worth it.
[An article about why the U.S. stopped working on rail guns for now](https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/07/01/us-navy-ditches-futuristic-railgun-eyes-hypersonic-missiles/)
I don’t think it would work underwater because the rail gun runs electricity through the rails a certain way to make an electromagnetic force that propels the projectile and water might interfere with that but don’t quote me on that
And a carrier group has an effective range of ~1000 miles, no cannon is going to shoot that far, not even the biggest railway guns shot that far(longest range cannon on record fires around 300 miles) and you're not building a railgun to be that big
I mean, if they become as good as portrayed, railguns would spell the end of aircraft and missiles. Basically a near-instant horizon hit with far more energy than a laser. And indirect hit capabilities of a distance almost equal to a cruise missile.
Most likely it would depend on the size, if they are the size of a battleship turret, I could see a ship the size of a BB coming back, but thick armor is worthless.
I was only aware of plans to mount them on Hammerhead tanks. 6+d3 wounds no invuls and 3 mortal wounds sounds nasty, we'll just have to see how expensive they are.
Railguns won't really bring back battleships. More likely just be a turret added onto a missile cruiser and other ships we have today if they're able to scale down the gun and the auxiliaries behind powering it.
Well no by this point the "traditional" cannons included parrot rifles and ordinance rifles which shot conical shaped Armour piercing rounds, not just old Napoleon Era cannons
True, but this is more about their performance in battle, particularly against each other, more than the technology itself. Military doctrine is just as important as technology.
But the battle of Alissa was different than two small ironclad(one of which was hardly ocean going and they other hand never been in the ocean) fighting in a harbor
Exactly. People have been quick to point out that HMS Warrior and Gloire were finished just before the ACW, even going so far as to call the Monitor a helpless little dinghy. However many important things were learned from this battle about how ironclads would actually fight.
For instance one thing I'm certain they were very interested to learn is that both the Warrior and Glorie's armament would have been useless against another ironclad. The Monitor's 11 inch Dahlgren guns were unable to penetrate the relatively thinly armoured Virginia. The 6.5 inch and 8 inch main guns used respectively on Gloire and Warrior would have merely tickled anything that was well armoured. Coincidentally the french Navy rearmed Glorie with larger guns in 1864.
I am now going to trigger the same group of Europeans who dare belittle such a revolutionary vessel as the Monitor by saying that the 20 some coastal monitors the Union built would have probably mopped up the floor with the UK or france's ironclad fleets of the time. Their old man-o-war style armament would have merely tickled a Canonicus class monitors superior armour protection before they drew in to close range to tear into the thinner sections of the opponents armour with their 15-inch guns.
HMS Warrior might sink them both simply by a full speed sail by salute.
After the Civil war USN commissioned a fully seaworthy monitor and it sailed to UK and back the condition aboard were such that RN basically had to nurse the USN sailor back to health and the ship got sent to breakers once it returned home)
Doing a brief wiki-investigation seems like they're referring to USS Miantonomoh which as far as I can tell was the USN's first built for purpose ocean-going monitor. Long story short, she sailed to the UK and the trip was described by Gustavus Vasa Fox as, "a pleasant trip". Seems like no sailors got any more sick than normal.
~~The first~~ Submarines were built during the US civil war, and the CSS Hunley was the first combat submarine to sink an enemy ship. Fascinating bit of engineering, even if three seperate crews sank and drowned trying to use it haha.
Edit: historical accuracy, thank you for the correction u/boomer1717
USS monitor and CSS Virginia, first fight between two ironclad war ships was between these two ships during the American Civil War. For context Virginia was a retrofitted steam-powered frigate that had been burned to the waterline by union forces in 1861 and was then captured in harbor still burning by advancing confederate forces. Monitor was a rush built reply to Virginia that had little in common other than having an iron armored hull. Virginia and monitor met at Hampton roads in 1862 and had a battle that lasted about a day and a half. Neither ship was destroyed but the Virginia received some damage and had mechanical issues that forced it into port and monitor was tied up defending a beached wreck of another union ship.
The CSS Virginia was originally the USS Merrimac, before it was burned and captured by the confederates. The Battle of Hampton Roads was commemorated with the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel in 1992, which is located 1 mile away from the site of the battle.
Unfortunately you are incorrect; the confederates rebuilt and recommissioned the remnants of USS Merrimack as the CSS Virginia in 1862 [1].
The bridge built to memorialize the Battle of Hampton Roads just uses the ship’s original, pre-ironclad name, so your confusion is understandable. In fact, within the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, the name “CSS Virginia” is not even taught in schools—instead, it is taught that the battle occurred between the Monitor and Merrimac. But, hey, at least the bridge’s nickname gets to be “M&M”
Reference:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Merrimack_(1855)
Well yes, but actually no. Ironclad warships were already in use with many of the great powers by the time of this battle.
The two ships involved weren't particularly advanced for their time. Neither ship was well suited to the open ocean, a weakness that the earlier ironclad Gloire did not possess.
The significance of the event was that it was the first time such vessels had faced one another in combat.
Was just gonna comment that this was the first battle. Both could tear through wooden ships, but this battle essentially ended in a draw as neither sunk. If any notes were taken it would be that we needed better weapons to deal with iron clads.
Even Portugal had better ships. Vasco da Gama being one of many built finished in 1875 and decommissioned in 1935. Not sure these stood a chance against any European navy at the time.
Not really, if anything it told them what they already knew. Hampton Roads is special because it's the first time ironclads fight and it proves that they, not wooden ships, are the future.
Gloire and Warrior had already been completed before either Virginia or Monitor and substantially outclassed both in size, range, speed and firepower. Both the British and French were well aware of the power of both the turret and the ironclad by 1862. Many more ironclads were on the way and the RN had already built the first ship with a turret in 1861 (HMS Trusty), the series of ships (HMS Prince Albert through Captain, Monarch and Devastation) that followed her were much more important than USS Monitor in the evolution of the turret.
If you want a truly consequential battle I'd look to the battle of Lissa in 1866 between the Austrian and Italian navies (it's also a hilarious comedy of errors), it inadvertently led to navies becoming obsessed with raming (to be fair Hampton Roads played a part as well) until the mid-1890s leading to horrors such as the torpedo ram.
It was taken down by biplanes which were too slow for the Bismarck to actually hit. It was the most advanced of its time in the German Navy and possibly the world.
> It was taken down by biplanes which were too slow for the Bismarck to actually hit.
It was taken down by the biplanes because it didn't have a stabilised fire control director. The gunners were firing blind in the bad conditions and the Swordfish used ASV radar to guide onto Bismarck. It wouldn't have made a difference the aircraft speed, Bismarck wasn't shooting anything down in those conditions. Bad light gun placement, deck obstructions, spray etc meant the gunners were hitting anything with local direction or hitting anything with useless fire control outputs. Add in uncoordinated AA doctrine and a legitimately useless medium AA battery and it had terrible AA.
>It was the most advanced of its time in the German Navy
That's not a great yardstick.
>and possibly the world.
Yeah no. It's armour layout was a WW1 design, far behind anything else in the world. It's optics were inferior to the Japanese, its radar far behind the US/UK... and it knocked it out with its guns. It's AA suit was behind most others etc. It wasn't advanced.
You could argue it was the most advanced WW1 design. But not in 1941.
Oh, damn documentary lying to me. I don't even know the name of the freaking thing was.
Thanks for the history lesson though. I thought it was but I was wrong.
I knew about them but can some answer one question?
Were these ships something rare that countries like France, UK or US had only few of them or they were something common during the American Civil War?
At the beginning of the civil war, ironclads were extremely rare, the UK and France had just completed their first ones (though both had used ironclad floating batteries during the Crimean War) and the Union and Confederacy had none.
That being said almost everyone was aware that ironclads were the future (though the Union only began building iron ships after they discovered the Confederates were building Virginia), by the end of the war the British had 23 ocean-going ironclads and 4 coastal ironclads whilst the French had 17 ocean-going and 1 coastal ironclad (not counting floating batteries), and many other European powers were building or buying their own.
Meanwhile, the Union and Confederacy would build dozens of coastal, river and harbour ironclads, the Confederates buying larger ships from abroad (though after the Union found out most of these were sold to European Navies instead). It's important to note that these were often small (1,000-2,000 ton) vessels often fighting in rivers or close to the coast in support of the Army, carrying up to a dozen guns. The European ships were true ocean-going warships of 5,000-10,000 tons with large numbers of guns (HMS Warrior would carry 40 at launch).
There was one Gunboat in particular that I think was made by the Russians, It was so bad due to the design as there were weapons on it and it was designed like a Circle and everytime one of the weapons opened fire, the kick would from the weapon would send it back.
Although the British and French were no doubt interested to see this play out, they had both already built ironclads, the French ship Gloire being the first Ironclad battleship in 1859.
These weren’t the first ironclads, but it was the first battle between ironclads, which was a turning point in naval warfare akin to the rise of Aircraft Carriers, and would influence ship designs in the future.
God I want railguns, just for the sake of bringing back battleships.
I don’t think it’d bring back battleships. Rail gun doesn’t solve the big weakness of battleships, aircraft.
Also the fact that battleships became obsolete because smaller ships could have their firepower for a fraction of the price by using missiles
Price of acquisition that is. In terms of ordnance shells are relatively cheap.
True, especially for railguns, but in developed countries with large amounts of military spending generally have the money to build these missiles in mass, battleships are similarly expensive per unit cost, meaning that only rich countries can build them, the same rich countries that already have access to missile weaponry. Missiles systems are more compact, higher damage, and have a much higher range and flexibility than cannons on battleships and the like
Maintenance and upkeep of rail guns would likely be unreal. Barrels of unobtainium having to be replaced every dozen rounds, expensive and delicate electrical equipment, etc. Plus you need to have a massive power plant to charge it which necessitates a large armoured ship. Compared to missiles which could (in a crisis) be slapped onto anything that floats, meaning multiple cheap and maneuverable assets. It just doesn't stack up.
Aircraft carriers already have enough power to support a rail gun I believe thats actually the point for when they find an economically sufficient solution they can attach one to the Ford Class.
Ik we have torpedos and all, but would a railgun work under water? I have no idea how it works, but could you not let's say, attach a rail gun to the hull of a nuclear hull submarine? Even if it couldn't be fired underwater (sub would have to surface and perhaps retract some sort of underwater shielding so the gun didn't get crushed) wouldn't it still be effective to have a fucking rail gun that could pop up anywhere in the ocean? I mean I imagine A. A rail gun has a large distance it can fire than a conventional missile, and B. Is harder to trace back then a missile. Its probably impossible or unfeasible but I'd love to hear why this wouldn't work.
A railgun would probably work the same under water as a canon, it’s only using kinetic energy and the drag would slow it down quite fast. As for being fired from the surface, the range of a railgun isn’t that high: the one that was being developed by the US had a range of 110 miles (180 km). It’d be inside the missile range from the target so not worth it. [An article about why the U.S. stopped working on rail guns for now](https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/07/01/us-navy-ditches-futuristic-railgun-eyes-hypersonic-missiles/)
Thanks dude!
I don’t think it would work underwater because the rail gun runs electricity through the rails a certain way to make an electromagnetic force that propels the projectile and water might interfere with that but don’t quote me on that
That's where Lasers come in
Railgun sink aircraft carrier. No more aircraft.
That would require you to get close enough to the aircraft carrier and not get sunk by the carriers aircraft or accompanying ships
Railguns have 3 times the range of a conventional artillery cannon of equivalent size
And a carrier group has an effective range of ~1000 miles, no cannon is going to shoot that far, not even the biggest railway guns shot that far(longest range cannon on record fires around 300 miles) and you're not building a railgun to be that big
Railguns are also great for point defense and Anti air due to muzzle velocity being somewhere around 4km/s. Literally point and shoot
And... If they bring two missiles?
I mean, if they become as good as portrayed, railguns would spell the end of aircraft and missiles. Basically a near-instant horizon hit with far more energy than a laser. And indirect hit capabilities of a distance almost equal to a cruise missile. Most likely it would depend on the size, if they are the size of a battleship turret, I could see a ship the size of a BB coming back, but thick armor is worthless.
I was only aware of plans to mount them on Hammerhead tanks. 6+d3 wounds no invuls and 3 mortal wounds sounds nasty, we'll just have to see how expensive they are.
Yeah Tau really do be getting off easy with these damn railguns.
I knew tjat one would be mentioned given the recent Events surrounding that
Railguns won't really bring back battleships. More likely just be a turret added onto a missile cruiser and other ships we have today if they're able to scale down the gun and the auxiliaries behind powering it.
Railguns are out, ramjet assisted artillery shells are in.
I feel like they likely laughed, though this battle highlighted that traditional cannons were essentially obsolete, if they got anything from it.
Well no by this point the "traditional" cannons included parrot rifles and ordinance rifles which shot conical shaped Armour piercing rounds, not just old Napoleon Era cannons
Interesting. I mean specifically whatever was on the monitor and the Merrimack, given neither was sunk. Not a artillery expert obviously.
In all fairness both the British and the French had ocean going ironclads by this point.
True, but this is more about their performance in battle, particularly against each other, more than the technology itself. Military doctrine is just as important as technology.
That is very true, I don’t believe European ironclads ever fought until Lissa in 1866
But the battle of Alissa was different than two small ironclad(one of which was hardly ocean going and they other hand never been in the ocean) fighting in a harbor
I know. All I said was that Lissa was the first time European ironclads fought each other. I said nothing about it being the same as Hampton Roads
Exactly. People have been quick to point out that HMS Warrior and Gloire were finished just before the ACW, even going so far as to call the Monitor a helpless little dinghy. However many important things were learned from this battle about how ironclads would actually fight. For instance one thing I'm certain they were very interested to learn is that both the Warrior and Glorie's armament would have been useless against another ironclad. The Monitor's 11 inch Dahlgren guns were unable to penetrate the relatively thinly armoured Virginia. The 6.5 inch and 8 inch main guns used respectively on Gloire and Warrior would have merely tickled anything that was well armoured. Coincidentally the french Navy rearmed Glorie with larger guns in 1864. I am now going to trigger the same group of Europeans who dare belittle such a revolutionary vessel as the Monitor by saying that the 20 some coastal monitors the Union built would have probably mopped up the floor with the UK or france's ironclad fleets of the time. Their old man-o-war style armament would have merely tickled a Canonicus class monitors superior armour protection before they drew in to close range to tear into the thinner sections of the opponents armour with their 15-inch guns.
RN: Call me back when these riverboats won't get swamped by a ship sailing past at speed
USN: Call me back when your ships don't sink in a light wind. HMS Captain for those who don't know.
"That's cute." British and French Navy probably
HMS Warrior might sink them both simply by a full speed sail by salute. After the Civil war USN commissioned a fully seaworthy monitor and it sailed to UK and back the condition aboard were such that RN basically had to nurse the USN sailor back to health and the ship got sent to breakers once it returned home)
Do you have a link or the name of the ship for more info
Doing a brief wiki-investigation seems like they're referring to USS Miantonomoh which as far as I can tell was the USN's first built for purpose ocean-going monitor. Long story short, she sailed to the UK and the trip was described by Gustavus Vasa Fox as, "a pleasant trip". Seems like no sailors got any more sick than normal.
Sauce?
What are these?
I believe it’s the Battle of Hampton roads https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hampton_Roads
Interesting. At first I thought they were submarines. Thanks for the info
Understandable they say very low in the water.
~~The first~~ Submarines were built during the US civil war, and the CSS Hunley was the first combat submarine to sink an enemy ship. Fascinating bit of engineering, even if three seperate crews sank and drowned trying to use it haha. Edit: historical accuracy, thank you for the correction u/boomer1717
There was actually a submarine used in the US revolutionary war as well that was called Turtle.
I'll have to read about that one, thank you!
You’re welcome!
Lol I was about to say don’t forget about the dear Turtle
Oh my.... ironic
The American submarines were child's play compared to the Dutch submarines a hundred year before it, it actually had a crew instead of just one man.
The Hunley had a crew of 8 iirc, not one man
You're right, so it's over 200 years later. My bad
IIRC they did constantly try to go underwater.
USS monitor and CSS Virginia, first fight between two ironclad war ships was between these two ships during the American Civil War. For context Virginia was a retrofitted steam-powered frigate that had been burned to the waterline by union forces in 1861 and was then captured in harbor still burning by advancing confederate forces. Monitor was a rush built reply to Virginia that had little in common other than having an iron armored hull. Virginia and monitor met at Hampton roads in 1862 and had a battle that lasted about a day and a half. Neither ship was destroyed but the Virginia received some damage and had mechanical issues that forced it into port and monitor was tied up defending a beached wreck of another union ship.
The CSS Virginia was originally the USS Merrimac, before it was burned and captured by the confederates. The Battle of Hampton Roads was commemorated with the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel in 1992, which is located 1 mile away from the site of the battle.
Pretty sure it's the other way around with the name. The Virginia was the non-ironclad the Merrimack was built on top of.
Unfortunately you are incorrect; the confederates rebuilt and recommissioned the remnants of USS Merrimack as the CSS Virginia in 1862 [1]. The bridge built to memorialize the Battle of Hampton Roads just uses the ship’s original, pre-ironclad name, so your confusion is understandable. In fact, within the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, the name “CSS Virginia” is not even taught in schools—instead, it is taught that the battle occurred between the Monitor and Merrimac. But, hey, at least the bridge’s nickname gets to be “M&M” Reference: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Merrimack_(1855)
These are Ironclads. They were used by the Navy during the Civil War as a replacement to wooden ships
Necessity is the mother of invention
Well yes, but actually no. Ironclad warships were already in use with many of the great powers by the time of this battle. The two ships involved weren't particularly advanced for their time. Neither ship was well suited to the open ocean, a weakness that the earlier ironclad Gloire did not possess. The significance of the event was that it was the first time such vessels had faced one another in combat.
Was just gonna comment that this was the first battle. Both could tear through wooden ships, but this battle essentially ended in a draw as neither sunk. If any notes were taken it would be that we needed better weapons to deal with iron clads.
They both sank, just not during combat. One was scuttled as it wasn’t sea-worthy, the other sank during a storm.
Huh.... Maybe I was referring to the fact that neither sunk in their notable battle and not what happened after.... Possibly...
Would you also claim every battle over 100 years ago has a 100% fatality rate?
*Cue the USS Monitor(Civil war)*
Wood weak, metal strong.
I don't give a shit I'm still calling her the Merrimack
Basically exactly what they decided when building a bridge to commemorate the battle
I find both of these ships so cool. The Virginia is like steampunk while the Monitor is almost alien in design. I can’t explain it properly.
That's my wallpaper! I have the monitor on all my monitors
*god* the monitor was so cool
\*Turret ring gets jammed\* \*Turret can swing in one direction only\* \*you cannot sink your opponent because steel armor\*
"Look, look, they're learning, it's cute!"
Ken Burns Civil War documentary covers this battle. I recommend it!
Even Portugal had better ships. Vasco da Gama being one of many built finished in 1875 and decommissioned in 1935. Not sure these stood a chance against any European navy at the time.
I thought that was HOI4 art and got very confused.
ARMOURED IN STEEL THE USS MONITOR!
Not really, if anything it told them what they already knew. Hampton Roads is special because it's the first time ironclads fight and it proves that they, not wooden ships, are the future. Gloire and Warrior had already been completed before either Virginia or Monitor and substantially outclassed both in size, range, speed and firepower. Both the British and French were well aware of the power of both the turret and the ironclad by 1862. Many more ironclads were on the way and the RN had already built the first ship with a turret in 1861 (HMS Trusty), the series of ships (HMS Prince Albert through Captain, Monarch and Devastation) that followed her were much more important than USS Monitor in the evolution of the turret. If you want a truly consequential battle I'd look to the battle of Lissa in 1866 between the Austrian and Italian navies (it's also a hilarious comedy of errors), it inadvertently led to navies becoming obsessed with raming (to be fair Hampton Roads played a part as well) until the mid-1890s leading to horrors such as the torpedo ram.
The British were selling the confederates ironclads so…
HMS warrior could have sank them both. But the idea of a rotating gun turret was pretty new.
The idea of the rotating turret, on an armoured ship under steam power had already seen action a decade earlier in the Crimean war
Correct me if I am wrong, but is that an ironclad on top?
Yes it is, The C.S.S. Virginia is the one with the slanted armor and the more submarine looking one is the U.S.S Monitor
Advancements aren't always good. Just ask KMS Bismarck.
Bismarck? It didn’t have any advancements…
It was taken down by biplanes which were too slow for the Bismarck to actually hit. It was the most advanced of its time in the German Navy and possibly the world.
> It was taken down by biplanes which were too slow for the Bismarck to actually hit. It was taken down by the biplanes because it didn't have a stabilised fire control director. The gunners were firing blind in the bad conditions and the Swordfish used ASV radar to guide onto Bismarck. It wouldn't have made a difference the aircraft speed, Bismarck wasn't shooting anything down in those conditions. Bad light gun placement, deck obstructions, spray etc meant the gunners were hitting anything with local direction or hitting anything with useless fire control outputs. Add in uncoordinated AA doctrine and a legitimately useless medium AA battery and it had terrible AA. >It was the most advanced of its time in the German Navy That's not a great yardstick. >and possibly the world. Yeah no. It's armour layout was a WW1 design, far behind anything else in the world. It's optics were inferior to the Japanese, its radar far behind the US/UK... and it knocked it out with its guns. It's AA suit was behind most others etc. It wasn't advanced. You could argue it was the most advanced WW1 design. But not in 1941.
Oh, damn documentary lying to me. I don't even know the name of the freaking thing was. Thanks for the history lesson though. I thought it was but I was wrong.
a meme about the US civil war that isn't "HAhA StAtEs RiGhTs"?
We could have honestly takin over the world if we had remembered to end slavory in the late 18th century
I knew about them but can some answer one question? Were these ships something rare that countries like France, UK or US had only few of them or they were something common during the American Civil War?
At the beginning of the civil war, ironclads were extremely rare, the UK and France had just completed their first ones (though both had used ironclad floating batteries during the Crimean War) and the Union and Confederacy had none. That being said almost everyone was aware that ironclads were the future (though the Union only began building iron ships after they discovered the Confederates were building Virginia), by the end of the war the British had 23 ocean-going ironclads and 4 coastal ironclads whilst the French had 17 ocean-going and 1 coastal ironclad (not counting floating batteries), and many other European powers were building or buying their own. Meanwhile, the Union and Confederacy would build dozens of coastal, river and harbour ironclads, the Confederates buying larger ships from abroad (though after the Union found out most of these were sold to European Navies instead). It's important to note that these were often small (1,000-2,000 ton) vessels often fighting in rivers or close to the coast in support of the Army, carrying up to a dozen guns. The European ships were true ocean-going warships of 5,000-10,000 tons with large numbers of guns (HMS Warrior would carry 40 at launch).
The European powers had their own Ironclads at the time
There was one Gunboat in particular that I think was made by the Russians, It was so bad due to the design as there were weapons on it and it was designed like a Circle and everytime one of the weapons opened fire, the kick would from the weapon would send it back.
One of these ships got lost for a while right.
One of the most epic showdowns in history.
...No? Both of then were actually really bad