Evaluation of The Gunboats
The only meaningful evaluation of a warship is by comparison with its contemporaries in function. By this scale, the City class gunboats must be given very good grades, as they combined firepower, protection, and mobility in a manner achieved by few of their contemporaries. Nevertheless, they had certain design flaws that would have had to be corrected in later ships of their general type.
Their weakest point was the hull. Not only was the hull easily penetrated, but once breached, there was no way to isolate the damage, such as by watertight compartments. This made them vulnerable to mines (Cairo and Baron De Kalb) and to ramming (Cincinnati and Mound City).
Their armor was inadequate in two respects: both the deck and the stern were uncovered. The lack of deck armor made them vulnerable to plunging fire, which they encountered most famously at the Battle of Fort Donelson. The gaps in the armor left the steering cables uncovered, so at Fort Donelson and other encounters, their steering was knocked out rather easily.
In common with all other ships of their era, no provision was made for confining escaping steam if the boilers were to suffer battle damage. The most prominent example of the evil consequences of this lack of foresight was the Mound City disaster of 17 June 1862, but other ships suffered similarly, if not to the same degree.
The peculiar three-keel construction and confined paddlewheel created steering problems that are often overlooked. The gunboats could not be backed against the current. These handling characteristics affected their use at the Battles of Island Number Ten and Memphis.
Read more about this topic: City Class Ironclad
Famous quotes containing the words evaluation of the, evaluation of, evaluation and/or gunboats:
“Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creators! Evaluating is itself the most valuable treasure of all that we value. It is only through evaluation that value exists: and without evaluation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Leadership in today’s world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)