HMS VULCAN
On 18 June 1888 Portsmouth Royal Dockyard laid the keel of a very special new type of warship, the torpedo-boat carrier (or mother ship) to be named Vulcan — a very appropriate name, as the original Vulcan was the Roman god of fire and volcanic eruptions, who forged iron in his workshop under Mount Etna. The modern HMS Vulcan also played with fire, carrying a small flotilla of up to nine second-class torpedo boats on her deck and a large number of offensive mines in her holds. She had extensive workshop facilities to maintain her brood of chicks. Vulcan was launched less than one year later, on 13 June 1889.
Her original configuration, as a lightly-armed protected cruiser with a fair turn of speed, would have allowed her to carry out trials of an offensive blockade role: carrying her flotilla of torpedo boats to enemy coastal waters, she could lay offensive minefields off the enemy’s harbours, and if he emerged to give battle could hoist out her flotilla of torpedo boats and lead them into an attack. If attacked herself, Vulcan was speedy and had fair protection; as a last resort she could put up a reasonable defence with her armament of 8 × 4.7in guns, 12 × 3pdrs (47mm) and 16 machine guns. Finally, she carried above-water torpedo tubes of her own, at bow and stern. However, it was unlikely her commanding officer would have risked the kind of jingoistic combat described by a journalist in the Graphic of 22 June 1889: ‘Her speed being at least as great as that of any large vessel yet afloat, and hardly less than that attained by the quickest torpedo-craft, she will be able to accept or decline an action, while the power and rapid fire of her armament will justify her in engaging any enemy short of a battleship.’
The inclusion of a minelaying capability was far-sighted, although Vulcan was never to be used in an offensive minelaying role. In spite of the bravery of their torpedo craft crews, the main Japanese successes against the Russian fleet during their blockade of Port Arthur had come from the minefields they had laid. Mines, however, were a two-edged sword, and the Japanese were to suffer grievous losses themselves in Russian minefields.
As the British and French navies discovered, second-class torpedo boats had very minimal sea-keeping characteristics, and soon were to be countered by torpedo-boat destroyers. Therefore, Vulcan’s role quickly evolved to become a general torpedo and mine training ship, and in 1909 she became a depot ship for submarines, the conceptual successors to the second-class torpedo boats.
Her workshop facilities were originally intended to maintain and repair the flimsy torpedo boats she carried; their highly stressed lightweight machinery was in constant need of care. The workshop could also carry out maintenance and repair of the large number of torpedoes Vulcan carried. In it there were five lathes of various sizes, two drilling machines with twist drills and boring bars, machines for planing, shaping and slotting, punching and shearing, and a circular saw bench. The machine tools were driven by belts from overhead shafting powered by a separate steam engine in the workshop. Casting and founding could be carried out in a sandpit and moulding boxes, and crucibles heated by hot air from a high-speed fan were capable of melting down two hundredweight (90kg) of iron or brass at a time. Fitters had the use of workbenches fitted with vices, and naturally a comprehensive set of tools was carried.
FOUDRE
The French navy’s response came in the form of the Foudre (‘lightning’), an appropriate companion to the Royal Navy’s god of fire. Laid down on 9 June 1892, she was launched on 20 October 1895. In obvious comparison with HMS Vulcan, the French design stood out by virtue of her four large gantry cranes fore and aft. While Vulcan’s single goose-neck hydraulic cranes would have had great difficulty in hoisting out a torpedo boat in a seaway, with the boat swinging about on the single hoisting cable, Foudre completely eliminated this potential problem by launching her set of eight second-class torpedo boats by means of overhead gantry cranes, which would not have been out of place in a contemporary railway locomotive construction shop. She even carried midships smaller gantry sets to launch the larger of her ship’s boats.
Like Vulcan, Foudre was a lightly-armed protected cruiser, capable of fight or flight. Built at the end of a period when the designers of French cruisers and battleships seemed to have a complete disregard for added top-weight, piling up superstructures like apartment blocks, topped by cylindrical fighting masts with internal electric ammunition hoists, Foudre’s designer appears to have taken the lesson to heart. To counteract her heavy gantry cranes and her deck cargo of torpedo boats, her superstructure, funnels and masting are minimalist to say the least. Her torpedo boats even had hinged funnels to keep down the height of the gantry cranes. She also avoided the second fatal design failure of most contemporary French warships, and lacked the excessive tumblehome sides which caused them to roll like barrels and seriously reduced their margins of stability.
Again, like Vulcan, Foudre also had extensive workshop facilities. Unlike the Industrial Revolution-era system on Vulcan, however, Foudre’s workshop had large electric motors powering each machine tool. She also had an elaborate system of overhead transporter rails to move torpedoes around the workshop. This equipment fit stood her in good stead as the mother ship of yet another new invention. She had previously carried an inflatable observation balloon on her after deck, and when she ceased to be a torpedo-boat carrier and her gantry cranes were finally removed, in 1912 Foudre was transformed into what may be considered the world’s very first specialised aircraft-carrying vessel.
AUXILIARY CRUISERS
The German raiders Komet, Kormoran and Michel each carried one small LS-boat, numbered respectively LS 2, LS 3 and LS 4. Whereas the first two carried only mines, LS 4 Esau carried by the 4740-ton raider Michel (Ship № 28, HSK No IX) was used in an offensive role, attacking several ships with her two 18in torpedoes, often in stalking attacks after dark.