The www.history.navy.mil website is really hurting

I keep trying to access images from the NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER website and continually am aggravated by the website performance. I was looking for more pictures of Confederate ironclads. This time I wanted to see pictures of the CSS Richmond. I am still waiting, several minutes later. The pictures tend to be under 100K in size, so what is the deal?

Real photographs of the CSS Albemarle

I had not realized that there were actual photographs of the Confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle. Admittedly, they were taken after the Albemarle was salvaged, but nonetheless, we know what the ship really looked like. AmericanCivilWar.com has a page with the photographs.

The Russian cruiser Askold

I think that the Russian cruiser Askold really betrays her German origin. The entire conception is very strange, with the low hull, the first level superstructure, and five funnels. This picture apparently shows the ship off Port Arthur in 1904 in gray wartime garb.

More on the Manassas

The more that I look at the Manassas picture, the more that it is obvious that it was an advanced concept. The ship was intended to be six feet above water and 17ft below the water line. The curved deck was almost an early example of a protective deck, with a bit more arch than was typical. One problem was that the armour was too thin. It seems to have been all that the displacement could carry. The Manassas was about 143ft long and had sharp ram shape forward, where the curve of the deck came down to a point below the water. The ram protruded 10 feet forward and seems to have been part of a solid block of wood about twenty feet long. In service, the ram seems to have been not solid enough to penetrate the side of a ship, since in about three attacks, ships were damaged but not holed. I was interested to read that David Dixon Porter had hoped to save the Manassas as an "engineering curiosity", but the ship was on fire, drifted downstream, blew-up, and sank before it could be rescued.

My CSS Manassas picture

I took that CSS Manassas drawing that the Wikipedia has and applied photographic elements and did some other graphic editing to see if I could make the picture look photographic. It seems at least somewhat successful to me (of course, I am prejudiced). The Manassas was converted towboat (often called a tug, which has a different connotation) that had curved iron plating for armour. The armour was too thin and the Manassas was sunk during the Union attack on New Orleans in 1862. This picture shows the Manassas with a single funnel, which is what I have grown to expect. An alternative view shows the Manassas with twin funnels aligned so that from the side, they look like one.

CSS Virginia

I thought that we needed a CSS Virginia photograph. This is the USS Merrimack cut down and given an iron casemate. The navy had burnt the Merrimack on abandoning Norfolk. The Confederates raised the ship and repaired the holes that had been drilled in the hull. The ship had sank, so that most of the lower hull was undamaged by fire. Captain Paulding had not done a very effective scuttling job. The engines were affected by being submerged in seawater, however. The Virginia was a very large ship. As a screw frigate, the Merrimack had displaced 4,363 tons. The Virginia had a mixed armament. She carried 2-7in MLR, 2-6in MLR, and 6-9in Dahlgren SBML. There wre also two 12pdr howitzers. The iron armour was built of two 2-in layers. The best that the Virginia could make was about six knots. (I drew this picture quite a while ago, but I was surprised to find that it was never published!)

The "Spanish Cruisers" page

I was impressed by the Spanish cruisers page at the UK website, www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk. I was particularly interested to see the photograph titled: "Almirante Oquendo after the Battle of Santiago". This was contributed by Rafael Galvan Diaz. The ship had run ashore, heavily damaged and on fire. The Spanish found out that above water torpedo launchers or tubes were hazardous. Sadly, the British had not learned the lesson and that probably caused the loss of the battlecruiser Hood in 1941.