Naval ram
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A Naval ram was a weapon carried by varied types of ships, dating back to antiquity. The weapon consisted of an underwater prolongation of the bow of the ship to form an armoured beak, usually between six and twelve feet in length.
The ram was a naval weapon in the Greek/Roman antiquity and was used in such naval battles as Salamis and Actium. For the last stage of the attack the ship would be propelled by oarsmen rather than sails.
A trireme bronze cast ram has been found off Athlit (Israel) without any other wreckage around it which gives credit to the idea often expressed by some scholars that the ancient shipbuilders and carpenters built the ship's keel with some sort of carpenter's trick enabling the ram to be sheared off the keel without endangering the ramming (attacking) ship, which could otherwise have sprung a leak or be driven to the bottom by the sinking opponent. Rams were always made of bronze, and weighed anywhere from 8 to 20 tons.
Many other historical vessels were used as rams, such as the Korean Turtle ship.
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[edit] Steam rams
In more modern examples, many 19th Century ironclad battleships were so equipped. The first modern ram ship built was the French-built Taureau, in 1863. [1] In fact, many ironclad ships were designed specifically to ram opponents, such as the General Price, pictured to the right. In ships of this type, the armour belt was prolonged to brace both sides of the ram to increase structural integrity.
The theory behind the revival of the weapon derived from the fact that, in the period around 1860, armour held superiority over the ship-mounted cannon. That is to say, it was believed that an armoured warship could not be seriously damaged by the naval artillery in existence at the time. In order to achieve a decisive result in a naval engagement, therefore, alternative methods of action were believed to be necessary. As it followed, from the same belief, that a ship armed with a ram could not be seriously damaged by the gunfire of its intended victim, the ram became, for a brief period, the main armament of Royal Navy and contemporary foreign battleships.
The frequent use of ramming as a tactic in the Battle of Lissa (1866) also led to many late nineteenth century naval designers equipping their warships with ram bows. This only really aggravated a number of incidents of ships being sunk by their squadron-mates in accidental collisions as ramming never featured as a viable battle tactic again. The fixation on ramming may also have inhibited the development of gunnery.
When it became clear, towards the end of the nineteenth century, that breech-loading cannon could hit, and hit effectively, enemy ships at several thousand yards range, the ineffectiveness of the ram became clear and ships ceased to be fitted with them.
No other ironclad was ever sunk by an enemy ship in time of war by the use of the ram, although the ram was regarded by all major navies for some thirty years as primary battleship armament. A number of ships were, however, rammed in peacetime by ships of their own navy. The most serious in terms of loss of life was the collision between HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown, which took place in the Mediterranean in 1893. (See HMS Victoria) The only battleship over submarine victory in history occurred during World War I, when the battleship HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank a German U-Boat, but this was incidental, and Dreadnought's bow was not intended for ramming enemy vessels.
[edit] Torpedo ram
The torpedo ram was a hybrid torpedo boat combining a ram with torpedo tubes. Incorporating design elements from the cruiser and the monitor, it was intended to provide a small and inexpensive weapon systems for coastal defence and other littoral combat.
Like a monitor, torpedo rams operated with very little freeboard, sometimes with only inches of hull rising above the water, exposing only their funnels and turrets to enemy fire. In addition to the guns in their turrets, they also were equipped with torpedoes. Early designs incorporated a spar torpedo that could be extended from the bow and detonated by ramming a target. Later designs used tube-launched self-propelled torpedoes, but retained the concept of ramming, resulting in designs like HMS Polyphemus, which had five torpedo tubes, two each port and starboard and one mounted in the center of her reinforced ram bow.
[edit] References
- ^ Hore, Peter: The Ironclads, page 38. Anness Publishing Ltd, 2006. ISBN 978-1-84476-299-6
