"The Ramming of HMS Prince George by HMS Hannibal, 1903" Topic

"For some five decades from 1866, when the naval battle of Lissa, when victory was secured by the Austro-Hungarian fleet over its Italian enemy by means of ramming, naval architects were to be fixated on designing ram bows into warships of all sizes. They ignored the fact that victory at Lissa was possible only because of short effective gun ranges and that this factor was soon obviated by progress in gunnery and torpedoes. The ram, as a design feature, was to prove more dangerous to friends than to enemies and there were major disasters occasioned by it. There was however one serious ramming in which disaster did not follow, as a result of prompt and efficient damage control. This instance, which involved two British Pre-Dreadnoughts, HMS Hannibal and HMS Prince George, offers interesting insights into the efficiency of the Royal Navy at the start of the 20th Century.

HMS Hannibal and HMS Prince George both belonged to the nine-ship Majestic class which was brought into service in the late 1890s. These 16,000-ton, 421-feet long vessels were among the most powerful afloat when first commissioned. Capable of steaming at maximum 16 knots, and with a crew of 672, they could each bring into action four 12-inch and twelve 6-inch guns as a well as many smaller weapons and five 18-inch torpedo tubes. Heavily armoured, they had one great vulnerability that would apply to all ships afloat until the invention of radar – they were blind in darkness or fog…."

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Amicalement
Armand

Battleship collisions were more common than one usually thinks. I can think of about 20 right off the top of my head. When Arizona and Oklahoma were sunk at Pearl Harbor they were both freshly repaired from an October collision….. for example.

The Japanese navy finally removed the bow rams from their ships in 1904 after the cruiser Yoshino was rammed and sunk in dense fog by the cruiser Kasuga in May 1904.
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Jim

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

The Japanese navy finally removed the bow rams from their ships in 1904

The author of the website you linked to quotes Jentschura's Warships of the Japanese Navy for the fact in question. I have the book, and it does not say that they were removed anywhere in the book – it is a false citation. As the ram bow was an integral part of the ship's hull, doing so would be very difficult and would change the ship's entry for the worse.

It would be much more correct to say that after 1904, the Japanese did not build any more ships with ram bows. Instead they went to a straight slightly clipperish stem, and later to a bullnose bow. Interesting to note that the English and Americans carried on with the false ram for another 10 years or so. Also interesting that the Yoshino was built in England and the ship that hit her was built in Italy.