- Author
- Davies, Jim
- Subjects
- 19th century wars, History - pre-Federation
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- March 1999 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Until this time, although fortress guns had sometimes been mounted on iron carriages, wood had been favoured by the Royal Navy for shipboard carriages. In 1865 it was decided to change to iron. The Kings Park guns were sent to Australia with iron fortress carriages which were unfortunately scrapped in 1932. On firing, the gun barrel slid back on its stationary carriage until halted by friction devices. After loading, the gun would be run back to the firing position. The little rear wheels seen in old photographs were set sideways on a circular track to enable the gun to swivel. The shipboard carriages were similar but usually lower and early models were moved by rope tackles. The Kings Park guns were loaded by hand but power loading was needed as guns and shot got bigger.
Rifled muzzle-loading guns were standard in the world’s ships and forts for some years but now the arms race was on in earnest. Guns became bigger and bigger. The largest RN RML guns were 16″ but the Gibraltar forts mounted four Armstrong 17.72″ guns to match the 17.72″ guns supplied to the Italian navy by Armstrong’s. Of course the same firms who sold the guns sold the armour to resist the guns and the new guns to penetrate new armour and so on. Nice work if you can get- it! Special “disappearing” mountings were developed for ships and forts to allow the guns to be loaded down behind protective walls or armour out of the reach of enemy fire.
During the 1880’s iron armour, now enormously thick, began to be combined with and then replaced by steel. At the same time, new developments allowed breech-loading to be adopted again, Britain settling for 6″, 9.2″ and 12″ as standard calibres. Gun powder was soon to be replaced by the new “smokeless” propellants such as cordite. As a result of all this rapid change, right up until 1914 the world’s navies and forts were full of obsolete ships and weapons, purchased at enormous cost, being replaced at further enormous cost by the new models. By the time the Kings Park guns arrived at Fremantle in 1891 the day of the RML was over.
And how did the guns come to be in Fremantle?
For the first part of the 19th Century Britain’s traditional rival was France. Sydney Harbour had protective gun batteries from 1788 and the arrival from time to time of a French scientific expedition was enough to spark off another frantic race to raise the flag on another possible site for a colony. By the middle of the century Russia had become another bogey-man and in the 1850’s Britain and France even became temporary allies in the Crimean War to prevent Russia supplanting Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean.
At that time there was some reaction in the Australian colonies but it soon calmed down. In Sydney Harbour the island of “Pinchgut” was fortified as Fort benison but nothing came of plans to erect a fort at the mouth of the Swan River.
In 1877 Russia defeated Turkey but her gains were limited by an international conference at which Britain gained Cyprus to guard the Suez Canal, the new life-line to India and Australia. Now defence became a real issue in Australia, at least for talking about, especially since the last British regiments had been withdrawn in 1870.
In the late 1870’s two British military experts, Jervois and Scratchley, had recommended extensive defensive works for the major Australian ports. Some works were undertaken by the Eastern colonies but in poor little WA, with a population of less than 30,000, who was going to find the money? The richer colonies were even starting their own navies. The colonies, meeting in 1881, were reluctant to accept the recommendations of a British commission that they fortify their own ports and contribute cash towards the cost of a Royal Navy force to control the seas but events forced their hands. The visit in 1882 of a small Russian naval squadron led to something close to public panic and the colonies,, pushed along by public pressure, began strengthening their defences on the lines recommended.
In 1885 a Russian victory over Afghan forces at their border was another great shock. The road to India and on to Australia seemed open. The Empire prepared for war. The self-governing colonies had accepted the proposal for the formation of a special Australasian squadron of the Royal Navy based at Sydney and work was pressed ahead on fortifications. Now Sydney had a battery on virtually every headland between Darling Harbour and the sea, a modem benefit of which is now so many of these points are public parks. Victoria built more forts in Port Phillip Bay to add to the defences at the entrance and went so far as to lay minefields in the bay. South Australia ordered more guns for a third fort to be built at Glenelg.