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KEY BATTLE
“The storm of shot and shell launched against the THE BATTLE OF
MANILA STEAM,
Spaniard was destructive beyond all description” MAY 1, 1898
The Spanish–American War of 1898
LIEUTENANT J L STICKNEY, EYEWITNESS TO THE BATTLE OF MANILA, 1898 was the first test of the American IR
“New Navy” of modern battleships
and cruisers. The Asiatic Squadron
as a fleet of iron-armored paddle steamers, to fight to this kind of gunfire. In addition, the adoption of under Commodore George Dewey
on the Mississippi. By the conclusion of the Civil steam power was not without its drawbacks. Sailing sank seven Spanish warships in the
War, in 1865, the superiority of ironclad steamships ships had not needed fuel, but coaling stations were Philippines without loss. ONCLADS,
over wooden sailing ships was generally accepted. now essential to naval operations, giving a new twist
In 1871, the British built HMS Devastation, the first to geopolitics. When coal began to be replaced by
capital warship to have no sails at all. However, oil, the possession of oilfields became a primary
a new configuration of naval warfare still took strategic concern for naval powers.
time to emerge: the design of naval guns and their
positioning on ships went through a stuttering NAVAL RACE
development. For a time, naval designers became By the end of the 19th century, navies had become
obsessed with rams, imagining that armor would supreme status symbols for competing imperial
make warships immune to gunfire; they pictured powers. The US, Japan, and Germany embarked AND THE FIRST BA
a return to the tactics of Ancient Greece in which on large-scale naval construction programs, to
steamships maneuvered like triremes in a bid to which the UK actively responded, determined
sink enemy vessels with their reinforced prows. to maintain its long-established naval supremacy.
Eventually a system was devised for mounting In the first decade of the 20th century, a frenzied ▲ American battleships steaming
large rifled guns in rotating armored turrets, with naval race between the British and the Germans in line destroy Spanish warships in
Manila Bay.
the magazine and ammunition stored in the hull saw the UK repeatedly raise the bar with faster,
below. These guns fired high-explosive shells at long more powerfully armed battleships, starting with
range, requiring the invention of complex range- the epoch-making HMS Dreadnought in 1906. Yet
finding devices. Hulls were now made from metal while naval commanders and a jingoistic public TTLESHIPS
and clad in steel armor, but the increasing power were obsessed with large warships—battleships, ▼ WHITEHEAD TORPEDO
of explosives meant that ships remained vulnerable battlecruisers, and cruisers—other developments In the 1860s, British engineer Robert
in naval warfare made these expensive vessels Whitehead invented the first effective
worryingly vulnerable. Sea mines, first used in the self-propelled torpedo. Carried by
Crimean War, could sink any capital ship—and so small ships, the torpedo threatened
to undermine the dominance of
could boats armed with torpedoes, whose worth heavily gunned warships.
was ably demonstrated by the
Japanese during their war
with Russia from 1904
to 1905. Destroyers were
devised to defend the fleet against attack by ▼ DAHLGREN GUN
torpedo boats, as well as launching torpedoes Invented by US naval officer John
themselves, but navies had no technology for A Dahlgren, the Dahlgren gun was
defense against torpedo-armed submarines, which in frequent use during the American
Civil War. Its distinctive soda-bottle
became a practical element of navies in the first shape gave more power than a
decade of the 20th century. conventional naval gun.