HMVS Cerberus

I thought HMVS Cerberus & the campaign to save her might be of interest.

Built in 1868, Cerberus is a breastwork monitor, an improvement on the American monitors. The Heritage At Risk site has a 'now' photo of her rusting away in Half Moon Bay (near Melbourne) and a good 'then' photo, and a good background.

Throughout her 53 years of service, HMVS Cerberus was never required to fire a shell at an enemy.

The closest she came was in 1878 in an attempt to apprehend a small trading vessel which was trying to evade customs duties by sneaking up Port Phillip Bay.

While the ship was lying at anchor in Hobson's Bay, the crew spotted the trading vessel and sprang into action to fire a shot at it.

Unfortunately they had not realised that the tide had turned, turning the ship around so that its guns faced towards the shore.

A shot from the ship's guns blew the roof off a chemist's shop in St Kilda. The crew then turned the gun around and fired again, this time hitting the Gellibrand Lighthouse. The crew were then ordered to cease-fire.

The offending vessel was later apprehended at daylight.

Now the Friends Of site is back up, which has the campaign details, although it's a rather awful site to navigate.

This is a a well done page though and the Wikipedia page is informative.

Also, you download a free paper model to assemble or look on Google Maps.

Ironclads

A note on the Ironclads

I love the look of the American Civil War ironclads


CSS Virginia & USS Monitor, both launched in 1862. Bigger version of picture.

One of the ideas behind their development, was to make it harder for the enemy ships to actually hit them. From memory, Virginia was built so enemy fire would 'slide off' and with Monitor, there is obviously little above the water to target.


USS Monitor obviously gave its name to the line of warships to come. although the very low deck obviously created problems at sea, which the breastwork monitor was developed to overcome.

To put these mastless, iron beasts into a ship-building context, this is still the era of the clipper ships, with the Cutty Sark still a few years from being built, and sail driven traders like Polly Woodside were still being built decades later.

Before the monitors though, there was the British HMS Warrior, launched 1860 and the first ocean going ironclad, the French La Gloire, launched 1859. I believe La Gloire was a wooden-hulled warship plated with iron, enough to make the traditional wooden warships suddenly obsolete. She in turn was made obsolete with the launching of Warrior just over a year later. Warrior was built with iron plates and had a single, central gun citadel, replacing the traditional rows of gun decks. While I don't think she ever saw active service, she was the start of an almost century-long naval arms race.