Naval ram
 | It has been suggested that Ram (ship) and Talk:Ram (ship) be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since September 2007. |
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 6 feet and twelve feet in length.
The ram was a naval weapon in the Grecian/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.
In more modern examples, many 18th Century ironclad battleships were so equipped; 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 Naval and contemporary foreign battleships.
The ram was commonly used in antiquity, and was an important part of the armament of the galleys of Imperial Rome. Its first recorded use in modern times between major warships, however, was in the American Civil War, at the battle of Hampton Roads, when the armoured Confederate warship Virginia rammed the Union frigate Cumberland, sinking her almost immediately. The only other significant success of the ram in wartime was at the battle of Lissa, between Italy and Austria. The Italian ironclad Re d'Italia had been damaged aft by gunfire, and had no rudder. Lying helpless in the water, she was struck amidships by the Austrian Ferdinand Max, the flagship of the Austrian Commander-in-Chief Admiral Tegetthoff. The Austrian ship retreated unharmed as the Italian vessel rolled over and sank.
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.
In World War II, naval ships often rammed other vessels, though this was often due to circumstances, as it could cause considerable damage to the attacking ship. Notably during anti-submarine warfare, ramming was an alternative if the destroyer was too close to the surfaced submarine for her main guns to fire into the water. A British destroyer was disguised as a German ship and rammed the lock gates at the U-boat base at St. Nazaire. PT-109 was rammed and crushed by a Japanese destroyer, though the incident was at night and the PT-boat was idling to avoid detection, making it doubtful the destroyer's actions were intentional. And most famously, HMS Glowworm rammed the German cruiser Admiral Hipper in an act of desperation.