172:, cushioned the shock of a hit from damaging the structure of the ship and distributed the force over a larger area, which prevented penetration. The drawback of using wood and iron was extreme weight. Experiments with reducing or eliminating wooden backing to save weight proved unsuccessful. The committee also tested steel as potential armor as its members felt that the harder the armor, the better it might deflect or resist shot. However, the steel being produced at that time proved too brittle to be effective. Iron, being softer, bent, dented and distorted but held together and remained an effective means of protection.
160:. The second method, rolling, involved stacking iron lumps atop one another, heating them to welding temperature and passing them between two iron rollers to become one plate of the required size. Rolled iron was difficult to produce initially, as it required machinery of immense size and great power. However, when the Special Committee tested both types of plate in 1863, it found that rolled iron was superior to hammered due to greater uniformity in quality. The committee and iron manufacturers worked together on how to more easily produce rolled plate, which became standard use in warships beginning in 1865.
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For instance, two processes were used in constructing iron armor. In the first, hammering, large lumps of iron of scrap or puddled iron were heated to welding temperature and placed under heavy steel hammers. Repeated blows welded these lumps into one solid plate and shaped it to the required form
149:. This committee worked four years, between 1861 and 1865, during which time it formulated the best performing armor with the metallurgy as then known, suggested ways for improving its production and quality and helped develop more effective shot against ironclad vessels.
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The committee addressed the use of wooden backing with iron armor. Early
European iron armour consisted of between four and five inches (roughly 10 to 13 cm) of wrought iron backed by between 18 and 36 inches (roughly one-half to one metre) of solid
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plates to the front face of iron armour. Efforts to carry out these proposals failed for many reasons, primarily because the
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used laminated armour but this was necessitated by lack of facilities for manufacturing single plates of proper thickness.
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Due to the ever increasing thickness of the armour, and the associated weight, proposals were made from an early date to
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as a reference to a ship 'clad' in iron. The earliest material available in sufficient quantities for armouring
225:(London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1877), ed. Pole, William FRS. At Google Books. Accessed 13 April 2012.
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and dimensions. Hammered iron plate was the armor used in the earliest ironclad vessels, including
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who had also built over 80 iron vessels before retiring from shipbuilding. Other members included
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government in 1868. Armoured ships may have been built as early as 1203, in the
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and, to a limited degree, fortifications. The use of iron gave rise to the term
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Gene Slover's US Navy pages, Naval ordnance and gunnery, chapter XII. Armor
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Baxter, p. 202-3; Fairbairn, pp. 356-8; Osborne, pp. 32-3; Sandler, p. 53.
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for the continued research into naval armour. Among its members was Sir
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has never been used for naval armour, it did find a use in land
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