Hiumijuu-class Ironclad
The
Hiumi-class were a class of two oceangoing ironclads built for Alteias in the late 760s. They were the first oceangoing ironclads designed by Alteias, all previous ironclads being designed exclusively for defending the home islands. They served with distinction during the later years of the War of Ekranonian Conquest, with a quiet career afterwards. The two ships were named after creatures of Altesian legend, setting a precedent of capital ship naming that continues into the present day.
Ordered in 764 for the ongoing War of Ekranonian Conquest, the ships had to be ocean going in order to reach the Ekranon continent, some 2700 nautical miles away. Because of the distances between Alteias and its neighbors, they were designed from the beginning with sails. The pair were large for the time, with a length of 114 meters at the waterline. Most of the armament lay within its armored casemate: some four 38cm muzzle loading smoothbores arranged with two in the bow and stern gunports, with one on each broadside, and ten 28cm smoothbores, with one in each corner gunport and three each on each broadside. Four 20cm muzzle loading rifles were located in two twin turrets on top of the casemate. A four meter long ram bow completed the ship's armament. Interestingly, the ship was initially designed without a ram, but reports of the legendary Battle of Arken Bay, where an force of Gliadean ironclads sank much of a larger force of Meralian ironclads through ramming attacks. The report was so influential that for the next decade, Altesian warships were designed with ram bows, even though battle experience showed that ramming was usually ineffective. Armor ranged from 4cm on the deck to 28cm for the turrets, with 25cm of Altesian Maple backing with the exception of the turrets and conning towers. The armored belt extended from the main deck to 2m below the waterline.
The ships were powered by two horizontal back-acting engines, which drove a propeller each for a maximum speed of 14.5 knots. The steam for the engines was created by six cylindrical boilers at a pressure of 25psi. All of the boilers exhausted out of a single, large funnel. This funnel could partially retract while the ship was under sail. Range was a little over 1300 nautical miles at 8 knots, a respectable distance, but still insufficient to traverse the oceans surrounding Alteias. The engines were supplemented with two masts and a brig rig. Due to their large size and nonretracting propellers, ships were not great under sail, but it was they were still able to move at 8 or so knots.
Completed in 768, the two ships proved to be fast ships, but the turrets proved to be their downfall. While they provided good fields of fire, the weight from the turrets caused considerable instability, and they were removed in 769 in a large rebuild for both ships. The turrets would then be used on two smaller ships. The top of the casemate was plated over, two conning towers in place of the two turrets. The two middle gunports on each side were moved inwards, with two more gunports installed. The armament was changed to six 25.5cm rifles and twelve 20cm rifles. The ships were recommissioned in December 769, not long after the commissioning of the class's successor, the two even more massive
Arachi-class oceangoing monitors.
Adandara after her refit
With the intensification of the war in 770, the four ships were sent to the west coast of the Ekranon continent in order to defend Altesian holdings. There, the four behemoths would defend Altesian territory from repeated Qeu attacks. Initial battles were successful, with Qeu wooden ships destroyed quickly by the ironclads. However, in the early hours of 18 September 870, a Qeu force of nine ironclads ran into the Altesian force that was hidden by the cover of night. The result was a savage and confused action, where neither side could tell what was going on. Fighting quickly devolved into multiple smaller battles, with the Altesian ships fighting two or even three Qeu ships. While initial fighting resulted in a stalemate, the tide of the battle began to shift in favor of the Altesians when
Adandara rammed the Qeu armored corvette
Jouren Siafung, which sank after an hour. As the ranges closed from hundreds of meters to mere dozens, the larger 25.5cm rifles of the
Hiumi-class and the massive 51cm smoothbores of the
Arachi-class began to smash through the armor of the Qeu ships, while the fire from the smaller Qeu guns, the largest being a 22.5cm smoothbore, was largely ineffective. As dawn began to break, the Qeu ships retreated. Three Qeu ships were sunk or sinking, with a further three having heavy damage for the loss of 839 officers and men. On the Altesian side, all four ships were lightly damaged. The worst off of the ships was
Hiumi, which suffered from an explosion in one of the 25.5cm rifles, killing or wounding nearly everyone in the frontmost quarter of the casemate. Other ships had jammed gunport shutters or had lost masts. Still, the battle was a major Altesian victory, with Qeu naval forces crippled for several months. Altesian forces took advantage of this to mount a large scale invasion of the main Qeu port on the continent, Alquans, with the four ironclads leading the force. The remaining three active Qeu ironclads could only watch from afar as their damaged sisters were scuttled while the Qeu army retreated. The
Arachi-class were ordered to a different theater of the war soon afterwards, but
Hiumi and
Adandara remained off of Qeu-controlled areas of Ekranon. Their guns proved instrumental in suppressing coastal cities while remaining invulnerable to Qeu coastal defenses. Not long afterwards, Qeu forces would surrender and the resulting peace treaty ceded most of the Qeu territory to Alteias, ensuring that Alteias would have a large influence on Ekranon.
After the conclusion of Altesian conflict in the War of Ekranonian Conquest in early 771, the two ships would sail to various ports around the world on various goodwill missions, or to display the power of Alteias on several occasions. However, the two ships would never fire a shot in anger again.
Adandara, approaching obsolescence, would be placed in reserve in 780 and scrapped in 782.
Hiumi would be reassigned as a training ship around the same time. She would continue in this role until decommissioned in 791. For nearly six years, there was a movement to preserve the
Hiumi as a memorial commemorating the Altesian victory over Qeu, but it was found that two decades of use followed by years spent idle resulted in the deterioration of the ship, and as a result she was also scrapped. There are still some remnants of the class, with the anchors of both ships being part of a memorial in Meria, and one of the conning towers functioning as a display in a children's museum in Remoris. A turret that was originally installed on
Adandara is also on display at the Naval Preservation District in Yokomaro.
Specifications:
Type: Casemate ironclad
Displacement: 8,389 tons
Length: 114m (wl), 116.4m (oa)
Beam: 22.25m
Draught: 6.4m
Propulsion:
- 2-shaft horizontal back-acting steam engines
- Six Kashirame boilers
- 4280 ihp
- Brig rig
Speed: 14.5 knots
Range: 1250 nmi at 8 knots (unlimited with sail)
Complement: 650
Armament:
As built
In casemate:
- 4 x 38cm Riasan smoothbores
- 10 x 28cm Riasan smoothbores
In turrets
- 4 x 20cm Iraka rifles
- Ram bow
- Various boarding equipment
As of 870
In casemate:
- 6 x 25.5cm Iraka rifles
- 12 x 20cm Iraka rifles
- Ram bow
- Various boarding equipment
Armor:
- Waterline belt: 7-9cm backed by 25cm of Altesian Maple
- Deck: 4cm with 25cm of backing
- Casemate: 12cm with 25cm of backing
- Turrets: 28cm
- Conning towers: 25cm
Ships in class:
Hiumi - Scrapped, 782
Adandara - Scrapped, 797
[Originally posted to the Ram Challenge thread]