Newly completed in June 1909, HMS Bellerophon shows a typical early British dreadnought bridge arrangement. The windowed level is the charthouse and signal bridge, its wings used to conn the ship in port. It housed the helm used in peacetime. On it were mechanical semaphores (one is visible to the left of the charthouse) used for daylight signalling. On either side of the charthouse were 36in searchlights – for night illumination of torpedo craft, not for signalling. Atop the charthouse was the compass platform, from which the ship was normally conned, the officers there ordering changes of course by voice tube. The tripod foremast carries an additional electrically-controlled searchlight, also for night torpedo defence. Within a short time masthead searchlights were being abandoned as ineffective. The girders supporting the charthouse rest on the ship’s armoured conning tower, from which she was supposed to be controlled in battle. It was often argued that the conning tower was so cramped and the view from it so restricted, that it was virtually useless.
Command: The Bridge
In 1906, when HMS Dreadnought was completed, the standard British bridge structure was an enclosed charthouse (with bridge wings) topped by an open compass platform, which took its name from the presence of a standard compass with pelorus, later supplemented by a gyro-compass. The ship was normally navigated from the compass platform, from whose compasses sights could be taken. Steering orders were passed to a helmsman below in the charthouse. In the period up to the First World War, compass platforms increasingly were built out forward of the charthouse. The bridge wings below the charthouse were generally designated the signal bridge. Flagships had an admiral’s bridge below them. When director control for secondary batteries was adopted, the directors (at least in newer ships) were generally placed in the wings of the signal bridge. The compass platform was sometimes called the navigation platform, particularly if this bridge level was split into a navigating position and a ship weapon-control position.
The 1909–10 ships (Lion and Orion classes) were completed with single tripod masts whose vertical legs were abaft the forefunnel, as in Dreadnought. Their simple bridge structures included compass platforms projecting forward over their conning towers. This arrangement proved particularly useless in HMS Lion and she and her sister Princess Royal were rebuilt with new bridge structures completely abaft the conning tower and forward of the forefunnel. For the first time the compass platform was placed directly above a substantial structure housing the charthouse, captain’s sea cabin, navigating officer’s sea cabin and other spaces. They were built of non-magnetic brass so as not to disturb the magnetic compass above them. This arrangement was repeated in ships built up to the Queen Elizabeth class.
The Royal Sovereigns were an attempt once more to prune back the bridge structure. Their small compass platform, supported by the foremast, was above a signal bridge carrying searchlights. Below it was an Admiral’s bridge and below it a larger bridge extending around the conning tower. The 6in directors were on an aft extension of the compass platform. Searchlights were on the signal bridge, below the directors. The new type of bridge structure was tested on board HMS Canada, whose bridge structure had originally been built for HMS Royal Sovereign. Early in 1916 Controller asked her CO Captain Nicholson for comments.1
Nicholson much preferred the lower bridge to the compass platform. Because it was close to the conning tower, officers on it became accustomed to manoeuvring the ship from the level they would occupy in battle, the conning tower. It, but not the narrow compass platform, offered a view aft on both sides. An officer on the lower bridge was ‘more in the ship’, with a better feel for the ship’s motion. Particularly at night, the view was better. The CO in his sea cabin (in the structure below the bridges) was closer to this bridge. However, the lower bridge was practically untenable in even fairly bad weather. Nicholson wrote ‘please God if we meet an enemy at night, I shall be on the lower bridge and I leave you to imagine what I must suffer during winter in the North Sea to obtain that object’. DNC’s battleship designer S V Goodall pointed out that much effort had been made to keep structure away from conning towers specifically to avoid the shell splinters hits on it would create. During the Russo-Japanese War some of Admiral Togo’s staff were killed by a shell which burst on striking a bridge stanchion.
Laid up in Australian waters in about 1923, HMAS Australia shows her bridge and foremast as modified during the First World War. Wartime additions included the long-base rangefinder atop the spotting top at the masthead and the main-battery director on the small platform immediately below it (with the flat face). The bridge structure consists mainly of the compass platform atop the large (extended and enclosed) charthouse. A small platform above the compass platform carries a semaphore and an even smaller platform above that carries a signal light. The bridge wings extend from the sides of the platform just below the compass platform, rather than, as was usual, from the charthouse. The ridge of a 9ft rangefinder is visible on the roof of ‘A’ turret. Note that the turret appears to have additional roof armour, which would have been added after Jutland.
For Nicholson the great question was how well the bridge would function at night, when a ship might have to evade torpedo attack. Searchlights, night lookouts and the command on the bridge all had to be co-ordinated. Searchlights at or near the bridge would blind those on it. Lights above the bridge were far better. However, the higher the searchlight, the smaller the spot it made on the water, hence the more difficult to pick up and hold an object on the water so that guns could engage it. Therefore the manoeuvring or compass platform should be no higher than necessary for bad weather. Nicholson doubted that the forward searchlights would make for good gunnery by the secondary battery, which would try to beat off night torpedo attacks. Directors above the searchlights would be useless, so guns would have to be individually laid, gunners trying to stay on the upper edge of the beam to avoid being blinded. The night defence control positions were relatively low and without a view across the bow. A control officer well below the searchlight would find its beam useless. The 6in directors should move down a deck and the searchlights up. The platform with the 6in directors should become the upper bridge. The two upper bridge searchlights in Canada had ‘very much brought home to me’ these points.
The war-built capital ships (Renown and Courageous classes and Furious) had minimal bridge structures similar to those on Canada and the Royal Sovereigns. CO of Repulse found that except in a fleet or squadron action, it was risky to handle so large and fast a ship from anywhere other than the compass platform. Her squadron and fleet commanders strongly agreed. Given the submarine threat, high-speed steaming was now the rule rather than the exception. DNE made the Compass Platform the recognised navigating position in these ships except when in action. The part of the compass platform occupied by captain and navigator was raised slightly above the rest of the platform. The after part carried gunnery and other control instruments, near enough for immediate control.
The ships of the 1909–10 programme had foremasts but no mainmasts. As a consequence, their only masts were stepped with the vertical leg abaft the funnel and the bridge protruding ahead of the funnel. HMS Orion shows her extremely cramped compass platform and the small charthouse below it. The protrusion from the enlarged conning tower was a fire-control tower.
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