Ruminations on the Steam Tank
The steam powered armored fighting vehicle has long been a staple of Steampunk fiction. Lately it has lead me to pondering if such a steam leviathan would have been probable or even possible? I decided to turn to history to see if there was anything there that could shine some light on this.
I'm an avid reader with a my trusty but not-so-Steampunk Nook HD I was able to consider a volume of material. One of my first discoveries was that that the Victorian British were ahead on this as early as the Boer Wars:
Fowler Armored Steam Train circa 1900
Now this bit of British innovation had some limitations; it was strictly a means to move supplies and war materials through the contested areas of South Africa amidst raiding Boers. It was limited to roads and not really designed for offensive action. It is interesting that it could mount some small artillery as well as riflemen in order to defend itself. From what I'm finding it seems to have been a success in it's limited role.
It was really the horrors of trench warfare during the First World War that turned people to considering the armored fighting vehicle again. In February 1915 the British created the 'Landship's Committee' under First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. What they wanted to create was a vehicle that could cross the mud and devastation of the 'no man's land' between the trenches and then defeat the barbed wire and machine guns of the defending army.
Some of their inspiration might have come from what could be considered an early Steampunk bit of fiction by none other than H G Wells, 'The Land Ironclads'.
You can get 'The Land Ironclads' for the Nook at the Barnes & Noble website for as little as 99 cents!
Now most of the World War One armored vehicle designs were based on the use of the internal combustion engine. When you consider the technology of the time it makes sense since the gasoline engines of the time produced considerably more efficient energy than the steam engines of the time. Even so the gasoline engines of the time were barely sufficient to power these first armored war machines and gasoline itself offered significant dangers to the vehicle crew if the armor plate was defeated by enemy fire.
Interesting little video about a replica World War One tank.
It is interesting to note though that steam was considered as a power source for at least one World War One era armored vehicle.
The fuel for this vehicle was actually kerosene which was not a lot safer than gasoline and steam itself had more than a few dangers to the crew if the steam lines were to break. It does seem logical to use kerosene for a steam powered vehicle rather than the more common coal used to fuel boiler fires in this era. This tank was not particularly mechanically reliable according to the records I've found; it even embarrassingly broke down during a parade to show it off to the public.
Still this whole bit of research leads me to ponder what would have happened if military minds had decided to develop a steam powered armored vehicle despite the inherent problems and dangers of this propulsion? Let's say that the American Civil War had gone like what is depicted in Cherie Priest's 'Clockwork Century' series of novels.
Somebody already has a game coming out on this sort of historical fantasy.
What if instead of four years the war had lasted twenty years? With the sort of bloodshed that was taking place in the trench fighting that took place outside Petersburg and Richmond in 1865 maybe the idea of an armored fighting vehicle would have been as plausible to the Union Army as it was to the British in 1915?
Maybe the British or the French would have created an armored vehicle to sell the struggling Confederacy to oppose the Union Behemoths? Would they have figured out more efficient designs for these steam powered weapons? All just a bit of rumination on my part...
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