Richard A. Fletcher

“ In order to appreciate the enormous progress which the United States have made as a naval power in the past thirty years one must turn to the American Navy List for 1879, and compare it with the present equipment in the matter of ships and personnel, which places the United States in the position of being the second naval power of the world—second, indeed, only to Great Britain, and with resources for the production of warships of the latest design and the highest fighting capacity scarcely if at all inferior to those of the United Kingdom itself. ”

“ Like all inventors of war material of increased efficiency, he believed that the more destructive the weapons and explosives the more improbable would war become, until it should be rendered impossible.
“Were it not that the increased destructiveness of war must tend to shorten its duration and diminish its frequency—thus saving human life—the invention of my projectiles could hardly be justified; but believing in the really pacific influence of the most powerful means of defence, these long projectiles I call the anti-war shell.” ”

“ From the raft to the fire-hollowed canoe was but a step, and having accomplished so much, the ingenuity of the naval architects of the period found scope in making improvements, gropingly, slowly, but none the less surely. The development of ships used for warlike purposes, as well as of ships designed as implements for fighting, forms a most attractive branch of study in its relation to the evolution of empires, no less than that of civilisation. Nor is the interest any the less if the attention be confined simply to the consideration of the development of the ships as ships of war. ”

“ The South American Republics, too, were indulging in one of those periodical bursts of unrest and pugnacity which seem inseparable from South American States in their relations with each other, or in the administration of their internal affairs, and when carefully fomented may lead plotting politicians on to become dictators and the victims of assassinations—unless they are fortunate enough to retire to Paris with the spoils and live in luxury and die naturally. ”

“ The torpedo itself is destined to play a part more important than has yet fallen to its lot in war. Not only will it be launched from the tubes of the battleship or cruiser or destroyer at the distant foe, but it will be dirigible, controlled and steered by wireless telegraphy, and extra speed, or counter explosion, or gun-fire, or the disablement of the vessel sending it forth will alone be the means of rendering it ineffective. Torpedo nets may be of value when ships are at anchor or travelling slowly, but not at any other time. ”

“ Some of the commanders and all the crews showed extraordinary bravery in maintaining the fight when the circumstances, though not the odds, were against them, but the other commanders were remarkable for incompetence and some of them for cowardice, for they had no plan of action, one at least fled as soon as the shooting began, and one or two others were careful to keep out of harm’s way. The main lessons drawn from this engagement were that armour was indispensable in protecting a ship from the effects of hostile shot, and that the gun must remain the chief weapon of naval warfare. ”

“ Of the bravery of the American sailors of whatever rank there has never been any question, but the methods of selecting them seem to have been as peculiar as the British methods of corruption in the old days, when it was possible for an infant in arms to be on the pay roll of a British ship when he had never so much as seen the sea, to say nothing of never having been on board the vessel of which he was nominally a midshipman. ”

“ Every nation has its own classification of warships, and the varieties of modern warships are so numerous, and the estimates of their effectiveness so much at variance, that it is little wonder the descriptions assigned to the vessels do not agree. Thus the American Maine, sunk at Havana, was described with equal accuracy as a cruiser and as a second-class battleship. But the nations have, for the most part, adopted the British classification of cruisers, though they have not failed to modify it to suit their own views. ”

“ The Devastation was the historical reply of the British naval constructors to the much-vaunted American monitors, and also the Admiralty’s reply to the Captain. She was so unlike anything else afloat, that the writers of those days had difficulty in finding anything to which they could compare her. One describes her as like an “impregnable piece of Vauban fortification with bastions mounted upon a fighting coal mine.” As a mastless turret ship or fighting machine, she possessed powers of offence, defence, and manœuvring greater than those of any other ship in the world. ”

“ It is obviously uneconomical to place the guns in such relative positions that the blast of any single gun on any permissible training should very seriously hamper the use of one or more of the remaining guns. While it is recognised that broadside fire is held to be the most important in a battleship, all-round fire is also considered of great importance, since it lies in the power of an enemy to force an opponent who is anxious to engage to fight an end-on action. In the arrangement of armament adopted six of the guns are mounted in pairs on the centre line of the ship ”

“ Will the battleship of the future, then, be an immense cylindrical-backed hull, with one mast or none, innocent of funnels, leaving no trace of smoke behind her, and rushing at a speed of a railway train as she belches forth with almost unerring precision [Pg 330] terrible explosives at a similar enemy so far distant as to be barely discernible on the horizon? ”

“ Long before steam engines were adopted in any form in the navy, numerous experiments had been made in the mechanical propulsion of warships, and some extraordinary methods were brought forward. The remarkable feature of nearly all these experiments is that they would propel a vessel; but the inventors could not be taught, except by the bitter lesson of experimental failure, that an appliance which might attain a certain measure of success with a small boat or a model might be incapable of developing sufficient power to propel a larger vessel. ”

“ The naval force which went to the Crimea was largely steam-driven. The Battle of Sinope, in November, 1853, in which the Russians annihilated a Turkish fleet, proved alike the superiority of a steam war fleet over a sailing fleet, and, incidentally, the range and power of the Russian guns. The Russian squadron was more powerful in every way, but its great superiority lay in its heavy artillery; all the Russian ships of the line carried smooth-bore guns which could fire shells, and the shells, exploding, set fire to and demolished the Turks in a few minutes. ”

“ One knows not whether to wonder more at the state of mind of an administration which could send so ill-equipped and neglected a fleet to the seat of war, or at the extraordinary bravery of the crews who went in a patriotic cause to what was little else than certain death. ”

“ In the meantime, science is seeking to surpass all its present achievements. The marine steam engine, of whatever type, will give way to the internal combustion engine of a type which will surpass all the existing machinery as surely as the best turbines are ahead of the old compound engines. The battleship of the future will have an armament surpassing in effective range and penetrative power anything at present afloat, and an armour as far in advance of the present steel armour as that is ahead of the compound armour it but lately supplanted. ”

“ The duties of the modern cruiser are multifarious. She has to be no less a commerce protector than a commerce destroyer, and while at one end of the scale she may be little more than a glorified gunboat, she may at the other end have to be able to take her place in the line of battle and help her more powerful sisters. Whatever her duties, speed is regarded as of great importance.
The Iris, in 1878, attained a speed of eighteen and a half knots, but more than seventeen years elapsed before this speed was equalled by any of the cruisers. ”

“ The introduction of rapid-firing guns of great power and range is claimed by some naval authorities to have reduced very materially the effectiveness of the torpedo boat. Its speed has been doubled in a few years, but it is contended that with the improvement in guns this has been more than neutralised by the greater size it has been necessary to give the torpedo boats in order to provide sufficient space for the machinery and retain the vessel’s sea-going qualities, as the increased size renders the vessel easier to hit. ”

“ The attitude of the Admiralty in regard to steam had hitherto been that in many respects it must be auxiliary to sail. The Black Prince’s armour, though only 41⁄2 inches thick, was considered to offer an adequate resistance to the 68-pounder gun’s projectile, and this, too, after the experience gained in the Crimean War; besides which no allowance whatever was made for the probability that more powerful guns, firing heavier projectiles than any yet known, would shortly be in existence, especially as they were already being designed. ”

“ Steel, at first gradually and then wholly, took the place of iron in the building of ships, the production of guns, and the manufacture of projectiles. Steel itself has been improved since it was made possible by the Bessemer process, and Harveyised steel, Krupp steel, and steel toughened with nickel or chrome or tungsten, or by what is known as the Simpson process, have all been tried and have all proved their value. The science of ballistics has made equal progress, and the development of the resources of marine engineering are little short of the miraculous. ”

“ At the end of May, 1877, the British cruisers Shah and Amethyst, which had been ordered to look for her, discovered her off Ilo. These were both light unarmoured cruisers, the latter being much the smaller of the two, and depended largely upon their speed to render attack upon them more difficult, or to avoid it altogether, or to assume the offensive at a time best suited to themselves. Their guns were more modern and powerful than those of the Huascar, and also more numerous, so that in gun power the cruisers were superior to the ironclad. ”

“ They were the first battleships to be built wholly of steel for the British Navy, and were asserted to be more powerful as fighting ships than any other ships in existence. This was due not only to the material of which they were constructed, but also to the fact that they were given breech-loading guns, Great Britain being the last of the great Powers to dispense with the old-fashioned muzzle-loader. These ships were of much the same type as the Ajax and Inflexible, but their citadels were of greater length; they were of fourteen knots speed. ”

“ Her gun-fire, as much by its weight as by the range of her guns, would enable her to pick and choose where and when and how she would fight, and her speed would enable her to prevent any ship, however powerful, from shrinking from a combat if the Dreadnought thought fit to insist upon one. It was even recognised that she was a match for two or three of the most powerful ships that could [Pg 314] be brought against her, for her big guns would be equal to theirs in hitting power, and their smaller guns would be ineffective at the range at which she could fight. ”

“ The unprotected cruisers have no side armour or other protection worth mentioning, and are mostly used for police duties, such as guarding fisheries, etc. They are lightly built and armed, and of relatively good speed for their size, and the duties they have to perform usually constitute the chief matter for consideration in the design of the several vessels. The protected cruisers have strong steel decks to protect their engines, etc., besides a great number of watertight compartments, and are classified according to their size, armament and speed, and the work for which they are intended. ”