British ships

“ But in every particular involving relations with the Grand Fleet as a whole, British practice was and is the rule. Everything that any British ship or squadron does devolves likewise upon every American ship and squadron, this extending from such things as providing work-parties for road-making or other jobs on the beach, to sallying forth on one of the great concerted sweeps through the North Sea in which the bulk of the floating might of the whole world is on the move. ”

“ And British shipmasters, officers, and seamen alike expressed their resolve to keep the seas open at all costs. The result of this inflexible determination is that throughout continuous struggle, exposed to daily and nightly peril from mine and submarine, British ships continue to arrive in British ports and sail again with a splendid disregard of all the difficulties and dangers which beset them in maintaining the overseas trade of the nation. It is time such priceless valour was more absolutely defended and held dear by the Empire which owes it so much. Our merchantmen should be armed. ”

“ The British navy, having very diversified services to perform during both peace and war, requires ships of various kinds and sizes. Its first and greatest requirement of all is that of line-of-battle ships in sufficient numbers to enable England to stand up successfully against any European naval force or forces that may threaten her or her empire. ”

“ So vast is British sea-power of every kind, compared with the sea-power of any other people, that foreign fleets and joint expeditions generally have to get British shipping to help them through their troubles when the British are either neutral or allied. The Russian fleet could not have gone to the Far East in 1904-05 without the supply ships of the British. ”

“ The aim of this book is to present, in a form that will readily appeal to boys, a comprehensive account of British shipping, both naval and mercantile, and to trace its development from the old wooden walls of Nelson's time down to the Dreadnoughts and high-speed ocean liners of to-day. All kinds of British ships, from the battleship to the trawler, are dealt with, and the characteristic points of each type of vessel are explained. ”

“ The ships of the Royal Navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol, and the other great seats of commerce, showed as liberal a zeal in equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was 17,472. ”

“ All kinds of British sea-power did magnificent work in the war, whether building ships, sailing them with passengers and cargoes, or fighting them. The Navy and Mercantile Marine gained eleven million tons during the war, exactly half each. But as the Mercantile Marine lost nine millions sunk, it ended three-and-a-half to the bad, a terrible handicap in the race with the shipping of countries which, like the United States have made stupendous fortunes by the war, besides gaining enormously in shipping and oversea trade. ”

“ While it cannot be said that the naval power of England upon the ocean was seriously impaired, yet the speed of the American vessels and the skill and gallantry with which they were fought and handled, made it apparent that the young giant of the West might some day claim the sceptre of the sea as his own.
During the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, the leading nation in the modelling and construction of ships was France, and during this period the finest frigates owned in the British Navy were those captured from the French. ”

“ They are seaworthy and fast, and probably the men who sail them are the greatest seamen of our time.
England, however, had once more found herself, and soon her yards were building clipper ships that equalled the Americans—surpassed them, some say, but more than one challenge for an ocean race was issued by groups of Americans only to find no takers in British shipping circles. Now and then, it is true, British ships outsailed American. But now and then, too, Americans outsailed their transatlantic brothers, so it is difficult to decide as to their relative merits. ”

“ As the British Parliament is the mother of all popular representative institutions, so the British Navy is the mother of navies. If the records of most [Pg 83] of the great fleets of the world are searched, it will be found that in greater or less degree they owe their birth to the more or less direct assistance of British naval officers, oft times acting with the direct authority of the British Admiralty; while in almost every fleet in the world even to-day may be found ships designed by British brains and constructed of British material by the skilled craftsmen of these islands. ”

“ These, in themselves, are reassuring facts; but their value is greatly enhanced by the knowledge that the British ships are much larger than the German ships, as will be seen in the following table:
TABLE V
As, however, a ship is merely a floating platform for the transport of men and guns to the scene of battle, and the displacement of this floating platform is the measure of its carrying capacity, it follows that the British Fleet in the North Sea can bring to the scene of battle a much more powerful armament than is carried by the German High Sea Fleet. ”

“ Troop transports from the States, standard cargo ships, munition carriers come over in the night from the French ports, high-sided empty colliers returning to the north for further loads, deep-laden freighters for London, ammunition and store ships for the Fleet, coasters and barges, made up the mercantile shipping riding at anchor, while naval patrols and harbour craft under way gave movement to the spectacle. ”

“ The whole impression of the British fleet must be, to overpower from two or three ships a-head of their commander in chief, supposed to be their centre, to the rear of their fleet. I will suppose twenty sail of the line to be untouched; it must be some time before, they could perform a manoeuvre to bring their force compact to attack any part of the British fleet, or succour their own ships: which, indeed, would be impossible, without mixing with the ships engaged. ”

“ Not only did the English mariner doff his hat to them, but a Parliamentary committee reported in 1837 that "the American ships frequenting the ports of England are stated by several witnesses to be superior to those of a similar class among the ships of Great Britain, the commanders and officers being generally considered to be more competent as seamen and navigators and more uniformly persons of education than the commanders and officers of British ships of a similar size and class trading from England to America." ”

“ Every Englishman knows, in a general way, that the commerce of the British Empire is more extensive than that of any other state in the world, and that the British sea-going mercantile marine compares favourably in point of size even with that of all the other countries of the world put together; but few are probably aware of the immense importance to us of these fleets of trading ships, and of the great part which they play in the maintenance of the prosperity of these isles. The shipping industry ranks, after agriculture, as the largest of our national commercial pursuits. ”

“ The American fleet that went round the world in 1908-09 had to depend on British colliers. And over three-fifths of all the American soldiers that went to France to fight the Germans went in British transports. Transports are any ships that can be used to carry troops, horses, motors, stores, munitions, guns, and all the other things an army needs. They come third on this list. Fourthly, come those Merchantmen which are not used by the Army or Navy because they carry on the regular oversea trade as best they can. ”

“ We are justly proud of the development of our steamships—their size, speed, and magnificent equipment—and we are apt to forget that this has always been characteristic of British shipping. In the old sailing-ship days, about 1850-1860, a walk round the Prince’s Dock, crowded with clipper ships, was something to fill an Englishman with pride. The beautiful symmetry of the hull, the graceful sweep of the sheer fore and aft, the tautness of the spars, the smartness of the gear and equipment attracted the eye ”

“ There are brutes among them, no doubt, but such German naval officers as I have met compare very favourably with their swaggering colleagues of the land service. German sailors are under no misapprehension as to the might and efficiency of the British Navy. It is not they who spread the tale of the British Fleet hiding in ports while German ships proudly sail the North Sea. It is not they who ask plaintively, “Will the British Fleet never come out?” ”

“ The same year (1801) that saw the French surrender in Egypt saw Nelson win his second victory, this time in the north. Napoleon (victorious, as usual, on land, and foiled, as usual, at sea) had tried to ruin British shipping by shutting it out of every port on the continent of Europe. This was his "Continental System." It hurt the Continent; for British ships carried most of the goods used in trade not only between Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, but also between the different ports on the European continent itself. ”

“ England, frankly confessing herself beaten and unable to compete with such ships as these, changed her attitude from hostility to open admiration. She surrendered the Atlantic packet trade to American enterprise, and British merchantmen sought their gains in other waters. The Navigation Laws still protected their commerce in the Far East and they were content to jog at a more sedate gait than these weltering packets whose skippers were striving for passages of a fortnight, with the forecastle doors nailed fast and the crew compelled to stay on deck from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Rock. ”

“ As to minor ships—trawlers, sloops, Q-boats, yachts, drifters, tugs, and the other miscellaneous types used in this work—the discrepancy was even greater. In absolute figures our effort thus seems a small one when compared with that of our great ally. In tonnage of merchant ships convoyed, the work of the British navy was far greater than ours. ”

“ At Norfolk the entire crew of a British merchantman deserted to an American sloop-of-war. A lively trade was done in forged papers of American citizenship, and the British naval officer who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up. Other nations looked covetously upon our great body of able-bodied seamen, born within sound of the swash of the surf, nurtured in the fisheries, able to build, to rig, or to navigate a ship. They were fighting sailors, too, though serving only in the merchant marine. ”

“ As a proof of this statement, it may be mentioned that, the labour-saving mechanical contrivances adopted by the Americans were such that, on board their famous liners and clippers, twenty men could do the work which in a British ship of equal size required thirty, and, in addition to this advantage, the American vessels could sail faster and carry more cargo in proportion to their registered tonnage than our own vessels. It was not till new life was infused into British naval architecture that we were enabled to conquer the American competition ”

“ The difference between the size, speed, and number of the British merchant-men that could be used as cruisers or scouts in time of war and the German merchant ships that might be similarly employed is as great, and as much to the advantage of the former marine, as the difference which has been shown to exist between the British and the German Navies. ”

“ The most important types of vessels composing the British Navy have now been described. There are many others—sloops, gunboats, transports, despatch-boats, coal ships, hospital-ships, etcetera, which need not be more than mentioned. What warships will be like in the future it is impossible to forecast, as will be seen from what has been already said. Improvements in armour and guns, as well in machinery, are ever being made, which may alter the present type of ship altogether. ”

“ The British carried nearly half of all the imports into Italy and France. They repaired more than a thousand ships a month. They ferried nearly two-thirds of all the Americans that crossed the Atlantic. They took to the many different fronts more than half a million vehicles, from one-horse carts to the biggest locomotives; more than two million animals—horses, mules, and camels; and more than twenty-two millions of men. Add to this well over a couple of hundred million tons of oil, coal, and warlike stores ”

“ If you will observe well the spirit of the men of the Grand Fleet at a time when the German Fleet—based though it is in the Kiel Canal, where regular shore-leave is easy to arrange—is filled with unrest and threatened with mutiny, I think you will agree with me the keeping of the British sailor in a healthy state of mind and body, without once letting him verge on 'staleness,' is worthy to rank as an achievement with that of keeping the enemy off the seas. ”

“ The navy that can beat its enemy from all the shortest ways across the sea must win the war, because the merchant ships of its own country, like its men-of-war, can use the best routes from the bases to the front and back again; while the merchant ships of its enemy must either lose time by roundabout voyages or, what is sure to happen as the war goes on, be driven off the high seas altogether. ”