Battlefleet

“ Since 1887 a new navy has been built. In place of the old wooden vessels it is composed of powerful steel steamers, capable of high speed and mounted with batteries of powerful modern guns. The fleet comprises the battleships, which practically are floating forts, heavily armored but capable of high speed; the cruisers, less heavily armored but of greater speed; the double-turreted monitors for harbor defense, single-turreted monitors, gunboats, torpedo-boats, torpedo-boat destroyers and submarines, besides transports, supply ships, hospital ships and colliers. ”

“ It was not until after 1880 that our government awoke to the need of a navy on the new lines, and began to take advantage of the lessons that had been learned abroad. It is not our purpose to speak in detail of the results. The steelclad battleship and cruiser, the armor-piercing breech-loader, the quick-firing gun, the machine gun, the submarine torpedo-boat, the anchored mine, the automobile torpedo, and other devices have come to make the naval warfare of our day a wonderfully different thing from that of the past. ”

“ But even the best of men and ships will not make the best fleet unless trained and "tuned up" to act together; and here, in its combined manuoeuvres, lay the crowning glory of the vast Grand Fleet. One day a visitor was watching it fight a sham battle against an enemy firing big guns at long range, when up came a real enemy, in the form of a German submarine, much closer than the sham. Of course the visitor turned his glasses on the "sub" and on the destroyers racing after it, like greyhounds slipped from the leash. ”

“ At the outbreak of the war the fleet comprised sixteen battleships, two armored and twelve light cruisers, eighteen destroyers, eighty-five torpedo boats and eleven submarines. The Allies were much more powerful. The French navy had in the matter of invention given the lead to the world, but its size had not kept pace with its quality. At the beginning of the war France had thirty-one battleships, twenty-four armored cruisers, eight light cruisers, eighty-seven destroyers, one hundred and fifty-three torpedo boats and seventy-six submarines. ”

“ Let us transfer ourselves for the time being from the general to the particular: in other words, to the deck of a great American dreadnought, which, together with others of her type, has been detached from the Atlantic Fleet and assigned to duty with Admiral Beatty's great company of battleships and battle-cruisers. This battleship has entered the war zone, en route to a certain rendezvous, whence all the American units will proceed to their ultimate destination in company. ”

“ Every country is now engaged in forming its aerial fleets. How far the naval and military branches will coalesce, or how far they will differentiate remains to be seen. The probabilities, at present, all point in the latter direction, and that just as an army is made up of cavalry, infantry, artillery, etc., and a navy of battleships, cruisers, torpedo craft and submarines, so the sky fleets seem destined to consist of groups of different types of machines, each type designed for some special purpose. ”

“ Acting in unison with those of France and Japan, they have swept German commerce and German cruisers from the face of the ocean, and so far, except for shore bombardments and submarine attacks, have been the only war-vessels engaged on either side. At the time of writing no battleships have as yet been in action against one another, for we may regard all those ships which have been reported in action at sea as cruisers, from the big battle-cruiser Lion down to the destroyers—and even, perhaps, our submarines, which are very useful scouts. ”

“ Finally, they built boats big enough to destroy gunboats, torpedo-boats, and torpedo-gunboats, without, however, losing the handy use of guns and torpedoes in vessels much smaller than cruisers. As battleships and cruisers are arranged in "squadrons" under admirals so destroyers are arranged in "flotillas" under commodores, who rank between admirals and captains.
A new kind of light craft—a sort of dwarf destroyer—grew up with the war. It is so light that it forms a class of its own—the featherweight class. ”

“ The flags were saluted by the booming of cannon from the batteries of the ships, and with cheers from the officers and men of the squadron and the people on the shore, and thus the transaction was completed, and the navy of the United States began to be.
The ships were slight in force, their equipments meager and deficient, and of inferior quality at best. The men had but little experience in naval warfare, and their officers scarcely much more. There were men of undoubted courage and capacity among them, however, and several to whom the profession of arms was not entirely new. ”

“ If war had been impending it would have been right, and even an imperative duty, to buy warships fully equipped wherever they could be found. But we were building a navy in time of peace, and a ship that “could not get out of her own way,” from our own designers, was better than the best afloat bought from a foreign land. In the building of the new navy—in the building of the White Squadron, of which we make boast in our periodicals—the product was nothing; the building of men was everything. ”

“ Our Navy does contain, however, a considerable number of ironclads of the monitor class, which, though not properly cruisers, are powerful and effective for harbor defense and for operations near our own shores. Of these all the single-turreted ones, fifteen in number, have been substantially rebuilt, their rotten wooden beams replaced with iron, their hulls strengthened, and their engines and machinery thoroughly repaired, so that they are now in the most efficient condition and ready for sea as soon as they can be manned and put in commission. ”

“ The author then remarked that the increase so rapidly occurring in weight of ordnance and of armor, and in speed of war-vessels, would probably soon compel a division of the vessels of every navy into three classes of ships, exclusive of torpedo-vessels, one for general service in time of peace, the others for use only in time of war.
“The first class may consist of unarmored vessels of moderate size, fair speed under steam, armed with a few tolerably heavy guns, and carrying full sail-power. ”

“ The maximum effective fighting force of the Navy during the war, separated into classes, was as follows:
Four battle ships of the first class, 1 battle ship of the second class, 2 armored cruisers, 6 coast-defense monitors, 1 armored ram, 12 protected cruisers, 3 unprotected cruisers, 18 gunboats, 1 dynamite cruiser, 11 torpedo boats; vessels of the old Navy, including monitors, 14. Auxiliary Navy: 11 auxiliary cruisers, 28 converted yachts, 27 converted tugs, 19 converted colliers, 15 revenue cutters, 4 light-house tenders, and 19 miscellaneous vessels. ”

“ Bombardment and blockade directed against great national centers, in the close and complicated network of national and commercial interests as they exist in modern times, strike not only the point affected, but every corner of the land.
The offensive in naval war, as has been said, is the function of the sea-going navy—of the battleships, and of the cruisers of various sizes and purposes, including sea-going torpedo-vessels capable of accompanying a fleet, without impeding its movements by their loss of speed or unseaworthiness. ”

“ If ships in "line ahead" all turn together to the right or left, or, to use the correct wording, alter course together eight points to starboard or port, only the leading and rear ship could use their broadsides, and only one of them at that. But a similar turn in "bow and quarter line" can be made without any loss of fire effect.
In the Great War we have not, at the time of writing, yet had a fleet action. The German Navy has shown itself most determined—to take no risks. ”

“ For warships, too, they are cheap, so that a commander can afford to risk losing a destroyer when he would fear to risk another vessel. For all purposes except the actual hard-hitting they are the most useful weapon which the commander of the fleet possesses.
When the main fleet puts to sea a whole cloud of these smaller craft hover round looking for submarines or for the surface torpedo boats which might try to attack the large ships under cover of darkness, while keeping a sharp look-out, too, for mines or any other kind of floating danger, and thus they screen the more valuable ships. ”

“ The main Fleet in whose centre we now steam, consists of Dreadnoughts, Orions, King George the Fifths, Iron Dukes (all acting as flagships) , Royal Sovereigns, with 15-⁠inch guns, the Canada, with 14-⁠inch guns, and that queer Dago ship the Agincourt, with her seven turrets all on the middle line, and each containing two 12-⁠inch guns. Not a ship in our battle line has been afloat for more than seven years, and most of them are less than three years old. The material newness of the Grand Fleet is a most striking testimony to the eternal youth of the Navy’s ancient soul. ”

“ You go back to the central compartment, where the Commander is ready to show you a ship through the periscope. Not, of course, an enemy ship—in this war, if you want a shot at an enemy ship, you must go into his own waters—into the Bight or the Baltic—to find him; and even there he is probably tucked up very tight in his berth, with chained barges and heavy nets all round him, and mines all up the approach. But there are plenty of our own ships out every day—sweeping, cruising, trading; and transporting men, food, mails, and munitions. ”

“ When we consider the very slight defence that the country now possesses in the single-turreted Monitors before alluded to, it would seem imperative to complete with all despatch these vessels, which would represent a force of real power.
These vessels are of iron as to the hulls, but they will be armored with steel or compound armor, and will be armed with the most powerful modern artillery that can be accommodated in their turrets. Their names appear in the navy list as “building.” ”

“ Everything is, and can be without harm, sacrificed to it. But it is far different in a man-of-war. As was long ago remarked, a fighting ship must always be a compromise. There are three great requisites: offensive power, meaning guns and torpedoes; defensive power, meaning armour, whether applied to sides, turrets, barbettes, or decks; and speed, meaning the most powerful engines, combined with the greatest coal endurance, that it is possible to get a ship of given tonnage to carry. ”

“ In ocean-going battle-ships canvas is a valuable auxiliary. In battle-ships for European waters, masts and yards involve a useless sacrifice of fighting power.... Heavily armored ships intended for the line of battle must necessarily carry powerful guns. They must be able to traverse great distances, and must therefore have considerable storage for coal. Great speed is required to enable them to meet the inevitable contingencies of an engagement. In a word, the class of ships which may be called battery-ships must be furnished with very considerable offensive and defensive power. ”

“ As Admiral Knight has observed, battleships alone do not make a fleet, much less a navy. Our fleet is greatly weakened by our lack of destroyers. A fleet should always be accompanied by a large number of these vessels to support the scouts, and also to do scout duty themselves. They stiffen the screen about the battleships, and, when an opening is present, they are ready to dash against the enemy.
In the Civil War and in the Spanish War we were able largely to employ improvised merchant vessels for fuel-ships and scouts ”

“ There is to be considered, however, the moral effect of Great Britain's big fleet, which has maintained control of the seas for four years. Similarly our American fleet is regarded as the first and decisive line of defense on our shores.
Battleships, it is true, do not figure frequently in the official communiques, but none the less they are playing their part. Battleships are absolutely a necessary and vital element to every nation at war. ”

“ Gently rolling and heaving on the surge of a summer sea lay a mighty fleet of war-vessels. There were the capital ships of the Atlantic Fleet, grim dreadnoughts with their superimposed turrets, their bristling broadsides, their basket-masts—veritable islands of steel. There were colliers, hospital-ships, destroyers, patrol-vessels—in all, a tremendous demonstration of our sea power. ”

“ The frequent changes make it impossible to discuss the strength of the fleets in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, or those stationed in colonial waters, but collectively the fighting force of the navy has for the last few years numbered roughly 25 battleships, 15 large armoured cruisers, 16 protected cruisers, 80 or 90 destroyers, 180 torpedo-boats, and about 90 submarines and submersibles. ”

“ This was what happened to our own battleship Maine in Havana harbour, and to the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk and the Japanese battleship Hatsuse at Port Arthur.
Enough has been said to prove that when the naval architect undertakes to build a hull that will be proof against the blow, not merely of one but of several of these terrific weapons, he has set himself a task that may well try his ingenuity to the utmost. Protection by heavy armour is out of the question. ”

“ With material of domestic manufacture at hand, it will be the duty of the government to provide the navy with a fleet of ten armored cruisers of the most approved type. These vessels would form the outer line of defence of the coast during war, and should be of such force as to be able to contend with any second-class armored vessel of other nations. ”