Battleship

“ It should be remembered, too, that the present battleship is not a sudden invention, springing up in a night, like Jonah's gourd, or newly contrived by a council sitting for the purpose, like a brand-new Constitution of the French Revolution. The battleship of to-day is the outcome of a gradual evolution extending over forty years. ”

“ 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? ”

“ If we imagine the problem still further complicated by an attack on a battleship line by flotillas of fast destroyers firing high-speed, long-range torpedoes, to intersect the course that that squadron is taking, we have the third element of confusion. ”

“ At the present moment, the battleship is the primary, or paramount type, the others secondary, because the battleship is the type that can exert the most force, stand the hardest punishment, steam the farthest in all kinds of weather, and in general, serve her country the best. ”

“ The one great secret of the fighting value of a battleship is to get her to sea quickly:—
“Build few, and build fast,
Each one better than the last.” You will come across some idiots whose minds are so deliciously symmetrical that they would prefer ten tortoises to one greyhound to catch a hare, and it was one of the principal articles of the ancient creed that you built ships in batches. ”

“ A slow, unarmoured battleship, carrying accurate, quick-firing, long-range guns, is a better fleet unit than a fast, perfectly protected ship with weapons unlikely to hit, because ill-made, poorly mounted, or badly ammunitioned. ”

“ With the fleet radio officer he talked quite frankly, discussing the appalling prospect of a great naval action in which the vast fleet of the enemy would operate with perfect coördination between its battlecruisers, scouts, and destroyers, directed by its flagship, as much a unit as a battleship operated from the bridge, while the Allied fleet, its directing nerve center semi-paralyzed, would be doomed to confusion, and almost certain disaster. ”

“ As we saw in the accounts of the battle [Pg 192] of Jutland, the German Fleet tackled our cruisers and lighter vessels but discreetly withdrew when the battleships came up.
Looked at in another way, we may say that a battleship is a floating fortress. Its speed is not great, when compared with other ships, but it is constructed to carry enormous guns. It is also armoured with steel plates of great thickness and of special hardness placed upon the outside of the hull so as to cover its vital parts and protect them from the shells of the enemy. ”

“ The ordinary routine of 'man and arm boats' is over.
LANDING PARTIES
Another signal (see Note IV.) will turn out, transport, land, embark, and disembark three thousand armed men, with twenty-one field guns, in the inside of three hours; leaving six thousand men in the ships to carry on if necessary the work of a bombardment; or you can vary the programme and load a mere thousand or so into eight identical double-funnelled fifteen-knot steam launches—one from each battleship—and play miniature Fleet-manœuvres to your heart's content. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We fought on the blood-soaked decks and gun-turreted floors of battleships, in the fuselage, cockpit, bellies, and wings of flying fortresses, inside hot, cramped, fire-and-cannon belching tanks, in the putrified trenches and shell and fox holes of battle scarred beaches, on the sides of most inaccessible steep mountain precipices, and on deserts and in jungles where we lay day and night in putrid mud, water, and scum. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Battleships and cruisers, torpedo boats, and submarines, all in their turn have done their work, and done it well. They are waiting they tell us for "the day" of which the enemy boasted so much, and when the day dawns they will be there.
We realise that our fleet will be the deciding fact in this war. Our soldiers have done splendidly and will continue so to do, but without our ships they [155] would be helpless, and if once we lose command of the sea, the glory of our country will pass away. But we have no doubts and no fears. They are there—and here—everywhere. ”

“ Now that a typical French battleship of the belted class has been brought so prominently to our notice, it may not be considered an inappropriate season to dwell shortly upon the various idiosyncrasies of thought which have produced, in our two nations, types of war vessels differing so materially from each other as to their protective features. ”

“ So uneven, or erratic, has been the progress of warship construction, that in some of the world’s harbours, riding the waters almost side by side, one may see dug-outs and “Dreadnoughts,” sampans and submarines, canoes and cruisers, barges and battleships, the vessels of peace—though in times past they were not always vessels of peace—resting securely under the protection of the grim and terrible modern warships. ”

“ It is true every one was a little proud over the performance of the fleet and glad that it had shaken itself into a homogeneous unit and was in first class fighting condition, not as separate battleships but as a fleet. ”

“ Although so different in form and material that a sailor of the old days, could he revisit the earth, would not recognize them, the battleships of to-day are the real descendants of the "line-of-battle" ships of those times. They are stout and strong, with the heaviest guns, capable of giving and taking the hardest knocks, and it is they who form the backbone of the fleet. ”

“ If plain paper is used, the warships may be made in several colors, which adds to the effect of rivalry between the fleets. Other types of craft may easily be devised, two of which are shown in Fig. 4. Not only the youngsters in the household, but their elders as well, may find not a little amusement and diversion in the making of a fleet of such warships, modeled after battleships, destroyers, battle cruisers, and other vessels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But most boys have 86 either seen big battleships, or cruisers, or have looked at photographs of them, so have an idea of what they look like. But something larger and more formidable than anything before constructed to deal death and destruction from the sea will have to be imagined. ”

“ The Allied fleet had a great advantage in visibility all along the line. Not only the main battle fleet of the enemy in the southwest, but also his battle cruisers in the west stood out in bold relief against the afternoon sky. For this reason, as well as by virtue of the heavier guns of the Allied battleships and the disconcerting effect of the torpedo attack, the fire of the battle cruisers soon became wild and ineffective. ”

“ Men, when they discussed naval warfare, viewed it with speculative eye as a clash of battleships in one or two terrific, decisive, world-shaking encounters. Few, if any, foresaw that the enemy, declining the great issue, would aim at a slow grinding pressure, adopting a kind of warfare in which the fighting fleets would hardly feel the shock. ”

“ Outside them showed the masts and fighting-tops of those which had sunk before reaching shore, and outside these again lay a score or so of battleships and a few armoured cruisers, some down by the head, some by the stern, and some listing badly to starboard or port—still afloat, and still with a little fight left in them, in spite of their gashed sides, torn decks, riddled topworks and smashed barbettes. ”

“ For the big grey battleships suddenly seemed to stand for many things, for the greatness of the country they guarded, for the power of the engines that drove them, the faithfulness and loyalty of the service that guided them and lastly—here an extra quiver ran through his shivering body—for the might of the enemy they would some day go forth to meet. ”

“ Here is the account of another service sent home by an engine-room artificer on one of H.M. battleships.
"It is Sunday evening, the time about 7.30, when upwards of seventy men may be seen sitting about the deck, under the fo'castle of one of His Majesty's cruisers. Outside all is dark, one watch of men are standing by the guns, trying to penetrate the darkness, in case of the approach of the enemy. A watch of stokers and engineers is below, humping the ship along. Another is resting, waiting for the time for their next trick to come round. ”

“ The United States will be represented by 16 battleships, 12 torpedo-boats, 4 submarines, 2 supply ships, 1 repair ship, 1 torpedo vessel, 1 tug and 7 colliers: 53 vessels in all, the battleships constituting the most powerful fleet ever assembled except on a few occasions in the English Channel. ”

“ Even to the civilian mind the inequalities of a battle in which six or eight battleships can concentrate their broadside fire on a single ship navigating a narrow and tortuous channel and able to reply with her bow guns only are sufficiently obvious. ”

“ And, the battleships passed, come the armored cruisers, riding the waters almost as ponderously as the battleships and hardly less powerful, but much faster on the trail; and they may run or fight as they please. ”

“ The naval strength of the republic embraces 17 modern battleships, 25 of older type, 18 first-class, 13 second and third-class cruisers, 173 torpedo boats, 87 destroyers, and 90 submarines. There is another element of modern military strength of growing importance and sure to be of large use in the war under review. This is that of the airship. In 1914 France stood at the head in this particular, its aeroplanes, built or under construction, numbering 550. Germany had 375, Russia 315, Italy 270, Austria 220, Britain 180 and Belgium 150. In dirigible balloons Germany stood first, with 50. ”

“ But in a stiff breeze, when a great wave strikes like an iron avalanche against the ship, she seems to pause and shudder, as it were, beneath the blow; then, gathering strength from the unceasing throb of the mighty power within, urges her way bravely on, while far as the eye can reach, as the ship sinks in the watery valleys, you see the great black tossing waves, all crested with spray and foam, like a huge squadron of white-plumed giant cavalry. The spray sometimes flies high over the smoke-stack, and a dash of saline drops, coming fiercely into the face, feels like a handful of pebbles. ”

“ Men-of-war boats, manned by smart seamen or smarter marines, each with a standard waving, and a little middy seated in the stern, were shooting to and fro, while the scene was a wondrous medley of nautical uproar. Ships of all kinds, loading or unloading; while piles of goods, waggons, carts, rigging, anchors, boats, casks, and government stores, guarded by seamen with cutlasses, and marines with fixed bayonets, met the eye on every hand; for the North-Sea fleet were moored in the roads. A small corvette, of sixteen guns, was undergoing repairs, and her artillery were placed upon the quay. ”

“ We pass a magnificent white-clad troop-ship, with a beading of red-coats leisurably looking over the forecastle, and glide under the lee of one of those steam-winged brigands of the deep, a steel-built cruiser, whose towering trim spars, and beautiful lines, excite admiration, but chastened with the reflection of the capabilities for destruction she carries in her enormous propelling power and far-reaching guns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instructions relating to the Line of Battle and the Conduct of the Fleet preparatory to their engaging and when engaged with an enemy.
I. The chief purposes for which a fleet is formed in line of battle are, that the ships may be able, to assist and support each other in action; that they may not be exposed to the fire of the enemy's ships greater in number than themselves, and that every ship may be able to fire on the enemy without risk of firing into the ships of her own fleet. ”

“ And our ship for action clear,
[308] By the cannon and the sword,
We will die or conquer here.
The foe, of twice our force, nears us fast:
To your posts, my faithful tars!
Mind your rigging, guns, and spars,
And defend your stripes and stars
To the last."
At the captain's bold command,
Flew each sailor to his gun,
And resolved he there would stand,
Though the odds was two to one,
To defend his flag and ship with his life:
High on every mast display'd,
"God, Our Country, and Free Trade,"
E'en the bravest braver made
For the strife. ”