Ship of war

“ To keep their shipmates at the port,
While glory strove with death.
With decks afloat, and powder gone,
The last broadside we gave
From the guns' heated iron lips
Burst out beneath the wave.
So sponges, rammers, and handspikes—
As men-of-war's men should—
We placed within their proper racks,
And at our quarters stood.
"Up to the spar-deck! Save yourselves!"
Cried Selfridge. "Up, my men!
God grant that some of us may live
To fight yon ship again!" ”

“ The rest is merely a narrative of collisions between ship and ship, with masts and sails falling, chains and grapnels straining, the hurling of stones and iron bars from the castle at the masthead, the felling of one another’s masts, the cutting adrift of the enemy’s halyards and shrouds, the heaving overboard (a favourite and regular habit in war) of every man and boy of the enemy they could lay their hands on, and finally victory to the English. ”

“ DECOY. So to change the aspect of a ship-of-war by striking a topgallant-mast, setting ragged sails, disfiguring the sides by whitewash or gunpowder, yellow, &c., as to induce a vessel of inferior force to chase; when, getting within gun-shot range, she becomes an easy capture. Similar manœuvres are sometimes used by a single ship to induce an enemy's squadron to follow her into the view of her own fleet. ”

“ This would prevent the men on board from being so much exposed as in the other ship: a thing of no trifling importance in a time of warfare. A well-built and well manned British ship of war, such as carries an admiral’s flag now, would, no doubt, destroy a whole fleet of the ships of olden time. ”

“ A light wind and sea accompany us for the present, but the filmy glare of the sun, now low, and a backward movement of the glass foretells a break ere long. We are steaming at high speed to make the most of the smooth sea. Ahead, on each bow, our two escorting destroyers conform to the angles of our zigzag—spurring out and swerving with the peculiar 'thrown-around' movement of their class. Look-out is alert and in numbers. Added to the watch of the ship's crew, military signallers are posted; the boats swung outboard have each a party of troops on guard. ”

“ But for general naval service, and in every case in which a ship is intended to accept battle with a powerful antagonist and fight it out, or to force an action when she encounters such an enemy, it cannot be wise to leave her so exposed that that enemy may almost certainly sink her or cause her to capsize by merely pouring any kind of shot or shell into her unarmored parts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is very sad, but this is war time, and the fleet must be manned.
All day long duty-boats keep going up and down. Now it is an admiral’s twelve-oared barge with the flag at the bows; now a captain’s gig, or a pinnace, pulling between ship and shore; now a midshipman’s boat scurrying off to answer the flagship’s signal. Ships’ long-boats with water-casks and pursers’ stores for various men-of-war in harbour, pass and repass, and beer hoys and yard craft of all kinds. ”

“ The ship appearing to be a lofty vessel, our people were panic struck with fear, taking her for a 70 gun ship, and, as we had several deserters from the men at war, they desired the Cap't to hoist the Jack and lower our pennant as a signal for our pinnace, which was then ashore, so that, if she proved to be a man of war, they might get ashore, and clear of the press. ”

“ In this, as in all the warfare of the coming time, imaginative foresight, a perpetual alteration of tactics, a perpetual production of unanticipated devices, will count enormously. Other things being equal, victory will rest with the force mentally most active. What type of ship may chance to be prevalent when the great naval war comes is hard guessing, but I incline to think that the naval architects of the ablest peoples will concentrate more and more upon speed and upon range and penetration, and, above all, upon precision of fire. ”

“ When battle is once joined, ship against ship, each man's strength must be strained to the utmost, whether he be a member of a gun-crew or a stoker, a munition man or a man on look-out duty who gives timely warning of the course of a torpedo. ”

“ The ship, or ships, always anchored well under the cover of the heaviest guns of the fortress, yet so far out that her, or their, own heavy guns completely commanded the waters of the roadstead, thus tremendously increasing the difficulty of sowing those waters with mines. ”

“ I then pressed further towards the rear; and had it pleased God that I had not been wounded and stone blind, there cannot be a doubt but that every ship would have been in our possession.’ Many of the French ships were individually superior to any of the English; the flagship Orient, of 120 guns, was supposed to be equal to any two of them; but, notwithstanding this, they were everywhere overpowered, and captured, burnt, or blown up. Two only escaped, the Généreux and Guillaume Tell, and two of the frigates.
A victory so decisive, so overwhelming, was unknown in the annals of modern war. ”

“ This simple picture of him portrays a fine figure338 of a man, of the sort who have created and fostered the spirit and traditions both of the British and the American naval services. In a sinking ship which had lost all her guns, he was still mindful of his duty of guarding the merchant convoy, or what was left of it, against any roving French or Spanish war vessels or privateers, and every fiber of him rebelled against deserting his ship as long as her flag flew above water. ”

“ Under all sail and braced close to the wind, a war-ship is standing in for the land, where a long stretch of low sand hills is broken by the entrance to a bay, an ugly line of breakers making across; while a mile beyond, the tall, white shaft of a half-ruined lighthouse is visible.
The vessel is a clipper-built bark, her long, tapering masts heavily sparred and spreading a cloud of canvas. The lines of her hull are so fine, her bow is so sharp, and her run so206 clean moulded that she could evidently show great speed were she not so closely hauled. ”

“ They adopt every improvement in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they fundamentally believe that the best stratagem in naval war, is to lay your ship close alongside of the enemy's ship, and bring all your guns to bear on him, until you or he go to the bottom. ”

“ It is practice that makes perfect. The original plan for mobilising the Navy for war was that on the outbreak of war you disorganised the ships already fully manned and efficient by taking a portion of the trained crew, thus impairing the efficiency of that ship, and putting them into the un-manned ships and filling up both the old and the new—the former efficient ships and those in the dockyards—with men from the Reserve. ”

“ The captain of the battle-ship must be all [207] that the merchant captain is, and more besides. Mooring and slipping moorings should be an open book to the naval officer, but his higher studies, the deeper intricacies of the science of war, are mysteries for the merchant captain. All of it is seamanship, of course. But to-day it is the seamanship of the bridled elements, where strength is met by strength and steam and iron make wind and wave as nothing. ”

“ The modern war vessel is a rapid travelling armoured screw steamer of eight to ten thousand tons and of from six to eight thousand horse power provided with turrets and four or six very powerful big guns, together with a ram at the bow below the water line for the purpose of destroying the ship of the enemy. ”

“ At the beginning of the war there were 361 vessels ready for service, including twelve first-line battleships, twenty-five second-line battleships, nine armored cruisers, twenty-four other cruisers, seven monitors, fifty destroyers, sixteen coast torpedo vessels, seventeen torpedo boats, forty-four submarines, eight tenders to torpedo boats, twenty-eight gunboats, four transports, four supply ships, one hospital ship, twenty-one fuel ships, fourteen converted yachts, forty-nine tugs, and twenty-eight minor vessels. ”

“ Doe was brooding over the ships of the Navy on the water, and over the white camps of the Army on the dull, bleak hill-slopes.
"I didn't know there were so many ships in the world," he said.
It was a wonderful revelation of sea power. There were battleships, heavy and squat; cruisers, more slender and graceful; low-lying destroyers, coal black or silver grey; and hospital ships, which, in their glistening white paint, were as much more lovely than the men-of-war as ruth is more lovely than ruthlessness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We want at once a navy for our rivers and creeks and bays and sounds; a navy consisting chiefly of vessels that, for the most part, will only be required to keep the sea for a few days at a time.” These ships would be so small as to present little more than a feather-edge as a target to the enemy, and therefore be more invulnerable than the best shot-proof men-of-war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where a gallant ship may anchor when her fighting days are done,
Free from tempest, rock and battle, toil and tumult safely o'er,
Where the breezes murmur softly and there's peace for evermore.
They have climbed the last horizon, they are standing in from sea,
And the Pilot makes the Haven where a ship is glad to be:
Comes at last the glorious greeting, strangely new and ages old,
See the sober grey is shining like the Tudor green and gold!
⁠And the waiting jibs are hoisted, in the old way,
⁠As the guns begin to thunder down the line ”

“ Naturally, the number and kinds of ships that need to be provided will depend on the nature of the war—whether, for instance, a very large force is to be sent to the other side of the world, to meet a powerful fleet there, or whether a sudden attack on our Atlantic coast is to be repelled. ”

“ She has eight hundred ships on the ocean, flushed with victory and conquest, and a part of her navy is at this moment triumphantly sailing almost in sight of your shores, ready at any moment to seize, should that course appear expedient to her, all our vessels navigating the ocean. It cannot affect her continental operations. The war she will wage, will be altogether maritime. Her navy cannot be essential against her continental enemies in Europe. ”

“ England, for example, has always guarded her homes, not at the hearth-stone nor the threshold, but within gunshot of her enemy’s territory; her defence has been an attack upon his inner line, and her vessels have been, not corsairs preying upon merchantmen, but battle-ships, ready for duel or for fleet engagement, whether they had the odds against them or not. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The proper duty of our navy is, not coast or river defence; it has a more glorious sphere—that of the offensive. In our last war, instead of lying in harbor, and contenting themselves with keeping a few more of the enemy's vessels in watch over them than their own number—instead of leaving the enemy's commerce in undisturbed enjoyment of the sea, and our commerce without countenance or aid, they scattered themselves over the wide surface of the ocean, penetrated to the most remote seas, everywhere acting with the most brilliant success against the enemy's navigation. ”