Sloop of war

“ The government sloop-of-war was not built for privateering purposes. Every government vessel was intended chiefly to fight, and required strength in every part and solidity throughout. The frame needed to be heavy to support the heavier structure; the quarters needed to be thick to protect the men at the guns from grape and musketry; the armament was as weighty as the frame would bear. ”

“ We began this struggle without a single gun afloat, while the resources of our enemy enabled them to gather fleets which, according to their official list published in August last, consisted of 427 vessels, measuring 340,036 tons and carrying 3,268 guns. Yet we have captured, sunk, or destroyed a number of these vessels, including two large frigates and one steam sloop of war, while four of their captured steam gunboats are now in our possession, adding to the strength of our little Navy, which is rapidly gaining in numbers and efficiency. ”

“ This stupendous fleet forms the most striking example of naval destructiveness the world has ever seen, and the nations of the world are entering the twentieth century with powers of warfare developed enormously beyond those with which they entered the nineteenth. We can only hope that this vast development both in army and navy may prove to exert a peace-compelling influence, and that every new discovery in the art of killing and destroying may be a nail in the coffin of Mars, the god of war. ”

“ I would rather meet the enemy and destroy him in a general engagement.”
“That sounds very right and chivalric,” replied Lord Claymore, smiling; “but observe the true state of the case. The object of going to war with an enemy is to sink, burn, and destroy his ships at sea, and to do him all the injury in our power on shore. In a general engagement you attack his fleet with yours, at the cost of some of your ships, perhaps, and the loss of many hundreds of your men. If a great victory is gained, a tenth, or at all events a twentieth, part of the enemy are killed and wounded. ”

“ From the interior there were clamours for troops to be massed on the Northern frontier, and from the seaboard cities there came a cry for ships that were worthy to be called men-of-war,—ships to defend the harbours and bays, ships to repel an invasion by sea. ”

“ Have we 100,000 regular troops and 200,000 landwehr, in the British Islands, ready to repel insult; and a fleet of 30 ships of the line and 20 armed steamers, ready afloat and manned, on the German Ocean and in the Channel, to secure our harbours from attack, and raise a blockade of our coasts? Have we—since we are so set upon a foreign war, and have done so much to spread the passions which necessarily lead to it, and made so many hostile demonstrations calculated instantly to induce it—made preparations in our Exchequer and our granaries for its expenses and its privations? ”

“ The doctrines of the Prince of Peace are never so beautiful as when they are in accord with one’s business interests—we are never so horrified by the wickedness of war as when we consider the destruction it would bring upon our property! Can we, indeed, view with complacency the proposition to sink a ship with five hundred unprepared souls by means of a torpedo, and yet shrink from the thought of preserving peace by the threat of capturing and destroying all of the property of an enemy that is found afloat after war is declared? ”

“ Battle and siege are thus in essence complementary modes of war and all military action may roughly be defined as fighting, or some method of postponing fighting, or steps or preparations towards fighting.
SEA WAR
War at sea is carried on, as we have seen, by naval fleets. The immediate object of a fleet is to find, defeat, and destroy the enemy’s fleet. The ultimate or further objective which is gained by such destruction is to monopolize the use of the sea, as the master highway, by retaining51 freedom for the passage of the victor’s ships while denying such passage to those of the defeated. ”

“ Do you think we are going to wait until our own women and children starve and let you keep your bread baskets full before we defend ourselves? You have started it. You are responsible for the consequences. If you would discontinue your inhuman way of carrying on the war, then we would let your sailing ships and steamers pass unmolested, when they do not carry contraband. You have wanted war to the knife. Good, we have accepted your challenge.”
The sailing ship sank rapidly by the stern, turning over on her side until the yard arms touched the water and the red bottom could be seen. ”

“ But if the bayonet, the lance, and even the cannon offered less to the eye, the true source of the grandeur of war was there—the power, the tremendous impulse, the materiel of those shocks which convulse nations—the marshalled strength, fierce science, and stern will, before which the works of man perish like chaff before the wind, and the glory of nations vanishes like a shade. ”

“ The roar of the guns, the crash of the explosions, the thunder of the great engines of war as they romped through the seas, the flashes of fire as shells left the maws of the terrific weapons—all went to make up a scene of horror, of impressiveness. It was a battle between rival giants at giants’ distance, while simultaneously another battle was raging between the smaller cruisers and torpedo craft. There is no doubt that one reason why the Germans chose a running fight was that they hoped to be able to lure their pursuers into the minefield round about Heligoland. ”

“ For during the months that are to come the British Navy and the sea power which it exerts will increasingly dominate the general situation, will be the main and unfailing reserve of the allied nations, will progressively paralyse the fighting energies of our antagonists, and will, if need be, even in default of all other favourable forces, ultimately, by itself, decide the issue of the War. ”

“ High up in the sky, slipping and gliding among the transparent clouds, a war plane swoops over the French warships, passes along them, and drops bombs that only our skillful dodging makes harmless; they burst opposite our ships. On the surface of the water one of the cruisers perceives the furrow of a periscope! ”

“ They stand to the deck through the battle’s wreck, when the great shells roar and screech—
And never they fear; when the foe is near, to practice what they preach:
But, off with your hat, and three times three, for the war-ship’s true-blue sons,
The men who batter the foe—my Boys—the men behind the guns.
Oh, light and merry of heart are they, when they swing into port, once more,
When, with more than enough of the “green-backed stuff,” they start for their leave-o’-shore ”

“ But on the whole the navy that had done more fighting than any other, and in the period of its existence when its fighting was most continuous, took what is at once a rational and a Christian view of these situations. Now it seems that war at sea dooms those who have fought unfalteringly to finish the business, when they can fight no longer, by a savage self-immolation. It is the only alternative to allowing the enemy the glory of a capture. ”

“ We cannot now, as we did then, depend on distance and our faithful old allies, the wind and waves, to protect our citizens from insult and pillage. Moreover, the epoch for 'big guns and little ships' is at hand. [2] Our enemy is not prepared for it. We are. Let us be up and doing, and with craft no larger than steam-tugs and pilot-boats, we may send to the bottom, or chase away from our bays and offings, his tall frigates. In the old war, none but stout ships could be sent against us, for we were separated from the enemy by the most stormy ocean in the world. ”

“ It was a nerve-racking and tantalizing experience—the troop ships sailing in echelon formation, preceded, followed, and flanked by destroyers; at night every glimmer of light eclipsed, the ships speeding ahead in perfect blackness, each inch of the sea swept by watchful eyes to discover the telltale ripple of a periscope or the trail of a torpedo, gun crews on the alert, depth bombs ready. ”

“ Literal swarms of destroyers England had running to and fro in the North Sea, keen for the chase and too quick at dodging and too fast to be in any danger of the under-water dagger thrust of the assassins whom they sought. There cannot be too many. They are the eyes of the navy; they gather information and carry a sting in their torpedo tubes. ”

“ The first striking difference between military and naval warfare is that, while—in theory, at least—the military forces of a country confine their attacks to the persons and power of their enemy, the naval forces devote themselves primarily to the plunder of his property and commerce. If on land the theory of modern war exempts from spoliation all of an enemy’s goods that do not contribute to his [Pg 67] military strength, on sea such spoliation is the professed object of maritime warfare. ”

“ No more heroic and devoted act illumines the long history of naval warfare than the laying of these mines close to the harbor, and under the full fire of the enemy's guns, any one of whose missiles, by exploding the dangerous cargo, might have sent the ship to destruction in a moment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All standing armies shall be disbanded, and every implement of warfare, of whatsoever nature, destroyed.
“Second: All war vessels shall be assembled—those of the Atlantic fleets midway between New York and Gibraltar, those of the Pacific fleets midway between San Francisco and Honolulu—and sunk. ”

“ So far as the Navy is concerned, we cannot fight while the enemy remains in port. We hope a decision at sea will be a feature of this war. Our men, who are spending a tireless vigil, hope they will have a chance to settle the question with the German Fleet, and if they do not come out and fight they will be dug out like rats in a hole. [Cheers.] Under the shield of our Navy you can raise an army in this country which will settle the war within six or seven months. ”

“ So successfully has the British Navy done its work that many generations of Englishmen have grown up without hearing the sound of a gun fired in anger. Every other nation in Europe has heard the tramp of foreign soldiery in the lifetime of men still living and felt the pain and shame of invasion. ”

“ Armed with such a tremendous engine of destruction as a navigable air-ship must necessarily be, when used in conjunction with the explosives already at our disposal, we could make war impossible to our enemies by bringing into the field a force with which no army or fleet could contend without the certainty of destruction. ”

“ In all the war not a single battle had been fought at close quarters; there had been plenty of instances of brilliant manœuvring, of torpedo-boats running the gauntlet and hurling their deadly missiles against the sides of battleships and cruisers, and of ships rammed and sunk in a few instants by consummately-handled opponents ”

“ Now, by my plan the lives of very few of our own people are risked; perhaps no one may be lost; while the ships of the enemy are entirely destroyed; and though, of course, some of their people are sacrificed, probably not more are lost than in a general engagement, while the chances are that the war in consequence is more speedily brought to a conclusion, and the lives of thousands saved, and people able to return to their peaceful and useful occupations. ”

“ If we examine, my lords, the influence of our European armaments, we shall find that their ships of war are shut up in the harbour of France, and that the fleets of both nations are happily blocked up together, so that they can neither extricate each other by concerted motions, in which our attention might be distracted, and our force divided, nor by their united force break through the bars by which they are shut up from the use of the ocean. ”

“ A Great Victory IT was five or six months after this before they heard any more of the savages, in which time our men were in hopes they had either forgot their former bad luck, or given over hopes of better; when, on a sudden, they were invaded with a most formidable fleet of no less than eight-and-twenty canoes, full of savages, armed with bows and arrows, great clubs, wooden swords, and such like engines of war; and they brought such numbers with them, that, in short, it put all our people into the utmost consternation. ”

“ When the time comes, as come it may, when the cannon of a hostile fleet are thundering at your ports; when your lumbering craft are flying before the rapacious grasp of quick-heeled cruisers, and fiery bombs are hissing through the pure air, bursting in your marble palaces and blasting your stores of wealth to dust, then you will turn with blanched faces to the sea, and wonder why you have so long forgotten the noble hearts and stalwart arms that once were thrown around you. ”