Tug of war

“ Let armed international strife be viewed as it really is—senseless as the now dying duello. Let the navy that represents the wealth, the best engineering, the highest courage and skill, of our age, be powerless at the attack of a swarm of trifling gnats like Gulliver bound by Lilliputians—what happens then? It is a reductio ad absurdum. Destructive war becomes so superlatively destructive as to destroy itself. ”

“ Our long gun was worked without ceasing, and we could see from time to time, that a bustle on the deck, denoted the destruction it was dealing; when suddenly a wild shout burst from one of our men—‘the man-of-war’s aground, her topsails are aback,’ A mad cheer—the frantic cry of rage and desperation—broke from us; when, at the instant, a reeling shock shook us from stem to stern. The little vessel trembled like a living thing; and then, with a crash like thunder, the hatchways sprang from their fastenings, and the white sea leaped up, and swept along the deck. ”

“ The bay presented a lively appearance with the innumerable little launches and despatch boats darting about from ship to ship. Vessels went alongside sailing colliers to have their bunkers replenished; other ships entered or left at all hours; signals were continually flying from the flagship; occasionally a Spanish launch bearing a flag of truce would come down from the town, and in the midst of it all the crews of the different men-of-war worked on in the accustomed routine, as if peace and war, drills and fighting, were all a part of man's ordinary existence. ”

“ They rain with desperate violence against men whose profession was never that of arms, who nevertheless were they offered a fair field and no favour would prove themselves more than a match for their assailants. Unsustained by the exhilaration of battle, defenceless, and in single, far-separated ships, their part in the drama offers few attractions. There are enviable occupations, no doubt, even in war, but who would choose the part of a running target for enemy shells and torpedoes? ”

“ Our rigging was soon shot away and our sails cut into ribbons. At length away went the lower masts a little above the deck, while about two hundred men were pegging away at us with muskets. To make our happiness supreme, the sloop of war which had been set on fire and abandoned, blew up, and set us partially in a blaze, and while we were endeavouring to extinguish it the enemy took the cowardly advantage of wounding the purser, gunner, and two seamen, as well as myself, though only slightly. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And yet what a small and miserable thing this was, after all, in the way of a battle compared with the titanic combats which have been taking place in Europe ever since the greatest war in history commenced last August. I can well understand how the nerves of any man, however strong, may be shaken to pieces, by the awful clamour of the giant shells and the concentrated fire of many machine-guns, and countless numbers of rifles, and the terrible havoc wrought by these fearful weapons of destruction. ”

“ He will recoil at the suggestion of the horrid spectacle of two men confronting each other with gloved hands in the roped arena, and at the same time he will clamor for larger armies and larger navies, for more destructive war machines, which, with a single discharge, will disrupt and rip to pieces more human beings than have died in the whole history of prize-fighting. ”

“ The painful feelings of anxious apprehension and suspense experienced by those in the boats, must have been greatly heightened by the circumstance, that most of the shells and shot fired by our war vessels were necessarily fired over their heads, they being between the vessels and the enemy: so that an ill-directed shot from their own ships, was as dangerous to them as one from the shore; and when buzzing through the air over them, must have been apprehended as one from the enemy, about to strike destruction amongst them. ”

“ On swept the boats, coming in full view of the long line of breastworks that broke the east shore—in full view of the black muzzles of the heavy guns which seemed watching the approach of the gallant little fleet in ominous silence—in full view of the flag waving defiantly from a high staff in the centre of the works, until one could almost see down the huge bore of the guns, the bright straps of the shells, which seemed like leashes to prevent the deadly missiles from springing forth upon their work of destruction—and yet not a trigger was pulled on either side. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So long as they remained in or near their ships—that is, within the atmosphere of which Mr. Alter had spoken, and beyond the influence of their civilian friends—naval officers saw the coming war with such concentration on its professional aspect that observant visitors were amazed and sometimes shocked. War would come; Germany would be the enemy and the aggressor; but the certainty of this aggression seemed no better reason for bitterness than a chess opponent’s initial move of his King’s Pawn. ”

“ But an impulsive nation egged on the Government who, confident that our old luck would pull us through, at once declare war. The fleet, trying to close with the enemy, is destroyed in “a few minutes” by the “deadly engines” left behind by the evasive enemy; our amateurish armies are defeated on our own soil, and voilà tout. ”

“ It will be a trifling countershock to wing an aeroplane or so, or blow a torpedo-boat out of the water. Our Dreadnoughts will cease to be a source of unmitigated confidence. A second battleship disaster will excite the Press extremely. A third will probably lead to a retirement of the battle fleet to some east-coast harbour, a refuge liable to aeroplanes, or to the west coast of Ireland—and the real naval war, which, as I have argued in an earlier chapter, will be a war of destroyers, submarines and hydroplanes, will begin. ”

“ The storm had burst upon the Sea-Gull with a violence that, while alarming, was not by any means overwhelming, and for a time, although laboring heavily, the tug succeeded in making way against it. Then, when safety was almost in sight, the second stage of the tempest broke, and this time the tug was powerless against it, and was slowly carried backward from land to sea, although fighting desperately for every inch. There came another slight lull, which was the one the chief mate had taken advantage of to bring the men off the barge to the tug-boat. ”

“ Through and through the barbette, and the hull itself, plunged and exploded the steel projectiles. Dead and dying men lay in heaps everywhere about the decks; the ammunition hoists were wrecked and the steering-gear disabled, so that the great, tortured battle-ship could only stagger over the water round and round in a circle, her remaining guns still firing at intervals, until the merciful waves swept over her, and with all on board, living and dead, she went down. ”

“ An explosion—a loud burst of terrific cries and wails,—a careen, and the rebel steamer, with its wretched multitude of victims, plunged beneath the waters, and disappeared from view. The rebel vessels were crowded with troops, who fired volleys of rifle balls, most of which did no harm. ”

“ We now rapidly left the floundering and mazed man-of-war. But our men kept firing into the medley on her decks, plying the stern-chasers in furious haste; and, ever as he was able, the enemy did shoot at us with muskets and pistols, and once—his ship having slewed right round—gave us a thundering great broadside. ”

“ Fired at by the great guns of the fort capable of effective work at eight or ten miles distance, exposed to explosive bombs dropped from soaring airships, made a target for the deadly weapon of the torpedo boat, and in constant risk of being stung by the submarine wasp, these great war ships, built at a cost of ten or more millions and peopled by hundreds of mariners, are in constant danger of being sent to the bottom with all on board a contingency likely to shake the nerves of the steadiest Jack Tar or admiral on board. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are farther worth consideration because in these last days of the nineteenth century a very great number of people in the nation believe that if an enemy’s battle-ship should dare to threaten the American metropolis, the courageous tugboat-men of the harbor would arm their little vessels with torpedoes and, swarming down to Sandy Hook, surround the audacious armor-clad, and by sheer force of numbers run in and explode their dynamite where it would fill the enemy with dismay, and his hull with water. ”

“ Consequently, when these monsters met in battle, they manoeuvred for the upper place, or grappled and fought like junks, throwing grenades fighting hand to hand in an entirely medieval fashion. The risks of a collapse and fall on either side came near to balancing in every case the chances of victory. As a consequence, and after their first experiences of battle, one finds a growing tendency on the part of the air-fleet admirals to evade joining battle, and to seek rather the moral advantage of a destructive counter attack. ”

“ If the war was a naval one, you destroyed your enemy's battle fleet and then blockaded his ports, secured his coaling stations, and hunted down any stray cruisers that threatened your ports of commerce. But to blockade and watch a coastline is one thing, to blockade and watch the whole surface of a country is another, and cruisers and privateers are things that take long to make, that cannot be packed up and hidden and carried unostentatiously from point to point. ”

“ Defensively, [1] to attack ships that come to bombard our forts, [2] to attack ships that come to blockade us, [3] to attack ships convoying a landing party, [4] to attack the enemy's fleet, [5] to attack ships interfering with our commerce; offensively, [1] to bombard an enemy's ports, [2] to blockade an enemy, [3] to convoy a landing party, [4] to attack the enemy's fleet, [5] to attack the enemy's commerce. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The ship quivered and rocked under the recoil of her own guns. The deadly British broadsides made her reel. The guns were torn from their settings and whole gun crews hurled to destruction. Men hurtled down from aloft, bruised, bleeding, dead.
Men were swept from the deck like flies from a tablecloth. Everywhere blood trickled and flowed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have seen that the paramount purpose of all naval warfare, and, indeed, of all warfare, is the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy. His armed forces are in the last resort the sole instrument of his will, and their destruction to such an extent as is necessary to subdue his will is the sole agency by which peace can be restored. ”