The New Navy

“ IN times of peace,” wrote the first Advisory Board summoned for a new navy by Secretary Hunt, over twenty years ago, in its report November 7, 1881, “ ironclads are not required to carry on the work of the United States navy.” “ Including the battleships mentioned, the three vessels of the Maine class and the five of the New Jersey class,” says that standard authority Brassey’s Naval Annual for 1902, “there will be under construction for the United States navy during the present year no less than ten first-class battleships; a larger number than for any other navy excluding our own.” Even the English navy has but three more, thirteen. This contrast between the recommendation of a board which did not lack for ability or fighting blood — Admiral John Rodgers was its head, and commanders (now Admirals) R. D. Evans and A. S. Crowninshield were members and signed this report — and the battleship-building now in progress for the United States measures the change wrought by a new navy which, when it was begun, found us twelfth or fourteenth among the world’s navies, and has made us fourth, not to say third, in efficiency.

In any nation, this would be a momentous change for the world and for itself. For the United States, with its internal resources and population, a coast line of some 6000 miles, insular possessions 12,000 miles apart, and a pledge to exclude all foreign interference from a territory of 8,000,000 square miles and a coast line of 19,000 miles in Central and South America, an advance from an insignificant navy to one equal to war with any navies but two, and to war, with a reasonable assurance of success, against all navies but three or four, affects the centre of political gravity in all the Seven Seas. Only two navies are afloat, Great Britain and France, which could confront the United States with such an overwhelming force that a collision would reduce the General Naval Board at Washington to a sole study of the defensive problem. Both these flags are united by so many ties to the fortune and future of the republic that it may he doubted if either enters to-day into the imagination of the American people as a probable or possible foe. Two navies more there are, Russia and Germany, whose force afloat is so strong were untoward circumstances to break the unbroken peace of the past as to render the issue of a collision one about which no man would hastily venture an opinion as to the outcome guided by considerations alone of tonnage, armor, engines, and guns. A fifth power, Italy, had ten to twenty years ago a powerful navy. It may regain its relative position. At present, its ships are antiquated. Three out of five first-class battleships are over ten years old, and all its second and third class battleships have been afloat from seventeen to twenty - five years. Its founder, Criapi, in 1900, pointed out that in ten years it had sunk from seventh to twelfth place. When the six battleships launched or building are equipped, Italy’s navy will be stronger absolutely not relatively, for the progress of other larger navies will be even more rapid.

No other navy need be considered, though one, Japan, has already reached a point at which its force in its own waters is stronger than that of any one navy permanently maintained on the same coast. Where Russia habitually keeps in Eastern Asia four battleships of the size of the Iowa, 10,960 tons, and all eight years old, and Great Britain the same number of our new Maine class, 12,950 tons, more modern, Japan has now six battleships, all new warships and all more powerful. What is true of battleships is as true of cruisers off Eastern Asia.. The Japanese fleet is to-day stronger than any one Asiatic squadron under a European flag, though not stronger than any two combined. When in 1896 the united Russian, French, and German fleets sent their boats ashore to prepare for action, Japan yielded, as it would be forced to yield again. Powerful, the Japanese navy is. None has made fewer mistakes of plan or construction. None averages better, ship by ship. It is well handled. Cruising in ill-charted waters and for twelve years making annual manoeuvres, it is the only navy afloat that in thirty years has never had a vessel wrecked, or lost a ship at sea by its own fault. Our navy averages a ship lost or injured every other year.

But the Japanese navy has no place in the world-reckoning of navies. Allowing it all its future programme, it will not for twenty years to come have over half the force of the least of the world’s five great navies. Nor will Italy. The pace is beyond the fiscal strength of these powers. The methodical German programme set by the Act of April 10, 1898, gives a measure that every competing nation must meet or be left, hull down. It provides for an annual average sum for new construction from 1901 to 1916 of $24,500,000. Less than this means naval inferiority in an art in which vessels five years old have perceptibly lost power, vessels ten years old are outclassed, and those fifteen to twenty years are useful only for convoy or in harbor defense as floating forts. Admiral Rawson in the British Channel manœuvres of 1900 found his flagship, the Majestic, 14,900 tons, completed in 1895, hopelessly handicapped by the limited coal endurance of vessels like the Edinburgh, 9420 tons, finished 1882, the Conqueror, 6200 tons, finished 1881, the Dreadnought, 10,820 tons, finished 1875, and the Sultan, 9290 tons, launched in 1871. Such vessels not only lack power themselves, they hamper stronger and swifter vessels of a longer coal endurance. They may bring an entire fleet to an untenable position as they did Admiral Rawson, forced in these manœuvres to flee from a fleet no stronger because the weaker vessels he had must be detached to coal.

No nation, unless able and willing to spend an average of at least $25,000,000 a year on new construction, can longer hold the sea on equal terms. Only five national budgets, all over $500,000,000 annually, — Germany, the smallest, was, ordinary and extraordinary, $586,146,500 for 1901, — can afford this expenditure. Seventeen years ago, Great Britain, leading all the rest, expended on hulls only, in thirteen years, 1872-85, $85,340,065, a yearly average of but $6,564,620, and France $56,789,480, an annual average of but $4,367,652. The total cost for new construction was twice this, but the entire sum spent on shipbuilding by England in 1884—85, when Egyptaud boundary issues in Asia had quickened defense, was only $19,455,000. This was for the world’s foremost fleet; and Sir Thomas Brassey in a speech at Portsmouth in 1885, while Secretary to the Admiralty, cited this expenditure as proof that “ an administration pledged to economy ” was determined to exceed the French in ironclad construction. The maximum annual outlay for new construction in the largest navy of the world a score of years ago stands today below the minimum needed to maintain a position in the world’s five foremost navies.

Of these five England and France are in advance of the rest. The other three would be differently distributed, according to the norm used. Two years ago, Mr. J. Holt Schooling in the Fortnightly Review for July, 1900, in an elaborate calculation, handicapped the vessels of the world’s navies by their age, reducing efficiency ten per cent for those over six years old, and so on back until vessels built before 1880 were rated at one fifth their fighting weight. This placed the United States fourth in battleships and third in armored and protected cruisers, while its navy stood ahead of both Germany and Italy, and therefore fourth when this principle was applied to the navy list as a whole.¹ If the world’s battleships are reduced to terms, let us say of the Indiana or Massachusetts, 10,000 tons, fifteen knots speed, four thirteen-inch guns, launched within fifteen years, the United States in 1890 was sixth, being led by Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Germany. By 1896, the United States had passed Germany on this basis, but was still led by the rest, and by 1902, the United States has passed Italy, and is led hy Russia if existing, or by Germany if approaching, naval strength be considered. There will be a period, just as the twelve battleships and two armored cruisers building or authorized are completed, when in the fighting line, measured by efficiency, the United States will be third; but the period will be brief unless our naval expenditure for new construction is kept up to an inexorable annual average of from $25,000,000 to $30,000,000. This is to-day the minimum price for the naval security of a first-class power, one of the Big Five, whose common action and consent rule the world and make up a world concert, steadily gravitating into three divisions, Russia and France, Germany and Central Europe, England and the United States. In the last, recent events in China and South Africa have suddenly burdened the United States with many of the responsibilities and some of the initiative of a senior partner.

The United States in popular American discussion is credited with a new place in the world because of its new possessions. This is to mistake cause and effect. The United States owes both its new position and its new possessions to the new fleet. Without that, it would have neither. Lacking this, it may at any moment lose both. Coaling strength in the central Pacific — where the United States is better off than Great Britain — and in the Gulf and Caribbean, the new possessions give. They give nothing else. With a modern fleet this is the difference between a fleet like that of Germany or Russia, which cannot move about the world at will, — as witness Prince Henry’s slow progress to China with the Kaiser’s “ Mailed Fist ” on the Brandenburg by the grace of British coaling stations, — and fleets like the British, French, and American, which within their appropriate or appropriated sphere have supplies and succor, — always assuming that the same wisdom that acquired our insular possessions and dependency is wise enough to make them serviceable by equipped and fortified naval stations. For this, allowance is made in the estimate just quoted.

It is not merely that the American navy ranks among the first world five. All lesser fleets have disappeared. There are no small fleets to-day. There were even twenty years ago. Two centuries ago, Holland was still equal to an even fight with England in a contest that had endured for a century, and might have endured longer, but for the peril in which Louis XIV. put the Low Countries. The battle of the Baltic had its centenary only last year ; it will be five years before that of the Danish surrender to Lord Cathcart and Admiral Gambler (whose conduct in the Basque Roads had its recent parallel in our service), and until these twin events Denmark had still a fleet deemed worth destroying at the cost of an act of atrocious bad faith. The Barbary States had fleets up to a century ago equal to naval warfare. It is just over a third of a century since an Austrian fleet destroyed the Italian at Lissa, a battle with the twin lesson that ships alone do not make a fighting force, and that a naval commander may, like Admiral Tegetthoff, know how to win the greatest naval victory between Navarino and the Yalu, and yet so use his fleet as to make its influence unfelt and inappreciable on the general conduct of the war. To-day, Austria has not a first-class battleship carrying a twelve-inch gun, and but two modern fighting vessels of the second class worth considering. They brought Turkey to terms. They would be feared by no other power. When Secretary Tracy wrote his first report, he ranked both Austria and Turkey as stronger than the United States, which then ranked twelfth in the list, taking the mere numerical strength of armored vessels and cruisers. In 1877, Turkey had a fleet which held its own against Russia in the Black Sea, and under a commander like Hobart Pasha would have sustained the traditional reputation of its flag in the Levant. Since the Ertogrul foundered in 1890 off the coast of Japan with a loss of 547 out of 600 men, no Turkish vessel has ventured on a voyage, though a Turkish yard in 1898 launched an ironclad which was laid down in 1878. A London engineering weekly, in April, 1898, ranked the Spanish fleet above the American. Since July, 1898, no such estimate has been made. The Spanish navy is now of little more consequence than the fleet its only great admiral defeated at Lepanto. Chile, in 1881, had a stronger fleet than the United States. There were then at least a dozen flags capable of giving a fair account of themselves, as there had been through all the history of organized European naval warfare. So far as the reckoning of the day goes, they have disappeared. The little folk among the nations have ceased to maintain navies. The fighting force of the five great nations has become so visible and so calculable that nothing else is considered. The lesser powers own vessels. They no longer possess a navy in any proper sense of the word. Remembering what sea power is, there is in the current development of civilization no more extraordinary, unexpected, or unprecedented fact than the change in a quarter of a century, which at its opening in 1875 found many navies, after the first two, France and England, of fairly comparable force, where to-day there are but five of the first rank, with Japan and Italy of a reputable but distinctly secondary consideration, and the rest nowhere.

When that first Naval Advisory Board twenty - one years ago considered the needs of the United States, this country was unaware that it had no longer before it the old choice of placing on the sea a small and efficient navy, easily to be made the nucleus of a larger one and ranking high among secondary navies. This had been our naval policy since John Paul Jones first gave it definition in his letter to the Continental Congress. The alternative, instead, was to have a navy of the first rank or none at all. The fundamental principle of naval strategy, “ The sea is never common territory to belligerents,” laid down by Admiral Colomb has steadily worked itself out by the elimination of lesser navies, while the larger tend to union. France and Russia, Germany and Italy, England and Japan, are already in formal alliances that really create three great navies, with the United States as a fourth. This was not only unknown, it could not be known, while our navy was first planning. There is perhaps in all our history no more remarkable proof of that sure and diffused instinct which in the world’s ruling nations leads them, like a homing bird, to where supremacy sits, than that after twenty years of fortuitous action by all the men and all the forces which decide our naval policy we find ourselves with a navy clearly one of the first five. There are only seven navies which Brassey’s or any other competent discussion of the world’s naval strength now deems worthy of analysis, — England, France, Russia, the United States, Germany, Japan, and Italy. There is no probable combination of six of these navies in which the United States would not turn the scale one way or the other. It is this unwritten postscript to every despatch leaving the State Department which is to-day the simple and sufficient reason why for two years, in the momentous issues presented by China from Taku to Tientsin, the policy of the United States has become the policy of the new world concert.

By that strange good fortune which is the proverbial possession of the United States this country launched no vessel, with three exceptions, the Miantonomoh, the Terror, and the Puritan, for twenty years, from 1864 to 1884, which is today on its effective navy list. It was a period of transition. Steel was replacing iron in the hull and in armor, rifled ordnance the smooth-bore, the breechloader the muzzle-loader ; the triple expansion, or to speak more correctly the three stage compound, engine was replacing the earlier type, to which in the Wampanoag we contributed on the whole the costliest and the most ineffective ever built. By the close of this period the cost of a vessel per ton had been reduced nearly half, the possible and expected speed had nearly doubled, and the initial velocity of a steel-pointed shot a little more than doubled. When war vessels were experimental, costly, slow, cumbrous, and possessing an ineffective armament, measured by modern standards, we built none. It was a grave risk for a great country to run. For twenty years we were defenseless, with only the low coal capacity of the armored vessel of the day and a foreign policy which avoided assertion or collision, for the protection of American citizens or the discharge of international duties, such as have confronted us on the Isthmus, in Samoa, in Cuba, and in China since a navy existed.

It was a costly policy, for during this period the United States had a naval establishment but no naval plant. It was in the position of a steamship line which should keep up its force of officers, engineers, and seamen and provide no steamers. In the nineteen years between the close of the war, June 30,1865, and the launch of the first vessels of the new navy in 1884 the United States spent, to accept the friendly statement of Mr. B. W. Harris, Representative from Massachusetts, on the maintenance of its navy, $243,337,318, and it had during this period no vessels worthy the name. So large was the mere cost of maintaining its yards and docks and providing for their administration that in this period $154,692,085 were expended “ for war vessels ” without result. The first board called in 1881 to consider the situation frankly admitted that the United States had no equipment, public or private, equal to the making of a steel vessel, of armor, or of high power ordnance.

The practical result now is that the United States has at the end of twenty years a navy whose construction as a whole is more recent than that of any other except Japan. All its vessels have been planned and built after the present type of warship had been reached. The opposite extremes represented by vessels like the Italian Duilio, in which everything had been sacrificed to armor or ordnance, and the Chilean Esmeralda, with all given over to speed and two heavy guns, had ended in the compromise which for the last decade has guided marine architecture. The work began under difficulties. There was the usual bugbear of labor, some seventy-seven per cent higher on the Delaware than on the Clyde. Material, from forty-five to forty-nine per cent of the cost of a cruiser, taking an English return ² in 1881 for guide, was thirty per cent higher in this country than in England. But efficiency makes up for all things. The original estimates for a 4200-ton cruiser by the Board of which Commodore Shufeldt was the head calculated the cost of what was later the Chicago at $1,352,000. The closest comparison is with the Boadicea and Bacchante, two English vessels of like speed and displacement, though of lighter armament, whose cost was $1,200,515 and $1,184,655 respectively. The actual cost of the Chicago, in the early days a much abused vessel, was $943,385. These are notable exceptions, but on the average our war vessels have cost little if any more than foreign ships measured by gun-fire. Per ton, our vessels cost thirtytwo per cent more than English, and per horse power thirty per cent more. Into the tragedy of those early vessels, which cost the solvency of the firm that built them and the life of their builder, it is not necessary to enter. They furnish one more illustration of a fact which the public is slow to believe, that the United States Navy Department is the most rigorous of customers, paying least, exacting most, and clogged by a perpetual uncertainty as to time of payment, due to varying appropriations. This is balanced by a final certainty of settlement, unimpeachable credit, the prestige of government work, and a job which lasts long and is not often pushed.

The work began slowly. It is now clear that the delays of Congress were to the national advantage. Shipbuilding is a trade for whose mastery time also is needed. In August, 1882, Congress reduced the scheme laid before it of sixty-eight vessels costing $29,607,000 to two costing $3,202,000. Begun under the firm belief in cruisers as the chief need of the United States, — a tradition due not to facts but to the way in which the history of the War of 1812 has been written, — for ten years the navy had nothing but cruisers. It is nineteen years since the keel of the first cruiser was laid. It is only eleven since the lines of the first battleship were laid down in the moulding-room. In 1892, ten years after Congress had passed the first appropriation for a new navy, nothing but cruisers were in commission save the Monterey and Miantonomoh, one new and the other a reëquipped monitor. Neither the New York nor Brooklyn, armored sea-going vessels, was ready for sea. The four battleships, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon, ordered were not half done. The navy in being still consisted even ten years ago of nine cruisers, five gunboats, and a schoolship. The work has been cumulative. From 1881 to 1885 (Arthur) five cruisers and three gunboats were authorized ; in the next four years, 1885-89 (Cleveland), two battleships (counting the Maine and Texas in this class), one armored cruiser, nine cruisers, and four gunboats ; 1889-93 (Harrison), four battleships, one armored cruiser, and two protected cruisers; 1893-97 (Cleveland), five battleships and seven gunboats; 1897-1902 (McKinley and Roosevelt), twelve battleships, two armored cruisers, six protected cruisers, and two gunboats. The succession is plain. First a fleet of cruisers, next armored vessels, and then in the past five years battleships and armored cruisers to supplement and complete the fleet already built. The discovery of some way to see in a submarine boat will instantly relegate this fleet to the place now held by wooden vessels. So long as the submarine pilot is blind in spite of a periscope and other devices, this new craft is in its experimental stage. He would be rash who predicted it would stay thus. Such as it is, the United States has as good a model in the Holland as any, even in France. The water-tube boiler this country was slow to adopt. So also with smokeless powder. But it has in the end adopted both. At other points, its vessels have for ten years equaled any. In torpedo boats, it has been slow and right in being slow.

As to the relative size of the new navy, mere lists of vessels built tell little. Even tonnage launched means little to the lay reader. Still, tonnage is a relative measure. Brassey, 1902, gives the total tonnage of the United States navy as close as may be at the opening of the year, built and building, at 476,739 tons. The English navy is 1,898,470 tons, the French 695,698 tons, the Russian 515,318 tons, the German 401,525 tons, the Italian 288,885 tons, and the Japanese 218,117 tons. But the broad difference in efficiency is that the tonnage of all other nations except Japan extends over thirty years. Of our new navy only 7863 tons were built before 1889, or adding the monitors 27,065 ; and only 62,695, less than a seventh, about an eighth, before 1893. Over four fifths of the navy is the work of the last ten years. On the other hand, one half the Italian navy is over sixteen years old, nearly one third the English and French, one fifth the Russian, and one sixth the German against a seventeenth of the American. It would be an equal error to assume that these old vessels are worthless, or to fail to see that they reduce the efficiency of a squadron. Valuable for home defense and for much service, they have no such relative worth as their tonnage indicates. A navy all whose vessels are of one period, purpose, and plan has indefinable advantages not easily estimated in manœuvres, in handling, in supplies, in ammunition, and in the greater familiarity with their new surroundings of officers as they shift from vessel to vessel. No man can foot or tabulate this; but it is none the less incontestable, and it might, like the relatively uniform size and manœuvring of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar, render possible a concerted attack, for which vessels built thirty years apart would be unequal.

Launched as they are within a little over a decade, though designed over a longer span, — nearly all have been from eight to thirty-six months longer in building than English vessels, a grievous loss, — the American fleet has a distinct type beyond any other afloat. Mobility, variety, handiness, and a wide range of experiment kept short of freaks mark the British navy. The French has carried to an extreme armor and superstructure. Since the terrible year defense has seized on France like an obsession. The German battleship has hitherto been marked by a narrow coal capacity. The Italian has forced gun-fire, and been plainly affected by the quieter Italian seas, which permit a heavier weight above the water line. A spruce, swift efficiency is the note of a Japanese ship. The Russian fleet is eclectic, and singularly lacking, as is curiously enough the Russian church and cathedral, in definite and homogeneous outline. It is full of crank experiments. Rash experiment might a priori have been anticipated in American vessels. Sacrifice to extreme speed would have been predicted by most as likely to be our temptation. A national desire to have the “ biggest,” “ fastest,” or “ most powerfully gunned ” vessel “ in the world ” might have been confidently expected to influence our marine designs. None of this has been. Now and then an American cruiser has “ broken the record,” but not for long. Much is said in superlative terms of our war vessels by those not experts. Great builders disdain the advertising of newspaper headlines as little as any men with wares to sell and all the world for a market. The few who are guided, not by claims, but by a patient comparison of navy lists, know that the note of our American men-of-war is a keen moderation and a clear knowledge that for allround efficiency, balance is more than bounce. Our battleships have been from 2000 to 4000 tons short of the extreme of foreign navies. The last authorized are limited to 16,000 tons where larger are now planned abroad. In speed, our fighting-craft have been deliberately designed some two knots slower. We built for sixteen knots when other nations were seeking eighteen and are launching vessels of eighteen knots — taking the records as they go, when others are seeking twenty. In armor, we have kept short of the French and Italian extreme. Our tendency is toward a twelve-inch gun instead of thirteen or more, and our last cruisers of the Essex class follow the English example in an armament of sixinch guns only.

It is a tradition of the American navy to over-gun. Our frigates a century ago carried the guns of a ship of the line, and our sloops the guns of a frigate, — a circumstance omitted by most American, and noted by most English, historians of the War of 1812. The four battleships at Santiago carried on a displacement of 10,000 to 11,000 tons the armor and the four twelve or thirteen inch guns which English designers have mounted on vessels of the Resolution class of 13,000 tons, though no more than the Nile and the Howe carry on the same tonnage. Our early gunboats were furnished with the ordnance of cruisers, and went through some queer and trying hours and “ moments ” in consequence. At least one cruiser had her military masts reduced in height and number to keep her stable with the armament of a small battleship behind her sponsons. Throughout our navy, the old American tradition of gunfire has however been retained. This has had its perils. They have been surmounted. Stability is not only to be secured by a safe metacentric height — that is, a centre of mass above the centre of gravity — but by lines. Skill in the latter has made up for lack in the former. The early designs were criticised. Daring, they were. Experience has shown that our battleships combine, to a degree which wins admiration in proportion to one’s knowledge, safety for the vessel, stability for the gun-platform, and the wise use of the last ounce of displacement to gain armor and guns well above the water line.

Shaved close, we have in these things, but after the American fashion, just inside of the line of safety. The American, after all, has always seemed more risky to others than to himself, for another man’s risk is only the American’s knowledge. For our policy in speed less is to be said. Speed with steam is all that the weather-gauge once was, and with occasional exceptions like our much bepraised and comparatively useless “ commerce destroyers ” — already outdated — our battleships and our cruisers are year by year short, tested by speed abroad. Russia counted on and got in the Varyag and Retvizan more speed than our vessels from the same yard had. But this also is a part of the moderation of our naval designers who sought efficiency rather than spectacular achievement. Something in the comparison is, of course, due to our speed trials being more severe. The English and Continental speed test is a mile in smooth water, over whose familiar stretch a vessel speeds with forced draught, picked coal, trying it again and again, often with several breakdowns, until a fancy record is won. The American speed test is for forty miles in blue water, unsheltered, with service coal and service conditions. Failure from a break in machinery has been most rare. The allowance this difference calls for no one can give. It exists and modifies comparison. I confess to a sneaking fondness for sheer speed. If our fleet is ever engaged in some long chase, such as Villeneuve led Nelson, we shall gnash our teeth over every missing knot. But the plea for the policy of our navy is strong. Excessive speed can be purchased only at the sacrifice of coal capacity and guns. Of all qualities, it deteriorates most rapidly. An eighteenknot vessel falls off to twelve — while a sixteen-knot cruiser can be kept to fourteen or even sixteen. The Oregon in her matchless voyage around South America under Admiral Clark, the one supreme feat of the war, averaged eleven knots, attaining 14.55 on one run of nine hours, far nearer its trial trip of 16.7 knots than is likely with the Centurion, begun in the same year, of the same tonnage, and 18.25 knots. This extra 1.55 knots too is gained by putting on four teninch instead of four thirteen-inch guns, and reducing the coal supply from 1940 tons in the Oregon to 1240 for the Centurion. Enough is known to render it at least probable, that while the trial speed of our vessels is in general less, their service speed, after five years’ use, is relatively higher than with English or Continental craft of higher trial speed. In any case, the engines of a war vessel deteriorate far more rapidly than those of a “ record-breaking ” liner. They are less carefully tended. They are not overhauled by a shore crew of engineers at each voyage. They are not kept in the same condition. One trembles to think what would be the result of a speed trial of the Columbia or Minneapolis to-day. Taking all things into consideration, while the tactical plea is all for high speed, it may be that here, as elsewhere, the refusal of our designers to go to extremes may have given better results than have been attained from engines with an indicated horse power keyed to eighteen knots twenty years ago, twenty knots ten years ago, and twenty-two knots or more now.

The American battleship or the American cruiser is therefore, more than any other, a balance between extremes, — of moderate size, eschewing extreme speed, of great power, of unusual stability, and of low but safe metacentric height, seeking an all-round fire and great weight of metal with a high muzzle velocity and diversified battery, but without guns of abnormal calibre or inordinate thickness of armor, — all limited by the shallow entrance of our harbors, which fixes the best draught at under twenty-five feet; though our later vessels reach the English limit of twenty-seven feet and an inch or two. No small share of this even balance of size, gun power, and. speed, which make our navy list read like a homogeneous whole, is due to the counsel, the wisdom, the ability, and the experience of the one man connected with the growth of our new navy who laid down the vessels of the Civil War, yet whose active life as a shipbuilder spans the whole growth of modern naval construction — Charles H. Cramp.

Naval warfare from Salamis down has been an issue of men and not of ships. China and Spain have in the last decade again reminded all the world that the strength of a navy is not to be measured by tonnage, armor, or guns. Each on this total was stronger than the opponent of each. Our fecund faculty has coined into a proverb our confidence in the “ men behind the guns.” Their excellence is accepted as an American attribute. But the enrapturing success with which that new complex machine, a modern battleship or cruiser, was first used in civilized warfare in 1898 was due not merely to the American birth of its officers, but to their special training. No nation provides a longer course of study in preparation for a naval career, or requires more assiduous attention to technical study from men on active duty. Our midshipmen begin with four years’ more schooling than the English middies, and are kept studying two years longer. The English “ gunnery,” “ ordnance,” or “ electrical ” lieutenant implies a man the master of one special field, where our officers are expected to be trained in all fields. Only the Russians approach us in special training, and only the Germans in the years of patient study. Any man who has visited the ships of more than one flag is aware that it is under our own alone that every officer seems able to answer all questions. American public opinion does not usually lay stress on special training. Adaptability is the national feat and foible, but in our navy we have carried to its last limit the application of early and special preparation. Drawn from no class and democratic in original selection, — for while we have what are called 舠 naval families,” our naval heroes in each generation have a way of coming from the American mass, — the Naval Academy has for sixty years created the spirit and transmitted the tradition of an order. It colors the navy far more completely than West Point the army. No service makes it more difficult to rise from before the mast. Much may be said for the promotion to a commission of warrant officers, the highest point to which a seaman can rise, but the real issue is not whether the promoted seaman is not as good a man as the men in the messroom he joins, but whether it is possible at thirty to make an officer the equal to officers whose making began at fifteen. Yet in order to improve the level of men enlisting as seamen, it is well that promotion should be in theory possible ; in fact difficult.

The national legislature of a country which beyond any other has required trained naval officers, after increasing its navy, refuses to increase its officers. In 1896 they were 715. In 1901 there were only 728, after the tonnage of the navy built and building had been doubled. The English navy in the same period of rapid naval expansion increased its officers from 1728 to 2085, Russia from 859 to 1096, and Germany from 723 to 974. The last nation, with wise prevision, increases its personnel with its ships, provides for twenty years to come an average annual addition of sixty officers and 1743 men, and will never build a ship, though it lays down three large vessels a year for sixteen years to come, for which it has not already provided the officers and men. Congress, instead of doubling the supply of officers, has added only one hundred new appointments at Annapolis, giving an average of sixteen more new officers yearly to sixtyfive now graduated. Our total strength, officers and seamen, which was 13,460 in 1895, has been advanced to 25,000 by the last naval appropriation bill, but it remains 5000 short of that of Germany, 14,000 short of that of Russia, and just equal to the weaker navies of Italy and Japan.

This illustrates the one weak point in the public management of our navy. It was long since pointed out by a great English authority that it was our tendency to emphasize in our battleships gun power which could be talked about, and to forget factors as important and less visible to the vulgar. For battleships it has proved easy to win appropriations. But the modern navy has three factors for success, ships, officers with men (particularly officers), and equipment. Ships have been built as rapidly as needed. Officers are still inadequate in number. There remains the swarm of subsidiary naval aids, coaling stations, dockyards, material, and a distributed store of ammunition. How scant this last was in the spring of 1898 will not be known for a generation. Two ships went into one of the two actions of the war with eighty-five rounds or so per five-inch gun when they should have had one hundred and twenty-five. Some thirty-five rounds won the fight. Suppose they had not ? Without fortified bases in the West Indies, in the Hawaiian Islands, and in the Philippines, and all needs of war on hand at home, our fleet at the critical moment may be like a boiler without steam. This third need Congress and Parliament both fail to meet.

Naval policy is dictated by national needs. England must preserve a fleet equal to any two in Europe, and now has it. France can never fall behind the joint power of the Triple Alliance, or be unequal to a defensive English campaign. Italy seeks to equal and often surpasses the French Mediterranean squadron. Germany once had a navy for defense. Its naval plan looks in twenty years to equal the existing English fleet by providing four squadrons of eight battleships each, two for foreign service, and two for reserve. The United States a decade ago looked on eighteen battleships as a sufficient complement. This provided squadrons for the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific. Our needs face a larger problem. Pledged to protect the Western World against aggression, our force now and twenty years hence must be large enough to meet any power likely to desire colonies in South or Central America. But the instinct which without a plan has placed the United States fourth among naval powers should keep this station at all costs. To keep it, the United sStates must add to its nineteen first-class battleships as many more in the next sixteen years, or two by each Congress. If this is done, the United States will never have to resort to force to support the Monroe Doctrine.

Talcott Williams.