IT is a pity that ex-Secretary Long should have told
us so much about the Spanish-American War and so little about the American Navy itself—that Navy which attains its majority this year, and destroyed the last remnants of Spain's world-wide dominion six years ago. Doubtless the personal details of naval officials and the autobiographical chit-chat about Admirals and Captains are interesting, perhaps valuable, and the excellent series of portraits renders the American type of face admirably ; but they do not instruct us much as to the present value and equipment of the American Navy. Possessed of a great naval history, the United States have had the unusual advantage of beginning a navy on modern lines with a clean slate. The great contro- versies regarding the distribution of armour, high and low freeboard, had been settled in England, and for the first time battleships were to be armed with breechloading guns. All the expensive, and sometimes disastrous, experiments of the Warrior,' the Captain,' the Devastation,' the Inflexible,' and the Victoria,' with the last word on big guns in the 'Sans Pareil,' must have afforded the naval constructors of the States plenty of data. They have also had the advantage of being spectators of the first isolated combats of ironclads : the destruction of the Chinese fleet at the Min River in 1884, and the great battle of the Yalu in 1894 between the Chinese and Japanese fleets. In these circumstances, we must regret that the author did not expand such chapters as deal with the building and organisation of the new Navy. The difficulties as regards personnel, or the consolidation of the naval and engineer services, are of intense interest to English readers. We can realise the difficulties of re- constructing almost a naval tradition and a naval nursery for seamen when we recollect Admiral Porter's statement that when the 'Trenton' went into commission she had representatives of nineteen nationalities aboard her. Only eighty men could speak English, and some wag hung the familiar Parisian sign in the gangway, " Iei on pane Anglais."
The sudden determination to have a modern navy, as ex- Secretary Long tells us, found the naval authorities without any plant ; but his predecessors, Chandler and Whitney, from the first held out for armour manufactured at home. The dilatory construction of the new Navy allowed Congress to take advantage of the lessons taught by the destruction of the Chinese fleet at the Min River in 1884. The 'Maine' and the 'Texas' were the result. Secretary Tracy said in 1889 that necessity demanded twenty battleships in two fleets to protect the United States. Congress ordered three sea-going coast-line battleships; these, with the ' Texas ' and another laid down two years later, comprised the battle- ships during the war. The two armoured cruisers which fought with the four battleships at Santiago were also built during this period. The United States have to-day the twenty battleships which Mr. Whitney and Mr. Tracy thought the necessities of the country demanded. Five- sixths of the two volumes relate the tale of the war. What Mr. Long says of his Assistant-Secretary--" He, like most of us, lacks the rare knack of brevity "—certainly applies to himself.
Naval development is a fascinating subject, and its story in the Victorian era—the nineteenth century, as we know it— has witnessed a great revolution. This is an old story now, but there is another side to it : the centuries during which the type of warship scarcely altered. There were two hundred years during which little essential variation could be noticed, as Sir Nathaniel Barnaby points out in his most instructive and suggestive chapter on slowness of development. If we compare the Royal Sovereign' built by Mr. Phineas Pett, of Cambridge University, in 1637, with the 'Hogue' built at the close of the eighteenth century, the reduction in the height
• (1) The New American Navy. By John D. Long. Illustrated. 2 vols. London Grant Richards. [21s.]—(2) Naval Development in the Century. By Sir N. Barnaby, 11.C.B. With Diagrams. London: W. and B. Chambers. L56.3 above water-line would be the most noticeable feature. As the 'Royal Sovereign' was a three-decker before she was cut down to a two-decker, the first three-decker which she ought to be compared with is the Caledonia,' a first-rate of a hundred and twenty guns, built in 1810, the then largest ship in the Navy. During these years we bad adopted the improve- ments of other nations, all of whom at one time or other built ships superior to ours, but did little else. Private enter- prise was non-existent; half the patents applied for related to pumps.
The year 1810 has an historical interest which the Navy League has doubtless noticed. We had two hundred and forty-eight ships of the line and two hundred and ninety frigates, and our fleet reached the grand total of twelve hundred and thirty-nine ! We never had such a Navy before,. and we shall have no such Navy again ; but then circum- stances alter cases. The wastage was very large, too, for a. list published in the Royal Navy Records gives the losses of wrecked, foundered, burnt, and captured vessels in the thirteen years 1803-15 at two hundred and forty-nine. Of these the vast majority met their fate by the act of God,—gales and a lee-shore. This great Navy was the last chapter of a glorious and unforgettable period. To it succeeded a period of stagna- tion, while at one time our Navy was scarcely superior to that of the French. It would amaze us but for the fact that Europe was scarcely recovering from the Napoleonic Wars, and a preponderating Navy was not essential.
The launching of the Goliath' in 1842 appropriately marks the last word of the old naval type. She lay "in Ordinai7". for fifteen years, was altered, and had five years' commission as a sixty-gun screw-ship ; and then, after a few years in the Steam Reserve, became a school-ship. She caught fire one summer day in 1875, and the writer well remembers seeing the blazing ship from the train, and at night the red-hot hull. Sir N. Barnaby has seen two Goliaths ' launched, and he draws an interesting comparison as to the labour employed then and now. Seventy-nine per cent. of the labour employed on the eighty-gun ship was shipwright's labour; fifty years later, when H.M.S. 'Speedy' was building, not a single ship- wright laid a finger on her. It was not till 1878 that people began building mercantile ships of steel, three in ten years having been the previous average ; the Admiralty at the time were going through the early stages of steel-plate manu- facture.
The sea-going qualities of the modern warship exercised the Admiralty twenty-five years ago ; and Sir N. Barnaby, who. thinks it was an unlucky day when France and England adopted armour-plating, points out some of the dangers- developed by protected decks at or below the water-line, and bulkheads. Water-tight compartments have reduced the risks after collision, but in the unmasted warship they mean,. when water enters on to this protected deck, but can get no, further down, a capsize. The filling of the double-bottom compartments could alone prevent this catastrophe. In olden. days the carpenters patrolled the orlop deck, which was three feet or so below the water-line, having a clear run along the ship's length, and plugged the shot-holes, and any water that came in could get to the bilges.
The great contest between guns and armour is set forth clearly by Sir N. Barnaby, who seems to think that the heavy gun will assert its mastery and compel our return to. smaller ships, and that quick-firing guns may settle duels. between ships otherwise equally matched, but not reduce the- advantages given by guns of great penetration. But the quick-firers of to-day have great power, and events, while demonstrating the smashing effects of the 12 in. gun, also indicate the demoralising power of the smaller but quicker calibre. Nevertheless, the battleship is a powerful unit,. and even the effectiveness of torpedo attack in the present war has not shaken the belief in its naval value. One point seems essential—plenty of gun protection. The author evidently thinks the action of arming subsidised steam- ships a substitute for an enlarged fleet, and, indeed, why not P Sir Nathaniel Barnaby has given us a clear, fair,. broad-minded review of English naval development as he- has been brought into contact with it, with many useful lists and diagrams regarding the relative increase in speed, size, armour, and guns. He is quite dispassionate, but he is also quite honest, and is no partisan.
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