A SERIOUS DEFECT IN THE NAVY.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sra,—The universal preliminary education which Mr. Gains- ford recommends in the Spectator of May 26th is a feature of the American Navy, where the system has a better opportunity of displaying its advantages than in the more conservative Navies of Europe. As a matter of fact, it has not been very strikingly successful. An officer is weighing the advantages of the various duties at a time when his attention should be focussed on one. It has shown other serious defects, and though the Americans still retain the system, their experience does not warrant its adoption in our Service. This reform, however, is one which the engineer officers of the Navy do not themselves desire,—their principal grievance is in the dis- crepancy between the rates of pay and the prospects open to the two branches. It requires some prac- tical experience of the Navy accurately to gauge the wants of the engineering branch, and the advocates of reform very often weaken their cause by a gross distortion of the phases of naval life, which prevents their arguments appealing very strongly to those conversant with the Service. The engineers' cause has also been harmed by its occasional identification with advocates who consider invective an efficient substitute for fact and argument. Non-naval writers almost invariably emphasise out of all proportion the social differ- ences which they imagine exist in a naval mess. As a matter of fact, engineers and executive officers nowadays meet on entirely equal and often intimate terms; naval opinion, which is considerably influenced by an officer's early gunroom life, is very antagonistic to social lines of demarcation, and the mental atmosphere in this respect is absolutely different from that which exists in the Army. One certainly occasionally meets with young Lieutenants who speak of the engineering branch in a very puerile way, but they are now almost phenomenal, and have usually spent their midshipman's time in a sloop on some out-of-the-way station. Mr. Gainsford has foreseen my reply to his desire that the Captain of a ship should be thoroughly acquainted with the technical details of engineering. The enormous multiplication of work in the Navy tends, as it does in all communities, to specialisation, and the outcome of making our executive and engineer officers interchangeable would be bad tacticians, poor gunners, and indifferent engineers. The case of the Army is hardly, I think, analogous; the difference between the functions of the various arms is not nearly so material as in the Navy. It is the importance of the engineers' work that prevents them paying attention to any- thing else, and the disadvantages which this importance entails are the strongest arguments for a very material improvement in rank and pay. Some of your correspondents' statements are unintentionally inaccurate. The cadets in the Britannia ' receive very careful instruction in steam, and also in the practical working of engines, from an engineer, usually of exceptional ability, though I am afraid they do not profit by it so much as they might; at sea they have to keep watch in the engine-room for eighteen months, and to be able to run a steamboat by themselves; some mid- shipmen take a very keen and intelligent interest in the
subject of " steam," and as all of them are instructed rega• larly by an engineer during their four years at sea, it is misleading to say " of engineering absolutely nothing at all." As for prejudices, midshipmen do not possess many ; as far as working in oil or tar is concerned, his aver- sion would be to working at all ; when he had over. come that I think he would give the preference to oil, from the point of view of his washing bill. Executive command is another stumbling-block of those inexperienced with the Navy. I have read sensible letters, whose writers seemed to imagine that no one but an executive officer is competent to give an order. In reality, an executive officer has very little authority over a stoker except in matters of routine, and cannot inter. fere with him at work in any way. The idea that it is "optional" for a stoker to obey an engineer is one which five minutes' conversation with a stoker will quickly rectify. The proper interpretation of executive command is the power of deciding upon and executing any particular course of action, and it is an attribute of the Captain only. The ordinary Lieutenant cannot punish, he can rarely give an order to an engineer unsanctioned by the Commander or Captain, and is in all respects on much the same footing, except as regards rank, pay, and service prospects,—very distinct grievances of the engineering branch. The senior executive officer under the Captain is entitled to mete out minor punishments, and the chief engineer should certainly possess the same authority in his department. In every department cases of disobedience and serious offences are at present brought before the Captain. The position and authority of the Commander often enable him to make himself very objectionable to engineers in many little matters, and he often forgets that an assistant-engineer of twenty-six or twenty-seven is not to be treated in the domineering style assumed towards midship- men. An assistant-engineer is often not allowed the privilege of a cabin, though there may be four or five vacant. He is catechised publicly and severely rated for not having his chest locked or some other petty matter. He is expected to measure within one-sixteenth of an inch the various items of clothing of some hundreds of men who enter the Service at a mature age and cannot understand the care which some Com. menders lavish on trivialities of uniform. These are minor grievances, but they are often very galling, and three or four officers whom the Service can ill afford to lose have recently resigned on account of them. I can only touch upon the question of pay and service prospects; an engineer cannot. however, rise above chief inspector of machinery, of whom there are six in the Nary drawing £730 a year with no allow. emcee, while there are seventy-two officers of flag rank with pay and allowances amounting in some cases to over £3,000 year. A senior engineer of thirty, whose position in a ship approximates to that of the Commander, receives the same pay as a watch-keeping Lieutenant of twenty-one, whose duties are by no means arduous. At present, solely from motives of ill-judged economy, there are eighty engineers doing the duty of chief engineers, and borne as such in their ships' books without the pay attached to that rank.—I am,
Previous page
