THE POWER OF THE NAVY.
THE great Review at Spithead was not required to impress on us the vast change which has occurred in the con- ditions of naval warfare and in the position of England as a Maritime Power, but it serves to deepen an impression already profound. We may be dazzled by the magnitude of the spectacle and the force embodied in it, and carry away from the scene the reflection that, despite all shortcomings, the British Navy is still able to maintain that supremacy at sea upon which we rely for safety. Nevertheless, however reasonable our pride and well grounded our confidence, it is just as well to remember that all Navies nowadays are in an experimental state, and that no one can tell what will happen when two great fleets, or even two great ships, engage in actual battle. For the materials of which the vessels are composed, their armament and motive-power, are all new, and have never been subjected to the crucial test of conflict. The line-of-battle ship, with all its complicated contrivances, is hardly less of an absolute novelty than the torpedo-boat, with its locomotive submarine mine ; but the latter appeals more powerfully to the imagination, and suggests more vivid examples of possible destruction. How all or any of the extremely varied species of war-craft, from the hugest and most complex to the unarmoured cruiser and the weird torpedo- boat, will behave, what effects they will produce, and what they will endure in the stress of combat, none save the boldest inventor or most confident seamart would venture to say. The
unknown and the unforeseen lie before them all, and that really constitutes the difference between the British Navy in 1877 and the British Navy at the end of the last or the
beginning of the present century. When Howe or Nelson sailed from Spithead, he knew exactly what could be done
with his ships, what wood, and cordage, and sailcloth, and such grins as he had, could do and bear. The wind was his friend or enemy ; but he knew it was not confined to particular spots. He had not to depend for motive-
power upon coaling-stations, fixed or floating, and his chief anxiety was to secure suitable places for taking in water,
obtaining stores and ammunition, and refitting after a long cruise, an action, or a storm. Now, however, in war as in peace, an Admiral is at the mercy of coal-depots, which are not so common as breezes ; he is more than ever dependent on his communications ; and if he can overcome these difficulties by sailor-forethought and mother-wit, it cannot be said that
he starts on a naval campaign knowing, as his forefathers
knew from long experience, what his fleet could do, and what he was likely to expect from the daring or the skill of his antagonist. The Fleet of our day is full of promise, but as nothing similar has ever been tried before, it is to a large extent experimental. At the same time, of course, all other
Fleets are precisely in the same state ; and, other things being equal, he will be the victor who gauges the more correctly the scope and potentiality of the new inventions, divines or dis- covers the secret of the new conditions, and applies his know- ledge with sagacity and resolution.
In one respect, however, we may hope that there has been no essential change. The race which yielded the sea-dogs of old is still the same. There is no apparent abatement in the passion which sends boys to sea, and service afloat is still eagerly sought by the masses as well as the classes. At
bottom, of course, it will be, as it always has been, the man, far more than the ship, who wins the day ; and although the type of Jack Tar has undergone some modifications, yet the stuff of which he is made is what it was of yore. Bullying, brutality, and cruelty have been banished from the Navy, and the seaman as well as the officer should be, and no doubt is, improved by their absence ; while it is certain that as greater knowledge pervades a ship's crew, so it is not more than is imperatively required by the inroad which science has made upon old seamanship. To a considerable extent, therefore, the reasonable anxiety inspired by the unknown is allayed or counterbalanced by the security that the men who have to fight the new engines of warfare, under the new conditions, spring from the stock and are nourished on the maxims and traditions which prevailed in the great naval eras. Yet that strong assurance and basis of trust does not alter the fact that the machines, methods, and almost the substance of naval warfare have suffered such a change as renders it impossible to predict, even approximately, its future character and results. Besides the river actions during the Secession War, when relatively poor craft did wonders against fixed batteries, and the duel between the ' Merrimac ' and the Monitor,' and that between the 'Ala- barns' and the Kearsage,' there has been no sea-fight except the Battle of Lissa. The bombardment of Alexandria yielded valuable experience, but it cannot be regarded as a test action between ships and fortresses, because the defence, though plucky, was not what it would have been had European gunners and troops been inside the Egyptian forts. Taking all the recent experience together in America, in the Adriatic, and off the coasts of France and Egypt, it does not supply any sure guide to the probable upshot of a strife between two ironclad squadrons, or between an armoured squadron and a powerful, well-armed, and well-manned fortress. Whichever way we look at the problem, it is the uncertain, we might almost say the unknown, which shrouds the vista in obscurity. The Naval Review has proved that we have a powerful force afloat, at home as well as abroad ; but it does not tell us what the force can do. We can only learn that in the hour of trial. This uncertainty has a direct bearing on the larger question, —Have the weapons, motive-power, and conditions, all new, increased or diminished the naval might of England I In former times, we could and did accumulate sufficient ships to keep the sea, fight battles, blockade coasts, and protect commerce. It was possible to build, arm, equip, and man them in brief periods of time, by having recourse to private as well as public yards. Scores of them were added to the Navy in twelve months ; and it was this facility, in addition to the destruction, or capture, or sealing-up of enemies, which made us predominant. We cannot, neither can our Mr* or foes, multiply ships as we could at the beginning of the century. Can we maintain enough to blockade ports, sweep the seas, and protect com- merce That has to be proved by experiment. For it may happen that the new appliances afforded by science will even make us more powerful than we were ; and it is that, far more than the risks of defeat and disaster, which adds such a spice to the uncertainty of the future. It may be doubtful whether railways have not destroyed the efficacy of blockades, so far, at least, as trade is concerned ; but it should still be possible to seal up war-ports, keep open the high- ways upon the ocean, and use squadrons to convoy transports bearing reliefs or troops upon distant expeditions. Given the existence of war-ships in adequate numbers, and assuming, what has to be proved, that the new species will fight as well, and with as great an approach to certainty, as the old, the key of the position lies in the coaling-stations. Coal means what is equivalent to wind at will ; and no coal means, at the best, safe inactivity, and at the worst, capture or destruction. Whatever may be the value of ironclad squadrons, swift cruisers, and torpedoes, they are one and all, at present, useless without coal ; and that nation will be the master of the sea which secures not a problematical, but a certain supply of fuel. Why England has not at this moment a command of coal on all the ocean routes, by which we mean command in time of war, is one of the mysteries of modem statesmanship ; and the neglect to establish such a control adds to the uncertainty attending the frame of British naval warfare.
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