LORD ARMSTRONG ON THE NAVY. once that he believed the
time to be fast approaching when armoured ships would be as obsolete as mail-clad men. " Do what we will," said he, " I believe that the means of attack will always overtake the means of defence, and that sooner or later armour will be abandoned." The special ground for this belief is the use of high explosives, now becoming general. Shells discharged from quick-firing guns would soon wreck the unarmoured ends of our battle-ships. " Nothing," he declared, " can be more perplexing than this question of armour. Without complete protection from end to end, the vulnerable parts of the ship are liable to be torn to pieces by modern shells fired in quick succession against them ; while, on the other hand, the extension of armour over the now unprotected parts would so increase the load upon the ship as to involve the necessity of a corresponding reduction of armament and engines." There remains, then, only a further increase of size ; but where is this to stop ? " The bigger we make our ships, the fewer we can have of them, and the fate of the Vic- toria painfully reminds us that size and cost have already reached a point at which the loss of a single vessel becomes a national calamity." Perhaps, continued Lord Arm- strong, it may be objected that shells charged with high explosives cannot be used without danger to the users ; but whatever that danger may be, it is certain that it will not deter an enemy from using them. Besides, he added, science may be relied on to turn that difficulty.
Lord Armstrong's deduction from these premises was that, in the future, we shall have to rely upon unarmoured ships, and he therefore advocated a great multiplication of swift vessels of moderate size, having no burden to carry in abatement of their offensive power. "I admit that old-fashioned fighting at close quarters would be impos- sible without mutual destruction, but old-fashioned tactics would have to be changed, and the change would afford scope for the superior seamanship which characterises the British Navy, and would thereby tend to maintain our naval supremacy." We believe that Lord Armstrong is right, and that the Power which first adopts the plan of light vessels of immense speed, armed with powerful quick-firing guns, will have an enormous advantage over its rivals. These vessels would, no doubt, be no match for the ' Camperdown ' or the Blake ;' but then they need never come within reach of the guns of the armoured battle-ships. Swift engines are, when all is said and done, a better protection than plates 2 ft. thick. It is the old story of what is better than presence of mind,—absence of body. It is better to be able to keep out of range, than to be in range but clad in armour which may sometimes keep out shells, but which may also be penetrated at a vital point. No doubt Lord Armstrong did not desire to advocate an immediate abandonment of armour-plating. We take it that as yet such a course would be premature. What he would like is to see the Admiralty very careful as regards committing themselves to the policy of building many more ships of the Victoria' class. He was clearly against the monster ships as much on the ground of size as of armament. As he pointed out, they are as easily rammed or struck by a torpedo, or as likely to be destroyed by some accident, as the tiniest gunboats, while the loss is incom- parably greater. Indeed, in the matter of accidents, the risks run by the heavy battle-ships are ten times as great, owing to their unwieldiness and their often uncontrollable momentum. Putting all one's eggs into a single basket cannot be as safe as distributing them. The vessel of the future will, then, be a small ship as well as an unarmoured ship. Another matter of great importance dealt with by Lord Armstrong was the use of the ram, and here we are glad to note that he advocated a policy which we have always regarded as the true one, in spite of the unwillingness of the experts to endorse it. Lord Armstrong pointed out that the Camperdown ' nearly destroyed herself by ramming the ' Victoria,' and that no battle-ship during a war would dare use her ram, —the risk would be too great to make it worth her while to do so. " The life of a battle-ship is far too valuable to be staked on the use of its ram." We ought, says Lord Armstrong, to build vessels specially designed for ramming. They need not be large or costly,—indeed, small vessels would be more active and more easily handled. Twenty vessels capable of steaming twenty-five miles an hour, with " snouts " built so that nothing could hurt them, and with the effects of the shock of collision counteracted as far as possible, but armed only with quick-firing and machine guns, would be the most formidable additions to the Navy that could possibly be made. A vessel of this class might dart in and out of an enemy's squadron, and, with plenty of pluck and a fair allowance of luck, might ram half-a-dozen Victories' before she was herself put out of action. Let us trust, as Lord Armstrong suggests, that these " rammers " will be made the feature of the next ship-building programme.
It is satisfactory to note that if Lord Armstrong's words come true, and if we do adopt the principle of multiplicity instead of magnitude, England will find herself in a singu- larly favourable position. Anything which tends to do away with the artificial type of battle-ship, and to approxi- mate the war-vessel to the ordinary ship of commerce, must tell in England's favour. And for this reason. England owns more steamships than any other country. If, then, a warship as regards armour becomes as indis- tinguishable from a merchantman as a foot-soldier is from a civilian, England will always have a bigger Fleet than her neighbours. If armour becomes no longer an essential, " my Lords " will be able to double the Navy on the out- break of war by judicious buying in the ship market. All that would be wanted would be to fit the purchases with the requisite guns, and to find them officers and crews. Ships specially built for warlike purposes might no doubt still be preferable, but in an emergency a fleet could be improvised which, if unarmoured vessels were the order of the day, would allow us to face all Europe in arms with impunity. The further development of the ram as a weapon of war, and the building of vessels exclusively for the duty of ramming, would also be good for England. Englishmen dare do things on the water which men of other nations dare not do, and hence it may be relied on that the " rammers" would do far more execution when in English hands. To ram successfully, officers and crew must have no nerves, and must be perfect water-men. But these are qualities which may safely be relied on to abound in an English Fleet. Depend upon it, we are weakest when, as the poet says, our battle-ships are like "eight-day clocks." Foreigners will construct as good, perhaps better, pieces of mechanism than we shall; but no amount of science can produce the qualities of the " sea-dog." Seamanship it was that won us the fight with the Armada, and if we have the chance to use it, seamanship will give us victory again. But unarmoured ships, manoeuvring at " long bowls" and ramming, are the seaman's opportunity. Hence the new style of naval warfare will be distinctly in our favour.
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