THE NEW AMERICAN NAVY.

WHAT everybody says must be true, and as every public man of both parties agrees in his testimony, Mr. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the American Navy, must be admitted to be a very foolish person. Somewhere, however, within his department, there must lurk a man with a brain, for it is the only one under the Government which, except when cheated by contractors, is found fairly up to its work. Throughout 1862, in the midst of incessant defeat, the American Navy has only once encountered the enemy without immediate and striking success. The apparent exceptions to this statdment only more conclusively prove the rule. The Merrimac sank the Cumberland, and made the Congress haul down her colours; but from the moment the Monitor appeared the Mer- rimac was useless, and was finally destroyed in despair by her own officers and crew. The Arkansas almost chased an entire fleet out of the Mississippi, but was attacked and blown up before she had destroyed two vessels. And finally, the Ala- bama, which has inflicted such damage among the West India Islands on peaceful traders and merchantmen, has never en- countered an armed Federal vessel except to escape by flight, and has only displayed her prowess in "sacking" ships with- out guns. The rebellion found the Federal Government with- out navy, or stores, or fighting materiel. They had all been collected years before; but America tried to live without taxes, and the stores once or twice accumulated were always expended without renewal. One or two large frigates, a little fleet in China, a vessel in the Pacific, and a small squadron in the Mediterranean, were in tolerable order, and these were instantly ordered home; but the Union, though it believed itself a first-class maritime power, had, in truth, no fighting fleet.

Mr. Gideon Welles, or the aforesaid able underling, set himself to remedy the deficiency. After summoning all out squadrons, and seeing all Southern officers prefer their States to the nation, he had but one resource, and that one he em- ployed. There was no time to use the dockyards, even had they been in a condition to render effective service. There was no possibility of building, or capturing, or hiring, so Mr. Gideon Welles, like any other man in a hurry, bought any ready-made article he could obtain, often exceedingly bad, and always excessively dear. Still there the things wanted were; purchased at rates comparatively lower than those our own Government has often paid, in the enormous quantities required, and on the waters where their absence had been so urgently felt. The task was terribly hard, for the Go- vernment required, without notice or preparation, that the department should perform three separate tasks, each of which taxes to the utmost every government save that of Great Britain. Mr. Welles, or his umbra, had to provide, first, a fleet sufficient to maintain the blockade of a few thousand miles of coast ; secondly, a transport ser- vice able to convey troops in armies of thirty or fifty thousand men; and thirdly, a fighting navy able to hold its own on some ten thousand miles of river, both banks of which were in the enemy's hands. Without preparation, with a fleet which Denmark or Spain would have blown out of the water, and amidst a torrent of obloquy pouring upon his department, Mr. Welles, or this aide-de-camp of his, supplied these three demands, supplied them so effectually, that with cotton worth 4' three prices," not a thousand bales have reached England, that five armies have been conveyed in safety to their points of attack, and that Mr. Jefferson Davis would willingly give an army to destroy the gunboats on the Western waters. Honourable members may sniff, and talk of green wood and contracts, but that result is a remarkable one for any nation to have attained. Our Admiralty, of course, is perfect, for has it not a Duke at its head? but still, three years ago, that great and swift department would have been puzzled to blockade all Europe without a warning, being exactly one- third of the task imposed on Mr. Gideon Welles, or this rnysterious adlatus of his. As a first step the department began purchasing and build- ing after the manner of departments in a free state, ie., with as much jobbery and blundering as it was well possible to im- port into such transactions, but still with an effective result. First and least important of all, the sailing navy was in- creased, being brought up by purchase and building from 76 vessels to 264, with an average tonnage of 950 tons, and carrying 2,557 guns. They were none of them, perhaps, of very much use in modern scientific warfare ; but still they did their work, which was to help a blockade, and carry armies from point to point. Then the steamers, all of real value, were brought up from 74 to 427, with an average ton- nage of 800 tons, and mounting 3,268 guns. Many of these also would not be reckoned by an officer when counting up the execution the "Warrior" could do ; but the value of every- thing, from a needle to a fleet, must be calculated by its capacity to do the work required to be done. This demand the new navy, as a rule, and with some acknowledged ex- ceptions, has fulfilled. It had to traverse quickly an -enormous extent of coast, to hunt down intrudine.° merchant- men, to guard huge stretches of river, often lined with hostile batteries ; and these tasks it performed with admitted -success. It had not to keep the sea, and, with one or two ex- ceptions, is no more fitted to do it than the Swedish flotilla is to contest with the Warrior the dominion of the Atlantic. Still, one reckons the Swedish flotilla, when considering the forces of different Powers available for a Baltic campaign. Steamers, however, were not all the de- -partment felt that they required. Somebody—nobody even in America can guess who—but we may say, as before, Mr. Gideon Welles's good genius, had watched English experiments, observed the Merrimac, built the Monitor to encounter her, and, that experiment succeeding, ordered fifty-four vessels, built more or less upon her plan. Twenty-eight of these are intended to go to sea, and twenty-six are for the Western rivers, and of both twelve are already afloat, and have been successfully tried. None of them are in the least adapted to sail round Cape Horn or steam across the Atlantic, or even, Mr. Welles seems to think, to try conclusions with France within the Mexican Gulf. All have been hurriedly built, amidst an infinity of corruption, under officers unused to the work, and with no time for experiment ; but still they all stand heavy shot without damage, move at five or six miles an honr, and carry an armament nothing except our new armoured men-of-war could encounter without imminent risk of annihilation. A twelvemonth will see all orders executed, and then the Northern States, besides 104 sailing "vessels of no account, will dispose of the following fleet :

STEAM VESSELS.

Description.

Number. Guns. Tons.

Screw frigates

228 18,272 Screw sloops, 1st class ...

133 11,955 Screw sloops, 2nd class ...

167 23,992 Screw gunboats, (new) ...

108 14,033

Iron-clad vessels •

261 59,808 Side-wheel frigates

49 8,003 Side-wheel gunboats, (new) ...

296 36,367 Side-wheel gunboats, (old navy)

11 2,190 Screw steamers, (purchased) ...

215 23,490 Side-wheel steamers, (purchased) ... 63 ... 250 38,617 Screw steamers, (old navy) ...

fermboats, transports, dm., transferred from other departments. ... G ...

40 ... 27 108 2,590 26,544

IOW ... 32 ...

1,853 ... 265,861 We ask any competent naval man or dockyard super- intendent, whose judgment is not blinded by hatred of Yankee vulgarity, whether that account is a bad one for the out-turn of two short years of work. Of course, the North with that fleet, even when all are afloat, is not prepared to en- counter on equal terms a first-class maritime Power. The editors and orators who affirm that she is, are writing and talking patriotic nonsense, only excusable by the utter ignorance of every American of everything outside America. For every ton here registered, England, for instance, could send three into American waters ; and even then no one but the accountants would miss them out of the depts. Of the iron-clads not ten will be of any use, except for harbour defence, and the paucity of steam frigates is shown in the im- punity enjoyed by the Alabama. But of all forms of false- hood, that which refuses to acknowledge the real success of a possible rival is, perhaps, the most pernicious, for it combines the suicidal effects at once of malice and vainglory. Judged as a Russian would judge them, the heads of the American navy, Mr. Gideon Welles and his remembrancer, must be held to have accomplished a really wonderful task. They will, by 1864—if the Democrats have nothanged them, to prove the high estimate in which they hold individual freedom— have provided the North with an efficient fleet for defence, with a competent transport service, and with a river navy equal to the task of rendering communication impossible on the second best system of rivers existing on the globe. We dare say they have filled their pockets ; we believe they have jobbed appointments ; we are quite sure that they use quaint expressions, in which odd reminiscences of Scripture struggle in vain to escape the contamination of odder scraps of slang ; but for all that, and much more, they have done a work for which every American with a brain would pardon even crime.

They are about, as it seems, to continue it. Mr. Gideon Welles or the naval Ahitophel whom he has purchased—and who, among other faculties, can write English without bom- bast—informs Congress that, subject always to its opinion, he intends to accept League Island, on the Schuylkill, as an iron navy yard, and build the future navy, which he hints will be mainly of iron, in that place himself. From the mode in which this paragraph is drawn up, we are morally certain that somebody intends to sanction a job on a colossal scale. The ironmasters of Pennsylvania are to be conciliated by a monopoly of the materials for the future fleet of the -Union. We feel as certain of that as if we had heard the conference between Messrs. Blank and Mr. Gideon Welles's first Aide. But we feel also certain that the North will possess a navy yard unrivalled throughout the world. League Island is on the Schuylkill, some hundreds of miles from the sea, and the iron nary will therefore be built in fresh water, in a position no enemy can threaten, and in the very centre of the great de- posits of iron and coal. It is as if the English navy yard could be planted on the head waters of the Tyne. The design is a most ambitious one, and if the North is not ruined by taxes, and can be persuaded that God made men and not Americans only, and can make her contractors decently honest, and can be induced to prefer perfection to rough and ready speed, the iron fleet of the North may yet be the one anxiety which will impose inventiveness on our Admirals and taxes upon our people.