1R. WARD HUNT ON THE "'VANGUARD' MINUTE."
Av. WARD HUNT was powerful on the Cattle-plague, Di and discriminating in relation to the dog-duty, but he was feeble as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as First Lord of the Admiralty he has been a rather bad failure. He began badly. His first speech, on phantom ships, was not true in itself, and was very childish unless intended to herald a great change of policy. When it was known that the drift and outcome of that speech was the proposal of an addition of £100,000 at most to the Navy Estimates, the effect on the mind of Parliament was comical. But Mr. Ward Hunt not only excels in political lacrymosity of a kind to make poli- ticians merry, but in political cheerfulness of a -kind to make them sad. His speech at Guildhall on Tuesday was a striking effort of the latter kind. He was quite radiant about the loss of the 'Vanguard.' One might almost say that, like Emile 011ivier on a still more lamentable occasion, Mr. Ward Hunt had seen the ' Vanguard' sink "with a light heart." He was so thankful that no lives were lost, that the costly ship hardly caused him a pang ; he was so delighted to see the destructiveness of the ' Iron Duke,' that he made light of the destruction of the ' Vanguard.' " If the 'Iron Duke ' had sent an enemy's ship to the bottom, we should have called her one of the most formidable ships-of-war in the world, and all that she has done was actually what she was intended to do, except, of course, that the ship that she struck was unfortu- nately our own property, and not that of an enemy." No doubt that seems a very trivial difference to Mr. Hunt, but to the country at large it will seem rather bad pleasantry to make light of the difference between using your ram for the purpose of striking an enemy, and using it for the purpose of striking yourself. It would be very interesting, no doubt, to know that our guns are as destructive as our rams, but we should hardly rejoice in the evidence of their destructiveness, if it were proved by their sinking the whole iron fleet in a single broadside. Mr. Hunt knows the old maxim about edged tools. Well, what makes the English people anxious is the fear, with which recent events have inspired them, lest the very formidable tools entrusted to our Naval Service should have been entrusted to people, we will not say without suffi- cient wit, but at all events without sufficient training, to handle them prudently and efficiently. Mr. Ward Hunt insists on the pluck which our Naval officers and men have often shown, and illustrates by the case of Commodore Goodenough and the recent expedition up the Congo. Well, we never had any doubt about the pluck. Even the somewhat faint- hearted way in which the attempt to keep down the water in the Vanguard' by the use of the pumps was abandoned, did not in the least impress us as due to want of pluck, so much as to (a very great) want of confidence in the proper organisa- tion of the ' Vanguard's' machinery. It is not want of pluck that the people of Great Britain fear in our Navy. What they have learnt to fear since the Court-Martial on the loss of the Vanguard' took place, is a want of capacity to turn the pluck to the best advantage in dealing with such very elaborate machines,—machines so complex and so dependent in their re- sult on the accurate correspondence of all the various parts,— as our new iron ships. In short, Mr. Hunt encourages us where we don't need to be encouraged,—as to the immense force of the rams and the admirable pluck of our sailors,—and seems to think encouragement quite unnecessary where we need it most,—namely, as to the engineering skill of the officers who wield these dangerous and mighty engines, and who may make sad havoc with them unless they are fully masters of the minutiae of their duties, and as to the method, punctuality, mechanical dexterity, and adequate appreciation of the mutually dependent functions of the various parts of so great a machine, which the crews of such ships ought to possess.
This is just the head on which Mr. Ward Hunt is wholly silent. "There may have been one or two blunders, and the Vanguard' has gone to the bottom of the sea," says Mr. Hunt, in his off-hand way, but what then ? Why, then it may turn out that we have got vessels to navigate which are beyond the navigating powers of the existing Naval Service ; that our Naval engineers are too refined for the class of men who have to embody the conceptions of those engineers in actual sailing,—that we are making very delicate tools for persons who are only qualified to use very rough ones. This is a fear which Mr. Ward Hunt apparently has never realised. When he sees the class of persons who proverbially ought not to play with edged tools playing with them, and coming to grief in consequence, his only impulse must surely be to congratulate himself on the very sharp edge which these tools had That is certainly not the uppermost feeling in the English people. They are naturally enough much more anxious about the training of the hand that holds the tools than-even about the efficiency of the tool that is held there. To improve the latter is a mere question of manufacturing art ; to improve the former is a question of educational art ; and we have always been much slower and stupider in England in the latter effort than in the former.
The truth is, we suspect, that Mr. Ward Hunt is quite out of his place at the head of the Board of Admiralty. He is very much afraid of injuring the physique of his sailors by over- education, but he appears to be not at all afraid of wasting the admirable physique of both sailors and ships through the deficiency in the training of those who manipulate the ships. And what is worse, Mr. Hunt not only fails to apprehend the grounds of the anxiety which the Court- Martial on the' Vanguard' has caused, but he clearly mis- apprehends also what common justice, in dealing with a great Service, absolutely requires. The Court-Martial, composed as it was of the very best materials for judging of the cause of the disaster, came to very specific conclusions as to that cause, but from the nature of the case it adjudicated only on the faults of those who had been officers in the 'Vanguard,' though it pronounced an opinion also on the faults of others ; indeed, those others, though they had given evidence as to the cata- strophe, were not heard in their own defence, for no charges had been formally made against them, and therefore the Court-Martial's judgment in relation to their case wanted the finality of an adequate Court of Inquiry. Thit as that judgment condemned the Admiral at the head of the fleet, and the leading officer of the Iron Duke,' no less than certain officers of the " Vanguard,' it was clearly only fitting, on every account,—for their own sakes, if they were really able to offer an adequate defence,—for the public's sake, if they were not,—that these other officers should have been put on their trial and challenged to make their defence. Instead of doing this, Mr. Ward Hunt, with a partiality that it is diffi- cult to excuse, dismissed a subordinate officer in the 'Iron Duke' without putting him on his trial, and put out an Ad- miralty Minute declaring that as regarded the Admiral and the Commander of the 'Iron Duke,' they were not in any way the causes of the disaster. And now he lightly tells the assembly at Guildhall that whenever he is challenged in Parliament to discuss the adjudication which he actually gave, the justice of his decision will be fully acknowledged. It would be diffi- cult, we should say, to justify the cashiering of a lieutenant of the 'Iron Duke' without putting him formally on his defence, and quite as difficult to show that the excuse offered by the Admiralty Minute for Admiral Tarleton and Captain Hickley was so complete an answer to the judg- ment of the Court-Martial, that justice does not require any further investigation of the matter. The Service in general discerned more technical knowledge and more autho- rity in the Court-Martial than in the Board of Admiralty which took upon itself to deal so cavalierly with its con- clusions. And whatever evidence Mr. Hunt may produce for the opinions expressed in the Admiralty Kmute, he will find it very difficult, we think, to make it clear to any one that it was just to act on those opinions without further investi- gation. Assuredly, Mr. Ward Hunt's speech at Guildhall will strengthen the impression, which is fast gaining ground amongst close observers of his Parliamentary and administra- tive manifestoes, that he is much more fit for the work of a country gentleman than for the work of a Minister. He does not even enter into the gravity of the public feeling as to the Court-Martial on the Vanguard,' and speaks of it with a light- ness which is as unstatesmanlike,—even if he can justify it to his own mind,—as we believe it to be utterly mistaken. If he
is not positively jocose about the' Vanguard's' disappearance to the bottom of the sea, he is quite gay as to the little confusion between our own ship and an enemy's which it apparently in- volved. He is so anxious to encourage the public about the state of the Navy, that he goes quite the wrong way to work, and makes the public believe that he himself cannot see a great disaster even when it occurs. And to tell the truth, we very much doubt whether he can. We suspect it was less due to bad political strategy, than to bad administrative judgment that he spoke so lightly on Tuesday. But whatever it was due to,— bad political strategy or bad administrative judgment,—it was certainly a speech which will make the English public more uneasy than ever about their Board of Admiralty, and more anxious than ever to see Mr. Ward Hunt transferred to another sphere of usefulness from that which he now occupies, but unfortunately does not fill.
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