LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE LATE SIR WILLIAM WHITE.
[TO TUE EDITOR OF TER "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Many notices have appeared within the past few days on the loss we have sustained by the death of Sir William White. It has been easy to obtain details of his varied pro- fessional career—and varied it was, as the branches of science involved in modern shipbuilding are numberless—but in regard to warship construction theory lacks something as to practice in confirmation or refutation of any thesis. The steel ships of Admiralty construction in their early days were undoubtedly experimental, but White, their designer, proved them to be skilfully designed, so far as sea-going qualities were tested. Their practical war qualities remain unproved by the ships of our nation, and their derivatives were not scientifically tested in the war between Russia and Japan, owing to many complications of inequality in handling and preparation. Much and bitter criticism was poured on our Admiralty for the construction of the so-called " soft-ended ships " of White's design, but to the onlooker we appear to be reverting to a type undoubtedly weak as to armour protection, except in the central body, although numerous subdivisions mitigate the weakness of the ends; the limitations in cost forced upon the chief constructor some years ago are now less stringent owing to the rapid increase of cost incurred by other countries on individual ships : this forces on us, as on themselves, an expenditure, in a monetary sense, injurious to all concerned. The expecta- tions of White as to the value of considerable subsidiary armament were confirmed by two war instances, the earlier one in the Spanish-American war, and later by the Russo- Japanese heavy battle. The first Dreadnought was avowedly an experiment: her armament consisted of a few heavy guns, and her subsidiary armament was negligible except against small craft : later developments show a recurrence to the views of Sir William White. Besides warship construction White had large and extended views as to passenger ships and vessels purely for commerce : he was largely interested in the building of the `Mauretania,' the most successful of a special type, and the amount of model experiments as to shape of hull and the location of her propellers was very great; in those experiments the firm, of which White was a director, who built the big ship, had unlimited assistance from Sir Charles Parsons, always the friend and ever an impartial appreciator of White the designer and White the man. Sir William White, with no early advantages from the position of his forebears, had to fight for his own band from very early days, but the grit that was in the boy developed into something approaching genius in his maturity, and his mental power was grafted on to a stock of the kindliest nature. The volume of work he did gratuitously was out of all proportion to the work he of necessity carried on for the support of himself and his family. At Mechanics' Institutes and other instructional centres he was a godsend, for he lectured on subjects where he was a maestro di color the sanno, and his powers of exposition were quite exceptional. A clear thinker, he became early in life a lucid speaker and also a lucid writer. Perhaps his fluency both in speaking and in writing at times verged on superabundance, but the material of that which be wrote or which be spoke was of the highest quality. Questions now arise which are gravely complicated by his death. For one thing, he was responsible for the construction of three ships, of a new and difficult type, for the cross passage between Southern India and Northern Ceylon, and of these only one is complete. She ran a very high trial lately, but no one will miss Sir William with more bitter sorrow than his old friend Mr. Inglis, who has the contract. Quite up to the last he was engaged in re-writing and bringing up to date his standard " Manual of Naval Architecture," but the galloping changes in the mechanics of shipbuilding and engines made this a toilsome work, and the fear is that flesh is lacking to the skeleton of the book. In the autumn there will probably be some form of international inquiry into the rules for ensuring safety in seagoing ships ; an Inquiry Committee was being organized by the President of our Board of Trade with White as chairman ; his signature would have carried great weight in foreign view. His place will be difficult to fill, for Lis death leaves us and the world the poorer.—I am, Sir, &c.,
otrris.
[We endorse every syllable said by " " as to Sir William White's lucidity of thought and style. His writings, as we can testify, never required a marginal query of any sort. You could not mistake his meaning. Further, nothing ever tempted him into exaggeration or over-emphasis. — ED. Spectator.]
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