THE ADMIRALTY ON THE LOSS OF THE VANGUARD.'
THE Admiralty Minute on the loss of the ' Vanguard' has surprised the public at least as much as the disclosures of the Court-Martial itself. The Court-Martial blamed Vice- Admiral Tarleton for not slackening speed in a fog ; but the Admiralty snub the Court-Martial for that censure, and state very curtly their belief, for which they assign no reason, that the Vice-Admiral was, under the circumstances, " justified in continuing the rate of speed ordered until the time when he made the signal to reduce it." The public are more likely to agree with the Naval Court than with the Civil Board. It is obviously not enough to say, with the apologists of the latter, that to determine where the blame lies we have only to ask ourselves,—What would have happened if the Vice-Admiral's signal to keep up the speed of seven knots an hour had been accepted by all the fleet as a positive order to do so ? It is just as necessary to ask whether the order to reduce speed in a fog would have been in itself a reasonable order, and whether, if so, the result of such an order would or would not have been to prevent the catastrophe, or to have rendered it less serious. It is perfectly obvi- ous that, though the omission of a particular precaution was not the cause of the accident, the adoption of that precaution might still have prevented it; and if so, and if the pre- caution was a reasonable and natural one which a cautious Commander would have adopted, it seems obvious that that Commander deserves censure for not adopting it. Now it is evident enough that in a fog there is much more serious danger of running into stray ships, when going at a high rate of speed than at a low ; and clearly Captain Dawkins was so far influenced by that consideration that he reduced speed on his own responsibility without orders from the Admiral ; moreover, the view which he took of his duty in this respect, far from being a completely eccentric and unprecedented view, was shared by Vice-Admiral Tarleton himself, who went out of his way to excuse Captain Dawkins for so doing, and to suggest that leaders of divisions at all events might act on their own responsi- bility in a fog, without regard to their Admiral's order. Now, had Vice-Admiral Tarleton himself reduced by signal the speed of the fleet during the fog, it is not to be presumed that Captain Dawkins would have further re- duced the speed of his own vessel. What led him to take this step was the fear that his ship, as leader of the division, might come suddenly upon some unfortunate vessel, without having a chance, at that high rate of speed, of avoiding it. And if, therefore, he had been ordered by the Admiral to slacken speed, he would have had no inducement to slacken speed on his own private responsibility. It is perfectly true that in avoiding the lesser danger, Captain Dawkins fell into the greater. He slackened speed to diminish the chance of fouling a strange ship, and so increased the chance of his own ship being struck by the ship which followed her. Still, be- cause Captain Dawkins was wrong, it does not at all follow that Admiral Tarleton was right. Had he been prudent enough to give the order to slacken speed to the whole fleet, Captain Dawkins, as leader of a division, would not have been led into the foolish step of an independent slackening of speed on his own part without even being able to communicate what he was doing to the 'Iron Duke.' The public will certainly think it a great blunder for the Board of Admiralty thus to have absolved the higher authority from all blame for a course which the Court-Martial rightly discerned to be a mistaken one, while they confirm the censure of the same Court on the lower officer for errors which were more numerous and more disastrous, but none of which was more obviously a mistake than this. Admiral Tarleton, as leader of the fleet, ought undoubtedly to have felt the very same fear which Captain Dawkins felt as leader of one division of it,—namely, of the danger of keeping up a high rate of speed in a fog. And he had the full right to take securities against that cause of fear, which Captain Dawkins, as a subordinate officer, had not (though both be and his superior seemed to think that he had). Unquestionably, then, he deserved censure for not doing that which, had he done it, would in all probability have prevented the catastrophe.
But the next point on which the Minute of the Lords of the Admiralty will surprise and disappoint the country is the imperfect way in which that Minute discusses the con- duct of the officers of the Iron Duke.' One officer of that vessel, the officer of the watch who sheered her out of line, is censured and dismissed ; but beyond this no blame appears to be attached to the officers of that ship. Now, if it was a serious fault for Captain Dawkins, as leader of a division, not to remain on deck during the whole manoeuvre and throughout the fog, it was obviously also wrong for Captain Hickley, as commander of one of the vessels, not to be on deck to see that his ship executed her part in the man- oeuvre rightly, and that the proper precautions to be used in a fog were observed. He did nothing of the sort ; and yet it is quite clear that if he had been present to countermand it, as he ought to have been, his ship would not have been sheered out of line at the arbitrary caprice of the officer of the watch. Still more it was Captain Hickley's duty to see that the fog- signals of his ship were in order, which was unfortunately not the case. The accident, on the Court-Martial's view, was as much due to neglect on Captain Hickley's part as to the capricious order of Lieutenant Evans. And here, again, the public will note with surprise and vexation that the superior officer is exonerated from blame, while the inferior is punished.
But most of all the public will regret to see no indi- cation in this Minute of the Lords of the Admiralty that the Civil authorities of the Navy are conscious of the slipshod character of the organisation,—if organisation it can be called,—which came out in every part of the system on which light was thrown by the recent inquiry. The Admiral did not know precisely how far it was incumbent on his inferior officers to obey his own orders under the con- ditions of a fog. His inferiors were equally uncertain of their own duty. One of them did one thing and one another. In the individual ships the division of responsibility was
equally loose. Neither Captain Dawkins nor Captain Hickley was apparently sensible of the danger of delegating their authority to others in critical circumstances, and it turned out that the condition and discipline of neither ship,—the Van- guard' and the 'Iron Duke,'—was what it ought to have been. The officers of the 'Vanguard'were at a great loss what signals to make. The officers of the Iron Duke' were at cross-pur- poses as to what ought to be done to secure them from accident in a fog. The latter ship had not the requisite means to make a fog-signal at all. Again, in the Vanguard,' the machinery for rigging the most important pumps was defective, and the mechanical instruments for effectually closing the water-tight compartments were defective too. Both ships were apparently worked by officers who had an exceedingly defective sense of the essential character of the small links in the delicate and elaborate mechanism by which a great iron- clad fleet is worked. As far as we can see, the 'Vanguard' was lost,—at all events, was lost as irreparably as it now is,— not from want of sailor-like pluck, but from want of method, from want of that mechanical accuracy of fit in the various wheels of the organisation which is absolutely needful for the efficiency of the new Naval system. When the fog came, the proper mode of signalling was apparently an unknown world to the Commanders whose duty it was to communicate what they were doing to each other. The engineers had not taken accurate orders for getting the pumps to work and closing the water- tight compartments at a moment's notice ; and when the necessity came upon them, the proper means were not at hand. There was a want of "drill" manifest throughout the two ships implicated in the catastrophe. The individual men were apparently brave enough, but the net-work of the system was loose and hap-hazard. The smaller responsibilities of the subordinate officers had been loosely attended to ; the apportion- ment of responsibility between the subordinates and their superiors had been still more loosely attended to ; there was no prevailing sense of the necessity that each link in the chain should be perfect, and no feeling of the greatness of the risk which might result from any one link of the chain giving way. The organisation which the Prussians have made so perfect in their military service, our Naval Service, which needs it in some re- spects even far more,—since the costliness and delicacy of the machinery used are far higher,—has neglected ; and a slovenly and tangled skein of responsibilities has disclosed itself in place of the closely-defined and closely-woven chain which ought to have appeared. No doubt at bottom this is due to want of education,—not to the want of high intellectual education, but to the want of that careful drill in the mutual dependence of the various parts of a great system which a certain amount of mechanical experience and strictly enforced responsibility alone produces. The Navy is still governed by traditions which were suitable to a system very different from the present, a system where skill and pertinacity in using obvious resources was the chief requisite for success, and where high organisation and carefully prepared mechanical agencies were not nearly so essential as they are now. If the late disaster proved here and there imperfect presence of mind, it evinced still more a looseness in the efficiency of the preparation which would not have been fatal under the old system, and is necessarily fatal under the new.
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