McClure's Magazine for January contains an article on the needs
of the United States Navy by Mr. Henry Reuterdahl, Associate of the United States Naval Institute and American editor of Mr. Jane's "Fighting Ships," which is bound to attract a great deal of attention, both here and in America, on account of the very serious allegations it contains. The first is that the American Fleet is a Fleet with " its main armour under water." Owing to faulty design, most of the American ships are asserted to be in the condition in which the overloaded Russian battleships and cruisers were at the battle of Tsushima. If they were hit just above the water-line, instead of the shells finding a thick belt of armour to resist them, they would pierce an unarmoured surface and make a hole into which at every roll of the vessel the sea would pour. According to the above-named writer, the United States has five big battleships now building, not one of them with its main belt above the water-line. The next allegation is that the American ships lie so low in the water that when they move in a heavy sea " they take in over their low bows solid water, which slaps up over their forward turrets." This means that one-third of the guns would be useless in rough weather. Foreign battleships, however, which are built with high bows, could, under the same conditions, fire their forward turret guns with ease.
