Vol. II

THE daily press has, perhaps unwittingly, paid a decidedly left-handed compliment to the seamen of the Atlantic

"Compliments" to our Sailors

Fleet by making so much of their good behavior during the stay of the battleships at Port of Spain and Rio. Apparently it was a great surprise to our daily papers that the presence of our men on shore was not accompanied by riot and revolution. THE NAVY has always maintained that the seamen of our ships when they go ashore are quite as well behaved as the same number of young men from any other source; and that if they are compared, for instance, with the students of our great universities, the percentage of disorderly men in the service is much less than that in the colleges. THE NAVY calls attention to these reports of the daily press, not because it is at all surprised at the good behavior of our seamen or thinks the fact in itself worthy of special mention, but rather because the stories, as printed by the daily press, indicate an expectation that whenever United States sailors are ashore, trouble is likely to follow. It is little more complimentary to make a feature of the fact that our sailors were not disorderly than to say of a man that he went down town and did not steal anything; to point out that a certain thing did not happen is equivalent to saying that it was likely to happen, and probable. It would be much fairer to our warship crews not to dilate upon their good behavior; this is a thing that should be taken for granted.

THE change in the regulations as to the duties to which commanders of the navy can be assigned, should be of distinct value to the service. The new text, Opportunities as approved by President Roosevelt, reads for as follows:Commanders

"A Commander may command a division of a squadron, a naval station, a protected cruiser of the first rate, a ship of the second or third rate, a torpedo boat destroyer flotilla, or a ship not rated; be chief of staff to a flag officer; be assigned to duty as engineer of the fleet, and may serve as executive officer of a battleship or armored cruiser or perform such shore duty as may be assigned to him. Such Commanders as are by law restricted to the performance of engineering duties shall be assigned accordingly and to shore duty only.”

Commanders are not eligible, except under an old civil war statute, to command first rate warships; and the

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small number of second-class vessels has relegated to shore duty many commanders who could have been more profitably occupied in gaining further sea experience. Considering the advanced age of our captains, and the slight opportunity there has been for commanders to obtain experience in active sea duty during their time in that grade, it seems very desirable that as many commanders as possible should be on duty in the fleet, in positions which will give them the greatest possible personal familiarity with the behavior of big ships in general and the widest possible acquaintance with each of the separate ships in a fleet. The present commanders are the coming captains; and every additional bit of active training that they can have as commanders is so much. gained for their efficiency when they become captains.

Italy has developed the naval balloon to the point of practical value. It is understood that a propo

sal to furnish a balloon for tests of this sort was made to the Department many months ago and that it was disapproved. Attention has already, in these pages, been called to the very successful use of a captive balloon in Italian naval maneuvers; and in this issue of THE NAVY will be found pictures illustrating the method of managing a balloon on board a small cruiser and giving views of a coast city and a squadron of warships as they appeared from the naval balloon. The practical usefulness of the balloon in naval operations is self-evident. Russia made good use of this method of getting a longrange view in connection with the operations of the Vladivostock squadron in the recent war; and if the Japanese had had an effective equipment of the same sort, their operations against Port Arthur might have been much simplified.

Italy has been as quick to borrow new devices as to

develop them for herself. It is interesting to know that within two months after the American fleet had successfully tested its wireless telephones, the Italian government ordered four sets of instruments to be installed on some of its warships.

Brazil's New

GERMAN expectation, as outlined by one of our Berlin correspondents, that the three 19,200-ton battleships building for Brazil will find their way into the British navy is not at all unlikely of fulfilment. If the German program proceeds Battleships rapidly and English criticisms of the present British naval strength continue to be as sharp as they have been for the past few months, the purchase of the three Brazilian ships will doubtless relieve the British government of a considerable burden. By any impartial judgment, Britain's two-power standard appears to be fully met in her present navy. The addition of the three Brazilian ships, however, would appear to close the present debate as to whether or not that standard is fully met.

The Brazilian ships should be of special interest to this country, because of the disposition of their armor belt. It is reported, on exceptionally good authority, that these ships will carry a nine-inch armor belt about four meters wide (thirteen feet), and that a little more than half of this breadth of this belt (some seven feet) is intended to show above the water line. The full thickness of the belt is carried out to the bow and stern. As these ships are British designed, the disposition of the armor belt may reasonably be taken to represent the present judgment of British constructors as to the proper place of the water line belt.

AT Portsmouth Dockyard, December 30, 1907, the British Admiralty began the construction of the St. Vincent, the first of a new series of improved

England's Dreadnoughts for the British navy. The Dreadnoughts Dreadnought has a displacement of 17,250 tons, was laid down in October, 1905, and completed in October, 1906. Then came the Temeraire class of improved Dreadnoughts,― the Temeraire, Bellerophon, and Superb,- each of 18,600 tons displacement, which were laid down respectively in January, 1907, December, 1906, and February, 1907, and all will be completed by next January. Under this year's building program we have the St. Vincent-which is of 650 tons greater displacement than the Temeraire trio - and two more sister ships along improved Dreadnought lines. These latter are the Collingwood, the keel of which is about to be laid at Devonport, and the Rodney, the contract for which has just been let to the firm of Vickers, Sons and Maxim.

The St. Vincent class will, so far as can be ascertained, differ but slightly from the Temeraires, except in greater displacement and heavier armament. The St. Vincent, Collingwood, and Rodney will, however, carry a different gun, it being understood that they will each be armed. with 13.5-inch guns 50 calibres long, and will steam 22 knots. The keel of the Collingwood is ready to be laid, and the slip where the vessel is to be built already presents a scene of great activity at Devonport, hundreds of tons of material having been transported to the slip and made ready to be placed in position. This practice has been observed for ten years in connection with the building of battleships at Devonport, but it is stated that the work has never before reached such an advanced stage prior to the "official commencement" of a ship at that yard. The particulars sent out by the Admiralty state that the St. Vincent ships are to be 500 feet long between perpendiculars, 84 feet beam, and that they will carry 50-calibre 12-inch guns, ten in number, arranged in five turrets; but there are recent intimations that these guns will be 13.5-inch ones when installed. The third of these battleships, the Rodney, which is to be constructed in the private yard of the Vickers, is the one which depended for her existence upon the failure of the disarmament project at The Hague. She is the first great battleship started in Europe since the closing of that Conference. The tenders received by the Admiralty for the construction of the Rodney were as follows: Vickers, Sons and Maxim, the successful bidders, £628,000; John Brown and Company, in Clydebank, £667,000; W. Beardmore and Co., Dalmuir, £704,000; Palmer Shipbuilding and Iron Co., Jarrow, £712,000; Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., Glasgow, £734,000; Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., Newcastle, £738,000; and Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., 764,000 pounds sterling.

FOLLOWING closely upon the experiment with the Hero, the British Admiralty have given instructions for the battleship Vengeance, 12,950 tons, to carry British out confidential experiments with a system Fire-Control of fire-control, the joint invention of a naval Experiments engineer and a civilian. About two years ago the battleship Jupiter, 14,900 tons, was engaged in experiments with this invention about four months. Improvements were made in the fittings as a result of the experience gained then, and subsequently the invention was fitted in the cruiser Ariadne. It has now been extended to the Vengeance, and, in addition to the Ariadne, the torpedo boat destroyers Kale, Derwent, Doon, and Ribble are to take part in the experiments.

THE NAVY enters upon its second year of publication, under new conditions, inasmuch as its former financial support has been withdrawn. It remains, however, under the same editorial management, and its policy is unchanged.

THE NAVY is glad to give full measure of praise to everything in our naval establishment which deserves praise. It shares the pride of all Americans in the energy, resourcefulness, and bravery of the personnel of the United States navy. But this personnel, unsurpassed in quality by that of any other navy in the world, ought to be supplied with the best possible war tools. It is because THE NAVY recognizes the fact that the tools given to our personnel are not the best and not up to the standard that American inventive mechanical skill is capable of reaching, that we have felt it a duty to the public, no less than to the personnel of the fleet, to print the facts in regard to defects in our warships and weaknesses in our system of naval administration.

The crying need of the naval service in this country. is an alert and educated public opinion that shall keep watch of what is being done by the Navy Department and that shall be sufficiently well informed to know whether or not what is done is well done. That such intelligent and critical public opinion is necessary in order to have defects corrected is shown by the fact that the same defects have been built into our new ships for years past —

defects well known to the Navy Department and for years protested against by officers of the fleet.

THE NAVY has therefore published certain facts (well known to foreign admiralties, as to our own Service, but of which the people of the United States have little or no knowledge), in order to bring public opinion to bear on the Navy Department and to force the correction of such defects. That public opinion has weight and can force reforms is shown by the fact that, after THE NAVY forced publicity upon the Department last summer in connection with the Georgia accident, a tardy reform of a most serious defect, of which the Department had known for years, was undertaken. The same is true of our battle practice: it was not until THE NAVY showed that our fleet had had only ten hours of battle practice since the Spanish war, that our ships actually did carry out some ten days of valuable and novel training. The same is true of our fire-control systems: it was not until THE NAVY made public the fact that the fleet going to the Pacific was wholly unprovided with any efficient system that the Department ordered every ship to spend fifty days at a dockyard in order to have fire control installed.

HOW OFFICIAL FIGURES HIDE FACTS Concealment of the true condition of our warships by the use of official figures is attempted in the second instalment of the article, "The Reuterdahl Attack on Our Navy Answered," in the Scientific American of January 27. The first instalment of this article, in the Scientific American of January 20, asserted that it was an entirely unbiased review of the actual facts; though it then proceeded to disclose its bias by practically reproducing, oftentimes word for word, the annual report of Chief Constructor Capps, even to the extent of duplicating the Constructor's reference to Janes' "Fighting Ships", though in this case the Scientific American referred to the five-hundred-page naval manual as a "foreign paper." The second instalment of this article comes to us just as THE NAVY is going to press, and we have time and space, therefore, for only a brief comment on it, chiefly in regard to the position of the water-line armor belt.

Mr. Reuterdahl's perfectly accurate statement that “Of all our battleships not one shows the main armor belt

six inches above the water, when fully equipped and ready for sea," is denied. The Scientific American repeats the familiar official theory of the "normal" water line, and asserts that our ships show from eighteen inches to several feet of the main belt at maximum draught.

This is not true of the ships as they are. The theoretical maximum draught of the Connecticut, as calculated by our constructors beforehand, is 26 feet 9 inches. If the Connecticut never set lower in the water than this 26 feet 9 inches, she would show about eighteen inches of her armor belt above water. But the trouble with these figures is that the Connecticut has never been in such trim. since her trial trip. When she led the fleet out of Hampton Roads on December 16 last, she drew nearly 29 feet of water. The writer made a close inspection of the ship on December 15 and was on a tug-boat within 300 yards of her, off her starboard bow, for a distance of several miles at the start of the voyage. The Connecticut's water line belt was completely under water from stem to stern. The red paint which covers the under-water part of this ship, and which extends on her and all the other vessels of the fleet to about a foot above the upper edge of the water line belt, was also hidden. The Connecticut's belt was therefore submerged to the extent of a full foot. Proof of this assertion will be found in the double page picture of the ship in this number of THE NAVY. This picture was taken on December 16, as the fleet left Hampton Roads. The large ship at the right-hand of the picture is the Connecticut, and every reader can see for himself that she shows only in three places a narrow line of the red paint above the armor belt, this stretch of red paint. above the belt being what is known in the fleet as "boottopping." Examination of the other ships in this same. picture will prove that on all of them the red underwater body was wholly covered by the sea, which means that on every one of them the water-line belt was submerged.

accepted authority as the Scientific American has fallen into the popular pit, and has published an article which we are compelled to believe it would not have admitted to its columns had it been as well acquainted with the facts as it is with the official figures.

The error into which the Scientific American has been led is perhaps particularly noticeable in the case of the Kentucky. The Scientific American presents a picture of the Kentucky at her normal draft of 23 feet 6 inches, when, according to official forecasts, she should show 3 feet 6 inches of her water-line belt above water. The statement is then made that the Kentucky at "full load draught" shows 19 inches of her belt; but, unfortunately for the figures, the Kentucky has never stopped at her official full load draught. When she closed the column of the Atlantic fleet on December 16 last, as we shall demonstrate by a photograph to be published in the February issue of THE NAVY, her actual full load draught was so great that her water-line belt was completely hidden. We have referred, in an earlier issue of THE NAVY, to the attempts made last winter to lighten the ships of the fleet by removing superfluous top hamper. It was found impossible to lighten the Kentucky sufficiently to make her show any substantial part of her armor belt above water.

If our ships, at their actual maximum draught, showed the extent of armor belt that the article in the Scientific American claims for them, there would be little room for criticism; but the fact is different. Our system of producing ships is so bad that they always draw much more water when fully loaded than they are expected to; and our Bureau system is so irresponsible, that, having made this mistake several times, it has the power of going on repeating the mistake, so that it may avoid confessing that it has made an error in its calculations. The official figures are interesting enough as showing what our constructors expected; but it is the ship, under service. conditions, and not theoretical figures, that shows what is the fact.

Mr. Reuterdahl's strictures on the lowness of our broadside guns, are confirmed by the Scientific American's own words. The paper gives a diagram showing the height above the water, at normal draught, of the broadside guns of the Connecticut, in comparison with the battleships of the King Edward VII and Swiftsure

classes, and the Drake cruisers of the British navy. The Scientific American says that the Connecticut's guns, 15 feet above the water at normal draught, would be clear of the water in rough weather, "when the eight battleships of the King Edward class and the two battleships Swiftsure and Triumph, to say nothing of the four armored cruisers of the Drake class, would be rolling theirs under." The "normal draught " of the Connecticut is 24 feet 6 inches, and it is only at that draught – which she has not had since her trial trip — that her broadside guns are fifteen feet above the water. Her actual full load draught in service is 28 feet 8 inches, or more than four feet in excess of her "normal draught." At actual maximum draught, then, her broadside guns are not fifteen feet above water, but only eleven feet. Thus it will be seen that the Scientific American is more severe than even Mr. Reuterdahl; for if the King Edward, with her guns 12 feet 9 inches from the water, is going to roll the muzzles of those guns under water in rough weather, what will happen to the Connecticut's guns at her actual full load draught in service?

THE BROWNSON-RIXEY DISPUTE The injustice of President Roosevelt's treatment of Rear Admiral Brownson, in regard to the appointment of a navy surgeon to command the hospital ship Relief, is brought into stronger light by the papers transmitted to the House on January 23, in response to the Gill resolution. The unfairness of the President's action, in publicly denouncing Rear Admiral Brownson, was so extraordinary as to leave even Mr. Roosevelt's staunchest friends no ground on which to defend him. From this beginning, the administration's treatment of the whole case has proceeded in a way that has alienated every fair-minded

man.

Admiral Brownson made an admirable record as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. It is well known within the Department that he was chosen for that position because of the President's personal liking for him and personal confidence in his judgment. Under the circumstances, Admiral Brownson was abundantly justified in resigning. He had been appointed for personal reasons, and when the President's approval had turned to disapproval, it

was inevitable that the Admiral should feel his continuance in the Bureau to be impossible.

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The administration's conduct of the matter since Admiral Brownson resigned has been of one character throughout. The first breach of common fairness was in allowing Surgeon General Rixey to rush into print with an attack upon the Bureau of Navigation, while Admiral Brownson reserved the silence demanded by official etiquette. The requests of newspaper men for Admiral Brownson's letter of resignation were refused, with the statement that the matter was considered a closed issue." Then the President's two letters addressed to Secretary Metcalf, in the first of which he made his attack upon Admiral Brownson, were given out. At the time these letters were made public at the White House, the newspaper correspondents asked again for Admiral Brownson's letter of resignation; and they made the same request of Secretary Metcalf, being refused in both cases. It was only after public sense of justice had been offended by the publication of the President's letters of January 2 and January 4 that Admiral Brownson's letter of resignation was given out, with the explanation that it had been "inadvertently omitted." How this omission could have been inadvertent, in the face of daily requests for the letter from newspaper correspondents, has not been explained.

The brevity of Admiral Brownson's letter of resignation raised the inference that he must have made some complete statement of his reasons for opposing the detail of a medical officer to command a ship. The newspaper men thereupon besieged the office of the Secretary of the Navy, but for several days were met with the intimation that no other documents in the case existed. All this time Admiral Brownson's memorandum, dated November 18, and addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, was upon the official files of the Department. Later, the Secretary admitted that a statement by Admiral Brownson was in existence; but it required the Gill resolution to bring it forth. Admiral Brownson's memorandum, with other facts bearing on the case, will be found in another part of this issue of THE NAVY.

But even in its response to the Gill Resolution, the Navy Department has continued to pursue a course which is the reverse of straightforward. The Gill Resolution