The announcement that the Admiralty favoured a speed of 33 knots evoked a chorus of disapproval. The Admiralty was supposed to have become obsessed by a craze for speed, to which everything must be sacrificed. All the old objections which had done duty at every increase of speed for years, and had been proved to be ill-founded, were revived, brought up to date, and launched against the Admiralty proposals. Again it was contended that a vessel travelling at that speed must inevitably founder if she should unfortunately bury her nose in a wave, and that the violent alternation of stresses as she travelled in a rough sea must cause her to break her back or buckle her decks without more ado. But the Mohawk, in 1907, came and conquered, much to the delight of everyone except those whose prophecies, as usual, were upset, and not only attained a speed of 34½ knots, but accomplished it in fairly rough weather in the wintry month of November of that year, and proved her soundness of construction and the possession of excellent sea-going qualities. An objection, which at first was supposed to be serious, was that to attain such a high speed her consumption of fuel would be so great that her radius of action would be greatly restricted. The contract under which the Mohawk was built by White, at Cowes, contained the stipulation that she should maintain a speed of 33 knots for six hours; at her trials, however, she averaged 34½ knots. Her consumption of oil fuel on this occasion was 64¼ tons, and as she is fitted to carry 148 tons, her radius of action at this enormous speed is 435 knots, and at 14 knots, which is known now as the cruising speed, she is estimated to cover 1,500 miles. Though 270 feet in length she is only 25 feet beam. She is constructed entirely of high tensile steel, the tensile strength ranging from 37 to 40 tons per square inch. Her three screw propellers are driven by turbine engines, and it has been found that with oil fuel she can attain her full speed in less time than would be possible were her furnaces fed with coal. Her armament consists of three 12-pounder rifled quick-firing breech-loading guns, two of which are forward and one aft, and two revolving tubes on deck for firing 18-inch torpedoes. Another of the class, Thornycroft’s Tartar, made 35.678 knots on the measured course, an almost equal speed on the six-hours’ run, while the highest speed she showed was 37.037 knots, thereby establishing a world’s record.

The same year saw the launch of the Swift, at Birkenhead. She has a displacement of 1,800 tons, and is the largest and fastest destroyer yet constructed. She is of a special type, a class by herself; her turbine engines of 30,000 indicated h.p. give her a speed of 36 knots, and for armament she carries four 4-inch guns and two torpedo tubes. Not far behind her in dimensions and speed is the Japanese Kaifu, but a Russian destroyer building at the Putilov yard in Russia is to be of 1,300 tons, but with engines as powerful as those of the Swift, is expected to prove fully as fast, if not faster.

The ocean-going destroyers, built in 1909, have displacements varying from 880 to 1,000 tons, and a speed of from 33 to 34 knots, a typical example being the Maori, built by Denny at Dumbarton. The new naval force for the Australian Commonwealth includes some very fine destroyers, among which may be mentioned the Yarra.

A tendency has been manifest in some of the later destroyers to provide better all-round fighting and sea-going qualities than were possible in vessels like the Swift, in which speed was all-important. The Beagle and Acorn are considered to be good representatives of the compromise.

The bunker capacity of destroyers being very limited, and their consumption of fuel large, it is evident that the scope of their operations must be considerably restricted. At no time is it possible for them to be more than fourteen days away from their coal base. In case of necessity they might coal at sea, if coal storeships accompany the fleet to which they are attached. The adoption of oil fuel, which can be stored in the double bottom, may increase the range at which these vessels can operate, and if, as is expected in the near future, destroyers driven by internal combustion engines are adopted, their range of action will prove more extensive still.

German and British rivalry in the production of faster destroyers and torpedo boats has resulted in the production of two types, each peculiarly suitable to the country to which it belongs; the British vessels have been designed rather for the offensive, on the principle perhaps that the truest defence is the swiftest attack, while the German boats have become torpedo boats rather than destroyers, and though capable of performing the duties of both roles, are considered by British experts to be less destroyers than the British boats, which are admittedly destroyers first and torpedo boats afterwards. By 1909 the tonnage of the British destroyers had reached 950 tons, the speed being 27 knots. In that year, too, the Admiralty standardised its vessels instead of leaving the contractors to design their own craft. Oil fuel was tried in the small boats of these classes in the British Navy in 1904 and for three years subsequently, but was dropped, only to be taken up again in 1909, in which year Germany also experimented in this direction. The armament of the British and German ships shows that the destroyers of the latter are meant to be torpedo boat destroyers, though it is contended that they could be more heavily and effectively armed still than they are without interfering with their sea-going qualities and speed. The British boats have probably the greater gun power, while the German torpedo boats have the better torpedo power.

The scouts were a class introduced early in the present century, intended to combine the advantages of a fast gunboat with the speed of a small cruiser and the activity of a commerce destroyer. One of the best examples is the Adventure, launched in 1904, of 2,940 tons, whose engines of close upon 16,000 h.p. under forced draught give her a speed of 25.4 knots. She is, moreover, powerfully armed for a vessel of her lightness and speed, as she has ten 12-pounders and eight 3-pounders. The Americans in 1907 brought out the remarkable scout cruiser Salem, built by the Fore River Company. She was a 24-knot vessel, and though only of 4,640 tons displacement fully loaded, was given a freeboard of 34 feet at the stem, 19 feet 8¼ inches amidships, and 21 feet 6 inches at the stern, or higher than that of any vessel then in the American navy, in order to give her excellent seagoing qualities in all weathers, and a wide range of stability. She was built of steel throughout, carried two torpedo tubes, and is heavily armed.

The crushing defeat of the Russians by the Japanese in both the naval engagements of the war was brought about by the superior long-range firing of the Japanese, whose big guns played havoc with the Russian vessels.

The Battle of Tsushima resulted in the “all-big-gun one-calibre battleship of high speed.” How this came about has been admirably demonstrated by Lieut.-Commander Simms, of the United States Navy, and chief of the American naval artillery department, in a remarkable report on the battle and its influence on shipbuilding.

“Experiments have shown,” he wrote, “that it is exceedingly difficult to hit an enemy at long range when the range is changing rapidly. This is, of course, not true at short range, but at long ranges half the danger spaces—those at which the gun sights must be set in order to hit—are so small, say 50 yards. The bearing of these facts on naval tactics is very important, since it means that, generally speaking, you cannot make many hits at long range while you are manœuvring. Conversely, you will not receive many hits at such a time, because, when at short ranges, the most dangerous position in which a ship can place itself is end-on to the enemy. It is usually assumed that this is equally true at all ranges; but this is not the case, provided the rate of change in fire is rapid.... From the point of view of the theory of gun-fire alone it would be unwise to think of building a man-of-war of any type having more than one calibre of gun in her main battery. In other words, it may be said that the abandonment of the mixed battery ships in favour of the all-big-gun one-calibre ship was directly caused by the recognition of certain fundamental principles of naval marksmanship developed by gunnery officers.”

There was no great heralding by trumpet-blast the arrival of the Dreadnought. The true significance of this vessel only became understood by degrees. The Admiralty kept its secret well: indeed, it may be doubted if an Admiralty secret has ever been so well kept before. A short paragraph in the papers was all that was vouchsafed for the edification of the public or the naval experts of other nations. It was known that a warship to bear the historic name of Dreadnought was to be launched, but the public took it for granted that it was an addition to some “programme” or other, and regarding modern battleships as too wonderful and too full of mechanism to be comprehended by ordinary mortals, was content to accept that much, and leave the rest to the experts. But the naval experts of the other powers were astounded when they learnt the march that Great Britain had stolen upon them. They appreciated to the full the importance of the new era in warship building which had been inaugurated, for they saw that England had a lead which they could not overtake, and that with her splendid resources she would be able to accept any challenge for rivalry for first position which any power might offer. The Dreadnought meant that any other warship afloat was already rendered out of date. Her gun-fire, as much by its weight as by the range of her guns, would enable her to pick and choose where and when and how she would fight, and her speed would enable her to prevent any ship, however powerful, from shrinking from a combat if the Dreadnought thought fit to insist upon one. It was even recognised that she was a match for two or three of the most powerful ships that could be brought against her, for her big guns would be equal to theirs in hitting power, and their smaller guns would be ineffective at the range at which she could fight. Again, by concentrating a portion of her fire upon one of her antagonists she would be able to crush it, and then turn her attention to the other two with the odds as represented by gun-fire distinctly in her favour. Some enthusiastic adherents of the Dreadnought even went so far as to assert that she was equal to half a dozen Lord Nelsons, but the more extreme views of this nature were rather severely criticised. It was not only in the number of big guns that the Dreadnought exceeded all previous ships, but in their penetrative quality also. Compared with those of the Majestic they are of about fifty per cent. greater power.

Lieut.-Commander Simms, however, was by no means the only one or the first to hold the views explained in his report. They were entertained by many authorities in other countries, and especially in England, and the recognition by this country of the importance of the theory led to the secrecy with which everything connected with the Dreadnought was invested.

One notable change introduced with the Dreadnought was that she had no intermediate or secondary armament. She carried ten 12-inch guns as her main battery, and some smaller guns to repel torpedo attack, but whereas the Lord Nelson had twenty-nine anti-torpedo boat guns the Dreadnought had but five, depending rather upon her smaller armament of twenty-four 3-inch quick-firers (12-pounders), and in addition she had five under-water torpedo tubes.

A Parliamentary Paper issued at the time described the arrangement of her guns as follows:—

Turbines were decided upon because it was held that their adoption conferred certain advantages which more than counterbalanced their disadvantages. Compared with reciprocating engines, they were said to be lighter, to have a less number of working parts, to work more smoothly and be more easily manipulated, and to be less liable to breakdown. They were claimed also to show a saving in coal consumption at high powers, and to require less boiler-room space and a smaller number of engineers to look after them. Another important consideration was that turbines could be placed lower in the ship. The point which chiefly occupied the committee was the question of providing sufficient stopping and turning power for quick and easy manœuvring. A series of experiments with pairs of sister ships, fitted respectively with reciprocating and turbine engines, and also at the Admiralty experimental works at Haslar, influenced the Admiralty in their decision in favour of turbines. The Dreadnought’s bunker capacity is 2,700 tons, with which she could steam 5,800 sea miles at economical speed, or 3,500 sea miles at 18½ knots, due allowance being made for extra consumption in bad weather, and for a small quantity being left in the bunkers. Oil fuel was not taken into account in estimating the ship’s radius of action, but a considerable quantity was arranged for and would, of course, greatly increase her effectiveness in this respect.

Another innovation in this remarkable ship was in the rearrangement of the principal officers’ quarters. Hitherto they had been accommodated as far as possible from the conning tower, where their most important duties were performed, but in this ship the admiral’s and captain’s quarters are placed on the main deck forward, near the conning tower. The officers’ quarters also are placed forward, both on the main deck and on the upper deck. Ample accommodation for the remainder of the crew is available on the main and lower decks aft.

Space does not permit—and to attempt it would be out of place in a book of this character, which does not profess to do more than indicate the general lines upon which the world’s warships have developed—of a detailed account of all the ships which have followed the Dreadnought. Some idea of the wonderful progress that has been made may be obtained from a comparison of the Dreadnought herself and one of her latest successors, the battleship Orion, in the matter of armament. The Dreadnought could fire on the broadside eight guns of 12-inch calibre, throwing projectiles of 850 lb. weight, her weight of broadside being 6,800 lb. The Orion has ten guns on the broadside having a calibre of 13½ inches, and throwing projectiles of 1,250 lb. in weight, the weight of broadside being 12,500 lb. Now, if we take the ships intended to be able to take their place in the line of battle since 1906, we find the evidence of development to be equally startling. The dimensions of the Lord Nelson and Agamemnon have already been referred to, and are of exceptional interest in this connection as showing the type of vessel the Dreadnought superseded. This vessel herself was exceeded slightly in displacement by the Bellerophon, Temeraire, and Superb, which had sixteen anti-torpedo boat 4-inch guns, as against the twenty-seven 12-pounders of the Dreadnought. The St. Vincent, completed in 1909, and her sisters the Vanguard and Collingwood, completed in 1910, are 500 feet in length by 84 feet beam, and have a displacement of 19,250 tons, and engines of 25,400 h.p.; their armoured belt is 9¾ inches thick amidships, tapering fore and aft to 6½ inches, while the armour of the barbettes is 11 inches in thickness, and the protective deck is 2¾ inches. They have the same number of big guns and torpedo tubes, but the number of the 4-inch anti-torpedo guns was increased to twenty, and they also had six Maxims. In 1911 the Colossus, Hercules and Neptune were launched, and showed a very great advance on those immediately before them. Their length was increased to 510 feet, and they were 86 feet in the beam and of 20,250 tons displacement, and their engines developed 25,000 h.p. Their armour was more powerful, as their water-line belt amidships was 10 inches thick, tapering to 8 inches forward and 7 inches aft; their armament was the same. These three ships were given conning towers with 11-inch armour. There were also launched in 1911 the Orion, Thunderer, Monarch, and Conqueror, built respectively at Portsmouth, Blackwall, Elswick and Dalmuir. These four vessels are so much larger and heavier than preceding ships of the all-big-gun type that they have been claimed as inaugurating another class. They carry ten 13.5 inch guns, which include the famous “12-inch A,” in five barbettes, all of which are on the centre line of the ship. These four vessels are each 545 feet in length between perpendiculars, and 584 feet over all, and have a beam of 88 feet 6 inches. The weight of the Orion at launching was about 8,000 tons, and her estimated load displacement is 22,500 tons. Her engines, developing 27,000 shaft h.p., are Parsons turbines, driving four shafts and screws, each having a turbine for ahead and astern, the ship having a nominal speed of 21 knots, which is expected to be exceeded. She has eighteen water-tube boilers, and can carry, besides 2,700 tons of coal, 1,000 tons of oil in her double bottom tanks. Her armour varies from 12 inches to 4 inches. Under ordinary circumstances the arrangement adopted for the guns would restrict their direct ahead and astern fire very materially, and in order to overcome this difficulty and double the gun-fire ahead or astern, the second and fourth pairs of guns are raised to fire above the others. Besides increasing the effectiveness of the end-on fire, it will also add materially to the weight of the broadside fire, as, the guns being on a different level, there will be less of what is known as the interference of one pair of guns with another, and the air will become clear the sooner so that the gunners will be able to take a more accurate aim than would otherwise be possible. There are also sixteen anti-torpedo 4-inch guns.

The Orion has about 2,000 tons more displacement than the Neptune, and this has enabled her to carry the heavier guns. She has one elevated tripod mast which is provided with wireless telegraphy apparatus. Her two funnels are of more than usual height, and steam is generated in a series of water-tube boilers. To summarise, by way of contrast, the armament arrangement of these ships, it may be said that the Dreadnought, the three Bellerophons, and the three St. Vincents have six 12-inch guns in three turrets on the middle line of the ship, and two in a turret on either wing. The Neptune, Colossus, and Hercules have their wing turrets en echelon, so that ten guns can be trained on either side. The Orions have all their guns on the centre line of the ship. Which of these systems is the best has been keenly debated. Experiments in gun-fire are being carried out to ascertain it, but the true test can only be warfare, and even then much will depend on the circumstances of the battle and on the men behind the guns.

The Hercules was the first of her class to be given only one mast. Of the centre-line turrets, one is forward and the other two are aft, and of these two the foremost can fire over that aft of it. This arrangement of the turrets makes it possible for ten of these immense guns to be fired on either broadside. There are also twenty 4-inch quick-firers and three submerged 21-inch torpedo tubes. Her maximum coal capacity is 2,700 tons and she can also carry oil fuel in her double bottom. She is a sister vessel to the Neptune and Colossus. These three vessels are protected against attack by aerial warships.

Like all the rest of the Dreadnoughts, the Neptune was constructed in unusually quick time, only two years elapsing from the laying of the keel until she was ready for being commissioned. She has been described as a 30 per cent. improvement on the Dreadnought, but the rapidity of her construction made her a cheaper vessel than the other, her cost per ton of displacement working out at £86.85, as against £101.29 for the Dreadnought.

The Monarch took the water with a launching weight of about 11,500 tons, a record for a warship, after having been just a year on the stocks. This weight included the main structure, the boilers, funnels, funnel uptakes, casings, and a large quantity of auxiliary machinery and armour. Her eighteen boilers weighed 23 tons each, and her two funnels, which are 53 feet high above the upper deck, weigh 18 tons apiece. The deck-houses and bridges were also in place, and she was in other respects in a forward condition. The whole of the work was carried out in 220 working days. This shows what can be done in the private ship-building yards of this country. Builders of warships now find it more economical to put as much work as possible into the hull before launching it, modern dockyard methods rendering this comparatively easy. A great boiler is raised bodily and lifted into position without trouble, and even items weighing 20 to 30 tons or more are lifted and deposited where wanted with no more trouble than if they weighed so many hundredweights.

Mention has been made in earlier pages of such splendid vessels as the Hood, Trafalgar, Nile and Royal Sovereign, all of which in their day, not so long past, were considered to be unsurpassed, and by some to be unsurpassable. Their fighting efficiency is as great as the day they were launched, yet these and many others, equally good vessels, have been removed from the list of the Navy as obsolete and ere long will retire ingloriously to the scrap-heap. All these vessels have been launched since 1890, and however much one may deplore that such fine ships should be discarded, there is no denying that they are hopelessly outclassed by the Dreadnoughts, and that a dozen of them would not be a match for one of the latest Orions. Yet more than one of them was hailed as the last word in battleships, and there were some who asserted that they would prove to be the last big armoured ships to be built, as torpedo craft and protected cruisers would constitute the navies of the future. But that prophecy was made before the Battle of Tsushima was fought, and the lessons it taught were learnt.

Protests by naval men against the relegation of these ships to the lists of the useless have been frequent, and it has been contended that some of these fine old battleships could have been sent to the Colonies to act as harbour-defence vessels. But the Colonies have shown no disposition to be satisfied with anything under the best that money can buy, and they have contended that if a ship be out of date it is no use to them, especially as any hostile power sending a ship out against them would probably send one of the best and newest and most powerful.

The compound armour produced in 1879 enabled the thickness of armour carried to be reduced to 18 inches, and proved equal to the attacks of the 80-ton gun of the period, but was ultimately beaten by heavier guns and improved projectiles. All-steel armour was introduced in 1890, and was followed in 1892 by the super-carburising and subsequent chilling of the face of plates made of nickel steel. Five years later steel plates were made yet harder, until the 9-inch plate of the modern battleship was equal to a 13-inch plate of the early hardened type; or a 20-inch compound plate of the ’eighties, or a 26-inch wrought-iron plate of the ’sixties.[59]

The modern 12-inch gun, it has been pointed out, with a muzzle velocity of 2,859 feet per second, can penetrate the thickest armour on any of the ships of the Majestic class at a range of 12,700 yards; the ships of the Duncan class would suffer at about the same range; that of the Ocean class would be penetrated at 13,350 yards; and that of the Formidables at over 11,000 yards. The broadside water-line belt of any of these ships could be perforated by the same gun at any range up to the limit of observation. On the other hand, the primary guns of the ships of the classes named could only perforate the water-line belt of the Dreadnoughts at from 7,000 to 9,000 yards range, the former being the range of the Oceans for this purpose. The modern ship could smash the others without receiving a hit in return. Even if they did succeed in getting close enough to use their heavier guns and the 6-inch guns as well, they would be exposed to the risk of a much severer blow in return. This is not the only consideration. Rapidity of gun-fire has to be taken into account. The Majestic’s four 12-inch guns can only fire six rounds each in ten minutes or twenty-four rounds in all in that time, and the other three classes named could fire forty rounds per ship in a ten minutes’ action. The Dreadnoughts of 1906-7 could reply with 120 rounds, and the latest type of Dreadnought with 150 rounds, using the 12-inch guns, and of course the disparity would be even greater with the newest guns.[60]

The rapidity of fire of the large guns has been greatly increased of late years, and compared with the destructive effects inflicted by some of the guns they have superseded, notwithstanding that the changes were not brought about without encountering some opposition, the new guns are held to have justified their selection to the fullest. The experiments made in firing on old battleships have shown what the guns then considered sufficient could accomplish, and as the muzzle velocity and muzzle energy and the other scientific data could all be calculated to a nicety, and the effects on certain constructions of armour when struck by projectiles of certain shapes and weights could be estimated approximately and verified by actual experiment, it became really a question for the gun-makers whether they could produce a weapon which, at the range at which modern actions at sea are likely to be fought in the future, would be able to penetrate the heaviest armour which could be placed on a battleship of known displacement. This problem has exercised the artillerists of all nations with naval aspirations, particularly those of Great Britain, Germany, Italy and the United States, and of recent years Japan. Austria has usually been content to follow the lead of Germany in this respect, and the other powers, such as the South American States, China, and the smaller European States, have had to content themselves with the advice of the experts in the gun-manufacturing countries, except when political necessities and diplomatic pressure have regulated their choice for them, to the financial advantage of the vendors. Some of the most powerful warships afloat have been designed by private firms, notably those built at Barrow, or on the Tyne, or at Liverpool, for the South American States, the Minas Geraes and her two sisters being conspicuous examples. These vessels have each twelve 12-inch guns, twenty-two 4.7 quick-firers, and eight 3-pounder quick-firers, and four torpedo tubes. Their displacement is 19,250 tons, their horse-power indicated 24,500, and their speed 21 knots.

The other nations made up their minds that they must follow the lead that England had set, and have Dreadnought ships as good as hers or better. The naval architects of the powers have since been engaged in a struggle to surpass each other and England in particular. The name-ship has been so much improved upon in recent designs that she is as inferior to the last of the super-Dreadnought battleships as the displaced pre-Dreadnoughts were to her.

One American legislator, unaware of the historical significance of the name of the Dreadnought, suggested at Washington that the United States should “go one better” by building the “United States warship Skeered-o’-Nothing,” with thirty or forty guns—a few big guns more or less apparently did not matter to this naval humorist—and let England see that there was a flag called “Old Glory” which could also brave the battle and the breeze. The suggestion was a sample of that peculiar humour, now, happily, almost moribund, in the Great Republic, and usually estimated at its proper value; it was taken seriously, however, in some quarters, and it was shown to be impossible to build a vessel which should carry forty guns larger than those of the Dreadnought, and be faster.

Modern American battleships have attracted more than ordinary attention by the daring character of the innovations the naval architects of that country have not hesitated to introduce. The armament of the Kearsarge and Kentucky was extremely powerful, and its arrangement was unique. There were two turrets with walls 13 inches thick, each containing two 13-inch guns; and above each of these turrets was a smaller turret with 9-inch walls, in which were two 8-inch guns. This gave two two-storeyed turrets with four guns to each; either pair of guns could be fired independently of the other pair, but they could not be aimed independently, and when it was necessary to turn the turret all four guns had to go with it. This experiment, though apparently excellent in theory, did not prove satisfactory in practice, and the designs for subsequent vessels which were to have had similar turrets were altered. Other nations have not taken kindly to the idea, and have not adopted it, and too many objections have been raised to the proposal that the upper and lower turrets should be constructed so as to revolve independently of each other for this plan to be given serious trial. Some of the American vessels have been fitted with what are known as lattice masts, or miniature Eiffel towers. It is claimed for them that they are of great strength for their weight, and that they are less likely than the military mast or the tripod mast to be utterly destroyed by gun-fire. The naval authorities of the other powers are interested but not converted.

When the Dreadnought was launched, the Americans replied with the ships of the Delaware class, of 20,000 tons and carrying ten 12-inch guns. The French had done very little for some time in the building of big ships, seeming to prefer smaller ships in greater number, but they too fell into line and built the Danton and others. The Danton was built in four years, which contrasts favourably with the seven years spent on some French ships.

Germany, in constructing her modern fleet, had to bear in mind that the waters round her coasts are rather shallow, but she has produced some splendid ships of great fighting power and high speed. She has some ships under construction more powerful than any at present in her navy, and one of these—the cruiser Moltke—is expected to be quite as good as anything England or America can show.

So great has been the demand for Dreadnoughts, that at the beginning of this year, for Great Britain alone, there were built or building no fewer than twenty-two, and arrangements had been made for laying down five more; while for foreign powers there have been constructed, or were still in the builders’ hands, up to January last, the enormous total of sixty. The average cost of these vessels has not been much short of a couple of millions sterling, and some have cost fully £2,300,000. The Dreadnought type has admittedly not reached its maximum development yet, and it may well be asked, where is it to stop? At present battleships of a somewhat smaller type are being advocated.

What will be the type of the battleship of the future? Revolutionary as have been the developments in the nineteenth century, great as have been the changes in the last twenty-five years, marvellous as has been the adaptation of scientific discoveries and appliances to the means for conducting naval warfare, it would be an idle boast for anyone to say that he can see finality. The dream to render war impossible by the introduction of some dread weapon has been entertained by many inventors, but never a one of them has seen its fulfilment. When steam-driven armoured warships were proposed, there were not wanting those who declared that henceforth fleets of wooden walls were doomed, and that naval war would become an impossibility. Yet the wooden walls have passed away, the nations unanimously adopted the newer methods, and the contingency of naval war must ever be provided for. The heavily armoured iron ship, carrying few guns of enormous power, came; and when at last it was found that were the armour made much thicker the ship would sink under the weight of her own protection and armament, and that guns could be constructed to smash that armour, again the hope was entertained that the limit had been reached, that naval warfare had become an impossibility, and that the world’s highways on the vast and beautiful ocean should be devoted solely to the purposes of commerce and peace. But science had already come to the rescue and dispelled the illusion before it was half-formed. Steel, at first gradually and then wholly, took the place of iron in the building of ships, the production of guns, and the manufacture of projectiles. Steel itself has been improved since it was made possible by the Bessemer process, and Harveyised steel, Krupp steel, and steel toughened with nickel or chrome or tungsten, or by what is known as the Simpson process, have all been tried and have all proved their value. The science of ballistics has made equal progress, and the development of the resources of marine engineering are little short of the miraculous. And the end is not yet!

There are guns in existence which at their maximum elevation will hurl a projectile weighing not far short of three-quarters of a ton a distance of 25 miles, and the projectile itself contains an explosive charge more powerful and destructive than the heaviest charge which could be placed in the heaviest gun which was fought in the Battle of Trafalgar. The whole fleet which bombarded Alexandria would be no match for the latest Orion, and the Orion herself at no very distant date will be removed from the list of effective ships as obsolete, or as having only a doubtful fighting value. Scientific development cannot be arrested, and the only hope is that some day the inventions for war purposes will have become so terrible that the dream of inventors that they have made war impossible will be realised. In the meantime, science is seeking to surpass all its present achievements. The marine steam engine, of whatever type, will give way to the internal combustion engine of a type which will surpass all the existing machinery as surely as the best turbines are ahead of the old compound engines. The battleship of the future will have an armament surpassing in effective range and penetrative power anything at present afloat, and an armour as far in advance of the present steel armour as that is ahead of the compound armour it but lately supplanted. The adoption of the internal combustion engine will mean the removal from the ship’s deck of the obstructions which now find a place there. With no furnaces, there will be no funnels. An armoured citadel, flush decked from end to end, has been prophesied as a coming type in the early future, with one mast for signalling purposes and to convey the wireless telegraphy apparatus, the necessary ventilators, and the conning towers as the only breaks in the smoothness of the deck. Submarine signalling, already in extensive use in warships and the mercantile marine, is being improved beyond all comparison with what it was a few years ago, and if the wireless apparatus be shot away it will still be possible for a ship to signal by the other method over a distance of some miles. Moreover, submarine signalling will enable an admiral to judge how an enemy’s fire may be affecting a distant ship of his own squadron. Size will be another feature of the coming battleship, for in size lies one of the chief protections from the attack of the most insidious and most to be feared naval weapons of the present, as well as the future. The submarine ship will launch its torpedo at a greater range as the propelling machinery of the torpedo is strengthened, and, granted that the aim is true, the only hope the great warship will have of surviving the explosion of the under-water weapon will lie in the number of compartments into which her dimensions will permit of her hull being subdivided or her double bottom to accommodate, thereby restricting the area of the damage and limiting the inrush of water.

The torpedo itself is destined to play a part more important than has yet fallen to its lot in war. Not only will it be launched from the tubes of the battleship or cruiser or destroyer at the distant foe, but it will be dirigible, controlled and steered by wireless telegraphy, and extra speed, or counter explosion, or gun-fire, or the disablement of the vessel sending it forth will alone be the means of rendering it ineffective. Torpedo nets may be of value when ships are at anchor or travelling slowly, but not at any other time.

The submarine will not be the only danger to be guarded against from an unexpected quarter. The aeroplane and airship will play their parts in the next naval war. Experiments have already been tried in starting a flight of an aeroplane from a platform at the bows of an American warship, and this being accomplished, it is not too much to anticipate that aeroplanes for purposes of observation or attack may become part of the equipment of every battleship or large cruiser. The flying machine will drop its bomb on the deck of the attacked vessel, if the aviator has the good fortune to aim sufficiently straight, but whether the dropped explosive will do much harm will depend on whether the deck is comparatively flat as at present, or is curved like the modern protective deck, or has a bomb-proof turtle back covering it entirely. Will the battleship of the future, then, be an immense cylindrical-backed hull, with one mast or none, innocent of funnels, leaving no trace of smoke behind her, and rushing at a speed of a railway train as she belches forth with almost unerring precision terrible explosives at a similar enemy so far distant as to be barely discernible on the horizon? Are we to see cruisers as much faster than the battleship, as the present cruiser is than the present Dreadnought? If, as is asserted to be possible, the battleship of twenty years hence will attain a speed of 30 knots under internal combustion engines, armed with weapons showing a corresponding advance in power and range and penetration, will the cruiser of that time cover its 40 or 45 knots, and the destroyer hurl itself forward at even greater speed to explode its torpedo, also correspondingly more destructive and deadly than now, at its foes? Will the aeroplane enable the whereabouts of the submarine to be more easily detected than now? It sounds like a confusion of ideas that such a thing should be suggested, but it is a well-established fact that it is possible to see further into the open sea from a height above it than when close to the surface. If the cruising aeroplane can detect and reveal the submarine to the battleship, the submarine will be robbed of half its terrors, and if the aeroplane can drop an explosive sufficiently near to the submarine it is not improbable that the career of the latter will be terminated instantly. The same fate may await the submarine as the result of the aeroplane signalling its whereabouts, for recent experiments have shown that it is possible for a warship to sink a submarine by gun-fire, even when the latter is several feet under the surface, the victim in this case being the ill-fated A1. Thus, it is not at all improbable that the under-water craft may find the swift aeroplane its greatest and most to be dreaded enemy. The aeroplane will be attacked by other aeroplanes, and aerial navies may yet be seen “grappling in the central blue,” fighting their battles on their own account and so high among the clouds as to be almost out of reach of the guns which might be directed against them. Are these ideas but visions and day dreams? It is impossible to say. Yet they have one and all been enunciated by naval experts and strategists. Whether these are the lines upon which the navy of the not distant future will operate, time alone will show. Events point in their direction. But one thing is assured, and that is that, marvellous as have been the developments in the last twenty-five years, it will indeed be strange if the developments of the next twenty-five years do not surpass them.