present Paper naval requirements are the chief consideration. From this point of view the arguments are cogent in favour of liberality in subsidies. Let it not be argued too strictly with the Colonies as to the amount and the incidence of subsidies. It is a high imperial duty to connect by fast services Canada and Australia with the Motherland. Swift communications encourage and facilitate trade. An imperial postal service, running fortnightly to Australia and weekly to Canada, would form a splendid reserve of scouts for the Navy. It would be a bond of empire. The scouts might be utilized for the training of naval engineers and stokers. The valuable school of training formerly afforded by the Indian and other troopships has ceased to exist. Proposals have been made for structural modifications, with a view to the protection of the auxiliary vessels by armour. The amount of protection which could be given may not be sufficient to justify the cost: the essential thing is the speed, which is the best security against capture. The subject was considered by a Committee appointed by the Admiralty. It would be interesting to know whether the opinions of members of the Committee are in any way changed in view of recent experiences. To conclude. It is vain to hope for finality in shipbuilding. The progress of invention is unceasing; and with every development in the propelling machinery, the gun, the torpedo, and the resistance of armour, designs must be reconsidered. The best ship is a compromise. In the past a Committee of Design, formed outside the Admiralty, laid down a shipbuilding policy which, as Sir William White has testified, was followed for many years. The Admiralty will be strengthened by the Special Committee on Designs recently appointed. It has been decided that its proceedings shall be confidential, and therefore they cannot aid in forming an instructed public opinion on the work of the Constructor's department. This Institution is not under the same restrictions. It may, from time to time, do good service by discussions on the many professional questions connected with shipbuilding for the Navy. They are of exceeding complexity, and of momentous import to the country. It is well to hear all that the best men have to say. No descriptions having been given to Parliament in the recent debates, the designs for the new ships, to be laid down in 1905–6, are probably still under revision. The time seems opportune for examination and inquiry, and for the free exchange of views between experts not bound to official secrecy, The President. The Author. Discussion. The PRESIDENT moved a hearty vote of thanks to the Author for his Paper. The AUTHOR hoped that, as one of the oldest Associates of the Institution, yet speaking within its walls for the first, and not improbably for the last time, he might be permitted in a few words to recall the past. He could look back, over nearly a half a century, to the time when his father was elected an Associate of the Institution-a distinction which was highly appreciated. Around the walls hung the portraits of his father's contemporaries and friends, and they called up many memories. Under Telford, the first President, his father was employed on the survey of the Holyhead Road. His father's first contract was on the Grand Junction Railway under the elder Stephenson, to whose distinguished son Lord Brassey owed his election to the Royal Yacht Squadron. Locke gave him his first day's shooting; and, as a small boy, he walked side by side with Cubitt the whole distance from London to Peterborough, on the occasion of an inspection of the works. in progress on the Great Northern Railway. With Sir John Hawkshaw he went to Paris as the deputation to enlist the support of the Emperor Napoleon III., for the project of a Channel Tunnel, receiving, at the close of a long interview, the not too encouraging answer, "Well, gentlemen, this will always interest me very much!" Of the past it might truly be said, "There were giants in the earth in those days." The memories of these men would be always revered within the walls of the Institution. Requiescant! "They rest from their labours and their works do follow them." Turning to the subject under consideration, it was not the first time he had sought to recommend that some ships of moderate dimensions should be included in the programme of shipbuilding. He offered himself as a target for the criticisms which he knew he must expect from Admiral Fitzgerald, and probably also from Sir William White. He appreciated the standpoint of the naval architect, and he admitted that the arguments were strong in favour of increased size. A nobler structure was produced; a greater triumph of the arts of design and construction was attained. With increased dimensions there was more than a proportionate gain in speed, in coal-capacity, in armour and armament. The arguments on the other side did not make themselves felt until the risks of actual warfare were experienced. He sub- The Author. mitted that the experience which had been gained recently should make the nation pause and consider well how far it was politic to go in for increasing dimensions. Below the belt the largest ships were not less vulnerable than those of less dimensions. The proof of this was to be found in the incidents of the war in the Far East. On the 8th February, 1904, the Russian battleships "Tsarevitch " and "Retvisan," and the cruiser "Pallada" were torpedoed. On the 12th April the Russian flagship "Petropavlovsk" was sunk by a mine, and the battleship " Poltava" was either damaged by a mine or torpedoed. On the 14th May the Japanese cruiser " Miyako" was blown up while sweeping for mines at Dalny. On the 15th May the Japanese battleship "Hatsuse," 15,000 tons-representing one-seventh of Japan's battleship force-was blown up by a mine; and on the same day the Japanese protected cruiser "Yoshino" was sunk by collision in a fog. It had been persistently stated -he did not know with how much truth that the battleship "Yashima," 12,200 tons, had been sunk by a mine. He would not include the five Russian battleships destroyed in December at Port Arthur, or the cruiser "Rurik" sunk in the action fought on the 14th August. They had been destroyed by gun-fire. It would perhaps be contended that if those ships had been of larger dimensions, and more fully protected, they might have resisted better. The risk on which he desired to insist was the risk of destruction through injuries below the belt, injuries against which armour gave no protection. He had insisted in the Paper on the risks of navigation. The experiences-more than once repeated-of the German navy in the Baltic in peace exercises, or those of the British navy, especially the position of Sir Geoffrey Hornby, in taking the ground when leading his fleet through the Dardanelles, might be recalled; or even incidents in the battles of the Nile and Copenhagen. To himself, as no doubt to other members of the Institution, the personal argument was very weighty. On the list of Captains there were many highly-trained officers burning with the desire to fight for their country, should occasion require it. In fleets consisting of units costing £2,000,000 or more, how few of those men would have a chance! As pointed out in the Paper, it was not a question of economy. He did not propose to put fewer guns afloat, but he did urge the advantage of distributing those guns in more ships. He admitted it would be at a 1 Since this discussion took place it has been announced officially that such was the fate of the "Yashima," on the 15th May.-SEC. INST. C.E. The Author. greater cost, but he contended the advantages would be worth the extra expenditure. The naval warfare of the past differed widely from modern conditions; yet it must not be forgotten how poor was the resistance of the big ships of the Spanish Armada to the smaller and handier vessels of the Elizabethan Navy. Again, comparing the lists of ships engaged at Trafalgar—representing the experiences of many years of war-the largest ships were not found in the British line of battle. As to authorities, he had quoted freely from a French Committee, and he might quote in the same sense an English Committee, appointed a few years ago to consider the design of battleships, on which sat Lord George Hamilton, Sir Anthony Hoskins, Sir John Hopkins, Lord Walter Kerr, the Director of Naval Ordnance, and the Director of Naval Construction. Before that Committee the question of speed and dimensions had arisen, the question being whether 15 knots per hour for continued steaming under natural draught, in favourable circumstances, and 17 knots as a maximum speed with forced draught, might be regarded as sufficient for first-class battleships. The general opinion of the Committee had been that those speeds were sufficient, in view of the considerable increase in size and cost involved in obtaining higher speeds; and that it would be preferable, for a given expenditure, to have a larger number of vessels capable of those speeds than one or two vessels of higher speed. That was the view he had endeavoured to impress upon the Institution. Admiral Admiral C. C. PENROSE FITZGERALD remarked that all through the Fitzgerald. Paper there was evident a desire to substitute something less expensive for the first-class battleship of 15,000 tons. It had been urged that, in order to save cost, smaller and cheaper ships, of inferior power, should take the place of first-class battleships. The Author would like to see the guns distributed in a larger number of vessels, and argued that if the armament of the "Lord Nelson" were put into two ships of the "Vittorio Emanuele III." type, there would be the same number of guns afloat, but better distributed, though the two ships would cost 2 millions sterling instead of 1 million for one. Now the first law of tactics was to bring the greatest possible strength to a given spot at a given time. Ships degenerated with time, and to build second-class ships was to anticipate what would take place naturally, and what had been going on ever since ironclads were first built. Firstclass ships became in time second-class, and then third-class, and then went to the scrap-heap; and to hasten that deterioration by building smaller ships was, he thought, bad policy. But there was a much stronger reason against the smaller ship. A ship of, Admiral say, 15,000 tons ought to have 50 per cent. more fighting-power Fitzgerald. than a 10,000-ton ship. He would not argue the interesting question whether French, German, or Italian naval architects could obtain more fighting-power for a given tonnage than English architects: he would simply ask the members to grant that, given the same skill in design, in contemporary ships tonnage meant power. Arguing on this basis, a fleet of ten ships of 15,000 tons each, and another fleet of fifteen battleships of 10,000 tons each, ought to be of the same nominal strength; but he did. not think there was an admiral in the world who, for tactical reasons, would not rather command the ten ships of 15,000 tons than the fifteen ships of 10,000 tons. Two smaller ships could not manoeuvre in the space required by a large vessel. Again, the 15,000-ton ship was bound to have thicker armour. Everything pointed to the fact that instead of the mêlée of which the Author spoke, fighting would be carried on outside torpedo-range. That was the principle adopted in all manoeuvres, and it had obtained in the only naval action fought in the war in progress in the Far East, where the ships fought at 5,000 to 6,000 yards. At that range it was highly probable that many of the guns of the 10,000-ton ships would not pierce the armour of the 15,000-ton ships, whereas many of the guns of the 15,000-ton vessels would pierce the armour of the smaller vessels. thought, was a very strong point. The bigger ship also was bound to be the steadier gun-platform. Then there was the moral effect on the men fighting in the stronger ship-a very important matter. All those things could not be disregarded, and they pointed to the conclusion that the power should be concentrated in big ships. It had been said that the 74-gun ship in the old days played the chief part in many of England's important naval actions. No doubt that was so, but the old seadogs fought in 74-gun ships because they had them, not because they liked them. When they captured an 80-gun ship they quickly fitted her out and used her. The famous French ship "Franklin," re-named "Canopus," captured at the Battle of the Nile, was an 80-gun ship. She was not only in the English Navy up to the middle of the last century, but she had served as a model for other ships. A large class of ships had been built after her model, and had been sailing up to the time when he joined the Navy. The Battle of the Nile was won by 74-gun ships, and by nothing else, except one 60-gun vessel; but that was because the That, he |