SHIPS THAT PASS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 12, 28 July 1919, Page 5

SHIPS THAT PASS

THE END OF THE NAVY'S VETERANS

SOME RECOLLECTIONS

(By the Naval Correspondent of the London "Observer.")

The end of the great struggle is to bring sweeping changes in the Fleet which held the seas victoriously—or, rather, to the Navy of which that Fleet was the spear-head. Virtually, every battleship, every armoured cruiser, and . Bvery light cruiser which was 'built before the "Dreadnought era" will go upon the scrap heap. There are a few exceptions. The Lord Nelson and Agamemnon. apparently, are to be retained for a while longer,/and the old Highflyer, a vessel -which has always been a favourite, for some reason, will be flagship in the East Indies. But, with these exceptions, everything antecedent to tlio Dreadnought is under sentenqo. If we couple with this fact the further information that work has been stopped on all battleslips and battle-cruisers under construction save the Hood we see pretty clearly what the Admiralty policy of the immediate future is to bo. It might be summed up in the sentence: "Few but fit." But the use of the word "few" is comparative only. There will be a great saving in men, but tho British.Navy will remain easily the first in the world. If the des.ira to outbuild us materialises w any quarter, it is evident that we shall nave to set to work to build new vessels oi equal or superior power to those ordBred by our competitors, friendly or otherwise. The situation could not be met by keeping old ships on the Navy List and publishing addition sums of their ton/'"i 1 ? 16 l las keen t°° much eyewash of that kind in the past. The war has shown the weakness of vessels, even the latest and most powerful-of the praDreadnought era, in armament, in speed, ind in protection, especially' in underr/ater protection. It is perfectly true that the war has also shown that a use can be found for almost every vessel, however old and wer.k. But it has also shown the wastefulness of using ships requiring many hundreds of men to work and fight them for functions which would be better discharged by smaller and less costly vessels. The fate of the three Cressys taught us that lesson very early in the history,of the struggle. But to the very end we, perforce, kept vessels like the Minotaur "barging about, on the verge of the Arctic circle to enforce the blockade, eating coal, locking up hundreds of men, anil presenting Mr unnecessarily large target, for enemy submarines. The mistake is one which •m i llo ' Te P ea ' e( l.- 'I'he Admiralty will be more sparing of its own hiehl.y paid personnel. A couplo of huncirec: men will do the work on which six hundred or more were employed; at least, until we find cursives with a new drove oi white elephants on our hands.' In . thß meautmie, the old drove are for extinction. There may bo something in be said *for keeping some of the snialler vessels-of the older type in reserve—suo.h of tho old second and third-class cruisers as were not worn out, for instance. But it is hard to see what argument can be u , r tlle decision to scrap the old battleships and the armoured cruisot's ol 10,000 tons and upwards. None of them, perhaps, has made themselves the reputation of the "Fighting Temeraire. At any rate, there is ao iurner to paint them, and no New t0 , 61 i l ? g ! llem - But tlloS e who have followed 1 the fortunes of the Navy for the last five-and-twenty years will be sorry enough to seo some of them go. The llajesfios-to take the oldest class firstrestored beauty to the ships of the lino. I'oregoing types of turret ships had been , monstrosities. Tliese were ships oiun more, their lines more graceful than oi the wooden three-decker, although they lacked the romantic chann of their spread of canvas. One of the . l 0 P r * nce George, had a caret;r full of hair-breadth escapes. She was rammed by her "opposite member/' the Hannibal, during night manoeuvres. She was cut down to the water-line and nearly sunk. •• Lord* Charles Beresford, commanding the Fleet, went on board hoi* and coolj; supervised the operations which resulted in saving her. • Her last advonhire was off Cape Helles, where she embarked the erearguard in the evacuation, and was struck by .a torpedo as sho steamed away—a "dud"! The Jupiter, oi. this class, has been'employed as pn ice-breaker at Archangel. ' Of the Canopus class, two lie at the bottom of the Aegean—Ocean and Goliath. Of the remainder the Oanopus .. herself did servico Bast and West in tho Avar. She was sent on the hopeless errant of supporting Cradock against von opee, but later avenged her impotence by acting as the lure which, to some extent at any rate, brought him to the Falkland Islands. Another of the class, the Aubion, is remembered by tho disaster which occurred at her launch on the .I'hames, when tho wave caused by her taking tlie water washed away a stage on which many spectators-were standing and caused the deaths of several people The Glory, another of the -type, , has been "doing her bit" recently—if sho -is not still—in the Arctic circle. (.'' the eight Foriiiidables three have Vuished during tho war-the Buhvarkby internal explosion, tho Formidable beniif torpedoed in the Channel, and the Irresistible mined in tho attack ion the Dardanelles. Tho Venerable, it will be remembered, took part in the earliest bombardments of the German positions on Ins Belgian coast. Three of the next class, the Exmouths, ■ have been. lost— the Montagu, through goiug ashore oil Ludv the Russell and Coriiwallis by submarine action during the war. Tho Swiftsure, one of the two battleships purchased from the Chilian Government to mevent their falling into the hands of the Russians at the outbreak of the Jiiwinese war, lost Her sister ship, the Triumph, in tho Aegean tho day before the Majestic was sunk. They were never well fitted for tho British Navy, and wove long ago relegated to guardship duties in China and the Bast Indies. Their disappearance will occasion little rigret.' • Bui what of the King Edward VII class—the "wobbly eight," as they were called—actually tho Third Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet when war broko out? Their disappearance will naturally cause somo surprise. , They were the last battleships designed by Sir William White, and the keel of the King Edward was only laid in 1903, by his late Majesty himself, on the same day that Queen Alexandra launched tho Queen at Pev(.aport. With a riso in displacements of some 1500 tons, and the addition of four 9.2-inch guns to tho stand- • ard armament of tho day, they were regarded as something of a new- departure in naval design. They were; for the further raising of tho armament brought the gunnery problem to a head, and led to its solution -in the all-big-gun ship, ihey wore one stepping-stone in this direction. and tho Lord Nelsons, with their 12-mch and ten 9.2-inch the next. After these the resort to'ono calibre was inevit?b!fe. Their soubriquet of "the wobbly eight was owing to the extremely small turning oircle with which they were endowed. and the consequent difficulty of regu,fitmg the helm. The King Edward VII was sunk by a mine during the war, and the Britannia torpedoed off Gibraltar en the evo of the armistice. The six others survive.

i ? armoured cruisers to be disposed of the most famous are those by Lord Goschen as "mighty" cruisers, of which tho Good Hope, given |).V Cnpo Colony to the Navy, on -tho initiative of Mr. Jan Hofraoyr, for long (he flagship of Mr. Percy Scott, and eventually sunk at Coronel, was the best known. The other three, Drake, King .Alfred, and Leviathan remain. The King Alfred, was torpedoed in tho last months of the war while on convoy duty, but survived the attack. '"Mighty" they were at their date, but their rapid define in comparative value shows the pace at which naval thought has moved in twenty years. /They had two fatal defects; their primary armament was insufficiently strong, and the secondary not powerful enough to back it, and their plain deck guns could not be fought in a seaway. And these weaknesses operated with fatal effects at Coronel.

The Duke of Edinburgh is tho only survivor of Sir Robert Arbuthnot's squadron which perished at Juttand. Tho unfortunate incident, whatever the cause, which entangled our under-gunned and under-protected armoured cruisers with the German battle-fleet helped to swell total of our losses and lend corroboration to the German claim of a victory. As a matter of fact, the ships were of less value than tho light cruisers in

which:.the Germans lost so heavily, but the loss of life was altogether incommensurate to the value of the ships. Therein we learned a lesson the fruits of which may be, seon in the scrapping policy now entered upon. It is a repetition, under altered circumstances, of Lord Fisher's "courageous strokes of the pen," and, being, the fruit of war experience, it, ex post facto, justifies the action taken by him in 1004. GERARD FINNES.