TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1893. The Loss of the Victoria

Feilding Star, 27 June 1893, Page 2

TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1893. The Loss of the Victoria

• Ths dreadful calamity which sent so many brave men into eternity a few days ago, on the occasion of the , foundering of H. M.S. Victoria, in the Mediterranean Bea, has excited the , sympathy of the whole of the civilized world. The fleet under Admiral • Tryon were maneuvering in a calm sea, when the Camperdown of 10 guns, 10,600 tons, and 11,500 h. p., ; rammed the Victoria, 15 (runs, 1-1,000 h.p. The officers on board the Victoria appear, judging from the meagre intelligence we hare received, > to have been quite unprepared for any contingency of the kind, because immediately after the collision the water-tight compartments were not dosed— for want of time. To us it appears that there was a certain amount of neglect, because as the ships were cleared for action this surely ought to have been a necessary part of the whole proceeding. Possibly, for purposes of ventilation it ; was omitted, with the result that [ many valuable lives were sacrificed, ! and hundreds of families in Great Britain made to mourn. Thiß loss I should go far to prove that these huge iron monsters are unfit for ocean warfare if they are so easily destroyed. The case of the Victoria i is not an isolated one. Since the loss of the Captain, over 20 years ago, England has lost more warship*, by ! accident or misadventure, than she I ever lost in the same number of ' years in the old naval wars, when she ; was fighting the whole world on the beeom of old ocean. With the wooden ships of war of that period ' engagements sometimes lasted for : days, and when victory went to the I best seamen, as the English were in l those days, the hulls of the victors, as ! well as those of the vanquished, were patched up in a rough and ready, but perfeotly efficient, sort of way, and, with tho help of good seamanship, brought into a friendly port. lastances of preventable losses were very rare, and the sinking of the Royal George, at Spithcad, was as surprising to the nation as it was shocking. Of course, in this age of progress, as we are pleased to call it, old ideas, aa well as old knowledge, . must give place to new notions and new experiments. The premier idea of shipbuilders in the old war times was to launch a vessel that would be able to meet the storms of the ocean i as well as the enemies of their country. . That is not the idea apparently of our present builders of warships. Common sense has been pushed aside by alleged ' science. Everything is done by calcu lation. Figures are made to prove that because a certain Wright of iron — above and below the water line — a vague term at any time — displaces so much water, therefore she will also have a certain buoyancy (very neatly and accurately expressed in decimals) on paper. So many inches in thickness of armour will resist so many tons in motion and applied hy an enemy's ship coming against the former at so many knots an hour. But where there is the slightest contretemps all of these calculations are proved to be valueless and these ships go to the bottom. Lord Uras.sey, who knows something about stiip building, has declared, of course after the accident, that these ships are two large and too unweildy, and his oppinion appears to be a correct one, Since our last issue we have been told that the steering gear of the Victoria was weak, and experts believe that the whole side of the Victoria was ripped out by the Camperdown and thus prevented the closing of the bulkheads. Jf tlie.se two statements may be accepted as reliable, then w« hold it as disgraceful that so important a part of the machinery of the ship should be out of order, and that the iinnour plates of the Victoria should l>e ho flimsy as to be torn even l.y a vessel so nearly her own weight as was the Camperdown. If these accideuts or mishaps can occur in ttiii(*>» of peace the prospects of what may happen in actual war are not cheerful, AVc believe that if warlike nation*

benefit by the experiences of the paat, in a few years time armoured ships of war will be as obaolite aa the armour clad knights of old who disappeared from the battlefields of the world shortly after the invention of gunpowder.