MAGIC NAVIES.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 November 1918, Page 4

MAGIC NAVIES.

GIANT GUNS

In the Sydney Sim, Mr H. Camp-bell-Jon.es, managing editor of the paper named, one of the Imperial Press lagitons wrote as follows to the Sun, under date of London, August 2l: The greatest fleet in the world; the second strongest fleet in tho world. Both are possessed by the British Empire. Sydney sleeps soundly; civilisation is safe liecauso this Empire of ours owns a navy without parallel in the annals of this old earth. There is nothing else like it. There has never been anything approaching it. Other nations in the past have lorded it over one or two oceans; but none have even been able to assert its supremacy in the seven seas with such irrefragable evidence of predominance. To be privileged to see the sea strength of Great Britain and her dominions is to realise why the Gorman High Seas Fleet" remains snugly tucked away in home waters. 'To challenge superiority would ho madness, | and the German Admiralty is not I mad—at least, not at present. I MILES OF WARSHIPS.

Those of us who watched the Great White Fleet of America, powerful battleships, plod ponderously up our landlocked harbours, experienced the thrills which springs from the visualising of a country’s might and majesty concentrated and expressed in ships 01 war. Picture them, if you can, not great ships, but miles of greater ships. And then remember that this amazing aggregation of battleships and battlecruisers and cruisers and destroyers and submarines only represents a majority of the wondrous navy which has foiled the Hohenzollern aspirations. The rest are elsewhere by the tens and hundreds and thousands. Never did the sun rise on such a stupendous massing of floating fortresses. There they lay, not in single line, hut in line after line from horizon to horizon—and beyond each one a large village in manpower, each one a Gibraltar in war dynamics, each one the supreme symbol of massive potency. BACK FROM JUTLAND. There were moored all the famous war-ships of our far-flung Empire the lenormous battleship which limped back from Jutland, the mammoth battlecruiser which the Germans sank in their communiques, the heavy craft light craft, the avengers and gadflies who have come through the tornadoes of destruction in the North Sea and are pining to get at the Germans again. From end to end of the lane, which seemed to stretch to the crack of doom were ships which chased the Germans back to their minefields —some of them wobbly with wounds, some perforated like colanders, some battle-red nearly beyond recognition. On none was there any of sign of the dint of smash of a German shell. They swing to the tide, sound, and staunch, ready to renew ithc combat at a moment’s notice.

Nothing perhaps more convinces one of the efficiency of the British Navy than the swiftness with which the ugly scar’s of war are effaced. TTie fleet of to-day might be bidden to a wedding.

MANY CHANGES. -

Of changes in construction there have been many. There is nothing of tut Bourbon about our Admiralty. They have not forgotten tiro lessons of yesterday. They are not too proud to he taught by the enemy.

The theory of yesterday is the accomplished fact of to-dav. The objec tivei remains the same—speed, defensive resistance and power of gunnery; but the means of attaining them have been transformed. The last word is never said.

Our Admiralty improves upon improvement. No commercial profit-seek-ing corporation was ever so keep for modernisation.

Our navy is infinitely faster, mm* powerful, and better protected than our most skilled experts dreamed of even <. decade ago. It could say without idle boast: “Come, the whole world.”

And the glory of its achievement is that it has set itself the highest standard of attainment notwithstanding that it has the whole-hearted co-opera-tion of the doughty fleets of France and Italy of America and Japan. Assurance has been made doubly sure. And daily it becomes surer.

MECHANICAL MIRACLES. Miracles of science, marvels of mechanical ingenuity, have been combined to maintain the Empire’s bulwark. A saunter down those lanes of frowning grey. annihilation reveals not one but a myriad was of confounding our enemies. It were a million times better for Fritz to be doorkeeper in Kiel than venture into l the North Sea. The most pronounced pessimist -within our national family could not deny the maritime genius of our race after studying our stupendous fleet, and the ingenuity ot the shipbuilder is not yet spent. Tie moves from one masterpiece to another. The triumph of yesterday is the HasBeen of to-morrow.

Nowhere does the spectator better ppprecijaite the truth of the French adage “Everything passes,” than when steaming amongst the warships of Great Britain. Every branch of the service is constantly going one better. The prodigious battle-cruisers are no longer tile prTde of the navy. They are via ordinaire. The colossal battleships are no more the awed focus of naval thought. They are only dates on the calendar of sea-power. SPEED AND SIZE GROW.

Hie re are larger battleships, greater battle-cruisers. Men spoke with bated breath of 17 knots as a record speed for a giant warship at the beginning of this centure. Already twice that speed is taken as a matter of course.

Monster guns drop monster shells of terrific explosive power away across the horizon on to swift rushing targets as accurately as a crack marksman Lundies over the tin targets in the pearifle saloon. Tt is all incredible, imponderable, being closer to magic than any other factor in our Imperial life. Always we have to return to tho fact that vessels of war fade fnster even than butterflies. They are hardly on the high seas before they are obolescent.

Looking at the British fleet, probable £500,000,000 are spread before astounded eyes. Ten years is the longest spatt of life which any fighting adipjjrsd will give to a warship , Half

that is about all it cau hope to remain iu even the second line of battle . Think, then, of what wo owe to the British taxpayer, who provides ninetcntlis of the money for this drain upon the exchequer. Sea power is world dominion but. it- lias to be paid for. AUSTRALIA’S BIG SHIP. Australia voting money or her battlecruiser. and New Zealand likewise, thought that she had done something very material to assist the Empire. At the* moment it was. But it was actually more moral than material. To-day neither the Australia nor tho New Zealand can remain many months more in the battle-squadron of which they arc integral parts. Their speed is too crabbed, their armour too thin, their guns too light. They must give place to other ships of increased power. Their day is gone, ex eept in a secondary sense. Only the best are admitted to the front fighting line. Six short years have sped since we foregathered on the quarter-deck of the Australia to celebrate her commissioning. Those six years have placed her in the aged class. Quickly as racehorses they have their crowded hour, and pass. THE SAME JACK TAR. It is the same with the personnel. Of the original officers and crew not a tithe remain. Nothing could better illustrate the tremendous expansion of the navy than their transfer elsewhere. All the trained men have been needed to stiffen the new crews in ships which have just joined the line. The process has almost stripped the older ships of their old companies. Tens of thousand of lusty sailors have been placed on new types of ships, and they have needed the companionship of proved salts. One of the miracles of our navy • is that it has grown so colossally without, in the slighest degree, impairing its efficiency. New wine has been poured into new bottles. The Jack Tar of 1918 is the same Jack Tar who won at Trafalgar, oven though he could no more use grappling irons and cutlass to-day that the gunner accustomed to black powder and round shot could manipulate a modern big gull But the breed and the spirit has come down the decades unchanged. . TOUGH AND HARDY. As in the days of Nelson, so in the days of Beatty, personnel and morale are the final deciding factors. Our officers and our men are chips of the old block. Of the comfort of the land-lub-ber they know little or nothing. They .are hardy men, trained in a toughening school. Every warship is a feat in organisation. If the same ultilisation of opportunities were made on shore we would believe that- our Governments were of divine origin. No boosted factory dare challenge comparison with a light cruiser, much loss a destroyer, for the conservation of space, tho development of energy, and the quickening of production. Without any vaunt, the British seaman takes what is going as his appointed lot, and his officers are of the same mind. And also without any spoken word they accept incredible risks as though life consisted of dodging death. There are parts to bo played in our navy which can only ho fitted by men who know before they can take up their task that their chance of surviving is loss than one in a thousand. With them the only alternatives are dentil or a Y.C.

Youth has its way right through the commands. Of dug-outs none are seen on tlie sen. By far the greater bulk of the fighting officers are under 40 years of age. The fact might easily be

missed. Overwhelming responsibility ages a naval man very rapidly. Crows Feetcheat the eye into thinking that a captain of 35 is a veteran of 50. The renrAdmiral is old, who counts more years. Men must he in their prime to prevail in ocean fighting. The call may come at any instant, and that vast armada lying so lazily at anchor, where no German submarine can penetrate, will instantly surge into effective activity. Its antennae stretch to Kiel Canal. Let tho enemy leave his moorings, and in the twinkling of an eye squadron after squadron of first-class fighting ships will sweep at a pace which the fastest liner cannot achieve. Some faint conception of this wonderful spectacle was gained from seeing a battle squadron steaming to anchorage, in a stately strength after a stunt “somewhere.” Tts kingly progress through its compeers was the perfection of masculine magnificence. Next morning, of that amazing assemblage of warships few remained. In the breaking dawn they had disappeared. With hundreds upon hundreds of vessels our naval chiefs shame the cleverest stage magician.. Upon them has descended the mantle of Drake.

“There must be a beginning of any great matter,” he said, “but the continuing until the end until it is thoroughly finished, yields the true glory.” Upon the front of tho bridge of the ships of our navy are burnished copper scrolls bearing the living legends: “Dogger Bank,” “Jutland,” Heligoland,’’ and other records of famous fights in the Seven Seas. They are the beginning. The navy is imbued with the intention of “continuing unto the end.”