BRITAIN'S SEA POWER.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 March 1919, Page 3

BRITAIN'S SEA POWER.

“Fighting for Sea Power,” a book by Mr H. W. Household, is a survey of tile work of the British Navy from Jacobean days down to the Napoleonic wars. The author makes us realise the enormous difference which steam and the invention of high explosives have made in naval tactics and per. sound ; the spirit of the fleet is unaltered hist everything else is changed. Even a generation after Trafalgar the ordinary ship of the line was much the same as those with which Blake beat Van Tromp. With a favourable wind and a good spread of canvas it was capable of ten knots an hour; a squadron moved at a maximum rate of seven knots and actions were fought at two or three knots. Yet our modern sailors could teach the navigators of those unwieldly craft nothing in the art of keeping station. They maneouvred in a line precisely two cables length behind the next ahead anil steered so true a course that a tub dropped by a ship could be picked up by the one following it. Some of the larger ships carried a hundred guns or more, but the standard type was the “seventy-four,’ a vessel of some 1700 tons, to build which 2000 stout oak trees were needed. No wonder that the Jong wars of (lie 18fh and early 19th centuries denuded the Royal forests! The French ships of the day were smaller, but the author confcs**-

better designed and armed. The maxi, mum range of the most powerful British guns was just over a mile but at that distance a hit was purely a matter of luck; captains preferred to fight at three or four hundred yards, so that after pounding the slow-moving target they could close in and hoard the enemy ship. Mr Household compares these hand-to-hand melees with the modern engagement fought bv ships moving as n ‘ , .. fast ns railway trains sixteen miles apart. 'l’lio crews of these old ‘seventy fours” were a heterogeneous gang to our present day ideas. 1 here was a sprinkling of men from the maritime counties, hereditary followers ot tho sen; there were also a few farm hands or counter jumpers, who Imd joined for adventure. But the navy was then a refuge for the rogues and vagabonds, who made the land too hot to hold them; many were gaolbirds from the “hulks”; if the supply failed the press gang would make good the deficiency by draggingii'elueta'iit recruits from their hearths mid homes. Not very promising material one would say, but the iron discipline of the navy soon welded it into an unequalled lighting weapon. Mr Household describes the old navy and its exploits and shows that- through all its material changes it has preserved

.. continuity of tradition which is not the least important element in i*s strength,