DREADNOUGHT EXPENSES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 241, 17 November 1909, Page 4

DREADNOUGHT EXPENSES.

WHAT JACK T. COSTS JOHN B. The British Navy cost just undor ihirty-three millions last year. . An enormous sum; yet, considering that our warships protect over sixteen million tons of merchant shipping, it is not a cosliy insurance, it is only 2.13 per cent. Japan spends 5 per cent.; Germany, 11 per cent.; and the United Slates no less than 25 per edit, for a similar purpose. We hear a great deal of the enormous expense of building now battleships. It is true that the new ships, like the Dreadnought and Temeraire, are tremendously costly. Ready for sea, th a .y average mil at .£1,750,000 apiece, and the priscul value of our Navy in hard cash is put bj experts at 1331/. millions. But it is not in construction that the money goes, it is in upkeep. Our ships are manned by nearly 104,000 officers and men, .and we have also 18,000 .Marines, These have to bo paid and the men victualled. There is also to bo considered the cost of coal, stores, and of repairs, lo say nothing of guns and ammunition.

Take a vessel of the newest type—the Dreadnought—which has IU,OOU tons displacement, and a sea speed of 21 knots.

llor full complement is about eight hundred a comparatively small number, seeing that older and much smaller vessels of the Hoyal Sovereign class required over seven hundred men. A vessel like tho Dreadnought has an admiral aboard her, whose pay is £lß2o a year. Her captain gets over £OOO, including allowances, and her two commanders about WOO a piece. She has about a dozen lieutenants—navigation, gunnery, torpedoes, etc.—and their combined pay is, roughly, £2BOO. Her half-dozen engineer officers are rather better paid. They take iiIUOO between them.

She has a chaplain, two doctors, a naval instructor, accountant officers, a .paymaster, and his staff. There are four warrant-ollieers, who each draw £l2O a year; a number of midshipmen, or naval cadets; a sick-bay stall', carpenter and artisans, cooks and domestics, bandsmen, and ship's police; besides all the petty officers, seamen, boys, engineroom artificers, and stokers. She carries also Marines, both artillery and light infantry. So it is not wonderful that the total pay-roll exceeds £40,000 a

The post of victualling varies very greatly in different places. In some places you can buy beef as cheaply as :ld a pound; in others—such as Ascension—it cost -2s «il a nounil. The men nowadays gel live meals a day, if you include the eailv-morning cocoa. Until lately tbev had three only. In round figures, the feeling of a Dreadnought's crew costs £IB,OOO a year. Coal is, of course, an item which depends upon the distance travelled, a'nd the spocd. Although tho Dreadnought's turbines can drive her through the water at 24 miles an hour, she usually travls at an economical cruising speed of about 10 knots. Even so, the 2700 tons of best Welsh which her vast bunkers contain will carry her only 5800 sea miles. besides the vast amount which she uses for steaming, sho needs coal for distilling, for making electric light, and for the pumping and other auxiliary engines, of which she has no fewer than 304 aboard her. Tlio coal costs about ;C1 a Inn, and the hill for fuel—coal and oil together—comes to about the same as that for victualling. Tho value of the stores carried by a ship like the Dreadnought is about £120,000. Stores include" paint, rope, lubricating-oil, boats, tools, forges, etc. The amount used yearly would average about £7OOO. Add £OOOO for depreciation, and the stores figure out at £13,000 a vear.

Ammunition is not counted among stores. In these days of keenly-com-petitive tarjet-nractice, when every ship in a squadron is trying to wipe out its neighbor's *ye. the target-practice allowance is largo. The dreadnought has eight 12-inch guns, which cost about £12.000 apiece. To fire a single shot from one of these weapons costs no less than £BO. There are also a number of quick-firers, field-guns, and other smaller guns: a-id quite £SOO has to be allowed for ride-carl ridges for small-arm practice. Tonmloos cost £SOO apiece, and a ship usually loses at least one in the course of a year. Eighteen thousand pounds is the lowest figure at which yon can put one item-ammunition. Hepnirs are always a big matter: but i they vary so greatly from vear to year that it is almost, impossible to make anything like a correct estimate. A vessel goes aground on an lnichartcd rock, and, like the Commonwealth, knocks a hole in her bottom which you could drive, a cab through. Tlesnlt. months in dock, and an expenditure of £70.000 or £BO.OOO. Another goes through a year with onlv one ordinary doekfcig. and gets ofl' witli £SOOO or '.CfiOOO. Tho effective life of a modern si eel battleship is not, at the outside, more than twenty years. And at the end of that time, a million-pound vessel fetches, perhaps, i£20,000 as old iron. So the Admiralty has to allow 5 per cent, for depreciation. In the, case of a Dreadnought or an Inflexible, this means the vanishing of £87,500 a year. Our list is rough and incomplete. Mr. Robertson, answering a question in Parliament at the beginning of the present year, said tliat Tic worked out the cost of a battleship, including everything, at £2:11.500 a year; while even a destroyer meant £17.500 a year out of the national exchequer.