MODERN VESSELS OF WAR

West Coast Times, Issue 367, 26 November 1866, Page 2 (Supplement)

MODERN VESSELS OF WAR

(froji the argus.) The invention of " the ironclad " is an ugly puzzle, and it is a terribly expensive one. If there was any forseeing the particular style of construction which may ultimately prevail, there would be nn more difficulty in the matter than under the old fashion of naval architecture. But the change is not only a revolution, but a transition of which it is quite hopeless at present to look for the end. One improvement follows on the heels of another : the idea of one year is discountenanced the next : and after building a fleet at enormous cost on the latest approved model, it is discovered within a . brief period that the model is superseded, and all the coimoissew's forthwith agree in pronouncing it out of date and useless. And the mutual distrust or jealousy of the nations, which keeps them armed cap-a-pie, and makes each unwilling to be a stage behind its neighbor in armed readiness, drives them to this hasty and wholesale fleet building on a system which is only in process of development, and on models so palpably crude and imperfect that they have no title to be regarded as better than mere experiments. Now that the European powers have fouud that the Americans have got the start of them — through, the practical test for such ingenuity which the civil war afforded — it seems not unlikely that the thing will be immediately done over again — that a fresh series of ships, like the latest American, will at once be laid on the stocks. Let one of them begin, and all will hurry to keep pace. On this mode of procedure there is no knowing what number of squadrons may be built, only to be speedily condemned, and what amount of money spent only to be wasted, ere a pause is reached in the fluctuating fashions of these hideous hogs in armour. The present European models are, we see, condemned in view in the present American ; and the question it, how long will the latter remain in favor either? Our Yankee cousins are of course smitten with the belief that they have already attained perfection, and one of their best periodicals expresses the conviction that there is no getting beyond' their new class of monitors, whether for fighting or sea-going capability.) Truly wonderful are those ships with the hard names — the Miantonomoh and ' Monadnoek — names as uncouth and novel as the craft themselves. But because they are at this date the most 'extraordinary and successful products of the kind, we arc very far irom having assurance that they are the final, and permanent pattern. That the ocean could be crossed by such ships is a marvel indeed, but it will be a great marvel if, without further improvement in their contrivance, it ever becomes the rule. It seems that wheu the sea is at all rough it makes a clean sweep over the Miantonomoh, All must be then battened down, and those on board can only obtain air through a funnel, fed by fans moved by a steam engine. We do not see lioav the wooden vessels which acted as convoy could have rendered help if the occasion had seriously arisen. It was a hardy feat of seamanship aucl a wonderful triumph of engineering skill, but we decline to believe 1 that the navies of the future will not be of a more seaworthy fashion. Such a vessel will answer for coast defence, but it will never become a practice on either side of the Atlantic to send craft to sea which have not some clearer pretensions to buoyancy, which cannot be more in hand in bad weather, or iv which it is necessary the moment the wind begins to blow, or the waves to tumble, to fasten the whole crew down below like rats in a hole. To suppose that such a model can be permanent is absurd. It will be just as temporary as its predecessors. Like them it will run its career of favor, and be then, , no doubt, stigmatised as a uscle.ss tub or floating coffin. But it is the daring pioneer of a completely new phase in this peculiar sort of ship-build-ing, which in due course will be brought to something very different, and much more suitable for the purpose. It is worthy of note, too, that there are but very limited means of judging of the fighting po tver of these American monitors, because in the war which developed them they were matched only against vessels much of f their own dimensions, not against vessels of the size of the Royal Sovereign, La Gloire, or the Warrior. Presenting little or no mark for an enemy's broadside they, of course, have an incomparable advantage over the ships we have mentioned in the exchange of shot ; and for this reason chiefly the latter are

now cried clown. But artillery is not the sole means of inflicting damage available in this naval revolution. The ships charge each other as battalions do in land battle. The ram and the beaked prow, old equipments of the Greek and Roman galley, are once more iv vogue, and it wa6 seen in the seafight the o"ther day in the Adriatic, that the shock which one of these ships can deliver to another may be more destructive and decisive than any amount of cannonading. It is matter for conjecture how any of the American monitors would stand the crash of one of the huge vessels which their introduction has rendered unpopular in England and France ? The real truth is that even the most scientific are still pretty well in the dark on the entire subject. Already the most confident theories have been up^et in practice. For instance, it was seen at Lissa, that a wooden war-ship is by no means the helpless machine which was thought inevitable in conflict with an iron- clad. How far we are yet from the mark we have aimed at is manifest in the blind haste with which each fresh novelty, each latest invention of the moment is hailed as the thing needful, and as a substitute for everything else. In America they pronounce their Miantomonohs perfect, and in England they want to have an entirely new fleet like them. It would be well if the various powers could agree to postpone their ship-build-ing in this line until they can first devise something to build which will really answer the requirement. No fleet of Miantonomohs could be a terror to enemies beyond a broad ocean. The importance of this American discovery lies not in its fulfilling an end, but in pointing the way to it — in proving that ships iv armor can be constructed to traverse the open sea. But the first ship in armor which has done this is more unlike those that will habitually do it than the first monitor was unlike her. We cannot perceive, therefore, with so many of the London journals, that Britain is in airy special or particular strait because her new iron-clad navy is. on an imperfect pattern, and will need to be reconstructed de novo. It seems to us that she is in just " the same boat" with the other maritime powers. All their ironclads arc imperfect — all their navies will have to be reconstructed, and America's as well as the vest, though hers may be at present the best of the lot ; and for that reconstruction no reliable model is yet available, though it is true that the promise of it has been practically presented.