Object lessons were before them. During Polk’s Administration, James Buchanan, then Secretary of State, had removed, or rather transferred to another post, a United States Minister to one of the South American Republics on the Pacific slope. This Minister had committed the, in United States “diplomacy,” unpardonable offence of indorsing the drafts of certain whale-ship captains upon their owners in New Bedford and Nantucket. The ships of these captains were in distress, having been dismasted in tempestuous passages around Cape Horn, and they had made their voyage to Valparaiso under jury-masts. Arrived there, they needed money to repair and refit their battered and storm-beaten ships. Our Minister to Chile used his good offices to help them get their drafts cashed so they could repair their vessels and pursue their voyages. This, from the view-point of primitive United States “diplomacy,” was of course a crime, and the Minister was made to suffer for it! Ultimately this unwritten law or tacit doctrine found expression on the floor of the Senate, in a debate on the Consular and Diplomatic Appropriation, from the lips of Thomas F. Bayard:
“The purity and dignity of our foreign representation,” he said, “must be preserved! The law now recognized, though unwritten, should be made statutory! If an American Minister abroad should use any of the influence or employ any of the prestige or credit which he may derive from his status as a representative of this country to aid or further or promote any scheme or project of American citizens in that country, having private gain in view, he should be held answerable for official misdemeanor!”
Buchanan and Bayard have already found their proper levels in American history, and need not be discussed here, even if their memories were worth discussion. But the theory they applied to our diplomatic representation was for many years the rule. The result was that our “diplomatic service” (so-called) down to, we may say, the end of Cleveland’s last Administration, had become little else than a hospital for political cripples, or a sanitarium for over-worked old lawyers and nervously prostrated college professors. It was the laughing-stock of foreigners and the object of cynical, albeit good-natured, contempt on the part of our own people. It had become a symposium of urbane uselessness and solemn stupidity.
All this was changed in our representation at St. Petersburg in 1898. Our Ambassador there was the Hon. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, of Missouri. He was neither a political cripple, nor an overworked old lawyer, nor a college president needing a gilt-edged vacation.
He was a great and successful manufacturer, a man of broad and keen business instincts, and he thought that any scheme calculated to disburse about seven million dollars among the workingmen and steel mills of the United States was well worthy the earnest attention and the best officers of the most dignified Ambassador. Imbued with such ideas, Mr. Hitchcock helped Mr. Cramp all he could. He may not have been as noisy about it as the German Ambassador or as strenuously in evidence as the French Ambassador, but he was none the less active or effective in his efforts to subserve and promote the interests of his country and her citizens. The maw-worm doctrine of Buchanan and the raven-like croaking of Bayard were lost upon such a man. Taking the situation altogether, it is safe to say, so far as diplomatic representation was concerned, the commercial and industrial interests of the United States and of American citizens in the Russian Empire were quite as well guarded in 1898 as were those of France and Germany.
The third element of opposition which Mr. Cramp had to encounter and overcome was of a purely technical or mechanical character. His plans involved installation of water-tube boilers of the Niclausse type. But up to that moment, ever since the adoption of the water-tube system by the Russian navy, the Belleville type of boiler had held undisputed sway there. The enormous wealth of the Belleville people, their straightway, open-handed mode of doing business with naval officials, not only in Russia but in England as well, and their aptness in placing valuable things where they would do the most good, were all notorious. They had for some time admitted that the Niclausse system was their most formidable rival, and naturally they were ready to exhaust their resources to prevent its introduction into the Russian navy, where their monopoly, up to that time, had been perfect and invulnerable. This discussion was, of course, carried on wholly between Mr. Cramp and the Russian technical authorities. It was a subject that could not be touched by diplomacy or by personal influence; a contest to be fought out wholly on the mechanical merits of the respective systems and decided entirely by skilled judgment. In this kind of contest Mr. Cramp was at home, and he won. His staple argument was that for any naval power to surrender itself to a single type of proprietary boiler, thereby creating a monopoly against itself, could not be else than unwise; that the era of water-tube boilers was still in the experimental stage, that perfection was yet to be developed, and was doubtless a long way off. Exhaustive trials already made had demonstrated a wide range of efficiency and consequent merit in the Niclausse system, and while it was no part of his contention to decry or depreciate the rival type, comparative performances of official record beyond dispute argued that sound marine engineering policy would forbid the exclusion of the Niclausse system. By the weight of these arguments Mr. Cramp carried all his points. The ultimate result of a six weeks’ campaign was the award of contracts for construction of six vessels in foreign shipyards: one first-class battleship and one armored cruiser to the Forges et Chantiers, of France; one first-class battleship and one large protected cruiser of the highest attainable speed to Mr. Cramp, and two protected cruisers of type similar to the last-named to Germany yards, the “Germania” of Kiel and the “Vulcan” of Stettin.
Upon these awards, Mr. Cramp came home and began construction at once. Indeed, while still in St. Petersburg, he had placed orders for important parts of the material required, and had contracted for the necessary armor. At the outset some delay occurred, due to the extreme deliberation observed by the Russian Inspectors in approving detail plans and specifications, and to some changes made in the character and quality of material for protective decks after the contract was signed. But notwithstanding these delays, Mr. Cramp completed and delivered both his ships long in advance of either the French or German builders, and such time penalties as had accrued by reason of the initial delays already referred to were remitted by direction of the Emperor Nicholas II himself.
The trial conditions imposed upon these ships were the most drastic and crucial ever known; they being required to develop their maximum speed for twelve hours continuously, as against four-hour or measured mile trials in other navies.
Upon the completion and delivery of these ships, Mr. Cramp had achieved the distinction of having done the greatest volume and highest value of ship-building for foreign accounts ever performed in an American shipyard. On their arrival at St. Petersburg, both ships were personally inspected by the Emperor, who was so pleased with the “Variag” that he ordered her detailed as escort to the Imperial yacht in a trip to Cherbourg.
It is worthy of remark that in the fall of 1898 our Navy Department advertised for proposals to construct three battleships, now known as the “Maine” class. The plan put forth by the Department was a modified and slightly enlarged “Alabama,” with a speed requirement of seventeen knots as against sixteen in the original type. Mr. Cramp offered to build an eighteen-knot ship within the statutory limit prescribed for one of seventeen knots, and used his Russian battleship as a basis of design. His proposition was accepted, and the other bidders—Newport News and the Union Iron Works, to each of whom one ship was awarded—were required to adopt Mr. Cramp’s conditions of dimension and performance. In this manner the American navy as well as the Russian profited by Mr. Cramp’s interesting and remarkable “Campaign of 1898.”