January 25th.
I have delayed sending you this letter hoping to find copy of a brief article I wrote on H.M. Ironclad “Nonsuch” of 18 knots, after seeing your design A; I can’t find it, and have written for the original, which I will send for your amusement. I don’t think your argument is a sound one as to the “degradation of our other ironclads by the construction of an 18-knotter.” Isn’t the principle right to make each succeeding ironclad an improvement and as perfect as you can?
THERE IS NO PROGRESS IN UNIFORMITY!!
We’ve had enough of the “Admiral” class of ship. Now try your hand on a “Nonsuch” (of vast speed!).
In violent haste,
Ever yours,
(Sgd.) J. A. F.
“Build few, and build fast,
Each one better than the last.”
Two of Sir Nathaniel Barnaby’s great successors in that arduous and always thankless post of Director of Naval Construction are Sir Philip Watts and Sir Eustace Tennyson-D’Eyncourt. These two great men have each of them done such service as should have brought them far greater honour than as yet they have received. The “Dreadnought” could not have been born but for Sir Philip Watts. I commend to all who wish to have a succinct account of the ships of the British Navy that formed the line of battle on the outbreak of war on the 4th August, 1914, to read the paper delivered by Sir Philip Watts at the Spring Meeting of the Naval Architects on the 9th April, 1919, when a very excellent Sea Officer with more brains than most people I have met presided—being the Marquis of Bristol. And it was a great delight to me that he commanded the “Renown,” my favourite ship, to bring to England King Alfonso—an equally admired hero of mine. If ever there was a brave man it is King Alfonso.
My other scientific hero besides Sir Philip Watts is Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt. He also was the practical means, besides his wonderful professional genius, of bringing forth what are known as the “Hush Hush” ships on account of the mystery surrounding their construction; and notwithstanding the armchair “Know-alls” who have done their best to blast their reputation, they achieved—the five of them—a phenomenal success. Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt also gave us those incomparable Monitors, with their bulges under water, which were “given away” through the unmitigated folly of the Censors, who permitted a newspaper correspondent to describe how he had seen men, like St. Peter, walking on the water—they were walking on the protuberance which extended under the surface as the absolute protection against submarines; and when an old first-class cruiser called the “Grafton” had been so made submarine-proof, the captain of her, after receiving a torpedo fired at him at right angles and hitting him amidships, reported to the Admiralty that she went faster than before, simply because her hull proper had not been touched; the submarine had only blown away the submarine obstruction that Sir Eustace had fitted to her. Has he been made a lord? Personally I should say the tanks could never have existed without him; of that I am quite sure. Sir Philip Watts and Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt are enshrined in my heart.
Previously in this chapter I mentioned Mr. Gladstone. I sat next to him at dinner once. At the other side of him was a very beautiful woman, but she was struck dumb by awe of Mr. Gladstone, so he turned round to me and asked me if I had ever been in China. Yes, I had. And he asked me who were the best missionaries. I said the Roman Catholics were the most successful as they wore the Chinese dress, were untrammelled by families, so they got better amongst the people in the interior, but furthermore in their chapels they represented our Saviour and His Apostles with pigtails and dressed as Chinamen. Yes, he said, he remembered that, and he told me the name of the Head of the Roman Catholic Mission, whose name I had forgotten, and said to me that the Pope considered he had gone too far in that respect, and had recalled him. That had happened some twenty years previously, and I had forgotten all about it. Someone said what a pity that all that is now being said is being lost. Mr. Gladstone said: “Nothing is lost. Science will one day take off the walls of this room what we have been saying.” This was years before the gramophone and the dictaphone and the telephone. He told us a great deal about Abraham and pigs, and why Abraham was so dead against them, and how he, Gladstone, had been driven by Daniel O’Connell in a four-in-hand, and how the Bishops in his early days were so much handsomer than now. One Bishop he specially named was called “The Beauty of Holiness.” When he left, he asked me to walk home with him, which I did. Mrs. Gladstone said, seated inside the brougham which was waiting at the door: “Come in, William.” He said: “No, I am going to walk with this young man.” It was midnight, and Piccadilly was quite alive. He was living with Lady Frederick Cavendish, I think, at Carlton Gardens. We were nearly run over, as he was regardless of the traffic. I remember his saying: “Do right, and you can never suffer for it.” I thought of that when, in my own case later on, it was “Athanasius contra Mundum.” I was urged only to attack one vested interest at a time, but I said, “No, if you kick everyone’s shins at the same time they won’t trouble about their neighbours,” and it succeeded; but alas! I gave up one thing, which was the real democratic pith and marrow, the Free Education of the Naval Officer, and a competence from the moment of entry, and open to all. King Edward said to me about this: “You’re a Socialist.” I said that a white shirt doesn’t imply the best brain. We have forty million to select from, and we restrict our selection to about one-fortieth of the population.