The command of this expedition was given to Rear-Admiral Sir David Beatty, one of the youngest admirals in our Navy. He was born in County Wexford in 1871, and is thus an Irishman, like Lord Kitchener. He entered the Navy in his thirteenth year. His mettle was first proved in an expedition that was sent to reconquer the Sudan in 1898. In command of the gunboat flotilla on the Upper Nile, he did such brilliant work that he was at once marked out for promotion. Two years later, at the early age of twenty-nine, he became a captain. In the same year he took part in the fighting against the Chinese Boxers, and at thirty-nine was promoted rear-admiral. For two years he was naval secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, and on the outbreak of war was placed in command of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron. Never before in the history of our Navy has so young a man held so high a rank.
Rear-Admiral Sir David Beatty. Photo, Central News.
"Look well at this man as he paces backward and forward across the airy platform out among the smoke and rigging and sea wind." He is a little man, but very well proportioned and remarkably full of vigour. "You feel that energy has been poured into him at enormous pressure, that it is working and boiling within him, and that some one is sitting on the safety-valve." His face is heavily lined, but his features are clear cut, and his gray eyes are quick and searching, like those of a bird. "There is, indeed, something birdlike about the whole man—in his quickness, his neatness, his smooth plumage, his effortless exercise of strength, and appearance of happiness and light-heartedness. His voice is deep and resonant—strangely deep to issue from so small and slim a body; and as he snaps out an order to his flag-lieutenant—'G16'—and as, on the word, the signal flags run up to the yardarm, and the white bone[91] that each ship carries in her teeth spreads wider and bigger as the speed of the squadron is increased to sixteen knots, you realize a little what an admiral's word stands for, and what powers are entrusted to him."
The Battle Cruiser Lion. Photo, Symonds and Co.
Sir David Beatty's flagship was the battle cruiser Lion. You will hear much about battle cruisers in the following pages, so let me now tell you how a battle cruiser differs from a battleship. There are two distinct types of modern warships of the largest size—namely, the battleship and the battle cruiser. The battleship, sometimes called a Dreadnought or super-Dreadnought, after the name of the first of the type, has thicker armour and less speed than the battle cruiser; that is practically all the difference between them. You may call the battle cruiser a cross between the battleship and the cruiser; she has the big guns of the former and the speed of the latter. She gains this speed by having a less weight of armour, and, as a rule, a smaller number of guns.
The most powerful weapon used in our Navy is the 15-inch gun, with which the latest of our battleships, the Queen Elizabeth (launched 1915), is armed. This gun, which weighs ninety tons, throws a shot weighing five-sixths of a ton at a velocity of more than a mile a second for a range of 10,000 yards, or roughly six miles. Of course the full range of the gun is much more than this. It can make good practice at 20,000 yards, or roughly 11 miles; at six miles the gun can be laid so as to hit the target practically every time. The 13.5-inch gun, with which the battle cruisers are mainly armed, is only a little less powerful than the 15-inch gun. It throws a projectile of 1,400 lbs. weight, and can be discharged twice a minute.
You will see in what ways a modern super-Dreadnought battleship differs from a battle cruiser if you examine the following figures
Queen Elizabeth (super-Dreadnought).—Length, 620 feet; tonnage, 27,500; horse-power, 28,000; speed per hour, 25 knots;[92] armour, belt of 13½ inch thickness; armament, eight 15-inch guns and sixteen 6-inch guns.