Then the figure sharps got after the engine power, and they tried to show if one ship had something like 15,000 horse-power, more or less, what the combined ships must have and what could be done with it on land—that is, how many railroad trains, each a mile long, could be pulled so many thousands of miles; how many bridges like those across the East River they could pull down with just one tug at them; how many cities such power could light; how many great factories and mills could be run with that power, and even how much goods could be made out of it—well, after that the amateur began to wonder if he could add up two and two.
After that it was figured out that the displacement in tons for the entire fleet was more than a quarter of a million, and the weight of a lot of other heavy things in the world was estimated. By this time the amateur was clear flabbergasted, and all he could say, landlubber that he is and will be until Neptune has him ducked, was that if the fleet did displace 250,000 tons of water the ocean didn't show any signs of it and Uncle Sam would have to try many, many thousands of times if he expected to get the better of old Neptune by displacing water.
After the mathematical sharps had finished, what are known as the word painters and grainers became busy. Some of the word painters compared the long file of ships to a line of gray geese in a long follow-your-leader flight to the south for a warmer clime. The ships did look gray at times, according to the atmospheric conditions, but the gray geese analogy was voted not a success because geese haven't things sticking up in the middle of their backs resembling the smoke-pipes of battleships. Besides, geese do not give out black or any other kind of smoke.
The painters got out their vocabulary of magnificent, awe inspiring, formidable demons of war, bulldogs of the sea, peace compellers and all that string and began to weave them all together, and it was voted all right and probably appropriate, but it was said that these did not hit quite the right note.
That was that this fleet was going out for business of a different kind from that which any other American fleet had undertaken. The business in hand was the moulding of sixteen battleship units into one battle fleet unit, not sixteen times stronger than one unit, but with the strength increased in something like geometrical ratio. The problem, therefore, was to make this fleet a unit, not like a chain, strong only as its weakest link, but like a rope, far stronger than the multiplied strength of its various strands.
Charles H. Cramp, the veteran shipbuilder, nearly ten years ago pointed out in a paper read at the annual meeting of naval men and marine engineers in New York City that the greatest training need of the United States navy was what he called battleship seamanship. That meant not navigation merely, but the synchronizing of one battleship to others, the tuning up, so to speak, the team work, to use a football analogy, in sailing, manœuvring, shooting—all pulling together.
Two hours after clearing the Capes Admiral Evans gave the signal for one of his favorite cruising formations, that is, in columns of fours. The four divisions of the fleet drew up in parallel lines with an Admiral at the head of each line.
The five starred white flag, called the five of clubs, was run up at the fore truck of the Connecticut to indicate that that ship was the guard ship. The lines were run at intervals of 1,600 yards, and the ships of each division, still in wing and wing fashion, were at distances of 400 yards. To be strictly naval you must call the space between two lines of ships interval and the space between two individual ships in line distance.
Well, after the ships were spread out they covered an area of more than two square miles, and then one began to realize what all these ships meant. The circle of twelve or fourteen miles that hemmed them in and that expanded in front and contracted in the rear seemed practically filled with them. Distances were kept fairly well and the ships plodded along in the smooth sea nodding their approval of what was going on.
It was this problem of distance that kept the officers of the decks busy. When you think that each of these ships represented a weight of from 15,000 to 18,000 tons more or less, and that you had to move that ship at the rate of 10 knots an hour and keep it within 400 yards of a ship in front of you; when you consider how some ships move a trifle of an inch faster than another ship at the same number of propeller revolutions; when you think that one of the propellers of your own ship will do more work than the other at the same number of revolutions, and that this will throw you out of your course and make you steer badly if you don't correct it; when you think that your leader may vary in his speed; when you think of all this, you can begin to understand the problem of those officers on the bridge to keep the ships in line and at proper distances.