It was not without labor and pain that we got the first modern ships afloat. It was not so much that short-sighted economists interfered, for a surplus of money was found in the treasury, but the politicians were numerous and the patriots few. The politician in power must needs use the new ships to perpetuate his power; he who was out of power must use them as ferries to get into power. They were extravagantly praised and extravagantly decried. Time has shown the extravagance in both directions; but it is the tendency of man to admire his own, and when the truth is told, these ships are not “the best of their class afloat,” unless we add the modifying and saving clause “considering the circumstances under which they were built.” As the product of apprentices in the art of building modern warships, they are marvels of excellence. But since they were designed we have learned something.
The Atlanta and Boston were good fourteen-knot cruisers, but there were faster boats, armed with guns as good as theirs, in Europe. American policy could not permit such a state of affairs to exist, and we designed larger and better ones than anything afloat. We laid down the New York. She cost “a whole lot of money,” it is true, but as we recall the thrill that stirred the nation when the story of her trial trip was told—when it was told that we had the swiftest and most powerful cruiser in the world, we are bound to say that twice the sum invested in any other way by the government could not have given the nation so great a benefit. It was not that any one was incited to a point where he wished the nation to go to war. On the contrary, the New York was an assurance that in our dealings with other peoples we would “not be influenced, or even be suspected of being influenced, by a consciousness of weakness on the sea.” Nations are like dogs in this, that the weaker must needs put his tail between his legs and sneak away when trouble brews. But, if any one doubts that nations are bullies, let him consider the names that are given to ships in Europe. With the New York afloat, the American patriot was so far assured that his country would not be bullied, and so we should have peace.
The Columbia on her Government Speed Trial.
From a photograph by Rau.
The swifter cruisers like the twenty-two-knot Columbia and the twenty-three-knot Minneapolis, and the little cruisers and gunboats for shoal water, followed the New York. In the meantime we were at work on battle-ships, beginning with the Maine and ending with the Iowa, the Indiana, the new Kearsarge, and the Illinois. The English author of “Ironclads in Action” compares the Iowa with the British Majestic. It is a most instructive comparison—the most instructive pages, for an American reader, in the whole of this valuable work are those devoted to this comparison. For, although the Majestic is set down with a tonnage of 15,000 and the Iowa with but 11,500, the Yankee ship throws at a broadside 4,532 pounds of metal (in guns above a twenty-pounder) to the other’s 4,000; she has an armor belt of fourteen inches to the other’s nine; the armor “upon the heavy gun positions” is “15-inch in the Iowa” to “14-inch in the Majestic”; and she could keep the sea five weeks to the Britisher’s four. On the other hand, the Majestic has more freeboard, and could fight in a rougher sea, and she has the hull beneath her quick-firing guns protected in better fashion. But when it is all summed up, it is conceded by this English writer that the Iowa is at least a good match for the bigger Majestic.
As was said before, let no mistake be made about this. It is a matter of the greatest moment when our ship of 11,500 tons is conceded to be a match for one of 15,000 tons in the best navy of the world—not because we have the ship, but because we have developed the men who can do that kind of work and the tools for their use.
Plan of the Iowa.
As many of the readers are aware, the Iowa is by no means the best battle-ship in the American navy. For instance, in her main battery she carries four twelve-inch and eight eight-inch breech-loading rifles, and six four-inch rifles, known as rapid-fire guns, because they use cartridges on the plan of a revolver or rifle cartridge, and can therefore be fired in service five or six times a minute. The new Kearsarge will carry four thirteen-inch and four eight-inch breech-loading rifles and fourteen five-inch rapid-fire guns. The new Illinois class will carry four thirteen-inch rifles and fourteen six-inch rapid-fire guns. The difference in the striking power of the batteries of the Iowa and the newer ships must be manifest to every reader. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the weight of metal landed, and not the weight of metal thrown, wins the battle.