Our Navy in the War

by Lawrence Perry

When the German fleet of battleships and battle-cruisers sallies forth into the North Sea for a final fight against the British Grand Fleet, they will find American dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts ready and eager to lend the material weight of their assistance to the Allied cause. A substantial number of our capital ships, under command of Rear-Admiral Hugh Rodman, are with the Grand Fleet, and have been for some months. Both in Washington and in London a German sea offensive on a grand scale has long been regarded as a possibility, and the admiralty authorities at the Entente capitals are anxious for the supreme test, and confident concerning its outcome. We have already noted Admiral Beatty's action in assigning American battleships to the place of honor in the line of sea-fighters which went forth to meet a reported German attack some time ago. It was a false report, but the honor done our naval fighters stands.

The expansion of the United States Navy has also included an enormous increase in our battleships and battle-cruisers; definite details are withheld, but it is not too much to say that we are thoroughly equipped to assist Great Britain very vitally in this respect. In the summer of 1917 Secretary Daniels announced that the Atlantic Fleet—our Grand Fleet—had been reorganized into two divisions, officially known as "forces." Battleship Force One had as commander Vice-Admiral Albert W. Grant, and Battleship Force Two was commanded by Vice-Admiral DeWitt Coffman. Admiral Henry T. Mayo remained as commander-in-chief.

"There are," said Secretary Daniels in announcing the new arrangement—July 18, 1917—"as many battleships in commission as we ever had before; in fact, every battleship we have is in commission. The whole purpose of the new organization is to keep our battleship fleet in as perfect condition as possible, to put it in the highest state of efficiency and readiness for action."

Eventually an appreciable number of our best fighters were sent to the Grand Fleet—which, however, is by no means to be understood as implying that our own coasts are unprotected. Not at all. The Navy Department has a view-point which embraces all possible angles, and nothing in the way of precaution has been overlooked. At the same time it has been the theory of Secretary Daniels that the way to beat the submarine and the German Navy in general was to go to the base of things, "to the neck of the bottle," and this as much as anything—more, in sooth—accounts for the hundreds of war-ships of various sorts that now fly our flag in the war zone.

The orders dividing the fleet into two "forces" and despatching a representation of our greatest fighters to the North Sea was preceded by a period of preparation the like of which this country—perhaps the world—never saw. The Atlantic Fleet was, indeed, converted into a huge workshop of war, turning out its finished products—fighting men. A visitor to the fleet, writing under date of May 14, expressed amazement at the amount of well-ordered activity which characterized a day on every one of the battleships. Here were men being trained for armed-guard service on merchantmen, groups of neophytes on the after deck undergoing instruction on the loading-machines; farther along a group of qualified gunners were shattering a target with their 5-inch gun. Other groups were hidden in the turrets with their long 14 and 12 inch guns, three or two to a turret. Signal-flags were whipping the air aloft—classes in signalling; while from engine-room and fighting-tops each battleship hummed with the activities of masters and pupils teaching and learning every phase of the complicated calling of the modern navy man.

And there were days when the great fleet put to sea for target practice and for battle manoeuvres, the turrets and broadsides belching forth their tons upon tons of steel and the observers aloft sending down their messages of commendation for shots well aimed. It is the statement of those in a position to know that never were jackies so quick to learn as those of our war-time personnel. Whether the fact of war is an incentive or whether American boys are adapted, through a life of competitive sport, quickly to grasp the sailorman's trade, the truth remains that in a very short space the boy who has never seen a ship develops swiftly into a bluejacket, rolling, swaggering, but none the less deft, precise, and indomitable.

"They come into the navy to fight," said one of the officers of the fleet, "and they want to get into the thick of it. We turn out qualified gun crews in three months—and that is going some." A large majority of the new men of the fleet come from farms, especially from the Middle West. More than 90 per cent of the seamen are native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes only from west of Chicago.

Not only gunners were developed, but engineers, electricians, cooks, bakers—what-not? They are still being developed on our home ships, but in the meantime the fruits of what was done in the time dating from our entrance into the war to the present summer are to be noted chiefly in the North Sea, where our vessels lie waiting with their sisters of the British Fleet for the appearance of the German armada.

Let us transfer ourselves for the time being from the general to the particular: in other words, to the deck of a great American dreadnought, which, together with others of her type, has been detached from the Atlantic Fleet and assigned to duty with Admiral Beatty's great company of battleships and battle-cruisers. This battleship has entered the war zone, en route to a certain rendezvous, whence all the American units will proceed to their ultimate destination in company.

It is night. It is a black night. The stars are viewless and the ocean through which the great steel hull is rushing, with only a slight hiss where the sharp cutwater parts the waves, is merely a part of the same gloom. Aloft and on deck the battleship is a part of the night. Below deck all is dark save perchance a thin, knife-like ray emanating from a battle-lantern. The lookouts, straining their eyes into the black for long, arduous stretches, are relieved and half-blind and dizzy they grope along the deck to their hammocks, stumbling over the prostrate forms of men sleeping beside the 5-inch guns, exchanging elbow thrusts with those of the gun crews who are on watch.