From a Photograph by permission of the Fore River Shipbuilding Co., U.S.A.
Modern American battleships have attracted more than ordinary attention by the daring character of the innovations the naval architects of that country have not hesitated to introduce. The armament of the Kearsarge and Kentucky was extremely powerful, and its arrangement was unique. There were two turrets with walls 13 inches thick, each containing two 13-inch guns; and above each of these turrets was a smaller turret with 9-inch walls, in which were two 8-inch guns. This gave two two-storeyed turrets with four guns to each; either pair of guns could be fired independently of the other pair, but they could not be aimed independently, and when it was necessary to turn the turret all four guns had to go with it. This experiment, though apparently excellent in theory, did not prove satisfactory in practice, and the designs for subsequent vessels which were to have had similar turrets were altered. Other nations have not taken kindly to the idea, and have not adopted it, and too many objections have been raised to the proposal that the upper and lower turrets should be constructed so as to revolve independently of each other for this plan to be given serious trial. Some of the American vessels have been fitted with what are known as lattice masts, or miniature Eiffel towers. It is claimed for them that they are of great strength for their weight, and that they are less likely than the military mast or the tripod mast to be utterly destroyed by gun-fire. The naval authorities of the other powers are interested but not converted.
When the Dreadnought was launched, the Americans replied with the ships of the Delaware class, of 20,000 tons and carrying ten 12-inch guns. The French had done very little for some time in the building of big ships, seeming to prefer smaller ships in greater number, but they too fell into line and built the Danton and others. The Danton was built in four years, which contrasts favourably with the seven years spent on some French ships.
Germany, in constructing her modern fleet, had to bear in mind that the waters round her coasts are rather shallow, but she has produced some splendid ships of great fighting power and high speed. She has some ships under construction more powerful than any at present in her navy, and one of these—the cruiser Moltke—is expected to be quite as good as anything England or America can show.
So great has been the demand for Dreadnoughts, that at the beginning of this year, for Great Britain alone, there were built or building no fewer than twenty-two, and arrangements had been made for laying down five more; while for foreign powers there have been constructed, or were still in the builders’ hands, up to January last, the enormous total of sixty. The average cost of these vessels has not been much short of a couple of millions sterling, and some have cost fully £2,300,000. The Dreadnought type has admittedly not reached its maximum development yet, and it may well be asked, where is it to stop? At present battleships of a somewhat smaller type are being advocated.
What will be the type of the battleship of the future? Revolutionary as have been the developments in the nineteenth century, great as have been the changes in the last twenty-five years, marvellous as has been the adaptation of scientific discoveries and appliances to the means for conducting naval warfare, it would be an idle boast for anyone to say that he can see finality. The dream to render war impossible by the introduction of some dread weapon has been entertained by many inventors, but never a one of them has seen its fulfilment. When steam-driven armoured warships were proposed, there were not wanting those who declared that henceforth fleets of wooden walls were doomed, and that naval war would become an impossibility. Yet the wooden walls have passed away, the nations unanimously adopted the newer methods, and the contingency of naval war must ever be provided for. The heavily armoured iron ship, carrying few guns of enormous power, came; and when at last it was found that were the armour made much thicker the ship would sink under the weight of her own protection and armament, and that guns could be constructed to smash that armour, again the hope was entertained that the limit had been reached, that naval warfare had become an impossibility, and that the world’s highways on the vast and beautiful ocean should be devoted solely to the purposes of commerce and peace. But science had already come to the rescue and dispelled the illusion before it was half-formed. Steel, at first gradually and then wholly, took the place of iron in the building of ships, the production of guns, and the manufacture of projectiles. Steel itself has been improved since it was made possible by the Bessemer process, and Harveyised steel, Krupp steel, and steel toughened with nickel or chrome or tungsten, or by what is known as the Simpson process, have all been tried and have all proved their value. The science of ballistics has made equal progress, and the development of the resources of marine engineering are little short of the miraculous. And the end is not yet!
There are guns in existence which at their maximum elevation will hurl a projectile weighing not far short of three-quarters of a ton a distance of 25 miles, and the projectile itself contains an explosive charge more powerful and destructive than the heaviest charge which could be placed in the heaviest gun which was fought in the Battle of Trafalgar. The whole fleet which bombarded Alexandria would be no match for the latest Orion, and the Orion herself at no very distant date will be removed from the list of effective ships as obsolete, or as having only a doubtful fighting value. Scientific development cannot be arrested, and the only hope is that some day the inventions for war purposes will have become so terrible that the dream of inventors that they have made war impossible will be realised. In the meantime, science is seeking to surpass all its present achievements. The marine steam engine, of whatever type, will give way to the internal combustion engine of a type which will surpass all the existing machinery as surely as the best turbines are ahead of the old compound engines. The battleship of the future will have an armament surpassing in effective range and penetrative power anything at present afloat, and an armour as far in advance of the present steel armour as that is ahead of the compound armour it but lately supplanted. The adoption of the internal combustion engine will mean the removal from the ship’s deck of the obstructions which now find a place there. With no furnaces, there will be no funnels. An armoured citadel, flush decked from end to end, has been prophesied as a coming type in the early future, with one mast for signalling purposes and to convey the wireless telegraphy apparatus, the necessary ventilators, and the conning towers as the only breaks in the smoothness of the deck. Submarine signalling, already in extensive use in warships and the mercantile marine, is being improved beyond all comparison with what it was a few years ago, and if the wireless apparatus be shot away it will still be possible for a ship to signal by the other method over a distance of some miles. Moreover, submarine signalling will enable an admiral to judge how an enemy’s fire may be affecting a distant ship of his own squadron. Size will be another feature of the coming battleship, for in size lies one of the chief protections from the attack of the most insidious and most to be feared naval weapons of the present, as well as the future. The submarine ship will launch its torpedo at a greater range as the propelling machinery of the torpedo is strengthened, and, granted that the aim is true, the only hope the great warship will have of surviving the explosion of the under-water weapon will lie in the number of compartments into which her dimensions will permit of her hull being subdivided or her double bottom to accommodate, thereby restricting the area of the damage and limiting the inrush of water.
The torpedo itself is destined to play a part more important than has yet fallen to its lot in war. Not only will it be launched from the tubes of the battleship or cruiser or destroyer at the distant foe, but it will be dirigible, controlled and steered by wireless telegraphy, and extra speed, or counter explosion, or gun-fire, or the disablement of the vessel sending it forth will alone be the means of rendering it ineffective. Torpedo nets may be of value when ships are at anchor or travelling slowly, but not at any other time.
The submarine will not be the only danger to be guarded against from an unexpected quarter. The aeroplane and airship will play their parts in the next naval war. Experiments have already been tried in starting a flight of an aeroplane from a platform at the bows of an American warship, and this being accomplished, it is not too much to anticipate that aeroplanes for purposes of observation or attack may become part of the equipment of every battleship or large cruiser. The flying machine will drop its bomb on the deck of the attacked vessel, if the aviator has the good fortune to aim sufficiently straight, but whether the dropped explosive will do much harm will depend on whether the deck is comparatively flat as at present, or is curved like the modern protective deck, or has a bomb-proof turtle back covering it entirely. Will the battleship of the future, then, be an immense cylindrical-backed hull, with one mast or none, innocent of funnels, leaving no trace of smoke behind her, and rushing at a speed of a railway train as she belches forth with almost unerring precision terrible explosives at a similar enemy so far distant as to be barely discernible on the horizon? Are we to see cruisers as much faster than the battleship, as the present cruiser is than the present Dreadnought? If, as is asserted to be possible, the battleship of twenty years hence will attain a speed of 30 knots under internal combustion engines, armed with weapons showing a corresponding advance in power and range and penetration, will the cruiser of that time cover its 40 or 45 knots, and the destroyer hurl itself forward at even greater speed to explode its torpedo, also correspondingly more destructive and deadly than now, at its foes? Will the aeroplane enable the whereabouts of the submarine to be more easily detected than now? It sounds like a confusion of ideas that such a thing should be suggested, but it is a well-established fact that it is possible to see further into the open sea from a height above it than when close to the surface. If the cruising aeroplane can detect and reveal the submarine to the battleship, the submarine will be robbed of half its terrors, and if the aeroplane can drop an explosive sufficiently near to the submarine it is not improbable that the career of the latter will be terminated instantly. The same fate may await the submarine as the result of the aeroplane signalling its whereabouts, for recent experiments have shown that it is possible for a warship to sink a submarine by gun-fire, even when the latter is several feet under the surface, the victim in this case being the ill-fated A1. Thus, it is not at all improbable that the under-water craft may find the swift aeroplane its greatest and most to be dreaded enemy. The aeroplane will be attacked by other aeroplanes, and aerial navies may yet be seen “grappling in the central blue,” fighting their battles on their own account and so high among the clouds as to be almost out of reach of the guns which might be directed against them. Are these ideas but visions and day dreams? It is impossible to say. Yet they have one and all been enunciated by naval experts and strategists. Whether these are the lines upon which the navy of the not distant future will operate, time alone will show. Events point in their direction. But one thing is assured, and that is that, marvellous as have been the developments in the last twenty-five years, it will indeed be strange if the developments of the next twenty-five years do not surpass them.