The Chilian navy has the two iron-armored, twin-screw, central-battery ships Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada, and the lightly armored turret-ship Huascar. The Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada are 210 feet in length, 45 feet 9 inches in beam, 19 feet 8 inches in draught, and 3500 tons in displacement. The former carries four 9-inch and two 7-inch breech-loading Armstrong rifles, four lighter pieces, and seven machine guns. Before the alterations and repairs lately made, the Blanco Encalada had six 12-ton muzzle-loading Armstrong rifles, four lighter pieces, and seven machine guns. The Huascar was built in 1865, and is a slightly protected iron ship of 2032 tons displacement, 1050 horse-power, and 12 knots speed. Her battery consists of two 10-inch muzzle-loading Armstrongs and two 40-pounders. Her wonderful record on the west coast of South America has made her name as familiar in the mouth as a household word, and whatever may have been the justice of the war, there never can or will be a question of the superb courage with which she was fought by her gallant officers and crew. Chili has three wooden corvettes, the Chacabuco, O’Higgins, and Pilcomayo, one composite corvette, the Magellanes, one steel cruiser, the Esmeralda, five gun-boats, two paddle steamers, one despatch-boat, one transport, and eleven torpedo-boats. In April, 1885, the Esmeralda ran from Valparaiso to Callao, 1292 miles, in one hundred and eight hours, the engines during the last eight hours barely turning over. In the exhaustive trials made before her departure from England the highest speed attained was 18¼ knots per hour. The Esmeralda is said to be at present in an inefficient condition, both as regards her speed and battery power. In November, 1886, the Chilian government gave the Armstrong firm an order for a powerful, partially-protected steel cruiser, which is to be of 4500 tons displacement, and to develop 19 knots speed. Her armament is to consist of two 10-inch, one 8-inch, and two 6-inch Armstrong breech-loaders, with a secondary battery of four 6-pounder rapid-fire guns, eight Hotchkiss revolving cannons, and eight torpedo-tubes. The cost of this vessel is to be about $1,500,000.
APPENDIX I.
SUBMARINE WARFARE.
The practicability of submarine navigation was established by the Dutch over two hundred and fifty years ago. Then, as now, its underlying idea, its claim for recognition, was the advantages the system gave in marine warfare. Nor is its battle value overestimated; for such a boat, if successful, exercises an influence that is great in material uses, that is enormous in moral effects. Its development has been slow; for though the problem was solved long ago, no practical results were attained until within the last thirty years. During the late war submarine boats were for the first time employed with such sufficient success that the great maritime powers have considered the type to have an importance which justified investigation. They reached this conclusion because no plan of defence exists which could defy the operations of a weapon that attacks not only matter but mind.
There is no danger which sailors will not face; because their environments are always perilous, and their traditions are rich with glorious records of seeming impossibilities overcome by pluck and dash. They are willing always, even against the heaviest odds, to accept any fighting chance. They know that the unexpected is sure to happen. The spirit that made Farragut take the lead of his disorganized line in Mobile Bay still lives; his clarion call of “Damn the torpedoes! Follow me!” is a sea instinct, born of brine and gale, which never dies.
Whatever coast fighting or port blockading may demand, sea battles are unchanged. History teaches that ships always closed for action, and that vessels fighting each other from beyond the circling horizons, or hull down, with long-range guns, are the dreams of shore inventors. Guns and ships have changed, but men and the sea are changeless. The fighting distance of to-day is not much greater than it was in Nelson’s or in Perry’s time; and the next naval war will surely prove that battle will be nearly as close as in Benbow’s age, when the gallant tars combed innocuous four-pound shots out of their pigtails, and battered each other within biscuit-throwing distance with deftly shied chocking quoins.
It is fortunate, in the interest of good, square fighting, that the operative sphere of submarine boats is limited to coast work. Fortunate, because while the bravery and the grit are the same, the threatening of a danger which cannot be squarely met is apt to benumb the heart of the stoutest. A sailor hates to run; he does not care to fight another day when the chance of the present is open before him; but of what avail are the highest courage and skill against a dull, venomous dog of an enemy who crawls in the darkness out of the deeps, and, silently attaching a mine or torpedo, leaves his impotent foe to sure destruction?
Submarine mines may be countermined; when necessary, defied; guns may be silenced and torpedo-boats so riddled by rapid-fire guns that they will be disabled beyond the radius of their effective action; automatic torpedoes may be checked by netting, or by the prompt manœuvrings of the attacked vessel; ship may always fight ship. But what is the chance for brain or brawn against a successful submarine boat, when the mere suspicion of its presence is enough in itself to break down the blithest, bravest heart of oak. It is here that their moral effects are enormous.
The history of their development may be briefly told. In 1624 Cornelius Van Drebble, a Hollander, made some curious experiments under the Thames. His diving-boat was propelled by twelve pairs of oars and carried a dozen persons, among them King James I. In 1771 Bushnell, of Connecticut, constructed a boat which Washington described in a letter to Jefferson as being a “machine so contrived as to carry the inventor under water at any depth he chose, and for a considerable time and distance with an appendage charged with powder, which he could fasten to a ship, and give fire to it in time sufficient for his returning, and by means thereof destroy it.” Fulton borrowed Bushnell’s idea, and in 1801 experimented successfully with it in the Seine. He descended under water, remained for twenty minutes, and after having gone a considerable distance, emerged. In 1851 a shoemaker named Phillips launched in Lake Michigan a cigar-shaped boat forty feet long and four feet in its greatest diameter. This was his first attempt, but in the course of a few years he so far perfected his arrangements for purifying the air that on one occasion he took his wife and children, and spent a whole day in exploring the bottom of the lake. In the history of these boats, as told in the report of the Board on Fortifications, Phillips afterwards descended in Lake Erie, near Buffalo, and never reappeared.