All this time the Naval Review at Spithead had been a-preparing. Every nation that boasts a Navy had sent a ship, and the streets of Portsmouth were filled with our own bluejackets and those belonging to the foreign ships. |The Naval Review.| All the World had come to see for herself what the British Fleet was like, and we were able to provide such a Naval spectacle as has never been witnessed before. Just as on June 22 we had furnished forth an Imperial pageant demonstrating the scope and strength of our dominion over the land surface of the globe, so now, on Saturday, June 26, we showed that our sovereignty over the seas is as far reaching and even more absolute. Without taking one single vessel from the Mediterranean, from the Chinese Seas, from Australia, India, or North America, we displayed at Spithead such a congregation of ships of war as filled with amazement and despair those representatives of alien Powers who knew our sea-going prowess only by repute. In all about 165 ships of our Navy rode at ease, in four long lines and two short ones in the narrow Strait, and they were manned by 40,000 officers and men. The length of the lines of British ships aggregated nearly thirty miles! The Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Nowell Salmon, G.C.B., V.C., flew his flag on the Renown.
From a Photograph taken for this Work] [by T. C. Hepworth.
THE ROYAL VISIT TO THE PEOPLE’S PALACE.
The photograph shows the Princess of Wales with her two daughters, the Princess Victoria and Princess Charles of Denmark (Princess Maud), who have just entered the carriage after seeing the crippled children at dinner. The Princess’s bouquet is being handed to her. The Prince is approaching the carriage. The Lord Mayor is seen standing by the pillar over the centre of the carriage.
Painful, indeed, must have been the reflections of those strangely-constituted Britons—if any were present—whose interest in public affairs is limited to the squalid area of parochial politics, as their eyes ranged over the water in the direction of this mighty fleet. With what vain regret must such as these have looked back on the days, some ten or a dozen years since, when British Naval supremacy was but a name—when we had few ships, and those out of date, and few men to man them. Alas! for the fond anticipations of those who were looking forward to the time when Britain should throw away her Empire and sink to the prosperous unimportance of a Belgium, the cheerful mediocrity of a Holland. There, at Spithead, was overwhelming proof that such views are not shared by the great bulk of British people, whether Liberals, Radicals, or Conservatives; that power is still sweet to the ruling race; that that Empire which has been bought with the blood of the Anglo-Saxon will be maintained in its integrity at any cost. Here they lay in serried ranks on the moving waters, orderly as soldiers on a parade ground—the steel-clad champions of a nation’s honour—as powerful to compel peace as to put the issue of war out of question if war must come.
[Fred T. Jane.
TORCHLIGHT EVOLUTIONS BY THE ETON BOYS IN THE QUADRANGLE OF WINDSOR CASTLE.
