THE SEA FIGHT OF THE FUTURE.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume 3670, Issue XXIV, 9 March 1898, Page 4

THE SEA FIGHT OF THE FUTURE.

Mr Fred. T. Jane writes on Naval Warfare, present and future, and after several gruesome forecasts, sums up more reassuringly :-— The naval battle of to-morrow may be a terrible thing, but there is reason to believe that it will be far less dreadful than people are so fond of imagining. Especially is there reason to think that in ironclads it wiU not be very sanguinary. Science has made cloae quarter fighting tantamount to annihilation ; but it has only very partially solved the problem how to hit at long range — except at target practice. The real danger of a modern soa fight at long range lies in the ammunition question. After such a battle, ships, perhaps still quite unsubdued, will be left with empty magazines : the biggest ironclad cannot cany enough for more than a Jew hours vigorous connonade. The Japanese Fuji, with less gun power and more capacity for ammunition, is J ; kely to prove superior to the U.S. Indiana, whose gun power has grown at the expense of the ammunition room. Mr Jane has no great dread of the dynamite gun, which must be exposed to the fire of long range guns long before it can fire, or of the submarine boat, which, with its slow speed and its need of coming to the surface, hold only "a limited future value." He also considers "nearly all the torpedo boats in existence are practically obsolete," because in the open sea they are too slow. The torpedo destroyer is, he things, nullified by the 12-poun-ders now used on board the ship to be torpedoed.