The British Navy.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 57, 22 October 1887, Page 4

The British Navy.

The odo thought that is impressed upon the mind by the recent naval man* reuvres is that of blank amazement that they should have been the first. They certainly must not be the last. The seven days’ mimic battle in the Channel has done more to open the Byes of the nation to the “Truth about the Navy ” th an anything short, nf actual war. It is the first time our Navy has been pnt to any sort, of test as to its ability to act as a first line of defence, and the result although in no sense a revelation to those who have studied the altered conditions of naval warfare, must have seriously alarmed the easy-go-ing optimist who complacently assumes that our mastery of the seas is still I a* undisputed and as undisputable as it was when Nelson fell at Trafalgar. Tor the naval manoeuvres have proved to the hilt every allegation which has been made as to the inefficiency, the inadequacy, and the unreadiness of the Navy of Old England. They have brought into glaring relief the absolute dependence of the modern

warship on the coaling station ; the revolution which steam, big guns, and torpedo* have effected in naval warfare ; and above all, the excessive fragility of the complex mechanisms which constitute our first and only line of defence against a foreign foe. No one can say that the conditions were not favorable. Our naval authorities had long notice, fine weather, and were undisturbed by any of the troubles and dangers that they would have to face in actual war. Our fleets are manoeuvring in the Channel, every square mile of which is as familiar as the parade ground of the Horse Guards, they are always within easy reach of the coaling stations and their repairing basins. Yet with all these conditions in their favour, what has been the result ? We have not been able to put to sea a single fighting fleet complete in all its parts ; we are at our wits’ end to find stokers for the ships we do send to sea; none of our fighting squadrons could keep up more than eleven or twelve knots per hour, and the vessels were so undermanned that the men were almost worn out with the incessant duties of a fortnight’s mimic war. Add to this that the supply of smokeless coal gave out at the beginning of operations, and we have a faint glimmering of the condition we should find ourselves in in case of war. But it is with none of these things, nor with the practically undefended condition of the gates of our ocean Empire that we have to do to-day. Our business is to call attention to the evidence supplied by the manoeuvres in the channel of the excessive fragility of the Navy. The tough old heart of oak has given place to a box of machinery, so complicate and delicate, enclosed in a case so brittle, that a single fortnight’s peace manoeuvres wrought such havoc among our ships as to justify an alarm that a month’s real fighting would leave very few of our men-of-war afloat.— Pall Mall Gazette.