DREADNOUGHT ARKANSAS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 202, 14 August 1911, Page 11

DREADNOUGHT ARKANSAS.

AMERICA’S LATEST BATTLE- ' SHIP . . | THE “EFFP lENCY OF THE ' INT'Ii IDUAL.’’ New York, June 22. j Undoubtedly in full sincerity of i sentiment anti jmrpuse. all public! men, from the President that is • down to tlie plain-spoken President ! that, was, say nice things al out tire; peace pact ; but then from Boose ! velt back to Taft insistence is also! made that the lies! security for' such a pact is a strong and, above: all. efficient navy. At the Corona-: tion Review, the American visiting l Dreadnought was designedly a; “ show” vessel, but in. some important respects it- is only a very partial realisation of the ideal American battleship. The aim now is to graft upon naval work that “ scientific management ” which in factories and industrial plants of all kinds is effecting something like a revolution in the methods of production.

Six weeks hence the youngest and biggest of the Dreadnoughts, the Arkansas, will finally leave the shipbuilding yard, and her crew — an assortment in all lines of the

very picked men of the navy —are now being assembled. In all, there will be 1000 men and 100 officers, and in the working plan there will be, as far as possible, no foreman or chief, but each man, as in a firstclass factory, will have his own duties and his own place, and orders will come direct from above.

Each day there will be big-gun drills for most of the crew, and smali-arms practice for all the crew. Each day. too, in the most modernequipped machine' shop alloat, the men of that- mechanic class will put in a number of hours repairing machinery and studyingniochanies ; and the engine and tire rooms, by unintermitted daily exercises of varied kind, will also be kept adept. Most of the officers-and in tlie future this “ most will probably < otn'.' t > mean all know everything in ti '“-ry. and in practice are able to do nearly all the work of the ship down to the simplest detail. Even as far back as the Spanish War, Admiral ,Wainwright, then commanding' a gunboat the niaebin ery of which had been disabled, went down himself to the engineroom. and with hL own 'he required repair l -, and saved the ship in the very niek of time from drifting into the fire of a hostile battery. ; Tim dominating principle at the: Navy Department is at present;

more and more that in modern warfare it is the “personal equation that counts —the efficiency of the individual in his own task, the system itself in correlating the crew into a harmonious unity, and the efficiency of the commander in directing this self-acting working whole to the best advantage.. That, is not the whole story, it need hardly be added, for accidents must be provided for. and efficient men grow careless, and no ideal is ever attainable. But, however far it may come short of perfection it could not be worse than the old muddled methods of the past.