THE "LONDON."

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 344, 11 March 1911, Page 2

THE "LONDON."

A Pointed Chapter of Our Naval History. London was among the first of English cities whose name was given to a man-of-war. The name, possibly with a political meaning, belonged to a ship which took part in the battles against the Dutch under Martin Tromp and from that time down to the present day the name London has rarely—and then but for short intervals—been absent from the lists of our Navy. After the first Dutch war, a larger London was built at Chatham,, and, carrying Lawson's flag, was one of the fleet which in May, 1660, went to Schevening to bring home the restored King. She did not live to have any war service, being accidentally (or carelessly) blown up, with the loss of 300 lives, in 1664. She was followed by the Loyal London, built with money raised by the City, and named by the King, in acknowledgment of the gift. Her fortune was almost worse than that of her predecessor : for within a year of her launch, and before the accounts of her building were paid, she was burnt by the Dutch in the Medway, a victim not so much to ignorance—for the result was foreseen—as to the culpable folly of the King and his too complaisant advisers. The story of a later and still larger London, a 98-gun ship, in the reign of George 111., brings us into touch with disasters more serious and scarcely less disgraceful. Built in 1766, she began her active career when—tempted by the naval impotence into which Great Britain had fallen—the French decided to intervene in the War of American Independence.

The story of the London during the whole of this war is typical of the state of the Navy. She was ordered to fit out to join Keppel ; but, owing to the bad stats to which years of political jobbery had brought the dockyards, she took so long in completing for sea that Keppel fought his action without her. She then joined the Channel Fleet, and continued in it during that memorable year when—vastly inferior to the allied force which came into our waters—it escaped defeat by sheltering itself behind the Isle of Wight. Its cruise has been spoken of in later times as "a strategical problem," but contemporary opinion saw in it little more than a confession of weakness. After this, the London went out to America, and was the flagship of Admiral Graves in the decisive battle of the war, when, by failing to beat De Grasse, he unwittingly ensured the independence of the Colonies.

"Great Britain," says Mr. Edward Praser, in his "Londons of the British Fleet," newly published by Mr. John Lane, "was paying the penalty ft?r weakening the defences in time of peace, on the plea of economy ; endangering the existence of the British Empire simply for party reasons, to catch House of Commons votes and swell a Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget. There would have been no Yorktown had the twoPower naval standard of that day been adhered to by the Ministry iu the years before the war, had the Fleet been kept superior, in ships of the line, to any combination of the next two Navies—' superior to the Fleets of the two Houses of Bourbon,,' according to the accepted maxim of British eighteenth-century statecraft." This statement of cause and effect is of more than usual importance at the present juncture, when there is danger that the Navy may once again be made the sport of party, and the way be thus paved for another and even greater disaster. It may also be noticed, in view of the efforts which have lately been made to show that "the two-power standard" of naval force is a modern and peace growth, that it was, in fact, devised and maintained to meet the severe and almost constant competition of the eighteenth century ; and that the ouc great failure of the Navy was due, directly and immediately, to the betrayal of that standard.—"Athenaeum."