BATTLESHIP OR TORPEDOBOAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12602, 17 June 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

BATTLESHIP OR TORPEDOBOAT.

It was inevitable that the unbroken series of disasters to the Russian battleships should , stimulate into renewed activity those people - who' believe that the. battleship is a cumbersome aud costly type of war vessel, that has outlived its usefulness. This was proved in a recent discussion in Congress (says a rece»t issue of the Scientific American), when several prominent members, one of whom at least is closely connected with naval affairs, seriously advocated the abandonment of all battleship construction. The' argument adduced "was the familiar fallacy that because. a ship costing six or seven million dollars can bo destroyed in a few minutes by the attack of an insignificant torpedo-boat, or sunk by a mine, it would be better to build smaller ships and more of them. "Let us have done with 12-jnoh guns and foot-thick •; armour," said one; "give me the fast cruiser and the 8-inch gun, which is big enough to sink any ship afloat." We are not going to' reiterate the wellknown argument in favour of the big battleship. They are as well known to our readers, doubtless, as they are'to the gentlemen in Congress,'who just now seem to be seized with something of a panic because of the Russian disasters. What we do wish to state is that while the torpedo-boat and the submarine mine have given fresh demonstration, of their "deadly powers, nothing whatever has occurred to prove that the battleship has outlived its usefulness. The loss of these vessels must bo viewed carefully in the full light of the cirpumtances under which it happened. On the night of the,. attack at Port Arthur there is no question that the Russians were totally unprepared! An article published recently in one of our leading dailies, by a correspondent who was on, board a passenger steamer, that lay with the Russian fleet in the outer roadstead, makes it. perfectly clear that an "attack by the Japanese ''on that particular night was not even dreamed of.

The task of sinking.these ships, judging from the description, was almost a? simple as if the torpedo-boats had steamed in among ■a, fleet of anchored merchant vessels in time of peace. ""' In saying this we do not detract, one iota from ..the praise clue to the Japanese for their alertness, dash, and skill. We simply wish to emphasise the fact that the torpedoing of the battleships .Tsarovitch and Rotvisan and the cruiser Pallada proves nothing more, as regards the vulnerability of battleships, than that an 18-inch Whitehead torpedo with 200 pounds ot guncotton in its .nose will, if fired from, close ranges of a few hundred yards, most surely disable, if not send to the bottom, any battleship afloat. This has been known for years, and the practical demonstration of the fact on that eventful night in Port Arthur has introduced into the problem of battleship construction not a single factor that was not well known before.

As to the sinking of the Potropavjovsk, it is- not denied that she was sunk by a submarine mine of some kind, and the probabilities are that it, was one of several that were laid by the Japanese on the night previous to the disaster. A submarine mine may contain anywhere from 250 to 500 pounds of the most powerful high explosive. It was perfectly well known that contact with such a mine by anything that floats, battleship or what not, meant almost, pertain destruction. The Petropavlovsk did not, turn turtle because of any faults in her design, or any want of a proper margin of stability; she turned turtle because when a huge section of her bottom was blown in, the work of cutting her in two was completed by the blowing up of the magazines. It is little wonder that she went down; and it matters little whether she went down on an even keel, by the head, or by the stern, or keel uppermost. It was not that the battleship was weak; but that the mine was strong. The true lesson of the loss of the Russian battleships is that these costly and most formidable engines of wai are to be handled with a becominc sense of their inestimable value, and of the terrible gap that is left in the naval fighting strength of a nation if so much as one of them be lost. They are not designed, for running" in and out of harbours, over fields that are mined both by friend and foe. They were never built as floating fortresses for harboui defence. Their place is in the open; they are preeminently deep-sea craft; they are designed to fight where sep room can be had, the perils of the mine do not exist, and the dea torpedo-boat can be fought under conditions that limit its powers. < Had the splendid Russian fleet or- .the night of February 9 been concentrated, as it should have been, in the inner harbom of Port Arthur, it would not have had its wings clipped at the veryopening of the war. It wQuld have probably met and fought the Japanese fleet on the open sea, on thoroughly even terms, if not with a slight advantage in weight and numbers, and we have not a, doubt that after the hard hammering of a bitterlyfought engagement in the open, the survivors would have proved to be, fb" «b'r<s that carried the heaviest jjjihs pud the heaviest armour. .\

The torpedo and the mine, however, have undoubtedly added in this war to their prestige, even among those naval experts who are able to estimate the dramatic: jpci-l'-jntp of the war at their full value. The most astonishing thing is the comparative immunity with which the torpedo-boats seem to have run in under the fire of the forts, whether to, attack with the torpedo, or to escort loaded merchant ships for blocking tho harbour. What naval men are hoping for is that there may jet be a fleet engagement in which the battleship will be given an opportunity to demonstrate its powers of (attack and defence.