SHIPS THAT PASS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17251, 29 August 1919, Page 9

SHIPS THAT PASS.

• — ;•: U BRITISH NAVY REFORM. |; NEW "SCRAPPING" POLICY. 1 END OF THE VETERANS. | Tout lasse, tout passe, tout est casse. 6 So may we vary the old French saying in I speaking of ships of war, writes the naval I correspondent of the London Observer. | The end of the great struggle is to bring 1 sweeping changes in the tit-.", which held i the seas victoriously— rather, to the 1 navy of which that fleet was the spear- 1 head. Virtually, every battleship, every I armoured cruiser, and every light cruiser I which was buiit before the " Dreadnought I era " will go lpon the scrap heap. There 1 are a few exceptions. The Lord Nelson i and Agamemnon, apparently, are to be re- 1 tamed for a while longer, and the old I Highflyer, a vessel which has alwava been 1 a favourite, for some reason, will be fla-- 1 ship in the East Indies. But, with these? j exceptions, everything antecedent to the Dreadnought is under sentence. If wa I couple with this fact the. further interna- I tion that work has been stopped on all | battleships a'.id battle-cruisers under con- 1 etruction save the Hood, we see pretty ' ; clearly what the Admiralty policy of the P immediate future is to be. It might be j summed up in the sentence, " Few, but j fit." But the use of the word '' few " is j comparative only. There will be a great saving in men, but th-n British Navy" will remain easily the first in the world. If the desire to outbuild us materialises I in any quarter, it is evident that we shall have to set to work to build new vessels of equal or superior power to those ordered by our competitors, friendly or otherwise. The situation could not be met bv keeping old ships on the Navy List, and publishing addition sums of their tonnage. There has been too much eye-wash of that kind iin the past. The war has shown the ; weakness of vessels, even .the.latest and most powerful of the pre-Dreadnought era, in armament, in speed, and in protection, especially in under-water protection. It is perfectly true that the war has also shown tL-.t a use can be found for almost every vessel, however old and weak. But it has also shown the wastefulness of using ships requiring many hundreds of men to work and fight them for functions which would be better discharged by smaller and less costly vessels. The fate of thw three Cressys taught us that lesson- very, early in the history of the struggle. ' ' ", Saving in Han Power. \ But to the very end we, perforce, kept great vessels like the Minotaur " barging ■ t about ". on the verge of the Arctic encie to enforce the blockade, eating coal, locking up hundreds of men, and presenting an unnecessarily large target for enemy submarines The mistake is one which will not be repeated. The Admiralty will be more sparing of its own highly personnel. A couple of hundred men will do the work on which six hundred or 1 more were employed; at least, until we find ourselves with a new drove of white elephants on our hands. . In the meantime, the old drove are for extinction. There may be something to be. said for keeping some of the smaller vessels'of the older type in reserve—«uch of the old second and third-class cruisers as were not worn out, for instance. But it is hard to see what argument can be urged against tie decision to scrap the eld battleships and the armoured craissrß of 10,000 tons and upwards. None of them, perhaps, have made themselves the reputation of the " Fighting " Temeraire. At any rate, there is no Turner to paint them, and no Newbolt to sing them. But those who have followed the fortunes of the navy for the last five-and-twenty years will" be sorryenough to see some of them ' go. . The Majesties take the oldesrt, class first —" restored beauty to the ships .of, the line. Foregoing types of turret ship's .been monstrosities. These were ships "once more, their lines more graceful than those of the wooden three-decker, although they lacked the romantic charm of their spread of canvas. On© of the number, the Prince George, had a career full of hair-breadth escapes. She was rammed by her " opposite member," the Hannibal, during night manoeuvres. She was cut down to the waterline and nearly sunk. - Lord Charles Beresford, commanding the. fleet, went on board her and coolly supervised the operations winch resulted in saving her. Her last- adventure was off -Cape Helles, where she embarked the rearfuard in the eivacuatio-n, and was struck y a torpedo as she steamed away—a "dnd!" The Jupiter, of this class, has been employed as an ice-breaker at Archangel. Canopus Class and Fonnidables. Of the Canopas class, two lie at the bottom of the iEgean— and Goliath. Of the remainder, the Ganopus herself did service East and West in the 'war.' She was sent on the hopeless errand of .supporting Cradock against von Spee,' but later avenged. her impotence by acting as the lure which, to some extent at any rate, brought him to the Falkland Islands. Another of the class, the Albion, is remembered by the disaster which occurred at her launch on the Thames, when the wave caused by her taking the water washed away a stage on which, spectators were standing and caused the deaths of several people. The Glory, anotner of the type, has been " doing her bit " recently—rif she is not still, in the Arctic circle. Of the eight Formidables three have perished during the war--the Bulwark 1 by internal explosion, the Formidable being torpedoed in the Channel, and the Irresistible mined in the attack on the Dardanelles. The Venerable, it will bo remembered, took part in the earliest bombardments of the German positions, on the Belgian coast. Three of the next class, the Exmouths, have been lost—the Montagu, through going ashore .off Lundy Island, the Russell and Cornwallis by submarine action during the war. The Swiftsure, one of the two battleships purchased from the Chilian Government to prevent their falling into the hands of the Russians at the outbreak of the. Japanese war, lost her sister ship, the Triumph, 'a in the .-Egean the day before the Majestic ; was sunk. They were never well fitted for the British Navy, and were long ago relegated to guardship dirties in China" and 1 the East Indies. Their disappearance will occasion little regret. " The Wobbly Eight." But what of the King Edward VII. class" the wobbly eight," as they were called actually the Third Battle "Squwl--1 ron of the Grand fleet when war broke 1 out! Their disappearance will naturally ; cause some surprise. They were the last battleships designed by " Sir William I Whit*, and the keel of the King Edward was only laid in 1903, by his lat e Majesty himself, on the same day that Cjueen Alex- ; andra launched the Queen at Devonport. With a rise in displacements of some 1500 tons, and the addition of four 9.2-inch | guns to the standard armament of the ' day, they were regarded as something of ' a new departure in naval design- They were, for the further raising of the armament brought the gunnery problem to a head, and led to its solution in the ?Jl- - ship. They were i>ne steppingstone in this direction, and the Lord 5 Nelsons, with their four 12-inch and ten 9.2-inch the next. After these [ the resort *o one calibre in- , evitable. Their soubriquet ,of " the [ wohblv eight " was owing to the extremely small turning circle with which they were endowed, and the consequent difficulty of regulating the helm. The Kim," Edward vTI. was sunk by a mine during the war, and the Britannia- torpedoed off Gibraltar on the eve of the , armistice. ' The six others survive. „'■ » -- - Of the armoured cruisers to be- disposed of the most famous are those described by" Lord Goschen as " mighty % cruisers, of , | which the Good. Hope, given > by : Gape - f Colony to the navy, on the initiative of ; # Mr. Jan Hofmeyr, for long the, flagship .;; of Sir Percy Scott, and ..eventually sunk / .-',"v at Coronel/was the best known.