NAVAL EVOLUTION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1726, 29 March 1905, Page 2

NAVAL EVOLUTION.

ONE CRUISER GOULD DESTROY NELSON'S FLEET LONDON PAPER’S INTERESTING COMPARISON. THE PRESENT AND A CENTURY AGOFox- close upon a century, says the London “Express,” Britain lias enjoyed, undisputed, the supremacy of the sea won for her by Nelson’s glorious victory at Trafalgar ninety-nine years ago. Nothing is more remarkable than the complete revolution which naval construction and naval warfare have undergone in the intervening years. If the great Admiral’s fleet could be restored as it was in 1805 a single cruiser would blow it out of the ■water in an hour without ever coming within range of its guns. Steam propelled vessels were, of coui-se, unknown in Nelson’s time, and the issue of a battle depended to a great extent upon seamanship and the vagaries of the wind. The range and destructive power of the guns -were then so small that officers and men wei-e often killed by rifle fire from picked shots placed in the enemy’s masts, and, as all know, Nelson himself met his death in this way. In modern naval warfare a decisive battle may be fought, as at Chemulpo, without the combatants coming within four miles of each other. If we compare the navy at the commencement of the nineteenth century with the navy of to-day, the following interesting comparison is obtained--1803. IC.I. No. of ships ... 450 472 Tonnage ... ... 461.000 1,867,200 Guns 24.800 1.800 Men 180.000 131.000 Cost <£12,007,400 £36.800,000 The actual average number or guns to each ship, a is interesting to note, has fallen from fifty-five in 1803 to about fifteen this year. In striking this average torpedo craft are taken into account. This reduction, of course, has been rendered possible by the enormous increase in the range and destructive power of the modern, gun. Comparing Nelson’s flagship Victory with the newest 16,000 ton battleship of the King Edward VII. class, it will be found that while the Victory’s heaviest shot was sixty-eight pounds, the twelveinch guns of the King Edward VII. will fire a pi*ojectile weighing 850 pounds. With the invention of armour plates, the first of which was mad© for the Crimean War, the cost of warship construction has increased enormously. A 100-gun man-of-war- in Nelson’s time coppered, masted and rigged, hut excluding armament-, cost £67,660. The King Edward VII. without its guns and ammunition cost the immense sum of £1,368,444 or twenty times as much as Nelson’s Victory. Britain’s naval predominance over other Powers w r as muoh more pronounced five years after the battle of Trafalgar than it is to-day. It will be seen from tlie appended table that in 1810, so far as gun power is concerned, she could have made a good fight of it had all the other naval Powers in the world combined against her. The strength of tho fleets of the great Powers in that year was as follows:

But in the unlikely event of Britain being at war with the combined nations of the world in 1905 she would stand a poor chance of victory. Coast defence ships are here included with battleships:— Rattle Armoured Ships. Cruisei's. Cruisers.

If the ships and the guns of the navy have undergone a revolution, since Nelson’s day, so also have the men. So difficult was it to obtain sufficient seamen to man the ships toward the close of tho eighteenth century that bounties amounting -to as much as £7O had to he offered to induce men to seiwe. This naturally led to the introduction of the riff-raff and ne’er-do-wells of every class. A sailor of the day has thus picturesquely described them : “Them were the chaps as played tlie donee with the fleet : every grass-comb-ing beggar as choose to bear up for the homily had milling to do but to dock the lails of his togs and take to the tender. They used to ship in shoals; they were drafted by forties and fifties 1 o eaeh snip in I lie fleet ; i hoy were bill”.'!y up ! bo mde before there was:— fvon! tor the barber, shave their pates aud .•’em! tne.ui ior'ard to the head fo be

scrubbed and sluished from olew to earring afore you should venture to berth ’em below. Then stand clear of their shore rigs—every finger was fairly a fish hook; neither chest nor bed nor blanket nor bag escaped their slight-o’-hand thievei*y; they pluck ye as clean as a poulterer, aud bone your very eyebrows while staring you full in the face.” There is a striking difference, indeed, between these ruffians and the smart, kind-hearted man of King Edward Vll.’s navy. Though men were difficult to obtain in Nelson’s time, the supply of officers were seldom deficient. So great, in fact, was the competition among the upper classes to enter the navy that the names of children were often entered in the ship’s books before they wore out of the nursery. A striking instance was Sir Edward Hamilton, who was horn on March 12, 1772, and was entered as midshipman on May 21, 1779, when he was only seven years old. It is stated that he actually took part in an action on board his father’s ship, the Hector, one year later. The famous Thomas Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, whose name is associated with as many daring and successful exploits as that of almost any naval officer, was born in December, 1775, and entered as captain’s servant when five years old. Nelson himself entered the navy at tho age of twelve and immediately went west on a voyage to the West Indies. It was the custom in those days, whether in the navy or army, for young gentlemen to serve their apprenticeship as page to some man of note or position and work their way up, partly by influence and partly by talent, to the higher grades of their profession. A preliminary training on land was not so important for Nelson’s officers as it is to-day, when a battleship is filled with complicated machinery from end to end, and manual labour has been reduced to a minimum.

Ships. Guns. Great Britain 450 24,800 France 212 6,000 Russia 346 4,450 Spain ... 301 8,000 "United States 158 526 Other countries ... 214 4.800

France 42 23 23 United States 35 23 21 Russia 30 11 27 Germany 35 7 26 Italy ... 18 6 14 Japan ... G 7 18 Totals 166 77 189 Great Britain ... 64 41 125