UNITED STATES NAVY YARDS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 3443, 26 May 1898, Page 4

UNITED STATES NAVY YARDS.

Of the eight Government dockyards of the United States (says an exchange) several lie in positions so exposed, and on channels so inadequately defended, as to offer a temptation to a dash from small swift gun-vessels, acting solely with the object of harassing the enemy and destroying manufacturing and repairing plants. Portsmouth navy yard, at Kittery, Maine, lies on the Pisoataqua river, but three miles from a bar bearing 50ft at high water. The entrance is poorly defended. Boston and New York navy yards are safe with their valuable contents, while the League Island yard lies 97 miles from the sea at Philadelphia, up an intricate and twisting channel, rendered impracticable to an attacking force by the removal of range sights and lights, the river being mined, besides defended by modern batteries. The Washington ordnance and repair yard is also safe, but the Norfolk Jnavy yard at Gosport (Va.) was burnt out by the Northern forces during the Civil War, when no lodger able to hold it against the State forces, the steam corvette Passaic running the opposing batteries successfully, and retiring unhurt after accomplishing her work of destruction. Pensacola yard in Florida would be open to a dash from an enterprising offieer. The Mare Island yard is properly defended, and in any event probably safe from its location. To attack the torpedo station at New London would be running one’s head into the lion’s don with a vengeance. The private shipbuilding plants of John Roach, at Chester, Pa., 12 miles below Philadelphia, and the Cramp Company’s yards at that city, with another smaller yard belonging to the Dialogue Company, are safe from attack, but the Newport News Shipbuilding Company’s yards in Hampton Road would be not inaccessible to the operations of a dashing young commander. But the situation reminds one somewhat of the story they tell in New York of the man who advertised a fight between a rattlesnake and a tortoise, to take place in a certain hall, admittance being charged at the rate of a dollar a head. On the night advertised, to a crowded audience, appeared the premotor, who addressed them somewhat in this way: " Gentlemen—As you are assembled here in such numbers, it gives me pleasure to begin by producing the tortoise ” —having done so —“ now, if any gentleman present has a rattlesnake in his pocket, the fight can proceed. The tortose is here.” So perhaps the exhibition of the American dockyard tortoise may not find a rattlesnake in the Spanish pockets.