THE "BALTIC" FLEET.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10409, 22 March 1910, Page 1

THE "BALTIC " FLEET.

A RUMOR, A REMINISCENCE, Als D A PLEA. (By Herbert Russell.) I am told that the '"Baltic Fleet" is about to bo disbanded. My informant is the skipper of one of the ships in that big cluster forming the "Special Reserve" at Devonport. He spoke with a tremor of regret as lie assured ine there was too little room to question the correctness of this intelligence. "Didn't I think it a great pity to do away with this old'guard? Why, only the last time the 'Baltic Fleet' went lo sea —a few months since—it steamed fifteen knots in combined tactical exercises. The guns were good, the armour good—the ships, in- fact, as good as when they were built. True, the later boats hopelessly outclassed them. But was that an argument for scrapping P" I found myself in complete sympathy with my friend's plaint. It is not my business to discuss here the merits or demerits of nucleus crews, skeleton reserves, care-and-maintenance parties, nor any other arrangement for keeping a laid-by warship from growing mouldy.

For I am merely • dealing with the ships of the "Baltic Fleet." The Navy of to-day is chillingly prosaic. It reasons in fighting-values, and defines efficiency in comparative points. There are those who think the line of obsolescence is drawn too soon. I believe Lord Charles Bcresford i.« of this opinion.

Anyhow, there is no room for sentiment in discussing the utility of warships. My friend, the "Baltic Fleet" skipper, could not very well escape sentiment, however. Pie knows that 'when his ship goes he goes, and there are a good many more like him, excellent men. capable of most useful work, but who have never had anybody to push, them or pull them along, and are relegated, hke the ships in which they are keeping their "last post," into the backwater of the service.

We were walking along one of the immense quays flanking the Prince of Wales' Basin in Keyham Dockyard as we talked. At the upper end of this, the finest naval dock in the world, lies moored the battle squadron of tiie "Baltic Fleet." We strolled to where we could command the whole line abreast, and halted. As a mere piece of stirless pageantry that show was worth dwelling upon. But I had a deeper interest. .Not one of those' vessels but could conjure up reminiscence in my memory; of scenes and doings when they were still in the glory of their reign, and when, somehow, the whole life of the Navy seemed more mellow and picturesque, as Rudyard Kipling has caught the spirit of it in his ''Fleet in Being." Mostly Royal Sovereigns, this cluster, with the nimbus-funnelled Nile, and the squat-looking Trafalgar sandwiched in ; vessels armed mainly with 13.5-incli guns, which hurl 12501b of metal through thirty inches of wrought iron at a mile range, and armoured with 18 inches of compound belting—they could still give and take more nasty knocks, these ships of the "Baltic Fleet."

There is the brave old Hood, in which I sailed upon, the farthest-flung scheme of combined manoeuvres ever yet carried out by the British Navy, in 1903, as special correspondent of the Express. The spectacle of these vessels in a gale of wind somewhere near the Azores recurs to me as I stand, musing, heedless of the proximity of my friend. The Hood was battened down, and laboring amid roaring cataracts, from which her forecastle, all cleared for action, would soar, sluicing and slantwise, until one marvelled that the ponderous turret could be up-borne to such heights. Our next ahead was the Empress of India, and our next astern the Resolution. Abeam, about a. mile away, the Benbow and Sans Pareil curtseyed* along through veils of spray. They have made their last voyage to the knacker's yard. The gale poured level in our teeth, and the wallowing of the top-hampered monsters was a breath-arresting spectacle to watch. Yet steadfastly did they maintain their thirteen knots, and this at the end of fifteen hundred miles of continuous steaming, when fires were* getting dirty and the machinery growing "tired." "Don't you call it a blessed shame?" ejaculated my friend, sullenly returning mo salute of a passing bluejacket. "It isn't for the cost of keeping the ships up. If the men who live aboard them weren't there, they'd be kicking their heels about in barracks ashore."

"I suppose tlie old must give place to the new?" said I.

"Ay, but the old may be useful, too. That tieet you're looking at is absolutely stronger than Togo's fleet at Tsushima, although, of course, two or three of his ships were more modern. Think how these same vessels would have altered the whole course of history in that war."

"And what is the cost of maintaining this last line in an efficient condition?"

"Less than the price of a new destroyer every year," he responded emphatically. "Which would be most useful, think you, in the last grips of a deadly struggle, those eight battleships or one destroyer?" I confess his words impressed me with a sense of conviction, backed as they were by the material objects of our discussion. I am told that the place these ships occupy in the Keyliam Basin is wanted for more modern craft.

Then let tliem be moved.. Betwixt North Corner and Saltasli Bridge the Hamoaze can offer a haven to thrice this number of battleships. I am further told that money is not available to keep pace with modern improvements iii tliem. The newest ships naturally receive first consideration when any fresh feature is adopted. By the time it comes to the turn of vessels with but two or three tlie normal span of a warship's life remaining the appropriation is commonly exhausted.

To which I reply in the words of my skipper friend, these ships are as good as they are as when they were built. Let; us keep them, not to send against a Nassau or Westfalen, but to meet their corresponding types when wc come to that inevitable phase of the struggle in which numbers tell. .

What wquld they make, this fine batch of battleships, if they were sold out of the service ? Sir Arthur Wilson, with his affectionate regard for the little Revenge, must needs have a kindly feeling for the whole class to which she belongs. He can surely reconcile the retention of the "Baltic Fleet" with the national interest. I dfevoutly hope that he will make out my friend the skipper to be wrong.