OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS COLUMN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17066, 26 July 1917, Page 2

OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS COLUMN

(Conducted by Magister, to whom all communications must bo addressed.) FOR SENIORS AND JUNIORS. [Magistor will ba glud bo receive Nature Notes, marked paperß containing educational articles, diagrams, detuils of experiments, etc.. of scholastio interest to teachers and pupils. Correspondents must use onmt onn side of tho paper, and whether using a pen names or not. must scud ootli NAMis and addkess.] THE JUNIOR NAVY LEAGUE ESSAY. "Fighting at Sea in Drako's Time and To-day; a Contrast" is the subject, and I promised about a month ago to write some notes upon it to give our primary school pupils a lead; but as my columns are to bo discontmued alter to-day—let us hope temporarily, for paper will not always be in short supply, and at abnormal rates — I must confine myself to what can bo got in in this issue. In the times of Drake, the Devil—that's what the Spaniards called him —England was a rising power and Spain was in its zenith, though showing signs of decadency; to-day Germany is one of the rising sea powers, but are wo decadent? A gentleman r>aid to me some time ago that we are, but that Germany is morally and spiritually on a. much lower plane, and is thoreforo not the one to wrest our supremacy from us; so that William, tho Modern Hun, with his myrmidons—young folk had better look that words up—is not to take the place of what tho Spaniards were in Drake's day, with their motto "Non sufficit orbis" ("the world is too small for us"), as long as we have a bulldog Beatty and a silent Jellicoe controlling our navies, and as long as we uphold a Christianised civilisation having a world-wide acceptance, and do not say that the ultimate issue is what is decided by Might is to be the Right—a long sentence, but let it pass. Now, where shall I begin? With colonies? In Drake's day, sea power was used to control colonisation, which did not mean then "what it means now as we understand tho word. Somebody said, the other day, that the looser the bonds binding us to the Motherland, the tighter we are bound. But in Drake's day the Spaniards U6ed their navy to make the colonies as a perquisite for Spain and Portugal—for Spain controlled Portugal—and then not as nuclei for budding nations forming a congeries, but as colonies in which the Spaniards took up an abode only as long as was necessary to exploit the natives, and wheji these were not sufficient or were diminished or exterminated, to exploit slaves imported from wherever they could be obtained. At the present moment our sea power is being used to prevent a modern domination by Germany, generally speaking, on the lines Spain worked along in Drake's time. Perhaps, however, when the subject for the essay was chosen, the object in view was to get a series of contrasts on fighting then and now, and not to get long views and to study cause and effect; so supposing wo narrow down our outlook. Take ships: In . Drake's time ships were small by comparison with ships now. The Home Government now cable out the number of ships sunk weekly over and under 1600 tons. But in Drake's era, there were perhaps none over 1600 tons, and merchant ships were convertible into fighting ships with little trouble; so we find now liners like Aquitania 47,000 tons, Britannic 54,000 (sunk), Olympic 45,000; while Germany has Vaterland 58,000 tons, besides several others built or being built over 50,000. Then, if we go to the navy, we have battleships up to 29,000 —I am speaking of before the war, for no authentic figures have appeared since, though since then we may have built bigger—while Germany had Blucher, and perhaps others 32,000 tons. Then, wind was depended upon as a' propelling power, and "windjammers" reached a maximum of, perhaps, 15 knots; but now we have steam, oil, and electricity as motive powers, engines developing 68,000 horse-power (Mauretania), and a speed' of knots; and in the navy we have battleships of 110,000 horse-power, developing a speed of 32 knots and even more. And what about armaments? The Victory—and not much progress was made in armament and munitions from Drake's time to Nelson's, though Nelson had more with a larger number of men and guns on board—had 102 guns and the Royal Sovereign 112;. but the largest of these were 36pounders, while now the largest shells are nearly a ton in weight. And see the distance they travel! Drake's 361b shot might have travelled a mile or so, but now a shot or shell—and pretty well all projectiles now are h.p. (high explosives), shrapnel and other kinds—can be hurled 20 miles or more, and in their flight go over Mount Cook! Cannon then were muzzle loading, now the loading and cleaning on a ship are done from the breech; and the speed of firing now was undreamt of in Drake's day 6. We have passed, too, from common powder generating a dense black smoke to smokeless powder of terrific power, giving off a bluish haze. Drake's cannon were pea-shooters compared with a modern piece of ordnance, for one gun can now discharge a weight of metal greater than a whole broadside in Drake's time, and take the cost! The Pelican—after passinothrough the (Strait of Magellan named the " Golden Hind"—with which Drake circumnavigated the world and returned loaded up with untold treasure, was " but 120 tons, at best no better than a modern racing yawl," and vessels like. this took part in the fight against the Spanish Armada; but even the best of Queen Elizabeth's navy did not cost perhaps more than £50,000, and after being riddled with round shot—no shell in those days, all solid shot—could be beached, careened, repaired, and launched again in a few days. Compare one of these ships in a fight, with what happens to a ship in a modern battle. A battleship nowadays can be sunk by a well-placed shell, and take down with her a thousand men or more —the Queen Mary had over 1000 when she went down in the battle of Jutland. And while we are mentioning losses, how many were lost in the running fight with the great Armada ? I do not know, but I think I- am safe in saying that more lives were lost in the battle of Jutland in an hour or two than were lost by the English in the several days' fight and pursuit of the Armada. At Trafalgar, we are told our loss in killed was 449 (Janes), and though it was a dingdong battle not a ship sunk as a direct result of the cannonading, while in tho battle of Jutland more men went down in one ship. And how many ships? A comparison between killed in a battle m Drake's time and in a modern battle cannot be made, but wo know that in men killed and in ships sunk, modern figures are appalling.

But I did not finish the comparison in cost. I have an idea that I have read somewhere that the Victory cost £60,000; but a modern battleship or battle cruiser cost before the war anything over £2,ooo,ooo—the Lion cost £2,068,350, and others larger and more recent have cost more. Then think of the money written off year by year for depreciation, the cost of coal, munitions, keeping and feeding 1000 men. The financial year before the war allowed, one way and another, for an expenditure of fully £50,000,000! Can you conceive it? Cromwell, half a century after Drake, reached the high-water mark of £400,000 in one of his budgets. Shall I say anything more about armament? In effectiveness we cannot compare Drake's guns with ours. _ But have a look at the cannon in the Triangle and in the Market R srve —I have forgotten the new names. Measure their length and the diameter of tho bore—calibre it is called. Our large guns are lighter than they used to bo, because they are made largely of miles of ribbons of a special steel wound round and round. That you cannot make a comparison with; but compare the calibre and length with that of a 16|in gun 58ft long how big is your school room? If you are in the VI Standard measure the calibre of the guns I have mentioned and compare, the area with the area of a 16iiii calibre which weighs, by-the-bye, about 122 tons! I wish, too, you could go along to the Central Battery' and see the breech and tho rifling, the latter grvin«greater shooting accuracy and penefrating power. Those who read those notes are fortunate if they saw a gun in mimao action in one of tho turrets of tibc New Zealand when she was here. I could speak, too,' of the complex mechanism connected with the working of a «un, the quick-firers, small arms, firing 600 shots a minute, but I must huxry on.

In Drake's time all ships were made of wood; about the time of the Crimean war wood gave place to iron, and that gave way_ to steel, which again gave place to GpeciaDy hardened steel, the most familinr kind being Krupp steel, which was first oxhibtted in the first great exhibition hofd in 1851, and connected with the name of Prince Consort, the Gomkui husband of Queen Victoria and the grandfather of the present King. Albert conceired the idea of having an exhibition which should bring together all the arts of peace, and one of the prominent, mottoes displayed was '" Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards Men! ' The ingot of Krupp steel then exhibited, m addition to being used in peaceful[■ arts, heralded its use in war, for the exhibition was followed by tho Crimean Danish, Austrian, aad Bianco-Prussian,

wars, and in these eteol and the science that mado it have developed into aids in the most inconceivable devilish destruction. But 1 must not enlarge upon this point, for there are so many others to consider—points I iriuet just allude to in a paragraph, and you can make out a paragraph on each. 'lake tho marvellous work done by wireless telegraphy; take aerial observation which is used at 6ea when wireless is unavailable, to locate ail enemy and to give iniomiutioii, and also to follow submarines which, though invisible from tho surface of the oceau, are visible from the air, just as stars invisible in tho day can be seen from the bottom of a shaft. The work of submarines we are tragically aware of, and submarine warfare is only in its infancy, unless the leading nations follow the advice of H. G. Wells in " War and the Future" and organise a league to inp warh'ko preparations in the bud. Already submarines of 2000 tons or more have been launched, and have crossed the Atlantic, and perhaps got further afield. Attention can be drawn to tho great use made of science in war as a destructive agent, but also to its beneficences. In no previous war has science played such an important part in soothing pain, restoring back to health, and in saving life. One of tho marvels of the present war is tho medical services with which are allied tho lied Cross and Ambulance movements. The mention of science, too, brings to mind the skilled labour and specialising that aro associated with naval warfare as with war on land.

Perhaps I may add a word on submarines to what I have already written. Tho submarine and the mine will make us recast our ideas upon what arc the elements of Sea Power, Within 24 hours of the declaration of war our North Sea Fleet established our naval supremacy, and the position remains unchanged: "Tho British ships, whether men-of-war or merchantmen, are upon the sea, the Germans in their ports. Nowhere perhaps wiu- the supreme, significance of their inconspicuous, their silent presence and pressure immediately realised." What is the British Navy doing? " h'ox many months neither in Germany nor among neutral States,' did uninstructed opinion clearly perceive ihat the key of the whole European civilisation, military as well as naval,' lay in the keeping of that invisible fleet, that the groat arc of the Allies' communicaitons from north to south, vital to all their efforts, depended upon its efficiency, that it was, too, the band of encircling steel, destined in the end to strangle by its unremitting pressure the strength and resources of the Central Powers." Those words are from

•" J'ho British Navy at War," a shilling not book by W. Macneile Dixon, a Professor in the University of Glasgow. One use our Navy has served has not been generally recognised. In times of peace ships have been used to chart the seas and oceans of the world, and tho charts resulting have been of service to the shipping of all nations. One word more. Sea Power in our hands has been a- force arresting tho license of the outlaw, and no other nation, except the Prussian, wants to see our sea power give way to a German sea power. Before tho ■\\ar no German had any cause to complain of British arrogance. Wo have held Neptune's sce;>tre for over a century, and what nation has chafed under our supremacy? Wo have crushed piracy and made the pirates themselves frankly acknowledge it has been for their good. Slavery, too, has retreated before the White Ensign. Just p.nothcr question: Where would civilisation and our Empire-, and tho Freedom of Nations have beon low if our Fleet had not asse.-ted the i-ovweianty of the seas in August, 1914?

These notes are rot well arranged, for they have been nut down just as they have occurred to my mind, but they will siiggesr other lines of thought which will provide more material 'or rssay work than the time limit will allow the use of.