ON BOARD THE BATTLESHIPS

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 36

ON BOARD THE BATTLESHIPS

INTERNAL WORKING OF THE

FLEET.

BIG GUNS AND THE GUNNERS.

ON THE DEATH-DEALING TURRET

lFv.au Oca Special CobbespokdejitJ

AUCKLAND, August 11. One soon gets tired of processions that do not progress and functions and speeches. The common blood and the crimson line of kinship are oft-recurring phrases. Flags and arches and even crowds cease to interest after a while, and the conclusion one ultimately arrives at is that the ships are the thing. Thus it was Donald Mac Donald, of the Argus, and I, in company with two others, who were guests on the Powerful, decided to hire a launch and proceed on a visit to one of the battleships of the first division. We choose the Georgia. As our launch puffed up to the gangway, the big white-sided mass of steel, with her buffcoloured top hamper of grim turrets, highfunnels, htige ventilators, and fighting tops towered vast above us, and the officer on watch — a lieutenant with two gold stripes and one star on his coat sleeves, who was receiving the handsome pay of £600 a year — greeted us cordially, and detailed a junior officer to show us round. He was a good-looking, darkhaired young fellow, with pince-nez and a pleasant smile.

The Georgia is a little village in itself. There are some 850 men and 35 officers on board. The big yellow superimposed turret on the after deck rose above us where we chatted, grim and silent, with the long dark muzzles of the great 12-inch guns nosing out into the air as if on the scent for trouble. Above them shorter antennae in the shape of two eight-inch guns reached out from smaller gaps in the steel casing. Forward of this were the great arms of the two 20-ton , cranes, which lift the steam launch and lower it to the water line as gently and tenderly as a mother might place her sleeping babe in its cradle". The big ventilators and the three funnels are grouped near the same spot, and above are the Hying bridge and the fighting tops. The turrets rising fore and aft above the upper deck give one the impression that so much top hamper might make the ship roll, but such is not the case. They are placed on the centre line, and, if anything, make the vessel steadier. We asked if we might go inside the Georgia's turret, and our guide stepped aside and talked in undertones with a senior lieutenant. He came back with an apologetic look on his handsome face, and 6aid he was sorry, but they were -in the midst of changing their loading system, and things were in a transition state. Probably the senior officer was not taking any risks just then with the secrets of the new system. We were ostensibly journalists, but we might be spies, and so we moved on to other things. But on another ship, where I had a friend at court, I was able to 6ee all I desired, and any secrets that I may have chanced upon have been carefully wrapped up and decently buried in Auckland Harbour.

I may say, however, that the American navy ie taking its electrical appliances out of the turrets, and is reverting to hand-loading, with which they find they can beat the records. The new manner of fire control which they are establishing is, I am given to understand, practically the same a« in the British navy. Those turrets, with their long gun muzzles nofing out and all their breech blocks and firing machinery hidden within the tough steel walls, fascinate one. When everything eke has been shot away or crippled beyond immediate repair, and the lower decks are perhaps deeply splashed with red, they are supposed to remain in action, and be still able to give a deathdealing blow to the enemy, perhaps to sink him. With their air blasts, deflection indicators, rods and pinions, and ratchets and other devilish contrivances, they are certainly something for the uninitiated to marvel at.

Although the 13-inch guns are the heaviest in the fleet, the 12-inch guns, such as we saw on the Georgia, are the more powerful. They discharge a projectile weighing 8701b, and have a muzzle velocity of 2700 ft per second, and a muzzle energy of 44,000 foot tons, or, in plainer words, a power that could lift no less than 44,000 tons. These are figures that take some thinking out on the part of the uninitiated, but they are worth while pondering over. The old Oregon played no mean part in the destruction of Admiral Cervera's fleet at Santiago, but the more modern Georgia is five times as effective.

And what of the man behind the gun? Bowles has described him of the English variety. He is a little, thick-set man, with a twinkle in his eye and a piece of 6pun yarn round his toe. Belgravia knows him not, nor Mayfair. Society would not admit him to her outer doorsteps. The chief ambition is to own a public-house in Portsea. Nevertheless he holds the balance of Europe in his hands. The American variety is very much the same. He is perhaps a little slimmer, there is less of the bulldog type about him. and he is of a more nervous temperament, but he is still the same little king in his own spotless kingdom. To him the great complicated machines are living entities. They are almost his friends, for he knows them from breech-block to muzzle better perhaps than he knows his dearest chum. And the curious part about it is that they are feminine. When th« big battleship is moving along her cour&e it is "her" and not- ''him" that he steadies before tlw great shell goes shri-eking through iho torn air to hit or miss.

One looks at the maze of rods and valves and all the machinery in bevalderinent,

but he knows them as intimately as ! Kubelik knows his Stradivarius, and, what is more, he can play upon, them with as much ease. There is a huge capital " E," which stands for " Excellence," painted on the after turret of the Georgia. It is the sign manual for some good shooting done. There is no means of judging whether or not the American gunner is better .than his British brother, for each nation "has its own system for ascertaining the percentage of efficiency, and so comparisons cannot be made.

The whole superimposed turret moves round with its four guns, tie two smaller ones above the 12's, so that a deadly fire could, be maintained over a considerable arc. It has been said that it would be impossible in rough weather to aim and fire the forward turret guns on these battleships, the guns being placed too low. Whether this is so or not I cannot say, but I should imagine that there would not be much effective fighting wihen a vessel was shipping seas on to guns placed 24ft above the water line. However, one never knows. It must not be forgotten, also, that the higher the turret the higher the conning tower behind it must be, and raising theee great masses of metal unduly above the water line might affect the stability of the ships, while it would certainly give a greater taTget to the enemy. It is a matter for the experts. Our guide led us along the deck of the Georgia to where a man was taking down a wireless message. Beside him was a typewriter. There is something dreadfully uncanny about "wireless." Hiss! hiss ! hiss ! goes the machine. — short low hisses as from a snake* — as the letters come from somewhere through the air and form into words that are written perhaps 2000 miles away. The ships have kept in touch with the outer w.orld practically throughout their long cruise, the auxiliary ships, such as the Culgoa. acting as the receiving stations.

As we walked along the upper deck the- Rhode Island, which was steaming slowly to another berth, came down upon us, and the lieutenant, spy-glaes under arm, went quickly to the top of the port gangway and looked anxiously ahead. The great mass of oncoming steel seemed as if it would crash into us, but just iis the distance between was being narrowed apparently within the danger zone the Rhode Island began to back away. There she turned her Tudder aslant, and. going slowly ahead once more, sieamed majestically past us to' her new station, the marines aft and the bluejackets forward standing at attention on the ship's side. As she passed us a bugle sounded, and an order was shouted in a full American accent. The purport of it was that special first class men were to get ready for "leave." We picked out way across v "the wet decks. They were cleaning ship, and we climbed to the flying bridge, which is the home of the signalmen, who are the eyes and ears of the fleet. The fleet is fitted up with a system of wireless telephones, and the Admiral, sitting at ease in liis own ship, can call up the commander of the next ahead or the commander of a ship five miles or 15 miles away and talk with him. Similarly the other ships can communicate with him. If they want the flagship they take the instrument off the hook and call " Connecticut, Connecticut, Connecticut, Connecticut " several times, then they put the instrument to an ear and listen. If the man on the Connecticut hns heard he will reply " Connecticut, Connecticut, Connecticut. " and then the talk will proceed. But you cannot talk to each other as on an ordinary telephone. The instrument must be on and off the hook alternately as you are talking and listeningr This is a somewhat slow process. What with the wireless telegraph and the wireless telephone, one would think that the days of the signalman were numbered, but not so. As we gained the flying bridge a hoist of flags rose in a flash on the yardarm of the flagship. You are puzzled to know how they can be pulled up so quickly by any human agency, and the midshipman at your side tells you. The flags are bent on to the rope, and a man on the fighting top, just above you, grips the rope and jumps from the rail to the deck below. It is his descending weight that brings the flags up so smartly, and there is sufficient resistance in the hoist of bunting to prevent him crashing on to the deck below and hurting himself. While this is being explained to us the signalman on the bridge of the Georgia claps his teles'oo 1 ? to his eye, and spells out the message to his brother signalman, who, with a stump of pencil, notes it down. That signal is soon done with. " What' 6 that hoist on the Louisiana?" suddenly asks one of the men, and again the telescope is brought into action, but the signal does not concern the Georgia, and we do not bother about it. Presently there is a call fr >m the Glacier, a storeship moored not faT away on our port side. r The bare-footed signalman springs on to the iron railing at the end of the bridge, and with arms extended and a flag in each hand he forms himself into a human T. The action is noticed, and presently the flags b«>gin to wag bewilderingly. " What do they mean?" I a.=k, and the other signalman, a dark-haired fellow who looks as if he had negro blood in him, smiles pleasantly, revealing a couple of gold teeth set in the midst of his shining " ivories," and replies jocularly, " Oh, something about a pound of butter or a box of sardines."

In the fighting tops, we are surprised to find there are no guns. Probably guns in the fighting tops are useless, and have gone out of faohlon. We got through the bakehouse, wheie young bakers in white pants and sleeveless singlets are at work. They bake 1200 loaves of bread a day.

We inspected the colt jrnns, which are a kind of Maxim, firing 460 phots a minute. I saw them in action in the last Samoan rebellion pouring forth a stream of lend that you could Bee in the bright sun-

shine some distance off waving like $ jet of water from a thin nozzle as the gun was turned, depressed, or elevated. Then there were the broadside guns vu the lower deck, but they need not bo described.

" How much metal could you fire ati one discharge from all the guns?" we asked. The midshipman did a quick sum in addition in his head, and replied: " Over three tons." As even the heaviest of the guns — the four twelves on the quarter deck and forecastle, with their 8751b) shells — can fire two shots a minute, one> can imagine what a perfect hell a battle* ship in action must be, even when the> enemy's shells are not landing on its own decks. We went into the turret of the*' Missouri, and saw where in 1903 33 men were killed during practice by an explosion of accumulated gases. Some were suffocated by the gas, • some died from shock, and others were practically burntr to death. A few laid down low on the floor of the turret, and managed to crawl out alive. Small blame to a man if on commencing practice after a long spell he becomes a Kttle gun shy; but thequalm does not last. A word from the? officer in charge, and he goes into^it oncd. more, smiling, and with all his heart and soul, as if he were a part of the living machine he handles.