About the Navy.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 41, 29 May 1917, Page 2

About the Navy.

THE SURE SHIELD OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE'.

What is the Navy doing ? is the question one constantly hears. Here is a fact, apart from Admiral Beatty’s great achievement off Jutland, which will help you to realise how it is guarding England’s coasts and keeping clear the seas.

During twenty months of war, 21,000 merchant vessels have passed a certain patrolled East Coast area, and of all that number only three have come to grief, Thousands of mines have been swept up. Half the vessels engaged on this work are craft that in peace times go a-flshing or do a coastal trade. There are very few bluejackets among their crews, the greater number of the ships being manned solely by the brave fellows of the merchant service, the fisheries, and the coast trade.

The huge 15in. and 13.5 guns with which our latest type of battleships are equipped are handled by our naval men almost as quickly and easily as would be a revolver, although the 13.5 fires a , monster shell of 1,250 pounds in weight, while the fifteen inch fires a shell of nearly a ton weight, with a smashing power nearly three times as great as that of the T 3.5.

In spite of this enormous .weight of the projectiles, the guns can be loaded in less than twenty-four seconds from the time of the order.

The modern big gun is made with a core of steel, around which is wound steel wire. In the biggest guns in use now there are between 140 and 170 miles of this wire.

In the great naval, munition works and shipbuilding yards thousands of woman are employed, usually apparelled in trousers. They are found to excel in the control of the machinery which repeats the same movement. In one huge munition factory 25,000 persons are employed, of which number 13,000 are women. The scope of their work, will be realised when it is mentioned that there are seventyseven kinds of shell.

Women also excel in that delicate and difficult work the blading of turbines, and it is satisfactory to know that in turbine machinery Great Britain is two years ahead of the Germans.

In the shipbuilding yards, well over 1,000,000 tons of shipping have been turned out during the war. A ship which used to take eighteen months is now executed in twelve, although extravagant acceleration rates have been abolished.

In one yard, which has never yet failed to keep the appointed day for delivery, the rate of work in twelve months has been one destroyer every seven weeks. Three aeroplanes a week are also part of the product; and this in spite of the fact that skilled men have been taken from the shipyards for the Army and there is a cry for more men. They are building ships so fast in one yard that only one side of certain vessels can be finished till the ship next to it has been launched on account of lack of space. Not a yard of ground, not a minute of time is wasted.

The heads of these wonderful yards are enthusiastic over their work and its efficiency. One of these men spent £25,0C0 on an experimental tank for models of ships, while another spent £32,000 on a similar experiment. The tools and machinery for these colossal shipbuilding operations are huge. At one of the yards on the Tyne there is a crane that could lift an express locomotive off the Tyne high-level bridge, while some of the tools for the boring and lining of large projectiles weigh twentyfour tons.

The sides of the turrets which protect the guns and men in the newer ships are of 131 in. hardened steel armour, capable of keeping out the shells of any but the 15in. gun at ordinary battle range, which in our day may be placed at 8,000 to 10,000 yards (five to six miles.) A ship’s guns are manoeuvred by hydraulic power, with an alternative hand-power instalment in case the hydraulic gear breaks down. In a few ships electrical gear is also installed.