Dreadnoughts, Old and New

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 14, 8 April 1909, Page 529

Dreadnoughts, Old and New

The luxury of fighting, both on sea and land, grows 1 more expensive year "by year. Half a century ago men who went down to the sea in ships of war had comparatively inexpensive fighting craft to manage. The old British sailing Dreadnought (as we may by anticipation call it) — the first-class line-of-battl-eship — did not exceed £115,000 in cost. ' All the world wondered 3 when " the "Warrior (the first British ironclad) cost, in 1860, no less a sum than £350,000. Eight years later (1868) the Prussians ' went one . better ' — they put £500,000 into the big ironclad, the ELcenig Wilhelm. In 1876' the Italians sank £700,000 in the Duilio, and, ten years later, £1,000,000 in the Italia. Between 1860 and 1886 — that is, in a quarter of a century — the cost of armored battleships increased nearly three-fold. Now — in another twenty-three years from 1886 — the expense of a first-class floating fighting machine has practically doubled. For the Dreadnought of our day costs some two million sterling. New Zealand's promised first ' little gift ' to the British navy would run into" £2 per head of our entire population. And (so rapid is the whirligig of change in naval construction) a few years' time would render it obsolete — if it is fortunate enough to escape destruction by collision or by the bang ol a £20 mine or by the insinuating nose of a £500 torpedo. "