(QnrncU 3llnitt0t0itg Siibrarg 3tl}aca, ^em gorh BERNARD ALBERT SINN COLLECTION NAVAL HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY THE GiFT OF BERNARD A. SINN. '97 1919 Cornell University Library VM23 .C88 Commercial supremacy olin 3 1924 030 900 645 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030900645 f ommercial Aupremacy AND OTHER PAPERS. BY CHARLES H. CRAMP. FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY. Ph^ladblphia, 1894 : MoYBR & Lbshbr, Stbam-'PoweA Printers, 223 E. Girard Avenue. INDEX. I. AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. - - - ... 5 Reprint from "The Forum," November, 1891. 2. THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. - - 17 Reprint from "The North American Review," January, 1892. 3. EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. - 26 Read before the American Society of Naval Archi- tects and Marine Engineers, New York, Novem- ber i6th, 1893. 4. OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. - - - 44 Reprint from "The North American Review," April, 1894. 5. SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. - - 56 Reprint from "The North American Review," August, 1894. AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. REPRINT FROM THE "FORUM. Discussion of the existing state of shipbuilding in the United States involves a survey of its history and the causes which have produced its vicissitudes. At any time prior to 1861 our shipbuilding industry had simply kept pace with the demands of private commercial enterprise. The govern- ment had not been a customer of the private shipyards to any extent worth mentioning. Almost all naval vessels, prior to the civil war, were built in the navy-yards. In some cases, engines for steam men-of-war had been built in private shops, but as a rule these were simply engine-build- ing establishments not connected with ship-yards ; and for that reason, and because the government suddenly stopped even this, it gave but little direct benefit to the industry of ship-building proper. During this period, it is needless to remark, the preponderance of shipping output in the United States was of wooden vessels, whether steam or sail; and at least up to i860, notwithstanding the rapid growth of steam propulsion during the preceding two decades, the sailing tonnage still held the lead in amount, if not in importance. These two decades, 1840 to i860, were, moreover, the first half of the great transition period from wood to metal in ship construction ; the last half of that period terminating, say, in 1880, when the building of wooden vessels, except for special and in the general sense of minor uses, was discontinued by all the great commercial nations. As early as 1840, England, which had for over two centuries held the first place as a shipbuilding and ship owning power, found her home supply of timber exhausted. Even for many years prior to that date, more than half of the timber used in British shipyards had been imported, — teak from India, oak from the shores of the Baltic, from Spain, and from Africa, together with pine and oak from this country and from the Scandinavian Peninsula: in short, she had to depend on foreign lands for her supply of raw material — a situation necessarily incompatible witli supremacy. The fact that, as her supply of timber vanished, her production of AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. metals increased, naturally caused the evolution of the iron ship. It might be interesting to go back to the first iron vessel, and trace the development of metal shipbuilding thence up to its present stage ; but the survey would be too prolix for the limits of this paper. Suffice to say, that, in any sense, metal shipbuilding is a development of the last half-century; and in what might be called the broad, effective sense, it is not more than thirty-five years old. This period of three decades and a half has witnessed the production of the British steam fleet, commercial and warlike, and therewith the expansion of British commerce, wealth, and power to dimensions which fairly baffle the comprehension. At this moment, with few unimportant and struggling exceptions, British steam- ers carry the freight and passengers of every land, and British men-of-war hover about every habitable coast, protecting their commerce where it has a foothold, and promoting its growth in new places. During the greater part of the period above indicated, England pur- sued her career without rivalry. From the end of the civil war to about 1880, there was but feeble effort to revive shipbuilding in this country. All our energies of capital and enterprise were directed to the extension of railways in every direction, to the repair of the war-ravage in the South, to the settlement of the vast Territories of the West, in a word, to purely domestic development ; pending which, England was by common consent left to enjoy her ocean monopoly. In 1870 a spasmodic effort was made to establish a transatlantic line of American steamers ; and the firm of William Cramp & Sons built four ships for that purpose. At that date those ships were not surpassed in speed or accommodation by any foreign vessel ; but their advent was at once met by the English with new constructions, larger, costlier, and of course more attractive; and the British government extended powerful aid to their builders and owners, through their Post-Office Department, by lucrative mail-contracts, and later through their admiralty by an advantageous " Naval Reserve" policy, while our vessels received no public aid or countenance whatever. The result was inevitable. Our enterprise had to succumb. It is worth remarking, that the four vessels we built in 1871-72 — the "Ohio," "Indiana, "Illinois," and "Pennsylvania" — are now the property of the International Navigation Company, and, though nearly twenty years old, have been found worth rejuvenating to the extent of substituting modern triple-expansion engines for the compound engines of their day. In size and speed they have, of course, been totally eclipsed by the enor- mous constructions of later years, such as the " City of Paris," " City of New York," "Majestic," "Prince Bismark," and other vessels ; but, as AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. samples of the state of the shipbuilding art as practised in Cramp's ship- yard twenty years ago, I do not hesitate to refer to them with pride. It is proper to remark that this attempt to establish an American line was made by the American Steamship Company, and never received encour- agement from the government. The Steamship Company could not con- tend against the British government. During this period, some other attempts were made to regain our national status on the ocean ; but, with minor differences of circumstance or condition, they all met the same fate. Some conception may be had of the state of affairs when I say that from 1870 to 1882 the total steam output of American shipyards for the foreign trade was 100,576 tons register, embracing 41 ships, or a mean tonnage of 2,453 P^"^ vessel ; while the steam output of British yards in the same period was 2,091,023 tons, embracing 714 vessels, averaging about 2,928 tons each. To state the proposition in another form, the English built over seventeen ships to our one, and nearly twenty-one tons to our one, between 1870 and 1882. Of course, the above refers only to tonnage for foreign trade, and the 100,576 tons represent but a fraction of the total output of our yards. During the period under discussion (1870 to 1882) there were built in American yards, for coastwise trade, 224,000 tons of steam-shipping, of which 1 76,000 tons were of metal, and 48,000 tons of wood. This, of course, refers only to ocean tonnage. That of the rivers and great lakes belongs to another branch of the subject, to be dealt with in its turn. But it must also be borne in mind that the two million odd tons reg- istered as British steam shipping between 1870 and 1882, by no means represents the whole work done in the shipyards of Great Britain during that period ; on the contrary, an enormous amount of tonnage, both commercial and naval, was built in British yards for other nations dur- ing that period, together with a large percentage of the hulls, and all of the engines, for increase of the English navy. It is hardly worth while to consider the efforts put forth by other European nations during that period, since, though some of them took steps to augment their merchant- fleets and the navies, much of the benefits of their policy accrued to British shipyards. It is not easy to ascertain the exact amount of iron and steel steam tonnage turned out of British yards during the period under consideration. The two million odd tons registered in the British merchant-fleet is easily accessible ; but the amount of tonnage, merchant and naval, built AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. for other nations, is not recorded in any form that would be available, except by comprehensive and laborious research. Some years ago it was stated in a parliamentary paper, that of the then existing iron and steel steam-shipping, naval and merchant, owned under foreign flags, about fifty-six to sixty per cent, was British built. This was as late as 1886. This survey exhibits the more important of the conditions which confronted American shipbuilders in 1882-83, when the government ap- peared in the market as a customer, to a probable extent hitherto unknown in the history of the Republic. It has been, I trust, made sufficiently clear, that in consequence of the monopoly of foreign trade enjoyed by Great Britain, and the necessarily restricted demand for vessels in our own coastwise trade, there was no opportunity for the development of a large shipbuilding industry from commercial sources alone. The few ship- yards that maintained an existence did such work as there was to do promptly and well ; but competition for the few ships offering from time to time was fierce ; bids were strained to within a bare percentage upon cost ; and the matter of profit was habitually subordinated to the desider- atum of keeping their organizations together, and maintaining the high standard of work, in the hope that the industry would ultimately revive. Thus when the government appeared in the market, and the indica- tions were, that the rehabilitation of the navy would be carried out liber- ally and steadily, the shipbuilders responded promptly. Without going into details, it may be said that the work of rebuilding the navy has been in progress eight years, the first contracts having been awarded in July, 1883. During that period, eight cruisers of from 4,000 to 5,000 tons, four gunboats of from 800 to 1,700 tons, a despatch vessel, and a dyna- mite vessel, have been completed and put in commission ; four double- turreted monitors have been finished in hull and machinery, and are re- ceiving their armor and armament ; while there are under contract, in various stages, three battle ships of about 11,000 tons each, one coast de- fence monitor, one armored cruiser of 8,300 tons, two protected cruisers of 7,500 tons each and another of 5,500 tons, a harbor-defence ram of 2,650 tons, three small cruisers of 2,000 tons each, two gunboats of 1,000 tons each, and a practice vessel for the Naval Academy, besides machinery for two armored ships, the hulls of which are building in the navy-yards of New York and Norfolk. The aggregate displacement of the vessels completed and in commission is 40,000 tons in round figures, exclusive of the monitors ; and that of those under contract is about 73,500 tons. Therefore, up to this time, the government has in eight 8 AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY, years patronized the shipbuilding industry to the extent of about 113,500 tons. That this work has stimulated and encouraged the hitherto languishing industry is quite true. But no intelligent manufacturer needs to be told that government work alone is not a reliable basis of permanent prosperity. The require- ments of the government as to material, workmanship, and perform- ance, are so severe, that there is but little profit in its work as compared with orders for merchant account. Besides this fact is the ever present element of uncertainty as to the continuity of the government programme, the vicissitude^of national politics, and the frequent changes of adminis- tration, both in personnel and in policy, under which the work must be carried on. The experience of the contractors who saw the hulls of the double- turreted monitors lying for a decade untouched on the stocks, in conse- quence of political conflicts, notwithstanding the regularity and good faith of the contracts under which they were begun, is not soon to be forgotten. It is true, that after the era of fierce party battle had passed away, and calmer counsels reigned, these vessels were completed substantially as provided in the original contracts, and the contractors received partial compensation for care and storage of the unfinished hulls during the long period of enforced suspension. But no account was ever taken of damages accruing for non-fulfillment of the contracts on the part of the government, and none ever will be. This matter is referred to here simply to call attention to both aspects of the case, and to correct a seemingly prevalent impression that the current work on government account is alone sufficient to revive our shipbuilding industry, and place it once more on a stable footing. Perhaps the absurdity of such an im- pression will be manifest, if I say that the total tonnage ordered by our government in the past eight years is less than that of the naval ship- building programme ordered by the British gevernment in a single year during the same period. However, if contractors have made no profit worth mentioning out of government work thus far, they have been enabled to improve their plants, train their men, and develop contributory industries to a con- dition of high efficiency and excellence, so that the present state of the shipbuilding art in this country is not surpassed anywhere in the world. Therefore, to sum up conclusions on this branch of the subject, it may be said, that while the current orders of the government on account of the new navy have revived shipbuilding, and given it a new lease of life, the revival is necessarily upon a small scale as compared with the state of the 9 AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. industry abroad ; that its benefits must be viewed as temporary ; and that the most that even a sanguine person can expect is that it may serve to prepare the way for a new era of extensive and profitable merchant ship- building in the future. Let us now turn to consider the situation and prospect with respect to the last-mentioned and most important branch of our subject. Thus far I have endeavored to make clear the following proposi- tions : — That, under existing conditions of national policy j^ipbuilding in the United States is not likely to be developed much beyond its present status. That the current patronage of the government cannot be relied on beyond certain limitations, and must therefore be considered a temporary help only. That the demands of our coastwise trade alone, while perhaps steady and permanent as far as they go, are insufficient to promote shipbuilding on a large scale. Assuming that these propositions are admitted, I will attempt to demonstrate the following : — That the true and main reliance of a flourishing and important ship- building industry in the United States must be upon a regular and liberal demand for ships, created by an extensive and growing foreign trade in American bottoms. That, in order to inaugurate such a condition of affairs, some step or steps must be taken to place the business of owning and operating com- mercial steamships on an equal footing with other nations. The commercial disadvantages resulting from a monopoly of our ocean carrying-trade by foreign fleets attracted public attention many years ago. From the first there was practical unanimity as to the exist- ence of these disadvantages, and a like concurrence in the opinion that "something ought to be done" to improve the situation; but upon the question of remedy, there have always been wide divergencies of view. It having been generally conceded that the remedy must at least begin in national legislation, the dispute has been simply as to what the character of that legislation should be. A certain faction contended that nothing was required beyond a simple repeal of the navigation laws, to permit the free importation and registry of foreign-built vessels ; and bills to that effect have been introduced, and in many cases discussed, in nearly every Congress since 1870. In no case has a bill of this character passed both Houses of Congress, and but once has the measure received a majority AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. in either House. Tiiat was in the Forty-seventh Congress, when a "Free Ship Amendment " was proposed by Mr. Candler, of Massachu- setts, to what was known as the " Dingley Shipping bill," and Mr. Candler's amendment was attached to the bill by a small majority. The result of this amendment was to kill the bill. It is not my purpose to discuss the merits of this proposition, further than to say that whatever in- crease in American tonnage might accrue from it would be gained at the expense of the destruction of American shipbuilding. That may be set down as an axiom to be observed as a necessary factor in every discussion of the subject. As pointed out at the beginning of this paper, the ship- building industry in Greqit Britain has been developed to such enormous proportions, and the facilities of construction enlarged to such a scale, that our own comparatively few and feeble shipyards would be instantly overwhelmed in the competition, the moment our market was thrown open to them to unload their old and worn-out wares on American "bargain-hunters." This fact is now so well understood, that I think there is no hazard in saying that a large majority of the best minds of all parties are con- vinced that the experiment of trying to augment our merchant marine by a policy calculated to destroy our shipbuilding industry would not be conducive to the general public interests. The other mode of remedy advocated has been that of adopting, in behalf of our own shipping, a policy similar to the one which has pro- duced such striking results elsewhere ; that is to say, public encourage- ment to the ownership and operation of American-built vessels in the foreign trade. This subject has for many years claimed a large share of the attention of Congress, commercial organizations, and the press. Its discussions has taken a wide scope, involving several exhaustive inquiries by congressional committees, numerous petitions and resolutions from boards of trades and chambers of commerce, with almost innumerable papers in the public prints, and speeches in our public halls ; the whole forming what may be called the "Literature of our Merchant Marine." Its volumes is so vast, that but the barest reference to its details can be made here. Suffice to say, that it covers every conceivable point at issue; and it has been so universally published, that no person of ordinary in- telligence and education can have excuse for ignorance or misinformation on the subject. The results of this agitation and discussion have been bills in Con- gress from time to time, providing for a more liberal and enlightened policy on the part of the government towards the national merchant II AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. marine. Some of these bills proposed special compensation to particular lines for carrying the mails. Such bills have failed in consequence of the objection that they involved the principle of special legislation. Other measures proposed a general bounty based upon tonnage, and distance actually travelled in foreign trade. This plan at the outset seemed more popular than any other, and there was at one time strong probability of its enactment into law. But it finally failed, partly on account of clash- ing of diverse interests, and partly by reason of "party exigencies," real or supposed, in the House of Representatives. It is hardly pertinent at this time to point out the benefits that would have been accrued, directly and incidentally, to every branch of our national life and industry, from a tonnage law properly administered. I have never hesitated, and do not now hesitate, to declare that ten years of its operation would result in placing our merchant marine in the foreign trade on a footing second only to that of Great Britain in amount, and vastly superior to it in character and quality of vessels. And I still hope to see such a policy adopted at no distant day. Another mode of remedy proposed was that of a law providing compensation for carrying the mails at so much per mile of outbound voyage, varying with the character of the vessel employed, as to tonnage and speed. Such a measure, modified by reduction of the compensation to a very low rate, became a law at the close of the last session of Con- gress ; and at this writing the Post-Office Department is considering the mode of putting it in operation. Briefly, it provides a scale of compen- sation as follows : — Per Mile. Vessels of 8,000 tons, 20 knot speed $4.00 " " S.ooo " 16 " " 2.00 " " 2,500 " 14 " " i.oo " " 1,400 " 12 " " 0.66 Vessels of the first, second, and third classes, must be of iron or steel, and must be subject to inspection and approval by the Navy Depart- ment for conversion into auxiliary cruisers, or for other warlike purposes if necessary. Vessels of the fourth class may be of metal or wooden construction; but all must rate A.i in their classes to be entitled to the benefits of the act. The sum of eight hundred thousand dollars was voted in the Post-Office Appropriation Bill for the current year to carry the provisions of this act into effect. Of course, at this time it is not possible to estimate the effect of this act upon our merchant marine. At any rate, it is an improvement upon 12 AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. the previous situation. What the extent and value of the improvement may be remains for time and experience to demonstrate : those concerned in the interests involved know that it is the least that could be done, because less than this would have been so little better than nothing as to be hardly worth consideration. In order that some idea of the possible effect of this act may be formed, I will explain that a ship capable of ful- filling the requirements under Class i would cost at least two millions dollars. Such a ship would, under the most favorable circumstances, be capable of earning about a hundred thousand dollars a year for carrying the transatlantic mails under the provisions of this act. She would have to compete with vessels of similar class plying under foreign flags. The two British lines carrying mails to the United States receive for that service upwards of a hundred thousand pounds per annum in addi- tion to the "cruiser money" of twenty shillings per ton paid to steam- ships enrolled in the British Naval Reserve. These ships also receive annually a large sum from the United States for sea-postage. The French line is heavily subsidized by its government ; and Germany indirectly subsidizes her lines. All these earn large sums as sea-postage from the United States Post-Office Department. It will be seen that British vessels capable of classification in the first class, as provided by this act, already receive a greater "subsidy" than is offered to American ships of equal rate and performance. Coming to the second class (those of 5,000 tons and 16 knots), it will be noticed that the terms of the act preclude this class from the North Atlantic trade ; the law providing specially that none but the first class ships shall be accepted by the Post-Office Department for that traffic. At this time there is no volume of trade between the Atlantic ports of North and South America to warrant the employment of vessels of that rate : therefore the use of vessels of the second class is probably restricted to the trade between the Pacific ports of the United States and China, Japan, and Australia. In this trad«, so far as China and Japan are concerned, such ships would at once be brought in competition with a line of British vessels plying between the western terminus of the Canada Pacific Railway and Hongkong under a fixed subsidy, from the British and Canadian governments, of three hundred thousand dollars a year for ten years. Three vessels are at present provided for this line ; and the subsidy amounts to a practical guaranty of the entire first cost of the ships, payable in ten years at the rate of ten per cent per annum. It is not necessary to enter into details in this paper. But I will say — and will demonstrate it, if any one disputes the statement — that the 13 AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. subsidy guaranteed to the British Vancouver line involves a considerably larger percentage on the first cost of the ships than the maximum com- pensation offered to competing American vessels by the terms of the act under consideration, for the same service. In the Australian trade, our ships would have a little advantage, as things are now; but it is not probable that the British government would allow that to exist long, if they found it advisable to apply to their Australian colonies a policy simi- lar to that which they have already adopted as between their colonies on the Pacific coast, and China and Japan. The third class of vessels named in this act (those of 2,500 tons and 14 knots) are practically restricted to the North and South American trade ; being too large for profitable West Indian traffic, and too small for the competition of the transpacific. They are to get a dollar per mile, which, with their average possible travel, would give them a maxi- mum of, say, from eighteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars per annum for carrying the mails. Probably vessels could be built to answer the requirements of this class for from three hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred thousand dollars apiece, according to the material and fittings ; so that the proposed compensation would amount to about five or six per cent per annum on the first cost as against the ten per cent already guaranteed to British vessels as above set forth. I have gone into detail to this extent, because it seemed necessary to do so in order to show, that, loud as has been the outcry of "subsidy" raised against the act recently passed, it is still, as a matter of fact, less liberal than existing provisions of the British government for their own ships already in the trade to be competed for. Thus far I have dealt with facts onlyj and I have been careful to avoid any matter susceptible of controversy. In conclusion I will venture a few deductions of my own, based upon the foregoing statements of simple facts. I will assume at the start that our internal development of farms, workshops, mines, railways, coastwise, lake, and river commerce, etc., has reached a point at which capital has reached its zenith of profitable investment in them, and must look for some new field, not only for further original investment, but also for the protection or betterment of investments already made. In my judgment, our energy and enter- prise during the last twenty-five years have exhausted all the large chances of fortune within the boundaries of the United States. Our existing in- dustries of every description represent an enormous volume of local " plant " and productive organizations quite up to our local requirements for some time : hence it is necessary to seek outlets for an inevitable sur- 14 AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. plus of product, and, in default of such outlet, there must be a plethora of production, which is bound to result in stagnation, or, in other words, national apoplexy. For this there can be but one preventive, " an ounce" of which is said on traditional authority to be "worth a pound of cure;" and that is in the development and retention of external market outlets. It is my opinion that we can never secure these until we can ourselves command the avenues to them. Commerce has its "strategy" no less than war. In war, strategy depends on lines of ope- ration and communication. At this time we possess neither, for either commerce or war. Our great rival controls both in every sense of the word. To-day we could not even defend our own coasts against her ob- solete ironclads in war, and we cannot control our own foreign commerce as against the poorest and least seaworthy of her myriad of " ocean tramps." If, for any reason, she were to withdraw from our trade the magnificent vessels which, by virtue of our acquiescence, do all our trans- atlantic fetching and carrying for us, our peerless nation of sixty odd millions would be laid helpless under an embargo compared to which that of Jefferson's administration would be but a mere trifle of annoy- ance. It has seemed strange to me that so little attention is paid to this fact. What would our political independence be worth, if circumstances, likely to occur at any moment, should visit upon us the consequences of our commercial servitude to England ? That this is a plain statement of fact I do not think any reasonable person will have the temerity to dispute. For the present I have only to add, that we have done nothing as yet to lift this yoke from our necks. It cannot be done except by restoring our merchant marine and our naval power to their former status upon the high seas. The attempts thus far made in that direction are but feeble. I am not sanguine that they will be strong in our time ; but I hope so. It may be that this result will not come until we have received a sterner lesson of our weakness and helpless- ness than any one now anticipates. This pitiable condition on the ocean is emphasized by the contrast of our unrivalled power, resource, and enterprise within our own borders. It seems indeed the strangest anomaly of modern civilization, that the most enlightened, most ambitious, most energetic, most productive, and internally most powerful nation on the globe should be externally among the weakest, most helpless, and least respected. The sole remedy for this situation is ships with seamen to handle them, whether for peace or for war ; whether to carry our enormous ex- ports, and bring our immense imports, and receive therefor the tremen- AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING AND COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY. dous tolls which now flow into foreign coffers, or to vindicate the majesty and power of our flag abroad in the world to a degree befitting our status in the community of nations. There is no lack of raw material, no lack of skill to fasliion it into the instruments of commerce. We have the iron and the steel ; we have the men to work them into the finished forms of stately ships ; we have the money to promote the most colossal of enterprises by sea. All we need is assurance of a steady national policy of liberal and enlightened encouragement, based upon a patriotic common consent, and elevated above the turmoils of politics, or the squabbles of parties. One decade of such a policy would make us second only to Great Britain on the high seas, either for commerce or for defence ; and two decades of it would bring us fairly into the twentieth century as the master maritime power of the globe. Chas. H. Cramp. i6 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. REPRINT FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW," JANUARY, 1892. Not long ago a metropolitan newspaper quoted me in an " interview" as saying that the higher classes of ships could be built as economically in this country as in Great Britain. ■ This observation called out a number of inquiries and requests for more specific information ; among which was a letter from the editor of The North American Review offering the pages of that eminent periodi- cal for any elaboration of the subject suggested that might seem proper. In availing myself of that offer, it is proper to say that I do so, not from desire to provoke controversy, but with a view to clear away some prevailing misapprehension as to the relative state of the shipbuilding in- dustry in this country and abroad, and as to the effect of the alleged or supposed difference in first cost upon the growth of our merchant marine. The scope suggested by this inquiry is naturally much beyond the limits of a single magazine paper, and, besides, the pressure of daily duties precludes such exhaustive treatment as I should like to give it. Therefore, the tenor of this paper will be that of a cursory survey of the most recent achievements in shipbuilding and their effects upon the con- ditions of ocean steam traffic. A review of the comparative history of British and American ship- building from the foundation of our republic would be interesting and instructive, as showing a steady tendency to superior workmanship and more elaborate finish on the part of American builders, class for class and rate for rate, whereby a factor of greater first cost was established, inde- pendent of any other conditions; but space and time forbid anything more than reference to it as a fact. Coming immediately to the subject matter of the existing state of things, it may be said that there is perhaps no topic which so many men discuss, and so few comprehend, as the technique of shipbuilding. This fact is gratifying as an evidence of growing public interest, but it often gives rise to amusing contretemps. For example, the frequenters of the smoking-room of one of our great trans-Atlantic liners, in a recent pas- sage, had been treated to a voluble disquisition on the comparative 17 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. "lines" of certain rival steamers. Persons not familiar with the subject were profoundly impressed with the belief that this gentleman was an au- thority. Finally one of the listeners interrupted the discourse to inquire what the gentleman understood the term "lines of a ship to mean." He was unable to define the term at all. It is this fact of limited public knowledge that makes misapprehension so easy, and accurate information so hard to convey. The simple question, Can you build a ship as cheaply in the United States as in England? is as impossible of direct positive or negative re- ply as would be the question, Can a man be educated as cheaply in one country as in the other? The absurdity of the latter question would be manifest, because any one could see that it depended partly on the man and partly on the edu- cation. In different ways, but in a similar generic sense, the principle would apply to the first question, and the answer would be that it de- pended partly on the ship and partly on the builder. With regard to the simpler and plainer types of vessels, such as are used for freighting mainly, it is not worth while to discuss them here. The question solves itself to any one of average intelligence who will go aboard and compare the workmanship, style, finish, and general range of seaboat qualities as between any freight vessel like those of the Metropoli- tan Line or the Morgan Line or the Clyde Line, for example, and the usual English tramp of approximately equal burthen. Put the plans and specifications of the average English tramp in the hands of an American shipbuilder, and he could not duplicate her. He would build a better vessel, of superior workmanship and neater finish in every respect ; for the reason, to put it broadly, that the mechanics who make up an American shipyard organization are trained to a grade of per- formance which they could not reduce to the standard of tramp construc- tion. Under these circumstances this branch of the subject may be dis- missed summarily, with the statement that an English freight ship of the usual type could not be duplicated in this country at any cost. Whether our superior standard in vessels of this class is an advantage or disadvan- tage in competition I will not attempt to decide. Coming to the highest class of vessels, — that is to say, the most re- cent trans-Atlantic liners, which are rated first in speed and accommo- dations, — the attention of the world is now directed to certain conspicu- ous ships. These are the " Columbia," the " City of Paris," and " City of New York," and the "Teutonic" and "Majestic." i8 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. In model these vessels show no improvement over the best American or British model of thirty years ago. Dividing them and the types which they represent into three groups, we find them distinguished by marked differences of form and construction, and also of machinery detail, but there is little difference in outfit or engine performance. The recent award by the Cunard Company of the contract for a new ship to the Fairfield works, of which Dr. Elgar, late superintendent of dock yards, is naval architect, will probably develop a fourth type. It is not my purpose to go into an exhaustive analysis of the pecu- liarities of these several types, and I have introduced the fact of their existence partly because I have seen no previous reference to it and partly to preface some remarks more directly pertinent to the main points of my theme. Thus, when one uses the term "British ships" for purposes of comparison with "American ships," it is calculated to mislead, because the inference would be that all " British ships " were alike j or, at least, that the similarity of type, model, mode of construction, cost, etc., class for class, was sufficiently close to make the national designation alone an adequate basis for comparison. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every great shipyard, of long existence and extensive output, acquires methods, systems, and prac- tices peculiarly its own, and these in turn express themselves in the char- acteristics of vessel which it designs and builds. The result is that, while there may not be much difference in the average performance between vessels of the same class by different builders, so far as speed, endurance, cost of operating, and annual ex- pense of repair are concerned, there will be material difference in the means and methods by which these results are reached, and hence a cor- responding disparity in estimates of first cost. A Harland & Wolf ship will not be a Thomson ship, nor a Laird ship, nor an Elder ship ; and the same rule will apply to further comparisons between the others. An error quite prevalent is the supposition that whenever a trans- Atlantic steamship company decides to add a new first-rate vessel to its fleet, complete plans, specifications, etc., are prepared and submitted to a number of competent shipyards for competitive bidding, after the fashion of the United States in its navy contract work. As a matter of fact, this sort of thing never occurs. As a rule, each company has its particular or favorite builder ; and often they are associated financially. The builders' type of ship becomes the company's standard for ser- vice. The excellences of the type have been ascertained by experience, and opportunity has occurred to detect and remedy any defect. Hence 19 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. the steamship company and the builders work together, and their co- operation results in the growth of a fleet having a reputation of its own and with it, to a very great extent at least, a settled class of public patronage. In short, the business, in a certain way, is governed by the general commercial rule that public patronage is largely a matter of habit, and that in making use of ships, as of other wares, people continue to patron- ize that which has suited them once. There are many shipyards in Great Britain ; more than in the rest of the world combined ; but, so far as my observation enables me to judge, there are not more than three or, at the outside, four yards which would be considered by any of the great steamship companies in connection with a first-rate modern vessel such as is now required for trans- Atlantic mail and passenger service. As before intimated in referring to the diversity of types, vessels of this class involve specialties of model, motive power, structural character, and quality of equipment, which, it may be said, make them sui generis, and in many particulars it is impossible to form an advance estimate of cost without a very liberal margin for contingencies. These facts are well understood in England, and their logic is invariably observed in negotiations for building such ships. It often happens that, after the general scheme and approximate price have been agreed upon, achieve- ments elsewhere make expedient certain departures from the original. In this connection it is worth while to bear in mind that during the construction of the "Majestic" and "Teutonic" at the Belfast yards, for the White Star Company, work was suspended for several months pending consideration of material changes, some of which were adopted and others rejected. But these conclusions were not hastily reached, and were based upon actual observation of the behavior of rival ships built elsewhere. Under an iron-clad contract, with arbitrary fixing of specifications and price, this could not have been done without friction. It may be that there are good reasons why the United States Government should to a great extent tie both its hands and those of the contractors by inflexible written stipu- lations under bond and penalty ; but no such conditions are imposed in transactions between steamship companies and shipbuilders of established rank, for the simple reason that both would be subject to probable or pos- sible embarrassment thereby, and experience demonstrates that it is better to leave the mass of detail to the operation of the common rules of busi- ness as encountered in the progress of the work. 20 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. From these observations it ought to be tolerably clear that the ques- tion, for example, Can you duplicate the "City of New York," or the "Majestic," or the "Columbia" — using the word "duplicate" in the purely structural sense — for the cost of those vessels in Great Britain ? would be putting the matter in an impracticable form. The " City of New York" is a product of the peculiar methods, practices', and sys- sems of the Thomsons, of Clyde bank; the " Majestic" similarly repre- sents the Belfast yard of Harland & Wolf, and the "Columbia," the Lairds, of Birkenhead. In each case the vessel is of a special type, and embodies idiosyncra- sies which no other establishment could imitate — at all events, not at equal cost. The proper form in which to put the question is : Can you build a ship to do the work of the " City of New York " or the " Majestic " or the " Columbia," in all respects, for the same cost? To that question I would reply : Yes, or within as small a margin as would likely to prevail in a similar case between any two British shipyards. Our ships might differ from the " City of New York" in the ratio of principal dimensions, in the type of machinery, in style of finish, in fittings, equipment, and accommodations, and in many other things, as sanctioned by our experience or approved in our particular practice ; but she should exhibit at least equal performance in speed, seaworthiness, comfort, durability, and, all other things being equal, in economy of operation. But the point I wish to accentuate is that the ship would be of our type and our model, and would embody our methods, our systems, and our practices ; she would not be a duplicate or an imitation of any other ship, whether British or otherwise. A proper apprehension of this point and an adequate realization of the importance of its bearing upon any question as to the comparative first cost of high-class vessels in this country and in England are absolutely essential to practical or valuable knowledge on the subject. In this connection I will refer briefly to a phase of the subject which I have exploited at other times in the numerous inquiries that have been made by committees of Congress. That is the fact that the " first cost" of ships is not only not a prime factor, but it is not even a serious factor, in any competition that may oc- cur between this country and Great Britain for a share of the trafiSc of the ocean. My views in that direction are, perhaps, well enough known to make THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. repetition of them here unnecessary, and I do not know that I could say anything that would affect any differences of opinion that may exist. I simply state the fact as suchj in order to preface the further and more important statement that growth of demand for new ships, with its resultant development of contributory industries in steel and iron and other materials of construction, its enlargement and improvement of plant and personnel employed, its natural incentive to greater energy and enlarged enterprise, and, above all, its assurance of security and per- petuity in the business, would speedily wipe out any small margin that may now exist against us in the matter of first cost, generally speaking. Whatever else may be needed to restore the United States to its footing as a maritime power I leave to the patriotism and wisdom of our legislators to determine. Referring, in conclusion, to the inquiry as to the relative cost of con- struction for navy account in the two countries, it must be borne in mind that disparities in bases of comparison exist in that direction even greater than in merchant shipbuilding. In Great Britain public patronage in great amount has been con- stantly and consistently extended to private enterprise, from time im- memorial. Here, excepting the abnormal period of the Civil War, gov- ernment patronage of private shipyards is a thing of recent growth ; not more than seven or eight years old. The evolution of the modern war-ship in England was a steady and natural growth ; the strides of progress were short and easy, and all con- tributory industries were concurrently developed by equally easy stages. There was no sudden transition ; no leap into unknown or untried fields. From the first iron war-ship of any note — the old " Warrior," in 1857 — up to the "Hood" and the "Royal Sovereign," first-rate battle-ships of 1 89 1, there was a rate of progress the steps of which were as regular as the ticking of a clock. At all times and under all conditions the ship- building industry of Great Britain has been of paramount national im- portance ; recognized as such by every public authority and fostered as such by every public power. The advantageous effect of such a state of affairs may be best appre- hended by contrast with the conditions under which American ship- builders undertook, a few years ago, the task of rebuilding the United States Navy. On November 7, 1881, just ten years ago at this writing, the first Naval Advisory Board reported a general scheme of naval reconstruction. The assembly of this board was one of the acts of the Garfield adminis- THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. tration. From it may be dated the prevailing consistent policy of the new navy, though actual construction was not begun until about two years later. At the outset it was resolved that we must have ships of the latest approved standard in every respect of material, armament, and equip- ment. When the work began, there were, say, three shipyards that the Navy Department considered competent to undertake it. But there was no steel-mill that had ever made plates and shapes of the quality required by the government specifications; no foundry that had ever made steel castings of that standard ; no forge capable of making the steel shafts, or the tubes, jackets, and hoops required for the motive power of the ships or for the built-up breech-loading rifled cannon of large calibre where- with to arm them ; and no plant able to even entertain a proposition for the heavy armor-plates necessary in the construction of fighting ships. To such an extent was this true that the steel shafts for the earlier ships, the forgings for the pioneer eight inch guns, and the compound armor for the turrets of the monitor " Miantonomoh " were all imported. Without going into tedious detail of these preliminary operations, it may be said in bulk that we not only had to build ships of even a higher grade than their contemporaries abroad, with no commensurate initial re- sources, but we had to create a new group of industries in every branch of the art of steel-making to supply us with the necessary material. Under these circumstances American shipyards have built or are building about forty naval vessels of numerous rates and types, all of the very highest and most effective class in the world ; and this development has been crowded into a space of about seven years. To put the case a little stronger, you may say that, with only the existing authorized con- struction in view, this country will have the third navy in the world within less than ten years, from a starting-point which may be described as at zero ! By that time we will have four first-rate battle-ships, six powerful double-turreted monitors, two heavy-armored cruisers, thirteen large pro- tected cruisers, two of which are the fastest and most effective in the world, and fifteen smaller vessels of from 2,000 tons down to first-class torpedo boats. In addition to these achievements we have developed on our own soil forging, foundry, and rolling plants with capacity of production, as to size or quality, equal to any in the world ; and all this has been built, you may say, literally " from the ground up." To state the case in another phrase, we have, in a comparatively brief 23 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. period, accomplished practical results commensurate with those due to steady growth during many years abroad. Manifestly it must have been impossible to carry all these things along together at such a rapid pace and to surmount so many initial diffi- culties with such celerity at a normal cost. No one conversant with the laws of trade would expect it. But it is a well-known and admitted fact that a decrease in cost per ton of displacement, or per indicated horse- power of machinery, or per foot-ton of ballistic energy in our guns, or per unit of effective resistance in our armor, has quite kept pace with our growth of facilities and our enlargement of output. The disparity in cost of naval ships between our yards and those of Great Britain, ton for ton, gun for gun, and performance for per- formance, has dwindled in seven years until, in the case of the three latest battle-ships, the margin between our prices and those of similar constructions abroad may be expressed by a very small figure. To illus- trate the rapidity of progress in this direction I will call attention to the fact that Congress, by an act approved June 30, 1890, authorized the con- struction of three battle-ships of "about 8,500 tons' displacement," to cost "not more than four million dollars each, exclusive of armament;" and the vessels now building under the provisions of that act are of 10,400 tons' displacement, or nearly 25 per cent, larger and more efficient than those contemplated by Congress, with a margin on each ship of over $800,000 for fixed armor and other necessary deductions. Gratifying as this prodigious development of new and great industries may be in the warlike sense, and in view of its guarantee of our indepen- dence as a nation for defence or for offence, its peaceful significance is still more profound. At this writing there are plants and organizations in the United States capable of producing in any quantity, and of the highest quality, any structure in steel or iron or brass, or any other metal, that can be pro- duced anywhere ; a state of things which did not exist seven years ago, and the present existence of which is a direct outcome of the enterprise and energy called forth by the rebuilding of the navy. In my opinion it must be a pretty poor American who is not proud of such achievements in so short a time. With regard to the character of the vessels built or building for the navy, so much has been said about it in the daily press, and public inter- est has been so constantly and so cordially expressed in every form, that comment here would seem unnecessary. Suffice it to say that it is the uni- versal testimony, both of our own sailors who have been abroad in the 24 THE FIRST COST OF SHIPS. new ships and of candid foreigners who have seen them, that they are ex- celled by none and equalled by but few in their respective classes any- where. If the current policy of naval reconstruction be pursued for another decade, coupled with a vigorous and consistent execution of the measures recently enacted in behalf of the merchant marine, the question which forms the subject of this paper will be asked no more; unless, indeed, its point should be reversed and Englishmen be asking one another : Can we build ships as economically as they can in the United States ? Charles H. Cramp. 25 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN SOCrETY OF NAVAL ARCHITECTS AND MARINE ENGINEERS, NEW YORK., NOVEMBER i6tH, 1893. Four hundred years is not a very long time when measured as part of the total seafaring history, but is it enough to have witnessed a pro- gress in the means of transatlantic travel from the caravels of Columbus to such giant steamships as the Lucania, Paris, Teutonic and their coadju- tors or competitors. To trace the history of transatlantic travel, from Columbus crawling across an unknown sea in a clumsy craft that would not now be "rated" in any shipping list, to the captains who drive the great steam liners with almost the regularity of limited express trains, would be or could be made perhaps the most entertaining theme possible to a modern pen ; but manifestly its natural and necessary scope would far transcend the limits of a paper like this. Recent events have directed public attention in the United States towards the subject above suggested with a degree of national interest hitherto unfelt during the last twenty years. From the beginning of the seventies — say 1871-72 to the present time, the American people have, seemingly, been content to employ Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans as the common carriers of their ocean traffic. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the causes of this state of things. In fact no profitable information could be evolved by such discussion, and perhaps the only effect would be to revive con- flicts of policy and opinion which, having raged in our public prints and in the halls of Congress for more than a decade, have ceased, pending a trial in good faith of measures adopted by the Fifty-first Congress, and, by acquiescence at least, sanctioned by the Fifty-second. At all events such is the view of the case taken by the commercial public, so that now, for the first time in twenty years, domestic capital and enterprise are be- ginning to look to the ocean for a field of operations and to steamships as an object for investment. 26 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. In view of these facts and for other reasons which need not be stated, I shall limit the scope of this paper to the last twenty years, as marking the era intervening between the practical abandonment of ocean traffic by our people and the beginning of their efforts to resume it. While sea routes are almost numberless and many of them of vast importance in the sum total of the world's commerce, that of the North Atlantic, embracing the grand thoroughfare of trade and travel between the great powers of Europe and the Northern half of the Western Hemis- phere well nigh overshadows all the rest combined in value and volume of its transactions, and totally eclipses them in the character of its vehicles. To such an extent is this true that, of all the myriad of steamships afloat, not more than twenty or thirty are popularly known even by name, and these are the great vessels which, under the popular designation of " At- lantic Greyhounds" ply in passenger and express traffic between the United States and the principal Nations of Western Europe. Plying on the thoroughfare of chief intercourse between civilized nations they come and go constantly fraught with the most valuable lives in both hemispheres, and for that reason if for no other their every performance is eagerly watched by the universal public until their names and the lines to which they belong have become household words. During the period under discussion — say from 1871 to the present time — the prime effort of these transatlantic competitors has been to re- duce time required in passage, and while of course other qualities, sea- worthiness, comfort and luxury of appointments, have held an even pace in the general contest for supremacy, the effort to augment speed has been so marked and so persistent as to create the aspect of a perpetual race, in which the development of the steamship has become an object enlisting the art and skill of the most masterful minds, and where each successive "lowering of the record" marks a triumph for designer and builder, a fame world-wide, and substantial benefit to mankind. Under these circumstances it is not too much to say that the grand contest for supremacy on the international race-course of the North Atlantic has ennobled the vocation of those who plan and build ships and those who manage them to a grade which abates none of its pride by compari- son with any other field in which the human intellect has ever held sway. While it is true that quick passages and regular runs were always desiderata even in the days of the old sailing packets, and in the early and primitive stage of the steam epoch, no considerable sacrifices of capital and no especial exertion of skill were then offered to secure those objects ; as, indeed the first thought in these times was to get across with- 27 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. out shipwreck, and the question of a few days more or less of passage time was reckoned only as of incidental value. It is sufficient for the general purposes of historical accuracy to say that the first real "send off" in the great modern steamship race was given by the Inraan Company in 1869-70 with the City of Brussels, which "broke the record" up to that time by a passage of seven days, 22 hours, and 3 minutes, being the first to get within the 8 day limit ; the best record up to that time being that of the old City of Paris — 8 days, 4 hours and I minute, in November, 1867. The City of Brussels was regarded as a culmination of the shipbuilder's art only twenty-three years ago, but supervening progress has left her so far in the rear that she is hardly worth description now, except to indicate the starting point of the advance- ment, the results of which we see in the colossal flyers of to-day. She was 390 feet long between perpendiculars, 40 feet, 4 inches beam, and reg- istered 3,090 tons gross; her displacement at 26 feet draught being 6,900 tons. Her engines were simple, direct acting, with two 90-inch cylinders of 54-inch stroke, and with steam at 30 lbs. she developed 3,020 indicated horse-power and realized an average speed of 14.53 knots in her best trip. To this challenge of the Inman Line, the White Star people quickly responded with the Oceanic. This was a vessel of 3,808 tons gross, British admeasurement; 420 feet long, 40.9 beam with a depth for tonnage of 23.4 feet. She was powered with a pair of com- pound or double expansion engines, having four cylinders ; two high pres- sures of 29 and two low pressures of 78 inches diameter on the " tandem " plan, with a sixty inch piston stroke, and carried usually 66 lbs. of steam. The distinguishing feature of the Oceanic was her extraordinary propor- tion of length to beam, and her ratio of 10^ to i in that respect was considered a remarkable venture on the part of her builders, Harland and Wolff, of Belfast. The rapid progress of the times soon distanced her in the North Atlantic race and she was transferred to the Pacific. The White Star Company was so well pleased with the result of its first experiment at lowering the record that its managers at once decided to reinforce their line with two new ships, the Adriatic and the Celtic, brought out in 1871-72. These were sister ships in general dimensions, model and engine power, and were designed to embody certain improve- ments which the experience of the Oceanic has made apparently advisable. The only difference between them was in the arrangement of the decks, which need not be described in detail here. The Adriatic and Celtic tonned 3,886 gross, on dimensions of 437 feet long by 41 feet beam, and they were propelled by 4 cylinder com- 28 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. pound engines, of which the two high pressure cylinders were each 41 inches and the two low pressures 78 inches diameter, with a 60-inch stroke, and, carrying 80 lbs. of steam they developed 3,880 indicated horse-power. They again reduced the transatlantic passage time below the Oceanic's record, the Adriatic making her best westward trip in 7 days, 16 hours and 26 minutes from Daunt's Rock to Sandy Hook, and her eastward run in 7 days, 19 hours and 43 minutes. The Celtic was never quite able to meet the record of her sister ship, her best trip being 7 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes eastward. The diflference, however, was no more than might have been due to ordinary vicissitudes of passage, and afforded only another of many proofs that no matter how faithfully sister ships may be duplicated in build, there will always be slight varia- tions in performance. These early ships of the White Star Line displayed pre-eminently the genius of Mr. Edward J. Harland, the head of the Belfast firm and also its chief naval architect, and he soon received the honor of knighthood in recognition of his services to the public. While these enterprises of the Whhe Star Line were in progress a movement was started on this side of the ocean, which at first bid fair to permanently enlist American capital and National spirit in an effort to regain the position of a maritime commercial power which our country had lost through the Civil War. The immediate upshot of this move- ment was the formation of the American Steamship Company and the construction, by the Cramp Company, of four steamships known as the "Indiana," "Illinois," "Pennsylvania" and "Ohio." There were at that time indications that the policy of the general Government toward the national merchant marine would be liberal, and it is probable that these indications had some bearing upon the action of the American Steamship Company; but, if so, the policy was altered too soon to realize any benefit, and the result was an unequal and of course unsuccess- ful contest between an unaided American private enterprise and British competitors backed by all the resources of their powerful Government. The four ships of the American Line were commissioned in 1872- 73. They are 357 feet long overall and 343 feet between perpendiculars, 43 feet beam, with a tonnage depth of 24 feet. United States measurement, and their gross register is 3,126 tons. They were powered with two cylinder compound engines, having piston diameters of 48 and 90 inches with 48-inch stroke and carrying 65 lbs. of steam pressure they develop- ed about 2,000 horse-power which gave them an average speed of 14 knots. They made 8 day trips and for a time attracted their share of 29 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. the transatlantic traffic, but, as already intimated, they succumbed at length to the competition of their subsidized British rivals and ultimately passed under the control of the International Navigation Company, by whom they have been considered worth re-equipment with new triple ex- pansion engines after twenty years of continuous service. These ships, though not so large or so high powered as some contemporary vessels, embodied the best ship-building practice of their date as to material and workmanship, and are still creditable specimens of American ship-build- ing skill twenty years ago, as well as of first-rate efficiency in their class. Suffice to say, that for more than two decades they have had the melancholy distinction of being the only merchant steamships to show the Stars and Stripes regularly in the ports of Western Europe, and in the three hundred and odd passages that each of them has made, their per- formance has invariably been excellent. At any rate,, though over- shadowed in size and distanced in speed by later products of the fierce competition which has followed their advent, the four " American ships " have served to tide the name of the American merchant marine over a score of dreary and disheartening years and now, in the dawn of a brighter epoch, they remain sturdy links connecting the promise of the future with the glories of the past. It has been no easy errand to keep the American flag fluttering on a North Atlantic Steamship since 1872, but these four ships have done it, and I feel that, in the present reawaken- ing of our national maritime spirit, the public will pardon my pride in them as part of the work of our establishment. They are soon to be re- inforced in the task of keeping our flag afloat by new and powerful coadjutors, whose proportions and performance will restore our ocean pres- tige to the best relative rank it ever enjoyed ; but when that time comes it will still be worth while to remember that the "Ohio," the " Indiana," the "Illinois," and the "Pennsylvania," for twenty years alone repre- sented in our merchant marine the motto of Lawrence in our Navy — " Don't give up the ship ! " Resuming consideration of operations abroad, we observe that the Inman Company did not rest content under the lead which the White Star people had established in 1871-72, but in 1873 they brought out two new ships, the City of Chester, built by Caird & Co., of Greenock, and the City of Richmond, by Todd & McGregor, of Glasgow. These ships were nearly equal in gross register, the Chester being 4,770 tons and the Richmond 4,780, but they differed considerably in model and in machinery. The Chester was 444 feet long, 44 feet beam with a tonnage depth of 34 feet. Her power was a two cylinder compound engine, with 30 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. cylinder diameters of 68 and 120 inches and 66 inch stroke, which with steam at 65 pounds developed about 4,300 horse-power. Although these new Inman ships were considerably larger than their contemporaries and competitors of the White Star Line and had about 35 per cent, more power, they did not meet the anticipations of their owners so far as the existing record was concerned. At all events the Adriatic held the record through 1875. Meantime the Inman Company renewed its efforts, resulting in the award of a contract during 1873 'o Caird & Co., Greenock, to build the City of Berlin. This was a vessel of 5,490 tons gross; 499 feet long, 44 feet beam, with a tonnage depth of 34 feet. She was powered with a two cylinder compound engine, high pressure cylinder 72 inches, low 120 inches, stroke 66 inches, and with steam at 75 pounds the indicated horse-power was 5,200. The City of Berlin was distinguished by having the greatest proportion of length to breadth thus far attained, namely : II to I. In other respects the Berlin was the finest ship of her time and she brought the record down to* 7 days, 15 hours and 28 minutes. Pending this activity of the Inmans, the White Star people were by no means idle, but contemporaneously brought out the Germanic and Britannic, within a few months of each other, from the Belfast yard of Harland and Wolff. These sister ships are 455 feet long, 45 feet beam, and 33 feet measured depth, their gross tonnage being 5,008. Their motive power is compound of the 4 cylinder type, the two high pressure cylinders having a diameter of 48 inches and the two lows 83 inches each, with 60 inch stroke and, carrying 75 pounds their indicated horse- power has reached 5,600. These ships brought the record down to 7 days, 6 hours and 52 min- utes, and they are still in service in the main fleet of the White Star Line, the Britannic having made an average of 7 days, 16 hours and 9 minutes, in 12 trips during the year 1 891, or an average all the way speed of 16 knots. From 1874 to 1879 ^^^ Germanic and Britannic easily held the pen- nant. In the latter year the Cunard people, who had hitherto rested con- tent with their reputation for safety without joining in the contest for speed, brought out the Gallia, built by the Thomsons', of Clydebank. The Gallia is a trifle smaller than her White Star rivals. She is 430 feet long, 44 feet beam, and 34 feet tonnage depth, her gross register being 4,809 tons. Her power is a three cylinder compound engine; the high pressure cylinder 64 inches and the two lows 80 inches each, with 60-inch stroke, developing 4,440 indicated horse-power. This ship, though a 31 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. distinct advance upon anything yet brought under the Cunard flag, did not affect the White Star championship, as the Gallia in her passage of 7 days, 16 hours and 42 minutes, fell 9 hours and 40 minutes behind the best record of the Britannic. In the same season, however, (1879) the Guion Line — a new Rich- mond in this particular field, by the way — brought out the Arizona, built at Elders' and with her took the pennant so long borne by the White Star ships. The. principal dimensions of the Arizona are 450 by 45. 4 by 35.7 feet; and she is powered with a three cylinder compound engine, having one 62-inch high and two 90-inch low pressure cylinders, 66-inch stroke, and with steam at 90 pounds developed 6,640 indicated horse- power. Her gross tonnage is 5,164, and her best trip was made in 7 days, 3 hours and 36 minutes, involving an average all the way speed of 16.27 knots an hour. The Arizona carried the banner, by virtue of this per- formance, two seasons — 1879 ^"^ 1880. This success of the Arizona stimulated the Guion people to renewed efforts, and in 1881 they brought out the Alaska, also built at Elders' (or the Fairfield yard) then under the able management of the late Sir William PeaJce. The Alaska's dimensions are 500 x 50 x j8 feet molded, with a gross tonnage of 9,500, and her power is a three cylinder compound engine, having a 68-iiich high pressure and two 100-inch low pressure cylinders, Tsrhich, carrying boiler steam at 100 pounds developed in a mean of four •day's performance, 11,800 I. H. P., aod drove her across the Atlantic ■westward in 6 days, 18 hours and 37 minutes, which involved an aU the way mean speed of 17.44 knots per hour. The Alaska now took the pen- nant, but she did not hold it long. The Barrow Ship-building Company brought out the City of Rome the same year, and that vessel was put in the service by the Inman Line under charter, as I understand, the title to the ship remaining with her builders. The contest between the Alaska and the Rome was fierce. Trip after trip they sped over the ocean "neck and neck" as horsemen say, the average difference between their records being but a few minutes. Finally, however the Rome got down to 6 days and 18 hours, which beat the Alaska's best by 37 minutes, and then the Rome hoisted the banner in her turn. The Rome was the largest ship of her day, excepting of course the Great Eastern ; at all events, the largest single screw ship up to her date. Her dimensions are 560 by 52 x 37 feet, her gross tonnage 8,144 and her maximum horse-power 1 1,500 indicated. The Rome under- went some vicissitudes in her early history. Her first service in the Inman 32 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. Line was not satisfactory, and she was thrown back on the hands of her builders. They then made considerable alterations of boiler arrangement and other details of internal economy, and she was put in service again by the Anchor Line, where she has remained to this time. During the year 1881, the Cunard Company brought out the Servia, built as the Gallia was, by Thomsons'. The Servia's dimensions are 515 X 53 X 37 feet and her gross register is 7,392 tons. Though a fine ship, the Servia repeated the disappointment of the Gallia, by failing to reduce the record of either the Alaska or the Rome. Her propulsion was by a three cylinder compound engine, having one 72-inch high and two 100- inch low pressures, with six foot stroke and, carrying 90 pounds of steam, she developed 10,200 I. H. P. in her best trip, which was 6 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes. The year 1882 may be considered as the end of the supremacy of 7 day ships ; because, though the Alaska and the Rome subsequently got inside that limit it was only to a small degree, and the performance was not maintained so that they remained properly in the 7 day class. The spring of 1883 witnessed another distinct stride of progress. Thomsons' built the America for the National Line, and the Aurania for the Cunards ; while Sir William Pearce, of Elder's, built the Oregon for the Guion Line. The America was in several respects a departure from the then current fashion in transatlantic liners. She was shorter, proportionally beamier, and much smaller in tonnage than her chief rival, the Oregon. The dimensions of the America were 441 x 5 1 x 36 feet, gross tonnage 5,528, and her displacement at 25 feet draught was 9,550 tons. Her engines were compound, three cylinders, high pressure 63 inches, two lows 91 inches with 66 inches stroke. Carrying 95 pounds of steam the America developed 9,500 horse-power and crossed the Atlantic in six days, fourteen hours and sixteen minutes, at a sustained speed of 18.41 knots an hour. Though perhaps the smartest ship of her time, the America proved unprofitable, because her carrying capacity was too small in pro- portion to her operating cost. Fortunately for her owners the " Russian Scare " in 1885 caused her to be taken up by the British Government as an auxiliary cruiser, and when she was discharged from that service she was purchased by Italy for use as an armed transport and torpedo depot-ship, in which service she has since figured under the name of the Etritreo. The Oregon was 501 x 54 x 38 feet, 7,375 tons gross register and at 25 feet draught displaced 12,560 tons. Her engines were three cylinder compound, of the highest working pressure attempted up to that time. 33 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. Her high pressure cylinder was 70 inches and her two lows 104 inches, with 72-inch stroke, and, carrying steam at no pounds she developed 13,200 horse-power; by far the most massive and powerful engines built at that date. The Oregon's best performance was the all-the-way speed of 18.58 knots, which gave her a record of six days, 9 hours and 22 minutes. She was also taken up as an auxiliary cruiser during the "Russian Scare," and on her release was purchased by the Cunard Company, in whose service she remained until sunk by collision off Long Island. The Aurania is 470x57x37 feet, 7,269 tons gross, and at 26 feet draught displaces 12,360 tons. Her engines are three cylinder com- pound, high pressure 68 inches, two lows 91 inches, with 72-inch stroke. Carrying 90 pounds of steam she developed a mean of 8,850 horse- power, producing an all-the-way speed of 17.21 knots. This gave her a record of six days, twenty hours and forty-eight minutes. Like the Gallia and the Servia, she was a disappointment to the public in speed. The Cunard Company continued their development however, and in 1884-85 brought out the Umbria and Etruria, built at Fairfield. These sister ships are 501 x 57 x 38 feet ; 8,120 tons gross register, and at 26 feet draught displace 13,380 tons of water. They are powered with three cylinder compound engines of the usual Fairfield type of that day, and differed but little from those of the Oregon. The high pressure cylinder was 71 inches, the two lows 105 inches, with 72-inch stroke, and with 110 pounds of steam their maximum development of horse-power has been 14,840 in the Etruria, and 14,460 in the Umbria. They re- duced the record to about six days even, though each has made at least one passage slightly inside of six days. They brought the Cunard Line to the front again for the first time in several years. From 1884 to 1889, the Umbria and Etruria maintained their supremacy. It was evident that in them the possibilities of single screw propulsion had been ex- hausted, and owners and builders who meditated an advance beyond them had to contemplate twin screws. During the years 1885, 1886 and 1887, there was much activity on the part of the French and Germans. The latter brought out the AUer, of the North German Lloyds, in 1885, the Saale and Trave in 1886, and the Lahn in 1887. These were British ships built at Fairfield. They were all single screw vessels, but they had the distinction of introducing the triple expansion engine in transatlantic propulsion. The AUer, Trave and Saale are substantially alike in hull and fittings, and their engines are exact duplicates, except in certain minor or non-essential 34 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. parts. They are 439 x 48 x 34 feet and register from 4,994 tons in the Aller, to 5,380 in the Trave and Saale; their displacement at 26 feet draught being 10,400 tons. Their triple expansion engines have the high pressure cylinder 44 inches, mediate 70 and low 108 inches, with 72-inch stroke. Carrying steam at 150 pounds, these engines have developed 8.300 indicated horse-power, and their best sustained speeds have been 17.7 knots for the Aller, 17.1 for the Saale and 17.6 for the Trave. As the time of these ships is reckoned from Southampton, certain deductions are necessary for fair comparison with ships dating from Queenstown, so it is not worth while to give their records, except to say that to equalize the records of ships starting from the two points, allowances must be made in favor of the Southampton ship as follows : For 17 knots speed, 16 hours and 20 minutes. For 17^ knots speed, 16 hours. For 18 knots speed, 15 hours and 30 minutes. For iS% knots speed, 14 hours and 56 minutes. For 19-^ knots speed, 14 hours. The Lahn is 10 feet longer, one foot wider and 10 inches deeper than her three consorts and her gross tonnage is 5,681. Her engines are also of different type, being 5 cylinder triple expansion with two high pressure cylinders 32^^ inches, one mediate 68, and two lows each 85 inches ; the duplicate cylinders being arranged tandem, one high and one low working together. These engines with 150 pounds of steam developed 9,800 horse-power, and produced a speed of 18.40 knots, making a Southampton record of 6 days, 22 hours and 42 minutes, which at her rate of speed is equal to a Queenstown passage of 6 days, 7 hours and 30 minutes. The Spree and Havel, built at Stettin in 1890 for the North German Lloyds, present no features essentially different from the Lahn, except some increase in size, and, as they have not lowered her record, it is not worth while to go into detail of them. In 1889-90, the successes of their neighbors stimulated the Hamburg Company to efforts which took shape in the Columbia, Normannia, Prince Bismark and Augusta Victoria. The Columbia was built by Lairds and Normannia at Fairfield ; the Bismark and Augusta Victoria were built in Germany; the former at Stettin and the latter by the Vulcan Works. The Columbia's dimensions are 463.5 x 55.6 x 35.5, and her gross reg- ister is 7,363 tons. She is driven by two triple expansion engines, with cylinder diameters of 41, 66 and loi inches and 66-inch stroke. With steam at 150 pounds these engines have developed 14,600 collective I. H, 35 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. P., producing a mean speed for a passage of 19.15 knots and a South- ampton record of 6 days, 14 hours and 2 minutes ; equivalent to a Queens- town record of about 6 days. The Normannia is larger than the Colum- bia and has more powerful machinery. The Normannia's dimensions are 500 x 57.5 x 34 and she tons 8,250. Her triple expansion engines have cylinders 40, 67 and 106 inches with 66-inch stroke, and, carrying steam at 150 pounds, they have developed over 15,000 I. H. P. Her best mean speed for a passage has been 19.33 knots. The Furst Bismark and Augusta Victoria are chiefly remarkable as being the most important commercial ships ever built in Germany, and as a result of the policy adopted by the German Emperor to encourage home ship-building by making a marked discrimination in favor of such ships as compared with those built abroad. The dimensions of the Bis- mark are 502.6 x 57.6 x 38 and her tonnage 8,874. Her engines are triple, with cylinder diameters of 431^, 6611 and 106A inches, having a stroke of 63 inches. She is reported to have developed 16,400 maximum I. H. P. and 14,800 as a mean of 6 days on the trip, which gave her for a brief period the Southampton record. The Augusta Victoria is 459 x 55 X 28 feet, principal dimensions, and her register is 7,661 tons. She has twin screws, driven by three cylinder triple expansion engines, with cylinders 41, 67 and 106 inches diameter respectively, and 63 inches stroke. Her best passage from Southampton was 6 days, 22 hours and 5 minutes, involving a mean speed of 18.4 knots per hour. During all this effort on the part of the English and Germans, the French remained quiescent until 1886-1887, when they brought forward the Champagne and Bretagne, built at St. Nazaire, and the Bourgogne and Gascogne, built by the Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee. These ships differ but little in dimensions or performance, and detail of them is hardly necessary, except to say that they ton from 7,087 to 7,395 gross, have compound engines of about 9,800 I. H. P. on a single screw, and the smartest of them, the Bourgogne, has made a Havre and Sandy Hook record of 7 days and 9 hours, which, at her rate of speed, 17.91 knots, is equal to a Queenstown record of 6 days and 13 hours These ships satisfied the French until 1891, when they brought out the Touraine, built at St. Nazaire. She is the first French liner equipped with twin screws. Her dimensions are 520 x 56 x 34 feet, and she tons 8,863 gross. Her engines are three cylinder, triple expansion. Cylinder di- mensions 41, 60^ and 100 inches with 65 stroke, and, carrying 140 pounds of steam, they have developed a mean average of 13,600 I. H, P. (French) which drove her from Havre to Sandy Hook in 7 days, 3 hours 36 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. and s minutes, equivalent to a Queenstown record of 6 days, 4 hours and 35 minutes. While the Touraine has not made any whole-trip record to compare with the Paris or Teutonic, she has shown some remarkable spurts. Externally the Touraine is one of the handsomest ships afloat, and her interior fittings sustain the repute of French builders for grace and elegance. I have given considerable time to this detail of dimension and per- formance, because I have often desired to have such a compilation in good shape for ready reference ; but, not being able to find one, concluded to - make it myself. It is not possible to survey the Evolution of the Atlantic Greyhound, without such reference, because in the absence of data as to dimensions and power, discussion of relative performance would be without result. We have now to consider the latest types, the New York, the Paris, the Majestic, the Teutonic, the Campania, and the Lucania. These ships are so well-known and have been so recently and minutely described, that it is not necessary to reproduce their details, and I will pass at once to another, and perhaps, more interesting phase of my subject ; but before passing on, it should be mentioned that to the International Navigation Company, in procuring the building of the New York and the Paris, belongs the credit of inaugurating the evolu- tion from single to twin screws in passenger ships, and of first offering to the public steamships so subdivided as to be unsinkable, with three com- partments flooded and with no water tight doors near or under the water line. However, in all the progress that I have noted there has been no improvement of model, or at least none worth noting. The principle fad of the great English builders is an aversion to statical stability, a repugnance to metacentric height. As one of their standard authorities remarked in a recent paper : "A ship will roll; you cannot help that. Therefore, the problem is to make her period as long and her motion as easy as possible." Even if this be true in theory, the practices by which they seek to put it in eifect are based upon error. In pursuit of "an easy roll," they persistently design their models without initial stability, and then make them stand up by great quantities of water ballast or other dead weight which pays nothing. When I undertook the design of the two steamships now building under our Ship-yard Numbers 277 and 278, 1 avoided this fad at the outset. 37 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. As part of the discussion which followed, I addressed, at his request, the President of the International Navigation Company in writing as follows : "Any system of design or construction which contemplates the carriage of water ballast (or other dead weight not cargo nor coal) as an inseparable condition of stability under any circumstances, is radically defective and should be condemned. Of course every double-bottom ship should be so compartmented that the spaces may be used as trimming tanks for regulating fore and aft trim when desired, but I utterly reject and condemn any system under which they must be viewed as necessary adjuncts to stability. "Under such a system no advantage can be taken of decreased draught caused by consumption of coal or absence of cargo, but the ship must always be kept down to a load draught in order to stand up. This is a purely English fad, and the English designers stick to it with characteristic tenacity. In this, as in many other fads, the English appear tenacious in exact ratio of the density of their error. " The proposition that you must carry one or two thousand tons of dead weight in water ballast when you happen to be short of cargo or run down in coal, is one that I cannot really discuss with patience, when it is possible to build the ship on lines that will make her stand alone, with- out detriment to any other desirable quality, and with vast improvement to her most important characteristic, that of safety at all times and in all conditions." One cannot conveniently amplify technical propositions in a business letter, and hence in my communication I merely touched the heads of my topic, and referred to the most important consideration last and also most briefly — that of "safety at all times and in all conditions." From this point of view I dismiss the commercial aspect of water ballast or permanent dead weight, with the remark that any steamship owner who will accept a design that compels him to lug around a thousand tons or so of non-paying freight in a bottom during the life of his ship, deserves what he gets, and is not entitled to sympathy. In connection with the conventional English plan of indispensable water ballast, there has been suggested as an ultimate refinement, a system of ingress and expulsion of water to and from numerous compartments by means of valve and pump gear under electric control from a central station. Let us suppose such a system so perfectly developed that an operator can sit at an electric key-board with a button for each valve and for each pump, and then operate them as Paderewski plays the piano. 38 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. This may be very pretty and very scientific, but after all it involves the human factor, with its liability to err, in a manner that places the lives of a thousand passengers at the finger ends of the operator. I have, during forty years of observation and experience in my profession, seen so much of the human factor under such circumstances that the elimination of it in every possible direction has almost become a passion with me. In any ship design, it is a first principle with me to provide as many absolute and unchangeable qualities of performance and safety as possible, and to place them beyond manipulation. The first and most important of such qualities is that of initial stability. With it the ship will stand up and float despite errors or mis- fortunes of management or condition. Without it she and all on board may at any time be at the mercy of a tipsy tank trimmer or a jammed valve. With regard to the increase of size as an element in the develop- ment of speed, I think we may all agree with Dr. Francis Elgar, in his paper read before the British Institution of Naval Architects, the nth of July last, that the limit of commercial practicability has been reached. The operation of Froude's well-known Law of Comparison, whereby the ratio of I. H. P. required to drive a ton of displacement at a given speed, decreases in a certain progressive ratio as the increase of dimen- sions, naturally led up to the Campania. But hydrographic conditions are inexorable and they impose an un- alterable limitation of one dimension, namely — draught of water, which, in turn, imposes an architectural limitation upon all the other dimensions. Dr. Elgar hopes that this limitation will be enlarged by dredging away bars and deepening docks, so that 30 feet of water may be had where only 26 feet now exists, so that it may become practicable to design a ship on the dimensions permissible with 30 feet draught. That would, perhaps, mean a ship about 700 feet long with 75 to 80 feet beam. But it is not worth while at this time to consider such a contingency. The practical commercial limit of our metropolitan seaport is about 28 feet, and it would require an expenditure of more millions than one cares to contemplate, to augment it to admit the safe passage of a steamer draw- ing 30 feet, either in channel or at dock ; so we may as well accept 28 feet as the basis of design in our time. There is another limitation to practicable size which has not been mentioned — the ship may become too large for the Captain. It is the fact, that while we may increase dimensions of ships, the size of man is a fixed quantity. I mean this in the physical as well as the mental sense. 39 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. A ship is not like an army which can be divided in sections, each capable of independent motion. She must be commanded and manoeuvered in one piece and by one man. The ratio of beam to draught in the immersed body ought never to exceed 3 to i, and is doubtless best at about 2j^ or 24 to i. All the elements of model, lines, girder strength, stability, easy motion and structural symmetry are involved in this ratio of dimensions, because the length is limited by the other two. We cannot go above a certain mold- ed depth without getting the topsides too high, and we cannot otherwise get the necessary girder strength beyond a certain length. Therefore, on a basis of 28 feet draught, we may have a beam of about 70, molded depth approximating 50, and a length of 600 to 620 feet. That seems to be about the end. In contemplating such ships the problems of structure and propulsion assume added importance propor- tionate to the dimensions. Of course the equivalent girder calculation can be made in a 620 foot ship as well as in a shorter one, but it is probable that in such great lengths and with such stresses of power as are applied to that class of vessels, larger margins of safety should be allowed than is the practice in computing smaller girders. At any rate, I should do so in designing any such ships. A 600 or 620 foot ship that will work her framing or buckle her plates in a sea-way, is not a good piece of property. Butt-starting, seam- opening and rivet-shearing are only questions of time in such a ship, and the danger increases with the size in a high ratio. We may now consider briefly the question of propulsion, which I will introduce by a further quotation from the letter to the President of the International Navigation Company, already referred to. Arguing that the limitations of practicable power in one engine were quite as definite as those of size in ships, for cognate reasons, I wrote as follows : "The most important practical reason for the distribution of power through two or more screws, instead of concentrating it in one, is the limitation placed upon the effective or economical diameter of the screw itself by the inexorable conditions of draught. " Reduction in size and weight of forgings, decrease of danger of total disablement, etc., are the plainest and simplest elements of the question, and are so well-known and generally accepted as hardly to re- quire attention. " You must have a certain immersion of the screw, the more the better. It should be at least nine feet ; that is, the top of the disc should 40 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. be about nine feet below the surface. Now, as the hydrographlc condi- tions of our Atlantic Coast harbors practically restrict draught to 27 or z8 feet, it follows that the maximum diameter of a screw is limited. " Again, unless you give your engine much higher revolutions than is desirable or economical under existing conditions in machines which must be driven at full speed five or six days at a stretch, you cannot put more than 12,000 I. H. P. through one screw. "These facts, with the force of a syllogism, demonstrate that when- ever you require more than 1 2,000 I. H. P., you must have two screws, and, if you find it necessary to exceed 24,000 I. H. P., three will be required. There is absolutely no escape from this proposition ; no alternative in practice; and volumes enough to make a library, by all the professors in the world, cannot alter the plain mechanical fact. "An English authority has recently called attention to an alleged greater tendency of twin screws to race when rolling, and has asserted that if instead of the two screws there were three, the extension of the side screws laterally would tend to reduce the advantage of smaller diameters, etc. This statement is disposed of by the remark that what causes racing is the pitching of the ship, which affects all the screws alike, when in the same horizontal plane, but with the counter screws sufficiently immersed, no properly built ship would roll enough to affect seriously their efficiency. "It will not do to treat this question as if it referred to all classes of ships alike. The question is not as to the relative advantage of single, twin or triple screws, per se, in any and all kinds of ships but as to the limit of dimensions in one engine and screw for safe and economical working. When we want to power a ship beyond that limit we must du- plicate or triplicate the engines and screws in due ratio. " No one, so far as I know, maintains that — except in men-of-war, for tactical reasons mainly, and for additional safety — two screws ought to be used when one will do the work, or three where two can do it. Some lake and river boats have two screws ; but in such cases the reason is that they facilitate landing at wharves, or that the draught is insufficient to afford diameter enough for one screw to take the power. But in sea- going vessels such construction would not apply." These remarks are based on existing conditions of practice. The future may develop modifying results. But men do not build ships on a prediction. Hence, I limit my views by what we know. I hope that the members of the Society will not expect me to say very much about the efforts which are now being put forth to restore the American flag to its proper rank in the contest of the North Atlantic. 41 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. We are, as is well-known, building a couple of 536 foot ships for the In- ternational Navigation Company. They are both framed up about two- thirds of their length amidships and plating is in progress. They will be launched next spring, and will go into commission about a year from now. Their principal dimensions and qualities are as follows : Length on 1. w. 1. - - - 536 feet. Length over all, - - - 554 feet. Extreme breadth, ... 63 feet. Molded depth, ... 42 feet. Gross register, - - - About 11,000 tons. First cabin capacity, - - - 320 Passengers. Second cabin capacity, - 200 Passengers. Third cabin capacity, - - - 900 Passengers. Their propulsion will be by twin screws, actuated by two quadruple expansion engines, on four cranks, which with steam at 200 pounds, will probably develop about 20,000 collective indicated horse-power. To sup- port the outboard shaft bearings, the hull is built out in a horizontal web to a steel frame having both bosses cast in one piece and weighing about 68,000 pounds. The after deadwood is cut away and the keel slopes up so that the shoe meets the boss frame at the after end. It will be ob- served that these ships are considerably larger than the New York and the Paris, or about half way between them and the Campania class. I will not venture predictions as to their probable performance, but I will guarantee them to be perfectly safe, comfortable and economical ships. They are to be followed closely by other ships, which I will not now describe, except to say that they will not shrink from any comparison or competition. The conditions of the mail contract between the Government and the International Navigation Company place at the disposal of the Navy seven great ships, almost instantly convertible into commerce destroyers, averaging greater performance than the Columbia and Minneapolis. This practically reinforces the Navy by twenty-one million dollars' worth of ships, and that not only without cost of building, but also without the expense of maintenance and commission in time of peace. From this point of view, the policy of the International Navigation Company, of which these ships are the result, appeals to the best and loftiest public sense. It is more than a mere commercial enterprise. It is as bold a stroke of national ambition and patriotic aspiration as was ever made. It aims at achievements the beneficial results of which will 42 EVOLUTION OF THE ATLANTIC GREYHOUND. be felt in every household throughout our broad land. And now in conclusion, let me remark that these ships are American from truck to keelson. No foreign materials enter into their construction. They are of American model and design, of American material, and they are being built by American skill and muscle. The existing tariff law, section 8, gives the privilege of importing all "plates, tees, beams, angles, wire rope and composition metals," that might be needed in their construction. But I did not take advantage of it. On the contrary we placed every order with American rolling mills, forges and foundries. In view of such a situation why should any one persist in threatening with hostile and destructive legislation, those who are making such efforts in the face of such obstacles ? No American ship-owner nor ship-builder asks for Free Ships. The demand for such a law comes from England, not from our own people. All that Americans ask is to be let alone. Since we began this work our English friends have had a good deal to say about it. They seem to think that it was impertinence on our part to enter the contest for supremacy on the North Atlantic. They deprecate the fact exceedingly. But they may as well understand that, after many years of practical expulsion from the ocean, the Yankees are coming again and coming to stay. The work we have in hand is only the beginning. It is a pretty fair start, but if they should ask you what the future has in store, you may tell them, in the words of our Paul Jones on a certain occasion, well remembered by Englishmen, that " we are just beginning to fight." Chas. H. Cramp. 43 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. REPRINT FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW," APRIL, 1 894. When one traces the history of the navigation laws of the United States, beginning with the act of December 31, 1792, which closed American registry to foreign-built vessels except as to prizes taken in war, down to the present time, there appears cumulative evidence that the policj- had its origin in the spirit of national independence, commercial as well as political. Superficial students and shallow reasoners associate our navigation laws with the doctrine of protection, as embodied in our tariff system; but, in point of fact, there is no association between them. The object of the Revolutionary fathers in enacting the prohibitive navigation law of 1792 was to provide for the development and perpetu- ity of ship-building in the United States as an indispensable condition of commercial independence and as an unfailing nursery of naval strength. At that time there was no need of protection to American ship-building, in the tariff sense of the term. The Pennsylvania Packet, in its issue of May 7, 1790, contained the following review of the then comparative state of ship-building in America and Europe, from the financial point of view : Ship-building is an art for which the United States are peculiarly qualified by their skill in the construction and by the materials with which their country abounds. . . . They build oak vessels on lower terms than the cheapest European vessels of fir, pine and larch. The cost of a white oak ship in New England is about 24 Mexican dollars per ton, fitted for sea; a fir vessel costs in the ports of the Baltic 35 Mexican dollars per ton ; though the American oak ship is much safer and more durable. The maximum cost of a vessel of the highest class of American live oak and cedar, which with salted timbers will last 30 years without repair, is only 36 to 38 dollars per ton in our different ports ; while an oak ship, fitted in a similar manner, in the cheapest ports of England, Holland or France, will cost 55 to 60 dollars per ton. This relative state of the first cost of ships existed at the date of the passage of the prohibitory law in 1792. Hence, it could not have been a merely protective measure, in the tariff sense, because under the con- ditions stated by the Pennsylvania Packet there could have been no com- petition. 44 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. The policy of the fathers had a broader basis, a deeper foundation and a wider scope of patriotism and foresight. They realized that Ameri- can-built ships were not only less costly but better and more efficient vehicles of commerce than contemporary foreign ships. They knew that, at the then prevailing rates of cost, it would be impossible for any Ameri- can merchant to import a newly built foreign ship. Therefore, the im- mediate object of their law of 1792 could not have been else than to pro- hibit the purchase and registry of old and partly worn-out foreign ships, and thereby to maintain in our merchant marine the high standard of superiority due to the greater skill of American builders and the better grade of American materials. But this was not their only purpose. With foresight amounting to prophecy they seemed to divine the vicissitudes of the future. So, at the very beginning of the federal government they laid this navigation law of 1792 as one of the foundation-stones of our domestic polity for all time, and wholly indifferent to mere economic con- ditions of the day in which they lived. During the one hundred and one years that have elapsed since George Washington approved the navigation law the conditions of ship- building in America, relatively to those prevailing abroad, have under- gone many vicissitudes. At any time between 1790 and 1840, the con- ditions set forth in the review quoted from the Pennsylvania Packet pre- vailed, and the United States continued to enjoy the advantage of her natural resources and the superior skill of her naval architects and ship- wrights. But, as England's supply of timber vanished, her production of metals increased, which fact naturally caused the evolution of the iron ship. The practicability of the use of iron in ship construction had been seen long before it became a commercial fact, but while the system was early known, the development of proper structural devices was of slower progress. As early as 1823, Captain de Montg6ry, of the French Navy, published a valuable work entitled Memoire sur les Navires en Per, in the form of papers in the Annates de P Industrie Nationale et Etrangere, which were subsequently reprinted in a small book in 1824. Captain Montgdry introduced his work with the remark that "one might, per- haps, trace the origin of iron vessels to an invention of Demetrius Poli- orcetes, when he was besieging Rhodes, 304 years before the present era." After some other interesting historical researches. Captain Montg6ry pointed out that the chief obstacle to successful shipbuilding in iron at that time (1823-24) was due to the lack of suitable machinery for work- ing and shaping the material. This, he said, could not be done by hand 45 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. as in the case of wooden ships, and he left the matter of inventing or adapting the necessary mechanical appliances for metal construction to the skill of practical ship-builders. These achievements came along quite slowly during the twenty years immediately following Captain Montg6ry's suggestion. The capac- ity of plate and shape mills was limited to small sizes and light weights. Punching, bending, and other ship-shed appliances were crude and costly. The old woodworking shipwrights did not at first take kindly to the new material. In fact the first iron hulls were built by boilermakers, on plans prepared by the wood-ship builders. In this country the development of the iron industry was much slower than in England during the period under consideration, so that, by the time the actual supremacy of the iron ship became established, we were far behind that country in all the essentials for rapid and economical construction. This state of things turned the tables as to first cost, besides relegating the wooden ship to the past. As soon as the English found that they could build iron ships cheaper than we could, and that their iron ships were commercially superior to our wooden ones, they at once began to clamor for repeal of our navigation laws. They rapidly pushed their way into the markets of the rest of the world, building iron ships at great profit to themselves for nearly every nation but our own, and they naturally desired to over-run ours too. Then began a series of systematic, organized assaults on our naviga- tion laws, always prompted from English sources and gradually adopted as a policy by certain of our lawmakers. These assaults, though made with vigor and sometimes adroitly managed, failed in every case. When- ever the question came to a vote it was always found that a majority in one or both Houses of Congress had inherited the patriotism of their ancestors of 1792. Had any of these assaults been successful to the extent of wiping the act of 1792 from the pages of the Revised Statutes, there would not now be a first-class shipyard in existence on our soil, and like Chili and Japan we should have been forced to dicker on the banks of the Clyde for the construction of our new navy, if we had one at all. But aside from the desire of English ship-builders to create a new market for their product by opening our registry, there is a political cause operating with even greater force to make free American registry a desideratum to England. It lies in the threat of maritime war to which European nations are con- stantly exposed and which just now happens to be at an acute stage. At the time of the Franco-German war of 1870-71, even so sturdy a 46 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. patriot as General Grant, then President, was persuaded for a time that it would be a good thing for our commerce, as a neutral nation, to permit American registry of foreign-built vessels, the theory being that many vessels of nations which might become involved in the struggle would seek the asylum of our flag. Actuated by powerful New York influences, which found expression through Roscoe Conkling, Edwin D. Morgan and Hamilton Fish, already conspicuously hostile to the American merchant marine, General Grant, in a special message, recommended that Congress enact legislation to that end. This proposition was antagonized by Judge Kelley, of Pennsylva- nia — always at the front when American interests were threatened — in one of his most powerful efforts, couched in the vehement eloquence of which he was master, which impressed General Grant so much that he abandon- ed that policy, and subsequently adhered to the existing system. I will not stop here to point out in detail the tremendous political and diplomatic advantage which England would enjoy when dealing with other maritime powers, if she could have always at hand an asylum for the lame ducks of her commercial fleet in time of war. Her ocean grey- hounds that could either escape the enemy's cruisers or be readily con- verted into cruisers themselves, might remain under her flag; but all her slow freighters, tramps, and obsolete passenger boats of past eras would be transferred by sham sales to our flag, under which they could pur- sue their traffic in safety during the war under peace rates of insurance, and without any material diversion of their earnings, which would of course be increased by war freight rates, returning to their former allegiance at the end of the war. The lack of such an asylum amounts to a perpetual bond to keep the peace. From the end of the Civil War to about 1880 there was but feeble efibrt to revive ship-building in this country. All our energies of capital and enterprise, as I have remarked elsewhere, were directed to the exten- sion of railways in every direction, to the repair of the war ravages in the South, to the settlement of the vast territories of the West — in a word, to purely domestic development, pending which, England was by common consent left to enjoy her ocean monoply. Such was the state of affairs in 1883-85, when the adoption of the policy of naval reconstruction offered to American ship-building the first encouragement it had seen in a quarter of a century. When we began to build the new navy, every English journal, from the London Times down, pooh-poohed the idea that a modern man-of- war could be built in an American yard, modern high-powered engines in 47 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. an American machine-shop, or modern breech-loading cannon in an American forge. Many of the English ship-builders rubbed their hands in actual anticipation of orders from this government for the ships and guns we needed, and they blandly assured us that they would give us quite as favorable terms as were accorded to China, Japan and Chili. And, to their shame be it said, there were officers of our navy who not only adopted this view, but did all they could to commit our government to the pernicious policy. In 1885, when Secretary Whitney took control of the Navy Depart- ment, the efforts of English shipbuilders to secure at least a share of the work were renewed. By this time the English were willing to admit that the hulls of modern ships could be built in the United States ; but they were satisfied that our best policy would be to buy the necessary engines, cannon and armor from them. Secretary Whitney, however, promptly decided that the only article of foreign production which the new navy needed was the plans of vessels for comparison. This was wise, because it placed in the hands of our builders the results of the most mature experience abroad, at comparatively small cost. But one of the earliest and firmest decisions of Mr. Whitney was that our naval ves- sels, machinery and all, must be built at home and of domestic material. The efforts of the English builders to get the engine-work for our new navy were much more serious and formidable than is generally known. A prominent member of the House Committee on Naval Affairs proposed an amendment to a pending naval bill empowering the Secretary at his discretion to contract abroad for the construction of pro- pelling machinery for our naval ships. The language was, of course, general, but every one knows that the term " abroad " in this sense would be synonymous with Great Britain, and nothing more. Mr. Whitney promptly met this proposition with a protest in the shape of a letter to the Naval Committee dated February 27, 1886. He said that so far as he was concerned, he would not avail himself of such a power if granted. There was no occasion for such power, and it could have no effect except to keep American builders in suspense, and thereby augment the difficulty of obtaining capital for the enlargement of their facilities to meet the national requirements. Mr. Whitney's protest was so vigorous that the proposition died from its effects in the committee and has been well-nigh forgotten. The proposer himself became satisfied that he had been misled by the representations of naval officers who were under English influence, and did not press his amendment. I have brought these facts forward for the purpose of emphasizing 48 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. my declaration that the promotive influence behind every movement against our navigation laws is of British origin, and whenever you put a pin through a free-ship bill you prick an Englishman. The portion of Mr. Whitney's letter referring to the proposed free- engine clause in the Naval Bill of 1886 was as follows: I think our true policy is to borrow the ideas of our neighbors as far as they are thought to be in advance of ours, give them to our shipbuilders in the shape of plans ; and, having this object in view, I have been anxious to acquire detailed drawings of the latest machinery in use abroad, and should feel at liberty to spend more in the same way in getting hold of the latest things as far as possible for the purpose of utilizing them. We have made important accumulations in this line during the last six months. I think I ought to say to the committee that I have placed myself in communication with some of the principal marine-engine builders of the country within the last three months for the purpose of conferring with them upon this subject. I detailed two officers of the navy — a chief engineer and a line officer — who, under my directions, visited the principal establishments in the East. They recognize that in the matter of engines for naval ships we are quite inexperienced as compared with some other countries. It is this fact, doubtless, which the committee has in view in authorizing the purchase and importation of engines for one of the vessels authorized to be con- structed under this act. If the committee will permit me to make the suggestion, I find myself quite satisfied, after consultation with people engaged in the industry in this country, that it would not be necessary for me to avail of that discretionary power in order to produce machines of the most advanced character. Our marine engine build- ers in general express their inability at the present moment to design the latest and most approved type of engines for naval vessels — an inability arising from the fact that they have not been called upon to do anything of importance in that line. At the same time, they state that if they are given the necessary time, and are asked to offer designs in competition, they would acquaint themselves with the state of the art abroad and here, and would prepare to offer to the government designs embodying the latest improvements in the art. And they are ready to construct at the present time anything that can be built anywhere else if the plans are furnished. As I find no great difficulty in the way of purchasing plans (in fact there is an entire readiness to sell to us on the part of the engine builders abroad) I think the solution of the question will be not very difficult, although it may require some time and a little delay. It will be noted that but little more than eight years have elapsed since the date of Secretary Whitney's letter. The wisdom of his policy needs no eulogy, beyond the history of the development of steam engi- neering in the United States during that brief period. In fact, no other eulogy could be a tenth part as eloquent as that history is. In 1886 we were content to purchase engine plans abroad. In 1894 we exhibit to the world the marvellous machinery of the New York, the Olympia, and the Columbia ; not to speak of the still higher development 49 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. that is now being wrought out for the new greyhounds of the American trans-Atlantic line. The engines of the New York, Olympia and Columbia have no equals, either in material, workmanship or performance. Does any one suppose they would have ever been built if Secretary Whitney had adopt- ed the policy of buying our naval engines in England, thereby devoting the resources of the American treasury to promote a British monopoly? No. In their stead we would have, perhaps, the engines of the Blake, guaranteed to develop 20,000 indicated horse-power, and accepted on a performance of 13,0005 or the engines of the Vulcan, with deficiency of performance even more pitiable. The policy of Secretary Whitney was in fact an echo of the sturdy patriotism that framed the act of December 31, 1792, dictated by the same impulse of national independence and conceived in the same aspira- tion of patriotic pride. And now, in the face of this record so fresh and recent, the same old demand for English free ships is heard again in our midst, promoted by the same old lobby and pressed on the same old lines. Are we never to hear the last it ? Is there to be a perennial supply of American legislators willing to promote a British industry by destroying an American one? To all history, to all logic, they oppose a single phrase : " Let us buy ships where they are cheapest." Well, if national independence is value- i less, and if everything is to be subordinated to cheapness, why not get our laws made in the House of Commons ? The members of the House of Commons legislate for nothing. Senators and Representatives charge $S,ooo a year for their services, besides stationery allowance and mileage. The House of Commons makes laws cheaper than our Congress does. Our ships and our capacity to create them are as much a symbol of inde- pendence as our laws are ; and if it is good policy to get the former where they are cheapest, why not get the latter on the same terms? Two years ago I discussed in these pages " The First Cost of Ships," pointing out, among other things, the enormous progress that has been made in the development of ships and engine building and contributory industries in a brief space by reason of the reconstruction of the navy under a domestic policy. Last November I contributed a paper to the " Proceedings of the American Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers," in which I stated that, notwithstanding the privilege embodied in Section 8, of the existing tariff, to import material of foreign produc- tion free of duty for use in the construction of vessels designed for the foreign trade, I had not taken advantage of it, but had placed orders for SO OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. many thousand tons of steel with American rolling mills, forges, and foundries. I had to pay something more for American material than British material would have cost delivered here, but there were certain mechanical and financial considerations involved which in my judgment more than offset this disparity. Hence we may dismiss the question of material and consider only that of labor, which represents a very large percentage of the cost of a ship. In this particular the English builders have an undoubted advantage over us, as will appear from the subjoined tables of comparative wages embracing twenty occupations. I have not depended on the consular reports, but have compiled them through my own sources of information from the actual payrolls respectfully of British ship-yards and our own. In reducing British wages to our standard I have taken the shilling as the equivalent of our quarter of a dollar. I have also brought all wages to a weekly basis, taking the average yearly rate of fifty-six hours to the week in the British yard: British Rate. 8.50 7-50 7.80 Trade. Patternmakers Machinists Riveters Calkers and chippers Beam and angle- smiths 8.40 Holders-on 4.20 Fitters-up 7.80 Ship carpenters 9.60 Joiners..... 9.00 Painters 9.60 American Rate. J! 1 8.00 15.00 12.00 15.00 15.00 ' 9.00 15.00 18.00 16.50 18.00 Trade. Shipshed machine men Furnacemen Riggers Plumbers Drillers. Sheet Iron workers.. Coppersmiths Moulders, iron Moulders, brass Laborers British American Rate. Rate. JS7.20 6,00 7.20 9.60 6.40 8.50 8.60 9.00 9.00 4.20 115.00 10.80 11.00 19.50 11.00 15.00 18.00 1450 15.00 $S to $9 These figures are taken direct from the books of representative ship- yards in the United States and Great Britain, and represent average rates for 1893. The comparison tells its own story. Brushing aside sophistry and cant, we have in front of us a plain proposition, the logic of which no man can evade. It is simply this : A vote for English free ships means a vote to reduce the wages of American patternmakers from ;Sli8 a week to the British rate of $g; of American machinists from ;$i5 a week to J8.50; of American boiler- makers from $15 a week to jgS.so; of American sheet-iron workers from «i5 a week to $8.50; of American coppersmiths from ^18 to ^8.60; of SI OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. American plumbers and pipe fitters from J19.50 a week to I9.60: of American carpenters from $18 a week to ^9.60; of American drillers from $11 a week to $6.40; of American fitters-up from $15 a week to ;j;7.8o; of American riveters from ||i2 a week to $7.50; of American calkers from $15 a week to J7.80; of American moulders from $15 a week to $g ; of American furnacemen from $11 a week to $6 ; of American painters from |i8 a week to $9.60; of American joiners from $16 50 a week to $g ; of American common laborers from $g a week to ^4. 20. There is no alternative to these reductions of wages except total clos- ing of American shipyards, which of course would reduce all shipbuild- ing wages from their present rates to nothing. This is what men mean when they talk about buying ships where they are cheapest. This is what makes ships cheaper in England than here. And this too is what makes English ships inferior to American ships, class for class and rate for rate; it is because $18 a week will buy better skill and greater dili- gence than $g or $10 a week in any country or under any flag. As a collateral argument in favor of free ships we are informed by the last report of the Post-Office Department that the act of March 3, 1 89 1, providing for ocean mail service in American vessels has not resulted in any improvement of the merchant marine. The solemnity with which this information is offered to the country indicates tha,t its authors considered it important. Less than three years have elapsed since that law was enacted. Without reference to its merits as an economic policy, but from the practical point of view, not much progress could be expected in that time, unless merchant fleets are sup- posed to spring from the brain of Congress full panoplied like Minerva from the brow of Jove. However, a broader survey of the situation shows that there has been material improvement of the merchant marine consequent upon that act. In conjunction with another act which created the nucleus of an American line of trans-Atlantic greyhounds, the law of March 3, 1891, has caused five new vessels to be under construction, which are in all re- spects abreast and in many respects ahead of anything now afloat. These vessels are being built in conformity to the requirements of the two acts referred to, under a contract duly executed between their owners and the Post Office Department, to go into active effect in October, 1895, for a period of ten years. This is surely progress and improvement, but the Foreign Mail Bureau of the Post-Office Department has either overlooked or ignored it through impatience with the slow processes inevitable in the production of ships over a tenth of a mile long. 52 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. This is somewhat digressive, but it is introduced here by way of pre- face to the remark that the capacity to build such ships has been attained but recently by any American shipyard, and hence, unless active hostility to American shipbuilding be admitted aS the motive, it is difficult to con- ceive the rationale of a movement the success of which would be inevi- tably and almost instantly fatal to the entire industry. It has been well said that " A great steamship is the grandest triumph of mind over matter. " In no other structure appears such a combination of science and skill, such a conspiracy of brain and brawn. When a steamship leaves the yard for her maiden voyage her cost account shows ninety-five per cent, of the total to the credit of labor. There is no charge for right of way, real estate, or accessories. She is a thing of life, an autonomy within herself, and, once off the land, is for the time being a planet. Her deck is the soil of the nation whose flag she bears. Her freight is not only the commodities of commerce, but human lives. Upon her safety and efficiency constantly hang the hopes and loves of thousands. No other thing made by human hands can appeal to the sentiment of men like a great steamship. From this point of view there is an element of public pride, of patriotic exultation in the national possession of great steamships, and it would seem that cognate pride and exultation ought to be cherished in the national capacity to create them. Such a capacity, after years of disheartening struggle against powerful and vindictive rivalry, has at last been attained and is now being exerted with grand results — when Congress is asked to paralyze it for all time. It has been said that even if the English should build all our ships for us, except those for the coastwise trade under such a law, American shipyards would still flourish on the proceeds of the coastwise construction and the repairs. Did the authors of that theory ever see an establish- ment entirely devoted to the repair of ships that was equipped to build so much as a tug ? The Erie Basin Drydocks in New York are exclusively repair works. Was ever a ship built there ? Could one be built there ? Certainly not. As for the resources of the coastwise trade, the state of shipbuilding in this country ten years ago, and before the government came into the market with the new navy, indicates the limit of its possibilities. From 1878 to 1888 there was considerable activity in shipbuilding for the coast- wise trade, resulting in the production of a large amount of tonnage which newly equipped that traffic for a term of years. After 1888 this demand fell off in consequence of having been fully supplied, so that since that time but few orders for further coastwise construction have been 53 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. offered. The total tonnage of new or comparatively new iron steam tonnage now employed in the coastwise trade, including colliers and ocean tugs employed in barge-towing, is about 340,000, and this, in the opinion of men qualified to judge, is a fair supply for the rest of this century at least. It is observed that the present English raid on the navigation law is the most determined yet made. This is because the development of ship- building capacity in Great Britain during the last decade has outstripped the demand for ships, and there is desperate need of a new market. France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Russia, and Italy, which were formerly large customers, have in recent years encouraged home ship- building by subvention and commercial discriminations, until their patron- age has been almost entirely withdrawn from British yards. So severe has been the distress of English shipyards under these conditions that quite recently one of them contracted to build a large ship "at cost," in express terms for the sole purpose of keeping their organization together. Even Japan, which in years past has poured about thirty millions of dollars into England's coffers for ships and guns, has now begun to build her own men-of-war. Denunciation of our navigation laws as " obsolete " is a fashionable fallacy. It is true that they are among the most venerable of our statutes, the Constitution itself antedating them only three years. But I call attention to the fact that the act of December 31, 1792, was quite as much in force from that time to i860, when our merchant marine was at its zenith of prosperity, as now, when it is prostrate. This is a historical fact which no one can gainsay. It is therefore not easy to see why a law which promoted such prosperity as our merchant marine enjoyed prior to i860, should exert an exactly contrary effect in 1894. At any rate it would require a new school of logic to prove that it has worked both ways. Denunciation of every business transaction between the govern- ment and steamship owners as " subsidy " is also a fashionable fad. Steamship owners who perform public service by transporting ocean mails undoubtedly expect to pay for it ; but I am unable to see why a cer- tain sum when paid to a railroad company or a river steamboat for mail- carrying under contract should be called " compensation," and when paid to an ocean steamship company for similar service should be called "subsidy." The five maritime great powers of Europe — England, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy — during the year 1893, paid ;^3, 331,573 sterling, or, roughly, ^16,657,865, for the transportation of their mails 54 OUR NAVIGATION LAWS. by sea. England paid 114,360,000, including the "retainer" of 20 shillings per ton per annum to the vessels enrolled as convertible cruisers for the auxiliary fleet. France paid, including both mail compensation and tonnage bounty, ^(15,356,000. Germany paid, inclusive of discrimi- nations in taxes, port dues, and lighthouse fees in favor of ships built in Germany, $1,962,000, of which j!i,2oo,ooo went to one company, the North German Lloyd. In all these cases the transactions are considered as being in the nature of fair compensation for actual services, and no one denounces them as subsidy. It would appear that compensation for service becomes "subsidy" only when paid to an American shipowner. Summing up, it appears that the actual, practical, valid reasons for the repeal of our navigation laws are : 1. That it would open a new and much needed market for the pro- duct of over-developed English shipyards. 2. That it would offer to English shipowners opportunity to unload their obsolete and worn-out tramps from the foot of their list upon our "bargain-hunters," enabling them to recruit at the top with new ships. 3. That it would release England from her bond to keep the peace by opening an asylum for her commercial fleet whenever she might desire to make war on a maritime power. These reasons are all English. There are no American reasons. Chas. H. Cramp. 55 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. REPRINT FROM "THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW," AUGUST, 1894. The discussion of the elements and effects of Sea Power evoked by Captain Mahan's books, has been fruitful of suggestion as to the aggre- gate of navies and the political consequences of superiority at sea^ but little has been said of the individuality of ships. This, of course, is from the point of view of the statesman and the diplomatist, but the share which the designer and builder of ships has in the production of Sea Power remains to be examined. Primarily it is worth while to remark that Captain Mahan's theme is by no means new, the real merit of his books resting in the fact that he has given a new force to old and well-known facts. Long ago the wisdom and foresight of Englishmen discerned the value of Sea Power before they possessed it, and Lord Bacon made it the subject of an essay as luminous as it was prophetic. This essay occurs in his work on the "True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates," and the following pithy extract serves to exhibit the train of thought. " To be master of the sea is an abridgement of a monarchy. We see the great effects of battles by sea ; the Battle of Actium decided the Empire of the World; the Battle of Lepante arrested the greatness of the Turk. There be many examples where sea fights have been final to the War. This much is certain, that he who commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much or as little of the war as he will, whereas, those that be strongest by land are many times nevertheless in great straits. Surely at this day with us of Europe, the vantage of strength at sea (which is one of the doweries of this Kingdom of Great Britain) is great, because most of the kingdoms of Europe are not merely inland, but girt with the sea most part of their compass, and because the wealth of both Indies seems in great part but an accessory to the com- mand of the Seas." 56 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. The phrase here is indeed Baconian, but the thought is as fresh now as it was then, and in the concluding sentence one may find a prophecy of the British conquest of India, and the necessity of keeping open the sea road. Captain Mahan's work, however, loses none of its merit from the fact that Bacon " blazed the way " for him ; on the contrary he is rather to be congratulated on having so distinguished a predecessor. Leaving the diplomatists and the strategists to pursue their generali- zations, I will try to point out the office of the Naval architect and ship-builder in the creation and maintenance of sea power. In a recent interview published in a British journal. Captain Mahan, with much pith and force, described the basis of maritime supremacy by saying, that the battleship is to fleets what infantry is to an army ; but when pressed by the reporter to particularize the type which he considered most effective the Captain declined to offer an opinion. This abstention was creditable both to his sound judgment and good taste. There are many types of battleships, each one with ardent partizens, and had Captain Mahan expressed a predilection for one type it would have been taken as a challenge by the adherents of all the others. This exhibits good judgment ; while on the point of good taste he is quite properly content to leave questions of design and construction to Naval architects and builders. There are some considerations affecting type and size of battleships which are of general interest and sufficiently non-technical to be easily comprehended by the average reader. I shall confine my observations to this class of subjects, because the purely technical questions involved in planning and constructing ships could be made neither interesting nor instructive to the readers of a popular magazine. Necessarily in conformity to prevailing ideas and practice, the em- ployment of battleships for the enforcement of Sea Power involves their operation in fleets or squadrons. The experience of war may and probably will modify prevailing ideas, and set a limit to the number of battleships that can be safely or effectively manceuvered in squadron. It is more than probable that at an early stage of action the commanding officer of a battleship fleet or squadron, will find it necessary to signal for each captain to do the best he can. And it is possible that fleet or squadron tactics, as now received and understood, will be found to impede if not destroy the efficiency of modern battleships in action. 57 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. No action having occurred between fleets of modern battleships the tactical conditions must be somewhat conjectural or at least theoretical ; but the experience of peace drills and manceuvers has demonstrated that the elements of difficulty and danger, due to modern appliances, as com- pared with the conditions of the great sea-fights of history, have been multiplied many fold. For example, at Trafalgar, the Victory, Temeraire and Redoubtable were foul of each other for a considerable period, and some historians say that the Bucentaure, Admiral Villeneuve's flagship, was also foul of the bunch at one time. None of these ships of the line sustained any injury worth mentioning from the fouling alone. I presume no one imagines that three or four modern battleships could be foul of each other for many minutes before some of them would begin to sink from the effects of contact alone, and irrespective of any execution done by their batteries or torpedoes. This ever present danger is equally great from friend and from foe, and the fact that it must be vastly increased by the circumstances of action will devolve upon the commander of the fleet, and upon each one of his captains responsibilities which Rodney and Nelson and their captains never dreamed of. These facts suggest a wide range of problems, embracing not only tactics, which is outside of my province, but design, structure, manoeuver- ing appliances, in short, everything that pertains to handiness, controlla- bility under various conditions and ultimate safety after a maximum of injury. The fate of the Victoria demonstrated that subdivision into water-tight compartments is useless if communication between any number of them is left free, and that water-tight doors, at least as arranged in that ship, cannot be closed against much head of in-rushing water. It also demonstrated the fact that the tactical diameters of ships as ascertained by trial singly in smooth water and under the most favorable conditions, cannot be depended on in fleet manceuvers at sea. Above all it demonstrated that Captains differ in capacity and in promptness, and that such difference operating in the brief time allotted to a single manceuver may easily be fatal to a ship, or, in action to a fleet. This is a case of the personal equation; the operation of the human factor, which is always unequal to an immeasurable degree if we consider the possible extremes of capacity and incapacity ; but at best always sub- ject to error, and hence calculated to defeat or mar in greater or less de- gree the efficiency of the most skilfully designed and most perfectly con- 58 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. structed mechanical devices. This is a fundamental fact, having its origin in the organic weaknesses of human nature and hence unavoidable. At best its consequences can only be mitigated. Last November, in a paper read before the American Society of Naval Architects, discussing the practicable size of ships, I employed the following language : " There is another limitation to practicable size which has not been mentioned — the ship may become too large for the Captain. It is the fact, that while we may increase the dimensions of ships the size of man is a fixed quantity. I mean this in the physical as well as the mental sense. A ship is not like an army which can be divided in sections, each capable of independent action. She must be commanded and manoeuvered in one piece and by one man. "I have, during many years of observation and experience in my pro- fession, seen so much of the human factor under such circumstances (cir- cumstances placing the lives of many men in a ship at the mercy of one man) that the elimination of it in every possible direction has become almost a passion with me. In any ship design it is the first principle with me to provide as many absolute and unchangeable qualities of per- formance and safety as possible, and to place them beyond manipulation." For the reasons that I have already stated these observations origi- nally made with reference to transatlantic passenger vessels, apply with ten fold force to battleships. As the speed of any fleet is that of its slowest ship, so will its manoeuvering power be limited by the capacity of its poorest captain. As it might easily happen that the slowest or least handy ship and the poorest captain would be joined, the quality of the other ships and the ability of the other officers would go for nothing. In view of the complex character of the ships themselves, and the difficulty and danger of manoeuvering them under the most favorable con- ditions, as pointed out, the experience of the first general action will demonstrate the necessity of having all the battleships in a fleet as nearly alike as possible in size, type, and capacity of performance. Such pro- vision would not equalize the personal factor of different commanding officers, but it would at least give them all an equal chance at the start. For this reason I have always considered it unwise to multiply types or to seriously modify those which the best judgment we are now able to form approves. The practice of the English, French, Russians and Germans, has been contrary to this idea. Each new administration of their navies has brought in new types, until their Navy lists present an almost bewildering variety. For example the present Mediterranean fleet 59 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. of England includes ten battleships, comprising six different types, and ranging in speed from the old Dreadnaught of 1 2 knots to the Hood of 16^. Of these six types four are singly represented, namely; the Dreadnaught, old-fashioned double-turreted monitor ; the Sanspareil, sister ship to the late Victoria; the Ramillies, modern barbette battleship, and the Hood modern double-turret battleship. Another type has two repre- sentatives, the Nile and Trafalgar, double-turret battleships, 2000 tons smaller than the Hood ; while the sixth type has four representatives, the Anson, Camperdown, CoUingwood and Howe, barbette battleships of the Admiral class, from 3500 to 4500 tons smaller than the Ramillies. The testimony in the Victoria Court of inquiry showed not only the difference in the capacity of Captains already referred to, but also considerable difference between the several types of ships themselves as to handiness, even at a manoeuvering speed of eight knots, which was dictated by the easy natural draught speed of the slowest ship, the Dreadnaught. It is not easy to imagine what the consequences of such discrepancy in the ability and promptness of officers, or in the power and handiness of the different ships would be under the vastly altered conditions of action. Of course the English have been accumulating different types during many years of active construction under different and disagreeing Admir ralties, and having the ships on hand must use them, no matter how mot- ley the resulting fleet. These observations bring us to a survey of the comparative situation of the United States in this respect. Our navy has not accumulated an assortment of battleship types, and hence is free to pursue the desirable policy of uniformity. Our very first attempt at battleship design pro- duced a type which I consider the fairest compromise of all divergent qualities and necessities yet reached anywhere. The resulting ship carries on a displacement of 10,400 tons, armor and armament superior to Brit- ish ships of 14,150 tons, is equal to them in manoeuvering speed, and much quicker and handier under helm. Our second effort produced a ship which is in some respect a modifl- cation of the first. The changes are mainly in the direction of greater free board and a knot more of speed, involving 1000 tons more displace- ment by which the all-around sea-going efficiency is expected to be in- creased ; but as a fighting ship pure and simple, I think no one contends that the Iowa is an improvement upon the Indiana class. Without going into detail of the differences between the two ships, I will say, generally, that the Indiana class is able to combat any first-rate battleship afloat as to armor and armament ; she has as much speed as will ever be needed few- do SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. manoeuvering purposes, and her coal capacity is sufficient for any cruise that the policy of the United States will ever require in war. When to these offensive and defensive qualities is added the fact that the Indiana developed on her preliminary trial a readiness of response and fidelity of direction under helm little short of marvellous in view of her dimensions and weight, she becomes by great odds the handiest first-rate battleship afloat. In the language of her Navigating officer on that occa- sion, " she steered like a pilot boat." I submit that it does not require the training of a naval tactician to see that a fleet of ten Indianas, com- pact handy ships, alike in all leading qualities, would have the ten diverse and unequal battleships of the British Mediterranean fleet at an initial disadvantage of tremendous effect, and this without taking account of in- dividual superiority. These considerations seem conclusive against multiplication of types, and in favor of adhering to one which so plainly meets the requirements of our national situation and policy. The composition of a battleship fleet under such conditions would min- imize the tactical dangers and difficulties referred to earlier, but they would still remain very great, and nothing can mitigate them except frequent and ardous drill in squadron of evolution, so that our captains may be- come familiar with their weapons before being called upon to use them in actual battle. There will be scant opportunity to drill a battleship squad- ron after the outbreak of war. From this point of view, it is to be regret- ted that Secretary Tracy's programme of 1890, contemplating eight battle- was cut down to three, and sound policy dictates its early revival. Passing now to another branch of the subject, I think it a matter of regret that some of the most distinguished advocates of the battleship policy have deemed it a part of the argument to depreciate the value of cruisers and commerce destroyers as an element of sea power. Captain Mahan does this by inference rather than expressly, but the Honorable Secretary of the Navy, in his admirable report for 1893, (pp. 37-38) pointedly questions the military value of unarmored vessels. He says : " The military value of a commerce-destroying fleet is easily over- rated. Cruisers directed against an enemy's wealth afloat are capable of doing great damage ; but unsupported by ships of the line their operations are never decisive of a war. During the twenty years, from 1792 to i8i2, French cruisers and privateers captured many thousands of British vessels and cargoes, but these captures operated more to provoke a spirit of determined hostility among the British people than to create such dis- tress or alarm as would put an end to hostilities. English line-of-battle 61 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. ships, instead of scattering to convoy merchant vessels, hunted and de- stroyed the French vessels of war at the Nile, at Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar. In the meantime, in spite of her losses of merchant ships and their cargoes, England continued to grow rich by her commerce. " Our own Civil War furnishes a more recent and familiar proof of my statement. The cruises of the Alabama and her sister ships were un- commonly successful. Semmes rivalled the exploits of Joan Bar and Du Guay-Trouin. His success delighted the Confederates, but it did not benefit their cause. In the meantime, in spite of depredations, American commerce flourished. Commerce destroying was irritating, but it accom- plished nothing. It would have been ineffectual even if the Confederates had possessed ten times as many cruisers, unsupported as they were by line-of-battle-ships. " Secretary Herbert's argument of facts here is ingeniously deployed, but his point of view seems limited to the special conditions which he has in mind. In both cases he cites — England's contest with Napoleon and our Civil War — the struggle was for life. Napoleon's success, as he had planned it, would have relegated England to the status of Denmark or Holland ; while the consequences that would have attended the success of the Confederacy cannot be measured. In the one case it was England or nothing, in the other case the Union or nothing. In either case the superior naval power could afford to let its commerce go by the board if necessary, in order to employ its fleets in strategic operations bearing di- rectly upon the fortunes of the struggle. It is true that French cruisers and privateers captured many English merchant ships and cargoes. But in turn the English cruisers captured so many French ships of their class, that by the end of the Napoleonic era a great many, perhaps a majority, of the British frigates in commission were of French build, or new ships rebuilt on captured French models; so there was some compensation, and as for French commerce, the English cruisers simply swept the sea clean of it. Nor am I prepared to agree with Secretary Herbert's light estimate of the effects produced by the Alabama and her consorts. It is true that they did not decide the struggle, but they made it infinitely more difficult, costly and painful. If they did not materially benefit the Confederacy, they did help England to an amazing extent. Coming just as they did, at a turning point where new materials of construction and new devices were becoming factors in the contest for commercial supremacy, the Con- federate cruisers cleared the seas of our old merchant marine, and before we could recover from the blow, England had occupied the ground. 62 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. In view of this far-reaching result, the operations of the Confederate cruisers cannot be fairly estimated on the basis of their immediate devas- tation. The Geneva Tribunal awarded ;!!is,ooo,ooo. in settlement of the direct damage they did to the United States aided and abetted by Eng- land. The question of consequential damage, which far surpassed the other in importance was ruled out of court. We got the mess of pottagej England got the birth-right. That has been the case with everj treaty we have negotiated with England except the treaty of Independence. Viewed in the light of these notorious historical facts, it is clear that no theory can be sound which leaves the Confederate cruisers out of the category of sea power. The fact that their operations inured to the benefit of England rather than of the Confederacy, was not accidental. On the contrary it was with deliberate purpose to that end that they were built in English yards, armed with English cannon, coaled with English coal and manned by English seamen. The Confederate flag that they flew, so far as it pretended to represent the practical object of their exist- ence, was a fraud. Their destruction of our commerce may not have helped the Confederate cause ; but it operated beyond measure to pro- mote England's dominion of the sea. It is worth while to pursue this survey of the value of cruisers as an element of sea power, by recalling briefly some incidents of a gratifying period in our own naval history. In 1 812 we had three frigates of 44 guns, the Constitution, Presi- dent and United States ; three of 36 guns, the Congress, Constellation and Chesapeake ; two of 32 guns, the Essex and the Adams (the latter then rating 28 guns), together with nine sloops and brigs ranging from the Hornet of 18 guns to the Enterprise of 12. There was no ship of the line. Yet this little fleet took the offensive in the face of England's sea power at its zenith and aided by a swam of privateers, not only ravaged her commerce but shocked the British sense as it had never been shocked before by repeated victories in duels between cruisers of equal rate. Commodore Porter did what all the cruisers of France had not been able to do, when he destroyed the British whale fishery in the Pacific. He lost his ship in battle against a superior force it is true, but not until no more British whale-ships were left for him to destroy. Johnston Blakeley in the New Wasp of 18 guns cruised right in the chops of the Channel, often in sight of the English shore, and sunk two British men-of-war of his own class, besides destroying many merchant- men and sending at least one valuable prize home. Warrington in the Peacock, and Biddle in the Hornet, 18 gun sloops, made similar cruises 63 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. in the East Indies and off the African coast. I do not think there can be any question that the operations of our cruisers in that war materially aided to prepare the British public mind for the peace of 1813. Apart, however, from these historical facts there is an element in the peculiar political and geographical situation of the United States which imparts to the term sea power a meaning different from that contem- plated by any other nation. England employs sea power to keep open the roads of her colossal commerce, to maintain touch with her outlying possessions and depend- encies and to enforce her status as a first-rate power in the European system, which her army alone could not do. France and Russia desire sea power as a counterbalance to England and in furtherance of ulterior designs which await only opportunity or pretext for development. There are signs which indicate that this pretext or opportunity may not be long deferred. In no such probable or possible complications of European powers can the United States be directly involved. If she ever fights again it will be to assert the dignity of her flag, to vindicate existing rights against aggression, or to enforce the principles of international law. From this point of view but two nations can be our foes within any reasonable range of probability. These are Spain and England. In a war with Spain our strategy would necessarily be offensive, with territo- rial operations confined to the West Indies, and our cruising fleet directed against the commerce of the Philippines. In a war with England our battle-ships would be required for coast defence, and to break blockades, while our cruisers would find employment on every sea within their radius of action. There can never be invasion of the United States on any scale suffi- cient to make our territory the theatre of considerable military operations. An enterprising enemy possessed of commanding sea power would confine his activity to forays upon unprotected seaboard towns and com- munities, and to blockades of our more important commercial ports. Hence, except for manning shore batteries or in repelling descents upon the coast, our Army, Regular and Volunteer, would be without occupation so far as defence is concerned. The bulk of the responsibility, and with it the laurels of success, would fall to the share of the Navy. This fact is well understood by our probable or possible enemies. Hence their attitude toward the United States and their bearing in any controversy with us, will be exactly regulated by our capacity for Naval 64 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. defence and reprisal. The meaning of sea power to the United States therefore is mainly of deterrent significance. That is to say, the posses- sion of a fairly powerful and quickly mobile naval force by the United States, so constituted that part of it would be instantly available for vigor- ous defence against the attacks of hostile battleships, and the other part for swift and summary reprisals upon the enemy's commerce, would materially affect the tenor of diplomacy and avert war. On the contrary, the abs'ence or insufficiency of such equipment would invite war. In this vein it seems proper to remark that I have derived some amusement from reading the interchanges of sentiment on the occasion of recent banquets to the Officers of the Chicago, in England, and to those of the British North American Squadron in Boston. In the English ban- quets the somewhat threadbare aphorism attributed to Commodore Tatnall, concerning the difference in consistency between blood and water, was disturbed from its long and well-earned repose by Commo- dore Erben, and made the text of an interesting personal reminiscence. Admiral Sir John Hopkins, commanding the British squadron in Boston, addressed his audience in a similar vein, intimating a growth of common interests and individual ties between the two great English speaking peoples which already guaranteed amity and foreshadowed alli- ance. On reading his remarks it occured to me that Sir John knew his audience. Last year during the Columbian Review, I had the pleasure of entertaining the gallant and accomplished Admiral, and his conversa- tion was as interesting here as in Boston. But its tenor was not the same. Possibly the reflection that Philadelphia is the most distinctively and patriotically American of cities, and the birthplace of the Declara- tion of Independence, may have dispelled the dream of future alliance from his mind ; but it is a fact, that when I took him on board the New York, and he examined her from ram to rudder and from bridge to double bottom, he was unmistakably viewing her as a possible adversary rather than a probable consort. The view which the British Admiralty takes of the value of cruisers and commerce-destroyers as elements of sea power, is strikingly embodied in their latest designs of that class, the Powerful and Terrible. These are to be cruising ships pure and simple, lightly armed and wholly unarmored, and yet they are of 14,200 tons displacement, which is a trifle larger than the Royal Sovereign type of battle-ship. They are intended to be "destroyers of commerce-destroyers," and the logic of their existence is simply that of an answer to the Columbia and Minneapolis. They would of course prey upon the commerce of an enemy, but 65 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. that object in their design is rather incidental. Their primary nnission will be to protect the British merchant marine by hunting down and de- stroying hostile cruisers at sea to prey upon commerce. Doubtless two more Columbias on our side would be answered by another pair of Powerfuls. If asked to offer an opinion as to the Powerful class, I should probably say that they seem overgrown. Their designed speed will not enable them to catch the Minneapolis, while their first cost and cruising expense must be considerably greater. With all due respect to the judgment of Secretary Herbert, who, during his legislative career had more to do with the authorization and financial provision for the new navy than any other one statesman of the period, I emphatically dissent from his views as to the value of unarmor- ed cruisers in the sum total of sea power and such dissent, as I have tried to show, has much broader foundation in logic for the United States than for any other nation. When I speak of cruisers in this sense, I mean heavily protected, well-armed and fast ships of the Baltimore class, commerce-destroyers proper of the Columbia and Minneapolis class, and armored vessels of high speed and great endurance, like the New York and Brooklyn, which, though not quite as fast as the Columbia and Minneapo- lis, have speed and endurance enough to overhaul any commercial ship afloat, except a very few of the latest trans-atlantic greyhounds. As for vessels ranging from the gun-boat classes up, except the Balti- more, possibly we have enough of them. The Baltimore class is useful under any .circumstances and the Navy ought to have more of them. When the Raleigh and Cincinnatti and the new gun-boats are finished, and the Chicago provided with modern engines, the Navy will have one cruiser of 5,500 tons, six of from 4,000 to 4,500 tons, four of about 3,000 tons, three of 2,000 tons, three gun-boats of 1,700 tons, and six of from 870 to 1,200 tons available for general sea police duty. All the old ships will have disappeared three years from now, so that the main burden of peace cruising or sea police duty will fall upon the 23 vessels I have enu- merated. It will probably be the policy of future administrations to keep most of the larger cruisers, both armored and unarmored, in readiness for service rather than actively employed in ordinary times, and the same will be true of our battle-ships, except as they may be from time to time en- gaged in squadrons of drill and evolution. Events of the past three or four years have kept our available force of smaller cruisers and gun-boats busy in all parts of the world, and it is a question whether the 23 vessels of the classes referred to can do the work of the future with sufficient margin for necessary overhaul and repair, be- 66 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. cause it is well-known that ships, like men, run down rapidly with over- work. Be that as it may, I will not contend that the cruisers of the smaller classes, and the gun-boats, constitute a very important element of sea power for war purposes, or as a deterrent force. But I maintain that the larger protected cruisers of the Baltimore class, and the commerce-destroyers proper, as well as the armored cruisers do constitute such an element of the first importance and that sound national policy dictates a considerable increase in their number concur- rently with the development of an effective fleet of battle-ships. Returning to Captain Mahan, it seems but just to say that the chief value of his books — as indeed it was apparently his principal object in writing them — lies in the stimulus they have given to universal public opinion as to the absolute necessity of adequate naval strength to every maritime power which aspires to commercial rank and profit. He has demonstrated, with the force of a syllogism, that one cannot exist with- out the other. This is a great public service, and, though his theme was of necessity mainly based upon European history, Captain Mahan's de- ductions and conclusions are none the less valuable as a guide to the naval policy of the United States. Opinions naturally differ as to what the details of that policy should be so far as the programme of construction is concerned, but men qualified to judge are pratically unanimous in the conclusion that we should pro- ceed much further before calling a halt. There is also a consensus of opinion, that in the Indiana class we have struck the type of battle-ship, in the New York or Brooklyn the type of armored cruiser, and in the Columbia and Minneapolis the type of commerce-destroyer respectively, best suited to our national needs. Question as to the advisability of multiplying purely harbor-defence ships of the Monitor or Montery types, or of building a considerable fleet of torpedo-boats and torpedo- cruisers though important, is subor- dinate to the topic of battle-ships, armored cruisers and commerce-de- stroyers. That the number of all three of these latter types should be in- creased, hardly requires argument. For my own part I have not and would not advise the adoption of a fixed ship-building programme calcu- lated to cover future operations for any considerable period. But I would and do advise adherance within conservative limits to types which have not only proved satisfactory to our own naval authorities on trial and in service, but which have repeatedly been pronounced by the most compe- tent foreign judges who have personally examined them, to be superior to anything of similar class abroad. 67 SEA POWER OF THE UNITED STATES. We have made great and rapid progress during eight years of naval reconstruction, but we have not yet rebuilt our navy. In fact, about all we can reasonably say is that we have conclusively demonstrated our domestic capacity to rebuild it. This grand and growing development of the ship-building art, with the enormous impetus it has given to cognate and contributory industries in every part of the realm of usefulness, is the contribution of the naval architect and marine engineer to the Sea Power of the United States, i To the brave men who make up the personnel of our navy may safely be left the task of using, whenever duty calls, the tremendous weapons we have made for them to enforce that Sea Power. Chas. H. Cramp. 68