The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-09-09 00:00:00

c=l" tonvb6b3C ObserVer.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9,1876.

THE BRITISH NAVY.

The attention which has been directed to the
anchoring of the British fleet in Besika Bay has
naturally called to mind the transition which
shipbuilaing has undergone within the past
twenty years. Really it is only fourteen years•
since the famous conflict between the Merriniac
and the Monitor during the civil war in America,
which opened the eyes of naval architects to
the necessity of making an alteration in a style
of shipbuilding which had lasted thousands of
years. Indeed, from the time of the building
of tho Ark until 1862 timber had been the
material used in the construction of vessel,s.
The " wooden walls of Old England " had been
the theme of many a tong of admiration in
many an age. "Our ship were British oak,
and hearts of oak our men," was the sentiment
associated with the greatest naval victory ever
witnessed in the history of the world. Centuries
upon centuries•passed over without its ever
being suggested that any other material besides
weed Wo.S suitable for shipbuilding. The
-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese,
and all the modern nations of Europe, employed
it for this purpose ; and from -Salamis to
Trafalgar wooden vessels were called into
requisition in time of war as well as in the
days of peace. Two-and-twenty years ago the
fleets which Great Britain despatched to the
Baltic and to the Bla-k Sea furnished subjects
of congratulation to all patriots. We were told
to admire—and with every just ground we did
admire—the noble proportions of such splendid
three-deckers as the Duke of Wellington, with
her 131 guns. She could, we were informed,
thi o v a broadside of six tons of iron shot in
four minutes. But it can scarcely be:said that
the deeds of our navy in the Russian war came
112 to the expectations of the people. The
Baltic fleet, which had cost taillions, and left
Spithead amid such a flourish of trumpets, re-
turned home after having cruised round
Cronstadt, with nothing better to show for
months of hope, than the bombardment of
Sweaborg and the capture of Bomarsund. The
Black Sea Fleet bombarded Odessa, and made
an attack upon the fortifications of Sebastopol,
bit the results in either case answered the
anticipations of the people at home. It may
have been that the people looked for too much,
bat whether this was so or not, they knew both
by tradition and by recollection that it was upon
the navy that the wealth, honour, and safety of
the realm mainly depended, and they were
certainly disappointed at the results of our
naval achievements so far as the Russian war
was concerned.
That was the last time on which wooden
vessels went forth from the shores of this
country to do battle with an enemy. We were
engaged in no farther wars requiriug the dis-
play of a great naval force ; and the review of
the fleets at Spithead by the Queen and Prince
Albert in April, 1856, closed a series of naval
spectacles in which we had taken a just pride.
Eleven years afterwards her Majesty held
another review in the same waters, but how
changed was the scene only in that short time.
Instead of magnificent three deckers and stately
liners, with their rows of guns peeping out
from either side of the ships, the late Sultan of
Turkey gazed upon strange and uncouth looking
monsters of various shapes and sizes. Some
people called them ships, and others declared
that they were floating batteries ; but the old
salts who remembered the proud and saucy
frigates of Nelson and Collingwood sighed over
the memories of departed glory, and declare
that the service has gone to the dogs. So far
as the science of navigation was concerned,
there was no doubt a great deal of truth in the
objections taken to the substitution of. steam
ironclads for wooden sailing ships. It is clear
that the commander with steam at his disposal
is not so dependent upon his skill in navigation
as he who has to rely solely upon his power to
make the most of the wind. In Nelson's tirae
the superiority of British skill in navigation
was so clear to the French that, in the numerous
engagements which took place between the two
navies, French gunners would invariably aim at
the sails in order to render the management of
the ships as difficult as possible. Indeed to
such an extent was this carried at the battle of
Trafalgar, that Nelson's ship the Fictory could
at last scarcely be handled at all, and on this
being reported to the dying hero he issued an
order to anchor. They were his last words, but
they showed clearly enough the idea in his
mind. If the ship could not be navigated, lot
her face her foes in a station ry position. But
there must be no flinching trona the perform-
ance of a stern and necessary duty.
Since the naval review in 1867, of which we
have already spoken, numorous changes have
taken place in the styles up °u which our ships
of war are constructed. Tho Devastation, for
instance, differed from the Captain almost as
much as the last mentioned vessel had differed
from the Warrior, the first ironclad built in our
dockyards. The Thunderer, the Inflexible, and
the Fury all tend to show that our naval archi-
tects are anything but settel in their plans as
to what the future type of fighting ship in the
Bii tish Navy should be. Many of those vessels
may be looked upon in the light of experiments
but that they are experiments of a very costly
char acter there can be no doubt. Yet the
ocople never grudge any reasonable expo nth-
tore over the efficiency of the Navy, Oa% is if
it can be made really efficient. It is the first
arm of the service, and supposing it to
.be
struck away from us by untoward event which
we can neither foresee nor imagine, our army,
valiant and courageous as it is, would
numerically be a very poor figure when con-
trasted with the swarming hosts of the Con-
inent.