The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1885-09-23
THE NAVAL PROBLEM.

can make such an one as we need. Ii we had
an effective one of the class of vessels that
has been developed by the experience and
ingenuity of the age. we should be held, in
some measure, to the line of construction
maintained for 1t by considerations of the
expense of changing il. Great Britain has so
many heavily armored ships of one form or
another that she can not abandon the ar
mored system without throwing into the
lumber OF her navy-yards some of the most
formidable war-ships ever conceived. She IS
fixed by precedent and big expense to GER
tain style or line of defense. So is FraLce.
though in past years she has acted with an
independence of precedent and a close re-
gard for scientific suggestions that has made
her war vessels models OF marine architec-
tUre. During the Napoleonic wars it was
standing Joke that ''the French built ships
for the English to use" The best sailors and
fighters of the English navy were built in
France and captured by the English. The
Fighting Tcmerairen was a French vessel,
but Turner's celebrated picture, quite as
much as her own achievements, has identi-
fed her fame with her enemys navy.
The French built ships on scientific ideas,
and beat the English out of sight in naval
architecture. but they were not the sailors
that the English were, and Nelson, and Trow
bridge: and Coffin. and a score of Others,
"nabbed'' those vessels and made all their
points of superiority count on the wrong
side. This was the case for long time, but
in later years France like England and all
the continental powers, has been building
impregnable ships. Germany has lot of
them. Italy has probably the most formid-
able vessels in the world, both in defensive
arnOr and offensive arms. She has guns of
100 tons and 2,OOO-pOund shot, with a range
of a half dozen miles. Turkey has them a
little less formidable, and Austria and China
have been getting some of the same kind.
Since the fight in Hampton Roads between
the Merrimac and the Monitor naval archi-
lecture has been running in the direction of
impregnability. Ships that can't be pene-
trated by shot and can't be sunk have been
the aim Of all maritime powers. The limit
has probably been reached.
Within a few months the English have
launched the "Benbow'' on the Clyde, con-
tanning 10000 tons of metal, mainly or
wholly steel She carries two guns of 10
tons each, fired by a charge of 800 pounds of
powder, the two conveying a destructive
momentum more than equal to the united
broadsides of every English ship at Trafalgar.
She has defensive armOr of eighteen inches
of chilled steel, with hacking of several
feet of solid teak. Her engines are sufficient
to drive hersthrOugh the water at seventeen
or eighteen knots an hour. There i no use
in fighting a monster like this" says the old
fOgy of naval history; neither wood nor
iron has any chance against her; she is
impregnable to all hostile fire, and nothing
is impregnable to her. She has only to show
herself in belligerent harbOr. and com
mand what ransom Of banks and manufac-
tories and treasures she will" Naval archi-
lecture, in the estimate of these people, has
reached its limit 1t is invulnerable and ire
sistible.
There is another side TO the case, as there
is to most cases III this world of mortal falli-
bility While the defensive armor has been
thickening to a foot and half of chilled
steel as impenetrable to ordinary naval gun
merry as an express safe to a Chinese cracker,
there have been changes i'm artillery going
on even greater than those aimed 20 resist
artillery. Guns that will throw shot OF a
ton or more with half a ton OF powder and
a momentum greater than that of a locomO-
tive at full speed, have been made and are
made every few days by Krupp and Arm
strong and other big manufacturers of metal.
\ steel plating of two feet with five feet
backing OF solid teak - has been shot through
like a pine plank by Winchester
bullet. Ike lmpregnable steel armor of the
iIenbow" is not impregnable to this awful
force. Then huge steel-covered vessel,
when encountered by such artillery, is very
considerably worse off than a common
wooden hull like those that the carpenters
prepared plugs for at the LAY of Aboukir,
and when the American frigates thrashed the
British seventy years ago. A shot went
through them easily enough, but the shot
holes were as easily plugged, and no great
harm done. Now, with heavy armor and
shot as big as a soap-kettle. hole in ships
hull is very different sort of affair. Itean't
be plugged when il is ragged rent in a
great mass of steel and splntered timber.
So, unless armored ships are made absolutely
impenetrabie. they are worse than the old
wooden walls that defended Rome from
the Carthagenians, the Greeks from the
Persians the English from Napoleon, the
Americans from the English.
TO this complexion it must come at last y
Ships can not be made invulnerable but
they can easily be made so heavy and
clumsy in the effort to be invulnerable that
they viii be of little use except as floating
forts. or as cruisers at an intolerable expense
for fuel and power. That is one considera-
ton pointing to a change in the costly and
cumbrous style OF naval architecture and
ornament now pursued. Another is growing
constantly in importance and urgency-that
is the torpedo and the submarine boat with
torpedo attachment or dynamite gun, as
available under water as above. These in
ventions have been coming up and going
down for many a year. Jacob Perkins and
Robert Fulton both invented torpedoes be