News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-05-04
Our New Navy,
WASHINGTON, d. G., April u, '03.
Editor News and Citizen -

Fortress Monroe, Norfolk, Ports
mouth with it's Navy-Yard and with
visions of the times of the war and of
the rebel, no that is not the term to
use now, you might jar the nerves of
some one on the other side of the
"late unpleasantness" and so you
mu It say Confederate, and with n big
c too, else you will be reviving the
memories of the war, so the Confeder-
ate ram made out of the old Merri-
mac and it's fight with the Monitor.
How all those things crowded in my
memory as | thought to go down
and see the great fleet of modern war
vessels which are the direct result OF
that fight. Yes the direct result, for
who that remembers the navies of the
world at that time can fail to see that
the destruction of the United States
vessels and later the defeat of the vic
torious ram By the "cheese-boX on
raft" has revolutiOnized the naval
armament of the world, has changed
the wooden walls of Old England"
into walls of steel and only in a less
degree those of all the other powers
of the world. Not only that hut the
two forms of offensive and defensive
vessels have ever since had many things
in common with one or the other of
those widely dissimilar types of naval
construction. But | did not start
out to discuss the theory of naval
warfare and construction of ships and
batteries, butte give my impressions
of the greatest gathering of modern
war-vessels that has ever taken place
on this continent.
go, the black ships, o, the fierce
Ships" sings Walt Whitman, but if
he had witnessed the great white
beauties of the United States, Ger
many, Italy and others he would
have realized that not all the fierce
ships" are black. Still it is undenia-
BILE that the black ones do have a
more sinister look than the white
ones, that the pride of the English
squadron, the Blake, looks more dan
gerous than she would if she had the
snowy plumage of the Philadelphia.
One thing that struck me most
forcibly as | went on the.steamer up
and down through and around tie
feet was the fact that we have made
astonishing progress in naval archi-
lecture as in almost all other ways
within few years. The fleet we had
in Hampton Roads was very credita-
BILE to us as a nation, considering
where we have been as a navalpower,
while almost every other country
with even single seaport has been
building modern ships of war. OF
course we have not yet anything to
match the leviathans that the great
powers of Europe have been so many
years building, though we have two
underway that bid fair to be equal to
most of tho-e, but in what is I'M
doubtedly to be the ships that are to
| do most of the work in thefuture, fast
and heavily-armed cruisers, weare not
far behind in kind if we are in num-
bers, the best of them, and when the
Columbia, more commonly called the
pirate" and the New York are in
commission we shall have the equals
of the very finest and our protective
armor is so superior that even Eng
land has had to adopt it over that of
her own manufacture. With the
same wise policy that has been pur-
sued for a little more than decade
We shall soon be in nearly the first
rank as an effective naval power; now
we are fifth instead of at the very
bottom as we were dozen years ago.
We can get an army atsbort notice
with our little band of regulars and
the more numerous National Guard
as a nucleus, but a navy is a horse
of different color, that takes time,
and much money, to develop. tits
very much like the favorite weapon o
the Lone Star State about which
anxious inquiry was made by pros
pective citizen and a native replied,
oval stranger, you mout never want
a pistol down yere but if you did
want one you'd want it mighty bad,
and right of. -
So good navy of fast and heavily
armed vessels that can, as an old
seaman said in my hearing not long
ago, Eight and then run away, if
they have to, is necessary if we are
ever again to resume our once boast
ed naval supremacy in a commercial
point of view.
The fact that almost without eX-
ception our ships built in private
yards have secured premiums on the
contract price for greater speed than
was called for by the contract, shows
that our builders have not lost their
cunning and that all that is wanted
is liberal dealing and a determined
purpose that we will have the best.
Shall we have it,.
In another letter [ will give my i'm
pressions of the different vessels as |
saw them from the outside.