The evening times., 1898-06-27
NQXaI RetrOrrcsSf

All intelligent Americans understand
that our new position among the pow
ers of the world will compel us to build
first-class navy as rapidly as that can
be done The law that commerce fol-
lows the flag has at length come to be
understood, and the old idea that the
American Navy was intended for coast
defense only has been exploded.
There is not a sane citizen of the
United States who will not say that,
since we are to have a respectable
Navy, the ships composing it ought to
and must be the best that human skill
and ingenuity can produce or money
pay for. There will be widespread as
tonishment, therefore, when it comes to
be popularity known that the Board of
Construction of the Navy Department
has decided that the three new battle
ships recently provided for by Congress
shall have speed Of only fifteen or six
teen knots an hour, thus placing them
at a disadvantage of from two to three
knots, compared with the warships of
all the other naval powers, which it is
possible they might some day have 10
chase or meet in battle.
Before this mortifying decision was
reached, according to the Engineering
News Commodore Melville, chief of the
Bureau of Steam Engineering. SUBJ
mitted designs for propelling machin-
cry adapted to give these vessels a
speed of eighteen knots; but these de-
signs have been rejected and notice to
plans for vessels of the speed which was
standard from 1850 to 1890, but not
since. AT the present time no other
government would think of designing
or accepting a battleship of lower speed
than from seventeen to nineteen knots,
and eighteen is the accepted standard.
Treating of this branch of the subject,
the Engineering News says:
1t ought not TO be necessary, in the light of
the events of past month, to explain To any
American reader the enormous advantages of high
speed in naval warfare. Had Spain's Cape Verde
squadron Of twentyknot armored cruisers been
able to take in n full equipment OF coal and sup
plies at any port this side of the Atlantic and
then start out on a cruise, we should have had
illustration and a pretty costly one Of the
value Of high speed We do not mean that they
could probably have done any very serious damage
to coast towns; but they could have dcne an
amount of injury to naval vessels and our
shipping Of most serious proportions: Let it be
remembered that out Of the entire United States
Navy of over 200 vessels We have only seven
tasde from the monitors) whose guns and armor
sufficient for them to engage such vessels as
the yiEcaya with any chance Of success. OF these
only two have speeds equal TO those of the
Spanish cruisers. Further, VIC have in our whole
Navy only six vessels. all told, with speeds ap-
preaching theirs, and four Of these have not armor
enough to engage them. Had Cervera's vessels
once got chance. with full coal bunkers. to sail
along the Atlantic coast, practically our whole
Navy and all coast shipping would have
had to seek refuge in harbors to escape cap
ture. and our slow-speed battleships would have
been powerless to catch and punish the invaders.
1t is understood that the Board of
Construction excuses itself for giving
the country warships Of low speed on
he ground that to change plans so as
10 secure an eighteen knot standard
would involve q delay Of several