The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-08-24
Many Things Have Been Learned By
the Navy.
SMALL CASUALTY LIST
NUMBERS BUT TWENTY, OUT OF
1900 MEN.
Comparatively Little Sickness, Be
cause the Navy Knows How to
Take Care of the Men-Should Be
No Woodwork-Use of Big Guns
and Smokeless Powder.

Boston, Aug. pa Boston Journal
reporter interviewed Rear Admiral
| Sampson on the train for Washington
Admiral Colomb, the English naval
authority, had said that this war had
taught no lesson in naval architecture
or naval strategy
If he said that" was the comment
he does not know what he is talking
about, for the war has taught a great
many things. For one thing it has
shown the necessity of making ships of
war fre-proof. 1t won't suffice merely
to make the woodwork fire-proof in
my opinion, for there are objections to
the process, as it involves unnecessary
expense. Ships ought to be built prac-
tically without woodwork at all, and
there is no good reason why this can
not be done. After the way in which
the woodwork of the Spanish ships
caught fire. causing the destruction of
the ships, there can be no question
about the Importance of this change -
THE trouble with COlomb may be
that he has always been an advocate
of torpedo boats. We are not likely to
hear so much about torpedo boats as
we used to hear before the war; it was
suggested.
"A
must be remembered that torpedo boats
have never had really fair test. They
have always been faulty in construc-
ton, necessary qualities having been
sacrificed to speed. There is no good
reason why a torpedo boat should have
a speed of more than "a or 20 miles an
hour, but it has been thought so i'm
portant to have them speedy that they
have been made too light, and in some
inc hot hn~
egg shells. The torpedo boat has it's
uses, but it ought to be built according
to the right ideas.
1T won't do, either, to draw FOO
hasty conclusion from the way the
Gloucester, which was a converted
yacht, did up the Furor and the Pluton
The Gloucester was hastily trans
formed into a torpedo boat destroyer,
it is true, but it is not a small boat
by any means"
How about the big guns? The eight
inch and the rapid fire guns seem to
have done the most of the execution,
both at Manila and at Santiago, and a
great many people seem to think the
guns of higher calibre, the 12-inch and
the 1S-inch, are not of so much ac-
count in battle
THE big guns will always be needed.
There is work which they can do and
smaller calibres. 1t happened at San
tiago that the eight-inch guns and the
rapidfire guns did great execution, but
this was because they could strike the
Spanish below the belt. as it were. That
is the lightly armored portions of the
Spanish ships We're exposed to their
fire. At Manila the Spanish ships were
not heavily armored at all.
When it comes to piercing heavy
armor, the high calibre guns must be
brought into action The armor pierre
ing capacity of a gun is almost exactly
proportional to it's calibre. For in
stance, an eight-inch gun can pierce
eight-inch armor, a 12-inch gun Pinch
armor, and SO on. Yes, the big guns
are needed.
Then there is the question of smoke
less powder Our ships ought to be sup
piled with smokeless powder. for sew
eral reasons. First and most import
ant, is the great advantage in velocity.
With ordinary powder the velocity is
something like 200; with smokeless
powder it is nearly $500. Ships using
black powder are Eat a disadvantage,
too, from the fact that when one gun
has been discharged the gun next to it
must wait until the smoke has cleared
before the target can be sighted. These
are among the reasons why smokeless
powder is to be preferred to any
other"
Admiral Sampson expressed doubt as
to whether it would be advisable to
raise the Cristobal Colon. He was
afraid it was now too late to accom-
plish anything in that direction, and he
described the peculiar position in which
the ship lay, making it seemingly i'm
possible to handle her. although she
was practically uninjured by our fire.
He commented on the excellent ply
steal condition of the men aboard the
fleet and the astonishing exemption
from disease as we'll as wounds. He
had just been informed that out of
H. 900 men on the fleet there have been
only 20 casualties throughout the war.
But" he remarked simply, I'VE
know how to take care of our men in
the navy. You see,i we are always on
a war footing. That is. today we han
ole ourselves in time of peace with as
much eXactness and discipline as in
time of war. Our. target practice in
time of peace is carried out with as
much care and precision as if we had
the enemy constantly in sight. In the
game way we are so accustomed to the
of supplies and the care
of the sick from long training in peace
The men on most OF the
ships in the fleet had been for six
months without going ashore until we
reached New York Saturday, and they
have borne up under the strain of a
existence on shipboard and
of hot climate wonderfully WELL"