The age-herald., 1899-01-01

again begun on her in October The con i tractors have all her material ready, and 1 have promised to deliver her within six months.
 It seems like marking back to old times to talk of monitors, but the four to be built for the new navy are to be crack vessels of their class. While resembling roughly the war monitors, these new vessels will be vastly superior to them in actual power. Their speed, for instance, will be twelve knots, about double that of the old vessels. Their batteries will consist of two twelve inch breech-loading rifles capable of picrc- ing the side of nine-tenths of the naval vessels of the world; four finch rapid-ire guns and seven smaller-calibred rapid-fire guns like those that did such service in the destruction of Cervera's squadron
 The builders are not required to furnish either guns, armor or turrets The tur- rets are to be electrically controlled like those on the Brooklyn. These turrets will be of the balanced type, ten inches thick. behind 11-inch barbarettes, and belt of ar nor eleven inches thick and five feet broad will be placed on the sides of the vessels. The monitors will be 225 feet long, fifty feet broad, and draw about twelve and a half feet of water, enabling them to move freely in any of the shallow Atlantic coast har- bors.
 One feature of the new navy" which is a very practical result of the war is that it has been increased by seven vessels each of which, at the outbreak of hostilities. flew the flag of Spain. Five of these are now attached to Admiral Deweys squadron, two are attached to the fleet in Cuban waters. while there is bare possibility that one, if not more, of the vessels of Cervera's squad ron may be raised and become additional object lessons to other naval powers.
 The Spanish prizes in Deweys squadron the Manila and Callao, cruisers: the Leyte and Mndano, gunboats; and the Barcelo, an armed launch. In the Cuban fleet the prizes are the gunboats Aharado and Sandoval. All of these seven vessels are admirably suited for the waters in which they are now serving.
 AUXILIARY SHIPS.
 Apart from the torpedo fleet and the tor pedo boat destroyers which many naval au- thorties still believe to be naval freaks the new navy will be distinguished from the old by taking under its wing and recogniz- ing officially several types of vessels which were impressed into naval service by the exigencies of the situation.
 These proved themselves to be of suffl- cient value to be accepted as worthy of further development. Among them are the auxiliary warships, the steam yacht an auxiliary for despatch boat service as well as for harder duties such as performed by the Gloucester off Santiago, the repair ship ] Vulcan, the distilling ships and the ambu- lance vessels.
 Some lessons of the war" that the new navy has taken to heart are those learned from the first actual battle tests of high | power steel guns. One of these lessons in particular is that powder hereafter must be | smokeess. It Is gratifying to know that our vessels will have this and nothing else for all calibres except that the cheaper brown powder will continue to be used for target practice at least until the stock on hand is dispsed of Some of our ships al- ready have full outfits of smokeless powder and all will have 1t in time. The benefit to be derived is not only that of preventing the line of fire from being obscured, but the 1 increase of initial velocity, range and pene- l trating power in which our guns have been behind the best foreign heavy calbres. l As to guns, one important lesson is that l all our 6-inch and at least some of our S. l inch guns must be converted into quick | frers. This process had been begun before | the war broke out, and during the past 1 twelve months thirty-three of the former calibre and two of the latter have been so | converted; but the testimony of the Span l iards that it was the tremendous volume of | fire from our guns that drove their men l from their batteries shows that rapid-fire i mounts must be applied to all calibres pos | sible.
 l One result of the increase of power in | guns is expected to be that the 12-inch will | serve as the maximum calibre in future l battleships instead of the 3-inch. And yet 1 we find simultaneous improvements in ar 1 nor, the new Krupp face-hardening process | being very promising. In the endless duel between guns and armor 1t is only neces- l sary to give the former power enough to overcome the protection of ships, all the l rest is useless weight; and in armor also l we find the navy counting not on giving