The Washington herald., 1908-01-12

t News and has displacement Of - so Z
daughter Of Senator CockreH of Missouri.
the smokepipes Of battle ships. Besides.
/ geese do not give out black OF any other
! kind of smoke.
/ The painters got out their vocabulary
Of magnificent. awe-inspiring, formidable
demons Of war bulldogs Of the sea, peace
COmpelleTs. and all that string and be-
gan 20 wave them all together and IL
was voted all right and probably appro-
/ pirate, but Il was said that these did not
! hit the right note.
Battle ship SeamanshIp.
That was that this fleet was going out
for business Of d different kind from that
which any other American fleet had uH-
dertaken. It had nothing 20 do with dip
/ l0macy or International things. The bust
ness In hand was the molding Of six
/ teen battle ship units into one battle
/ fleet unit. not sixteen times stronger
than one unit, but with the strength In
! creased in something like geometricaI
ratio.
The problem, therefore, was 20 make
/ this fleet "a unit. not Ike a chain, strong
only as its weakest link, but like a rope
/ far stronger than the multiplied strength
/ OF its various strands.
/ Charles II. Cramp, the veteran ship
/ builder. nearly ten years ago pointed out
I IN a paper read AT the annual meeting Of
naval men and marine engineers in New
/ York City that the greatest training
need of the United States navy was what
1 he called battle ship seamanship. That
meant not navigation merely. but the
| synchrouizing Of one battle ship 20 others,
the tuning up so 20 speak, the team
work. 20 use a football analogy. In sail
/ ing. maneuverinE, shooting-all pulling
/ together Well Of course. the first thing
is to get your battle ships. The country
now has sixteen al work together, and
/ this cruise and the practice work at Mag
ds.ens Bay are expected 10 produce what
Mr.. Cramp termed battle ship seaman
ship. II could not be accomplished. ac-
c0rding 10 the naval officers, in any other
way.
Two hours after clearing the capes Ad-
miral Evans gave the signal for one OF
his favorite cruising formations; that is.
In columns Of fours. The four divisions
Of the fleet drew up in parallel lines with
an admiral al the head of each line
/ The five-starred white flag. called the
! five Of clubs was run UP at the fore
| truck Of the Connecticut 20 indicate that
the ship was the guide ship The lines
were run at intervals Of 1900 yards. and
the ships of each division, still In wing
and-wing fashion, were at distances OF
400 yards. To be strictly naval you must
call the space between two lines Of ships
interval and the space between two in
dividual ships IN line distance.
Well. after the ships were spread out
they covered an area of more than two
square miles, and then one began 20 real
lie what all these ships meant. The circle
of twelve or fourteen miles that hemmed
them in and that expanded in front and
contracted in the rear seemed practically
ulled with them Distances were kept
fairly well and the ships plodded along
in the smooth sea nodding their approval
Of what was going on.
Work of Keeping Distances.
It was this problem Of distance that
kept the officers Of the decks busy. When
you think that each OF these ships repre-
sented a weight of from 1900 10 1900
tons, more or less, and that you had TO
move that ship at the rate Of 10 knots
an hour and keep 1t within 400 yards of a
ship in front of you; when you consider
how some ships move a trife of an inch
faster than another ship a the same
number of propeller revolutions; when
you think that one of the propellers OF
your own ship will do more work than
the other at the same number Of revolu-
tions. and that this will throw you out of
your course and make you steer badly il
you don't correct 1t; when you think that
your leader may vary in his speed; when
you think Of all this. you can begin to
understand the problem Of those officers
on the bridge to keep the ships in line
| and at proper distances.
II took some time for each ship to de-
termine how many revolutions were nee
| essary TO produce ten knots of speed, ac-
cOrding TO the standard Of the flagship.
For example, the LOuisiana's experts fig
ured on sixty-seven revolutions. 1t was
too much, for after an hour or two il
was found that sixty-ive would do the
work. Some Of the ships were between
two numbers.
All the time each ship was gaining or
losing a trifie, and this had to be cor
rected every minute or two On each ship
a young midshipman stood on the bridge
beside the officer on watch looking
through a little instrument Of bars and
| glasses and wheels graduated to a scale
of figures and called a stadimeter. He
reduced the truckline and the waterline
OF the flagship to some mathematical
basis involving triangulatiOn-whats the
use Of trying to explain it?-no one but a
mathematician could understand it-and
then he would say Three hundred and
! seventy yards, sir or perhaps the figures
would be 325 OF $50, or what not, and the
officer OF the deck would have TO signal
to the engine-room 10 slow down or go
| faster
Careful Watch Kept.
1t was "be watchful every minute of the
hour" The midshipman often bad to re-
port distances every fifteen or twenty
seconds, and the corrections of speed were
going on every two or three minutes.
Maybe you think it was not a hard job