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28 DEFECTS OF OUR BATTLE- SHIPS. In its issue for July The Navy renews its attack upon the' battleships of our navy, of which it further says in the extracts from a long article which fol- low: "Tt has been asserted' that the sige of the Iowa and Oregon class were up to the best conception of the time when they wére designed, and the same asser- tion has been charitably extended to cover the designs of the Kearsarge and Kentucky. Now, in our comment on these ships, we based our observations in the first placé upon the fact that the current edition of Brassey's Annual has given the United States the second rank among naval powers upon the basis of the possession of twenty-two first-class battleships, which included. those of the Iowa class and up. 'And we pointed out that these ships were not first-class battleships, because they had soft ends. We might add that they, have alow free- board, low speed, «and that according ;to! the pretensions of the: navy' department they were never intended to, be any- thing but coast defense battleships; not: sea-going fighting ships. "The large turret guns of these two ships are built with very thick chases; they are mounted on trunnions placed so far from the turret wall that it was necessary to cut a great hole in the tur- ret wall so as to allow for 'the required elevation and depression of the gun; and the gun itself--that is, the mechan- ism of the gun outside of the shot carry- ing bore--was so constructed as to ex-' pose the whole affair to instant wreck- ing by so small a projectile as that from a one-pounder. rapid-fire gun. "If the Kearsarge and Kentucky had been designed according to the best ideas of practice current at that time, it seems hardly likely that the officers. who took them to Europe soon after completion would have been grossly ashamed of the ships of which they had command; but, alas! they were ashamed. When they got over to Europe, these officers discovered that European con- tractors had perceived the obvious, and had constructed their turret guns with trunnions close to the wall of the turret, and with the smallest possible openings in the turret armor, so that their ar- rangements should not invite the in- stant wrecking of their biggest guns. It may be imagined that tthe ,people aboard the Kearsarge and' Kentucky-- and for the benefit of our heretic-hunt- ing critics we will add that our informa- tion does not come from the officers who _ commanded those ships at that time-- were considerably humiliated by the evi- dent fact that the navy department of the United States had sent abroad, as an under water strip of armor; 'mistaken THE Marine REVIEW examples of its newest and most efficient warship construction, ships that were far behind the productions of foreign naval architects. With a zeal which may have been misplaced, but was at least sincere, the officers aboard these ships took pains to conceal the backwardness of our naval construction. They secured various' pieces of wood and they built around their turret guns, inside the tur- . ret armor, certain shields which obstruct- ed the view from the outside into the interior of the turrets, and which, when pairted a judicious gray, were easily for turret, shutters of steel. This is the way 'and};the measure in which the)(Kearsarge land! Kentucky were built ;;/up ito: the best conceptions | of; the, naval architects -ofe 'that dayisosloni ton "The bureau .of construction ard res; pair, «the bureauS of ordnance, sand) the bureau of steam engineering appear to be jointly responsibe for the designs adopted for Nos. 28 and 29; the results of their co-operation furnish one more of almost: innumerable instances of the unfontunate results of the existing sys- tétn of bureau administration of the navy department. The bureau of ordnance, under Rear Admiral Mason, has been energetic, progressive, and almost wholly praiseworthy in everything that relates to ordnance. In so far, however, as it is responsible for the waterline armor belt of Nos. 28 and 29, it has done ill. These new ships, like their predecessors, will be designed to deyelop their maximum speed under conditions of loading which will leave from two-fifths to a half of the waterline belt above water. Trial speed is obtained when the ship, outside her own' permanent structure, has rather less than half the weights aboard, in the way of coal, water, ammunition, food supplies, and crew, that she will have ever after. As soon as the ship goes into commission, she takes on many tons of additional load. The results of this addition of weights are two: first, the waterline belt is pushed so far down into the water that it becomes practically second, the ship sets so much deeper in the water that she is slower than her maxi- mum speed by. an amount averaging about one and one-half knots. That is, an, eighteen-knot battleship, when fully loaded with supplies and comforts for her crew, can rarely make seventeen knots at top speed, and is usually con- sidered slower. The system enforced by the bureaus means, therefore, not only that our battleships do not have the waterline protection credited to them by the official reports, but that when they are in fighting trim they' do not have the speed they are officially declared to have." Concerning a dispatch the criticism, "of those ships, from Washington read as_ follows: "The prevailing opinion among officers of the bureaus of construction and ordnance is that the criticism represents the opinion of a minority of naval of- ficers whose opinions haye not found favor officially and who see ony their., side of the question." ~ It is not of the smallest consequence who or. what prompts the criticism; the sole question to be considered is whether it is sound or not. As to ts Admiral Brownson says: , "That there were defects): in ae Oregon class and the Kentucky. and Kearsarge js well known; in fact, these defects were discovered before the completion but the wonder. is that there. were so few defects, considering 'that: they, , were the first heavy battleships built in, this, country. Compared to the battleships of ,other nations, designed and built at the same time, the Oregon class was conspicuously superior. "It is true that their armor was badly placed, but that arose from the addition to the ships of a great amount of materi-. al and stores and:machinery not includ- ed in the original design. It is also true >that they lack balanced turrets, but when they were built there were no such tur- rets in any navy. Their eight-inch am- munition tubes also were not sufficiently protected. : "As to the crtitcisms. directed at the large size of the ports in the turrets, this has been corrected in later designs by bringing the trunnions of the guns nearer to the front of the turret, so that . battleships of later design are free from this defect. As to gun platforms, which is the main purpose of the ship, the Ore- gon class has no superior, and even at this late day they would give a good ac- count of themselves in. action." GEORGIA DISAS- TER. By a process of elimination the naval board, which has been investigating the accident whereby the men in the turret of the battleship Ge®rgia lost their lives, has arrived at the conclusion that a "de- layed flare back" caused this catastrophe. In one sense the verdict is received with a distinct sense of relief by naval offi- cers, because it shows that they had no new element of danger to contend with. They had experienced "flare backs" be- fore and thought that they knew how to deal with them. A "delayed flare back" is caused by closing off too soon the blast of com- pressed air, which is supposed to ex- pel from the bore of the gun the un- burnt gases and fragments of smolder- ing powder covering what might be left from the last discharge. After the ter- rible accident in the. Missouri's turret, FINDINGS ON