The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

sneer VOL. 37. CLEVELAND, FEBRUARY 20, 1908. me a NEW YORK No. 8 = : ---- GEORGE W. DICKIE ON THE NAVY. George W. Dickie, for = many years manager of the Union Iron Works, San Francisco, Cal. made a striking speech at the annual banquet \ of the California Metal Trades As- Sociation in San Francisco lately. He t(o0k serious exception to the article whyich Henry Reuterdahl recently pub- lishéed in McClure's Magazine on the vulnéerable nature of American bat- tleshiaps. Mr. Dickie did not think that R&euterdahl knew very much about it. Hee represented that Reuterdahl was sitenply threshing out questions that haa! been mooted in the navy for yearss. Dickie personally believed the armor \\ belts to. be properly placed, ssiderable submergence when the ship ish fully loaded, so that in rolling it st! pill protects the most vul- nerable parth of the hull. There was one statemeiMt, however, in Reuter- dahl's article which met with Dickie's approval. Ti nis statement was: "The Unitegd States navy is built, equipped and) operated by bureaus. The criticisms{ of the navy all come back to them\ They are, where the criticisms are 'to be acted upon, prac- tically both tfhe judge and defend- ant. Naturallw they aquit the de- fendant and Imost invariably this kills the criticfism." bject Mr. Dickie spoke with consideratple emphasis, saying: "There is a }good deal of truth in this statement { of the attitude of the bureau in regfard to any suggestion for improvemeént in naval design from those on the{ outside. This is un- fortunate, for {I believe that if the bureaus couldg take the best naval architect and | shipbuilding talent of the country irhto their council in re- Upon this su gard to designs for new warships we would be. abreast of instead of lagging behinci Great Britain. Last - é "4 to any competent year those of the public interested in stich things thought that a real movement in the right direction was at last being made that would result in uniting the outside talent with that of the bureaus in the design for new battle ships now being built. not think that in this company it would be amiss to narrate my own experience in this connection. "In the act making appropriations for ithe naval service approved June 29, 1906, a provision was made that before approving any plans or speci- fications for the consideration of a battleship, the secretary of the navy would afford a reasonable opportunity constructor who may desire so to do to submit plans and specifications for his considera- tion, for which plans such compen- sation should be paid as the secre- tary should deem equitable. "Under date of July 19, Acting Secretary Newberry invited me to submit plans if I so desired. This invitation aroused in me the old de- sire to do something for the navy and I started the making of plans to embody all my study of battle ship requirements. These plans cost me a great deal of thought and time and money for draftsmen's wages, etc, and on October 24, 1906, I submitted my plans to the secretary of the navy. "My plans were so worked out and described that I felt sure of some rec- ognition at the navy department. But when the special board appointed by the secretary to examine and re- port on the designs submitted was found to be composed practically of the board of construction, that is the bureau chiefs with the assistant ~ secretary as president, I lost my in- terest in the result. "On Dec. 18, 1906, I received from the navy department a letter stat- ing- that: i do This special board on design submitted its report under date of Nov. 19, 1906, and the department under date of Dec. 12, 1906, trans- mitted to congress the report of the board ~ and the plans and specifications of the de- sign which had been selected as the one best fulfilling the requirements of the act. While the report of the board clearly indicates that the design submitted by you was not regard- ed as embodying all the essential character- istics of a battleship in so high a degree as did the design of the board on construction of the navy- department, the department begs to thank you for your interest in this matter and to express its appreciation. of the labor bestowed by you upon the design submitted. "Now this special board did the natural thing in selecting its 'own plan as the best. I would thave se- lected my plan as ithe best if I had the chance they had. But the fact that this board was to decide whether its own plan or some other plan was the best made it impossible for the navy department to benefit in the slightest by 'tthe labor bestowed on the outside plans. ih "One_ naval architect in. the East who had sent in plans showed me the letter he received from the de- partment and it was word for word the same as mine. A_ well-known English naval architect who had sent in elaborate plans sent me a copy of tthe letter he had received from our navy department, and it was word for word the same as mine. It seemed to me that these letters were prepared before the plans were ex- amined, if they ever were examined. "On Jan. 7, 1907, I replied to the letter of the department, stating that I had seen similar letters sent to others who had submitted designs and expressed my surprise at the board being able to express in the same words its disapproval of plans so entirely different from one another and asked for a copy of the findings of the board and its discussion of the various plans submitted, but have been informed that that matter is held private by the department."