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264 - Tae Marine REVIEW 7 August, 1909 THE NAVAL WASTE Editor's Note:--We present herewith the first of the series of articles on the naval administration referred to in the July Review. It should be kept in mind that these were written early in 1908 from notes made long before the Reuterdahl criticisms appeared. The author will later add notes bringing the subject down to date. The MARINE REVIEW did not join in the attacks on the navy and would not now but for the attitude of the department towards the Merchant Marine and' the difficulty of securing relief at the hands of congress while naval appropriations go through apparently without investigation and in continually increasing amounts. We _ con- ceive, therefore, that it is only proper that the application of these funds should be shown. The author is well known in ship building and engineering circles, and is now and has been for years prominently identified with the industry. He is a member of sev- eral of the leading technical societies and is familiar with the various navy yards and their administration, and with the different private | yards doing both naval and commercial work; has had a number of years sea service, and is well known to numbers of naval officers and department attaches, and writes, there- fore, from knowledge and _ observation, and not from hearsay and _ belief. : N JANUARY last there happened together in the rooms of a lead- ing engineering society in an eastern city a small party of men actively associated with ship build- ing and engineering industries. Among them were men_ whose names are known from one_ end of the country to the other. The con- versation turned upon the just pub- lished criticisms of warship construc- tion. Said one of the party, one of the best known and most capable nav- al architects of our day, who is known by reputation, at least, wherever ships are built in America and less widely perhaps, but still extensively, abroad: "The. worst of it is, that it's nearly all true." But this is not the worst of it. The worst perhaps as regards the navy's fighting efficiency, but not by any means the whole. The worst of it is that but a fragment of the truth has been told. The author has no inten- tion of commenting on the subject of warship construction except to add that an additional 3 ft. of width of 8- in. armor for 200 ft. each side only weighs about 280 tons; less than the we'ght of one of the just now popu- lar 12-in. guns with its mountings and equipment. In fact it would not be difficult to save a great part of that weight in superfluous accommoda- tions and fittings, but the greatest saving would 'be by the jettisoning of at least a part of the red tape, dignity and misinformation, with which our ships and bureaus are top-heavy. Neither are the rejoinders "unpa- triotic" and "muckraking" from Wash- ington justifiable or in any sense an answer. The people of the United States have poured their millions like water into the navy sponge. The navy's estimates and requests for more money have been patriotically responded to and no questions asked. Every man who earns or spends a dollar under the flag is a contributor and is entitled to question or criticize its expenditure so long as he does so intelligently, and he is entitled to an answer and a civil one, and not a snarling general statement that "the navy is the equal of any,' coupled with slurring epithets from the bureau- crats at Washington who receive not only their education, but their sub- sistence as well, out of the public funds. As a people we are not even satis- fied to have our navy "the equal of any;" the national characteristic of being in the lead and the money voted and spent for it justify its being the superior of any, having regard of course for size. The "report" of Ad- miral Converse would better have been suppressed; so far from strengthening the cause of the navy it is merely a further array of general statements save in the comparison he makes with Russian ships. Are we then reduced to the necessity of turning to Russia to find something worse than our own? Even its worst enemies could not have said anything more contemp- tuous of our navy than that. The state- ments as to armor and turrets and ammunition hoists were definite and have not been controverted. -As° a matter of fact, announcement was made at Washington on Feb. 6 that the department had prepared plans for remodeling the turrets and 'tammuni- tion 'hoists of the battleships of the entire fleet. Evidently the shot went home. Seven Million for Four Colliers. What the remodeling cons'sts of we have yet to learn. On the same date reference was made to the de- partment's request for $7,000,000 to build four colliers. Seven million dol- lars for four collers! An average of $1,750,000 each. The cargo capacity of these proposed colliers was not stated in the report referred to. The navy has now under construction two colliers under an act approved April 27, 1904, at an estimated: cost of $1,550,000 each. Their cargo capacity is given in the Report of the Bureau of Construction and Repair at 6,410 tons and the'r corresponding displace- ment at 12,500 tons. Do the people of the United States realize what this means? That to get a Ship, 43) = fighting ship, but a common every--- day coal carrier, they will pay what the navy, if it were not for its fool specifications and still more foolish methods and ideas, could buy three better ships for. They were author- ized in April, 1904, the Report gives their estimated date of completion as July, 1909. Five years to 'build a 6,000-ton col- lier. . Probably twice as long. The one building in the navy yard at Mare Island is stated in the last bureau re- port to be 2 per cent completed. Af- ter four years. In this same country of ours there are builders who have, and do, put into commission, not a 6,000-ton but a 10,000-ton, coal -- ship, im 7o. days: from the day the Keel is laid and at less than one-fourth _ the cost. But the naval apologist will say that they are not so fast and they are not so good, and they are not armed, and they don't have to carry so many men and "anyway we couldn't use them." Right you are, Me. Apologist... Zhey . are built for business and for people who do know how to use them and care for them enough and no more, and by peo- ple who do know how to build them, and. they will be in service, working, not lying around navy yards, long after your 'brass trimmed toy has become "obsolete," the 'handiest term that was ever coined for your use. Useless Cost of High Speed. What does a collier want with 16 knots speed? She can't keep up with a battleship or cruiser; she is too fast for cruising speeds; she cannot Car- ry anything at profitable, to say noth- ing of reasonable cost, as the merest amateur in shipping knows; she is altogether a useless, senseless waste of money. To illustrate: A _ perfectly supposable case is that we want to get coal to a fleet in the Straits of Magellan, where our ships coaled on the recently begun Pacific cruise, a distance of about 8,000 knots from Hampton Roads, as quickly as possi- ble. That means, supposedly, that the colliers first referred to would be driven there as fast. as possible, or at 16 knots. Their 'bunker capacity is stated to 'be 1,958 tons, or, with the Cargo, a total on 'board of 7,958 tons. At 7,500 horsepower the coal consump- tion per horsepower per hour for all purposes will two be approximately