The United Service Magazine

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHAT HAVE WE GAINED FROM THE MAN(EUVRKS OF OUR EVOLUTIONARY SQUADRON? THE Lords of the Admiralty are beginning to count the cost of the mimic warfare lately conducted by the Evolutionary Squadron, and to consider what practical experience they have gained in return for the large amount of money swallowed...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHAT HAVE WE GAINED FROM THE MAN(EUVRKS OF OUR EVOLUTIONARY SQUADRON? THE Lords of the Admiralty are beginning to count the cost of the mimic warfare lately conducted by the Evolutionary Squadron, and to consider what practical experience they have gained in return for the large amount of money swallowed up by these costly manoeuvres. Certainly an amount of experience has been gained, but, unfortunately, of a nature not by any means flattering to the first Naval Power of the world. As the evolutions draw to a close, records may be compiled showing that the armour-clad and torpedo fleet constructed on the most approved scientific principles of the last quarter of a century are wofully lacking in their estimated efficiency when subjected to a very limited practical test. Our ponderous armour-clads have proved very unwieldly and dangerous to friends and foes alike owing to their defective steering capabilities and signalling codes; the gunboats, whose looked-for arrival delayed the operations of the squadron for a considerable time, were utterly useless, when they did arrive, on account of their very slow rate of speed and the dreadfully corroded state of their boilers and tubes; the torpedo boats, from various causes, were ghorn of their presumed sanguiuary aggressive powers?partly on account of their being altogether unfitted for the part they are supposed to play in naval warfare, and partly because they were absurdly handicapped by elaborate protective arrangements on the part of their opponents not at all likely to occur in actual warfare. Without reckoning the supposed destruction of vessels ruled out of action by the umpires, this scientific fleet sustained extensive damages from collisions, running on shore, explosions, and other disasters, to repair which will cost a...