The Relative Efficiency of War Ships

Abstract

I HAVE a complaint to make against certain of the statements made in the article upon “The Relative Efficiency of War Ships,” which appeared in your number for February 26. It is incorrect to declare that I advocated before the Committee on Naval Designs, in 1871, the system of construction upon which the ships of the Admiral class are built. The Ajax, Agamemnon, Colossus, and Edinburgh are designed upon a citadel system which I originally devised and advocated under certain limitations; but I deny, and always have denied, that any of those ships conformed to the fundamental and indispensable condition which I laid down as part of my system: viz. that the armoured citadel should be of ample dimensions to command the whole structure, keeping it afloat and upright, notwithstanding any amount of injury to the unarmoured ends. As this system has been violated in all the four ships above-mentioned, it is most unfair and improper to state that even those vessels are constructed upon a system which I advocated. But as regards the ships of the Admiral class they do not at all conform to the system which I advised, and the writer of the article in question could only have supposed them to do so from a serious misapprehension of the ships themselves. The article stated that the central part of all the ships in question, including the Admiral class, are “plated completely around with very thick armour, which extends from the upper deck to several feet below the water-line.” This is a very incorrect description of the Admiral class, the armour in which does not rise to the upper deck at all, but is stopped in the form of a shallow belt rising but a foot or two, or possibly slightly more, above the water's surface. I repudiate with indignation the statement that such a system of construction as this, in association with the long unarmoured ends of the Admiral class, was ever recommended by me. For this reason I complain likewise of the statement in your article to the effect that my recent letter to the Times is but a continuation of the old and well-remembered Inflexible debate. So far is this from being so, that I distinctly pointed out in that letter that the cutting down of the armour to a mere belt of short length separated the ships of the Admiral class from the others, and imported “a new and terrible cause of danger.” Another statement of which I complain, and which I desire to have corrected, is to the effect that I “refused to give evidence” before the Inflexible Committee, Were this true, it would constitute, in my judgment, a most serious ground of complaint against me, but it is not true. The Inflexible Report and its Appendices clearly exhibit the fact that within two days of the appointment of the Committee, and on the very day on which my evidence was asked for by the Committee, I handed in to that body a most claborate mass of evidence, occupying no less than eighteen columns of the Inflexible Report, and illustrated by two sheets of drawings, this evidence setting forth in great detail my views of the subject, and the grounds of my dissatisfaction with such ships. It is true that four months later I was asked by telegram to attend the Committee, but asked to be excused on the ground that I objected to take part in the dilatory proceedings of the Committee, which I regarded as frustrating the objects with which it was demanded by Parliament. My full evidence was, however, already before the Committee, and had been for several months.