NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



cial appropriations of Congress. Thus it will be 

 seen that one-half of the steam-navy adapted to 

 cruising is in commission and in actual service. 



An act, passed by Congress in June, 1874, to 

 encourage the establishment of public marine- 

 schools, authorized and directed the Secretary 

 of the Navy to furnish on certain conditions, 

 on the application of the Governor of the 

 State, a suitable vessel, with all her apparel, 

 charts, books, and instruments of navigation, 

 provided they could be spared without detri- 

 ment to the naval service, to be used for the 

 benefit of any nautical school or college having 

 a nautical branch established at any of the 

 ports of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Bal- 

 timore, Norfolk, and San Francisco. The act 

 further authorized the detail of proper officers 

 of the navy as superintendents or instructors 

 of such schools. Pursuant to this provision, 

 training-ships have been supplied to New York 

 and California. 



Secretary Eobeson recommends that the Hy- 

 drographic Office, which is so important to the 

 maritime interests of the country, should re- 

 ceive from Congress such support as will place 

 it on a footing with the most important of such 

 institutions abroad, and to enable it to furnish 

 to our naval and commercial marine the charts, 

 books, and information required in the naviga- 

 tion of the waters of the globe. Before the 

 establishment of the United States Hydro- 

 graphic Office in 1866, the navigators of this 

 country were almost entirely supplied from 

 the hydrographic labors of England their 

 charts, books, and nautical information were 

 all imported the United States being thus de- 

 pendent on a foreign country for the means of 

 navigating its vessels and tracing their paths 

 on the ocean. Since that date the commerce 

 of this country has been supplied by the United 

 States Office with hydrographic information 

 for which there is a constant demand. 



At the close of 1873 two vessels of the Navy, 

 the Portsmouth and the Nar-ragansett, were 

 engaged on surveys in the Pacific Ocean. The 

 latter was engaged in the survey of the coasts 

 and Gulf of Lower California, the charts of 

 which are now in course of publication. The 

 Portsmouth was withdrawn from the survey. 



In the surveys of the great channels of com- 

 merce, this country, with the exception of a 

 few isolated expeditions, has done but little, 

 and has been indebted for hydrographic infor- 

 mation almost entirely to England and France. 

 The North-Pacific Ocean is in a measure con- 

 sidered an American ocean, and the accurate 

 establishment of the innumerable and com- 

 paratively unknown dangers becomes a press- 

 ing duty of the nation claiming the preponder- 

 ance in these waters. The annual list of ves- 

 sels lost (numbering 1,465 in 1872) always con- 

 tains a large number the fate of which is un- 

 known, and there is great probability that 

 many have been wrecked on dangers not at all 

 shown or imperfectly located on charts. This 

 applies especially to the Pacific. Serious er- 



rors are also known to exist in all charts of the 

 coasts of the republics bordering the Gulf of 

 Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. 



A running survey of the gulf-coast of Mex- 

 ico has been made by the United States steam- 

 er Fortune, Lieutenant-Commander Green, un- 

 der the supervision of the Bureau of Naviga- 

 tion, which has very materially changed the 

 delineation of the coast as heretofore laid down, 

 and has disclosed new and important shoals. 

 This work should be extended at least to the 

 boundary of Brazil. At the present day our 

 knowledge of the hydrography of many of the 

 islands of the "West Indies is very imperfect, 

 and the correct positions of many of them by 

 no means established with accuracy. An ex- 

 pedition for the determination of longitudes in 

 the West Indies, by means of the electric ca- 

 ble, was organized by the Hydrographic Office, 

 under the Bureau of Navigation. Owing to 

 adverse occurrences, this expedition was neces- 

 sarily detained, but left the United States near 

 the close of the year, under the command of 

 Lieutenant-Commander Green, for the prosecu- 

 tion of this work. 



During 1874 the United States steamer Tus- 

 carora, Commander George E. Belknap, was 

 employed in taking deep-sea soundings in the 

 North -Pacific Ocean, for the purpose of ascer- 

 taining a practicable route for a submarine 

 cable between the United States and Japan. 

 The northern and southern routes between 

 these countries have been examined by run- 

 ning lines of soundings. The line on the for- 

 mer route commenced at Cape Flattery, touched 

 the Aleutian Islands, skirted the coasts of the 

 Kurile Islands, and terminated at Yokohama, 

 Japan. On the latter route the line commenced 

 at San Diego, California, touched the Hawaiian 

 and the Bonin Islands, and terminated also at 

 Yokohama. Besides these lines of soundings, 

 others were run on and off shore between Cape 

 Flattery and San Diego, for the purpose of 

 determining the continental outline or the com- 

 mencement of the ocean-bed proper. 



The reports of Commander Belknap have 

 been collated at the Hydrographic Office, and 

 are in course of publication. 



The number and yearly amount of pensions 

 of the Navy on the rolls November 1, 1874, 

 were as follows : 



The appropriations applicable to the fiscal 

 year ending June 30, 1874, including the unex- 

 pended balance of the appropriations for the 

 building of new sloops, and the special appro- 

 priations to reimburse the bureaus for their 

 extraordinary expenditures during the threat- 



