And State Papers 579 



raw men can be mixed with the highly trained, their 

 shortcomings being made good by the skill of their 

 fellows; but the efficient fighting force of the navy 

 when pitted against an equal opponent will be found 

 almost exclusively in the warships that have been 

 regularly built and in the officers and men who 

 through years of faithful performance of sea duty 

 have been trained to handle their formidable but com- 

 plex) and delicate weapons with the highest efficiency. 

 In the late war with Spain the ships that dealt the 

 decisive blows at Manila and Santiago had been 

 launched from two to fourteen years, and they were 

 able to do as they did because the men in the conning 

 towers, the gun-turrets, and the engine-rooms had 

 through long years of practice at sea learned how to 

 do their duty. 



Our present navy was begun in 1882. At that 

 period our navy consisted of a collection of anti- 

 quated wooden ships, already almost as out of place 

 against modern war vessels as the galleys of Alci- 

 biades and Hamilcar certainly as the ships of 

 Tromp and Blake. Nor at that time did we have 

 men fit to handle a modern man-of-war. Under the 

 wise legislation of the Congress and the successful 

 administration of a succession of patriotic Secre- 

 taries of the Navy, belonging to both political parties, 

 the work of upbuilding the navy went on, and ships 

 equal to any in the world of their kind were con- 

 tinually added ; and what was even more important, 

 these ships were exercised at sea singly and in squad- 

 rons until the men aboard them were able to get the 



