DETAILS OF NAVAL DESIGN FROM JUTLAND. 
By CoMMANDER HERBERT S. Howarp (C. C.), U. S. N., Member. 
[Read at the thirtieth general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in 
New York, November 8 and 9, 1922.] 
In the introduction to a book entitled “A Naval Lieutenant, 1914-1918,” written by an 
officer in the British Navy under the name of Etienne, there appears this paragraph in which 
he gives his reason for writing the book: 
“Much of our knowledge of the details of the great naval wars of the Napoleonic days 
has come from letters, diaries, and personal aceounts published at the time in the naval chroni- 
cles, and the historian of the future will seek for similar sources of information.” 
This quotation very well expresses the fact that more information on the subject of a 
particular battle is often obtained through the personal accounts and diaries of those who 
were engaged directly in the fighting than from rather dry official reports and records made 
up with great care after the battle was over. The author in his book had particularly in 
mind, it is believed, the usually accepted type of historian, but the statement made holds 
equally true for the researches of what might be termed a technical historian. 
The many reports and discussions that have been published on the Battle of Jutland 
almost invariably have to do either with controversial points of strategy, movements of 
fleets and so forth, or major questions of design, particularly those comparative between 
British and German ships such as protection of vitals, turret magazine protection and so on. 
These questions have been treated and retreated: strategy by the ablest naval strategists 
in all countries possessing or interested in navies, and major design questions by the lead- 
ing naval constructors and naval specialists in England and Germany. 
There is a field, however, in which, as far as is known, no naval designer or constructor 
of naval vessels has as yet ventured, and in which it seems such a one should venture. That 
field comprises the performance of the different detail features of design of the naval ships 
in the battle. 
Personal accounts have been written, one which it will be remembered was referred to 
at the beginning of the paper, by those who went through the battle. In these accounts we 
read, not of the movements of the fleets and the large questions of strategy on hand that day, 
but of the particular events which took place on board the ship on which the writer was at 
the time. Most naturally he was interested first and foremost in the things that affected his 
own ship, and if this ship happened to be one which suffered a good deal of damage under 
fire, we learn how the various details of design stood up to their work. 
The published personal accounts of the battle are none too many, but they are of great 
value not only to the true historian, but to the technical naval designer as well, and, it may 
be added, most thrilling and interesting reading. In this paper an attempt has been made 
to analyze these accounts as far as concerns the principal minor features of design of naval 
vessels. As may be imagined, the accounts available from those on British ships are much 
