94 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Feb. 4 1899. 
Third — For harbor patrol dofy in connection with the 
guarding of mine fields and the enforcing of the war 
regulations governing ports and harbors. 
The preparation of this particular branch was but one 
detail of the important task entrusted to the "Naval Aux- 
iliary Board," specially created at a time when the pos- 
sibility of war had almost crystallized into a certainty. 
This board proceeded at once to examine a very large 
number of vessels, ranging from the large passenger 
steamers of the American Line down to the smaller sizes 
of tugboats and yachts; and, in accordance with its re- 
ports, vessels were purchased from the special appropria- 
tion made by Congress for the pm-pose of defense. 
For the work above outlined two classes of vessels 
w?re selected, tlie ocean-going tug and the steam yacht, 
the latter to the number of twenty-seven. The selection 
was made from many localities, several of the yachts 
coming from the Great T^akes. The vessels were mainly 
purchased direct from the owners, the price being fixed 
by the Board. As soon as the transfer of title was com- 
pleted the yacht was delivered at the nearest navy yard, 
where the work was pushed as rapidly as possible. As a 
matter of course, the majority of the yachts hailed from 
New York, and the work on them was consequentlj^ ex- 
ecuted at the Brooldyn Navy Yard. 
The general nature of this material for an emergency 
fleet is shown by Table I. in the Appendix. Its capabili- 
ties for successful conversion to war purposes were, as 
we shall see later, not of the best; but the facilities for 
carrying out the work were in the main satisfactory, the 
skilled labor and the necessary material being readily ob- 
tained. The only difficulty encountered in this part of 
the work was in the detail of armament, there being a 
lack of some of the sizes of guns best fitted for these 
small vessels. The general character of the work is 
shown by Table II. 
To the yachtsman at least, tlie sight of the well-known 
vessels as they left the Navy Yard was a surprise and also 
a shock; under a dull monochrome of "war paint" (lead 
color) covering everything from waterline to truck, the 
distinctive color scheme of the yacht was effaced en- 
tirely; there was no longer a trace of the green "boot 
topi," the jet black topsides relieved by gilded cove and 
trail boards and figurehead, with the sheer cut out cleanly 
by a strip of polished teak. The rich brown of the deck 
houses, the bright yellow of the spars, and the white sails 
set off by the parti-colored burgee at each truck, had all 
disappeared. The bowsprit was sawed off^ just outside th<; 
gammon iron and brought to a blunt point; the fore top- 
mast shared a similar fate, projecting but a few feet above 
the cap, and the mainmast had disappeared entirely. A 
pair of three or six pounders grinned menacingly from 
the forecastle, a couple more from the quarterdeck, and 
bridge and deck house each showed an automatic gun. 
The rowing boats were retained, but the steam and 
naphtha launches were left ashore. 
As each vessel was completed she was dispatched to her 
station, many going direct to Key West, and from there 
to the Cuban coast; others were stationed along the 
coast of the Eastern and Atlantic Slates to give warn- 
ing of the approach of the expected Spanish fleet, while 
the smaller ones were assigned to duty in the harbors of 
New York, Boston and other important seaports. At the 
outset the sea picket division was regarded as the most 
important of the three, but as matters turned out it had 
nothing to do, and after Cen^era's fleet took refuge in 
Santiago Harbor it was withdrawn and the vessels dis- 
patched to more southern stations. The work of the 
harbor patrol fleet was also very light, mere policing of 
the mine fields against the intrusipn of garbage scows and 
coasting schooners. 
While specific information as to the individual per- 
formances of the main division of the yacht fleet in actual 
service is not yet at hand, enough is known to establish 
the fact that the fleet, as a whole, acquitted itself credita- 
bly and fully justified its creation. While some of the 
converted yachts proved failures and entirely unfit for 
sea work, and others were only partly satisfactory, many 
of them have done excellent work under trying condi- 
tions. The part played by the Gloucester and the Vixen 
at Santiago was such as to bring them into special prom- 
inence, but the Mayflower, Yankton, Scorpion and others 
have done regular and consistent service, though under 
conditions which have attracted less attention to 
them. 
The work of laying up this fleet really began before the 
actual cessation of hostilities, the smaller yachts of the 
harbor patrol being withdrawn and placed out of com- 
mission at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other points. 
One yacht, the Free Lance, presented to the Government 
by her owner, F, Augustus Schermerhorn, Esq., without 
conditions, was returned to him as soon as the need for 
her services in the New York harbor patrol fleet was 
over. Another similar gift, the Buccaneer, presented bj 
W. R. Hearst, Esq., was also returned later on, being in 
Cuban waters when hostilities ceased. At the time of 
writing, most of the yachts have returned from the West 
Indies, the majority of these to go out of cemmission. 
The Gloucester, Scorpion, Vixen, Mayflower and others 
of the larger and abler are still in service. One yacht, j 
new craft uncompleted at the time of purchase and placed 
in commission only after the need for her was past, has 
been reserved for the special use of the President, a ser- 
vice heretofore performed by such Government tugs, light- 
house tenders, or other small craft as were temporarily 
available. She has been named Sylph, and her original 
arrangements as a private yacht have been modified to 
suit this new use. No decision has yet been made as to 
the disposal of the yachts remaining, twenty-five in all, but 
it is probable that most of them will be offered for sale, 
ultimately returning to the pleasure fleet. 
In summing up what has been at best an experiment 
arising from an emergency which should never have oc- 
curred, it may be said in regard to the home divisions of 
the converted fleet, the sea pickets and harbor patrol, that 
the course of the war has been such that no serious or pro- 
longed service was required of either, and the merits of 
the fleet was not put to a practical test. Had, however, 
the anticipated attack upon the North Atlantic coastproved 
a reality, it is safe to say that the yachts would have met 
all expectations. In the case of the third division of 
the fleet, the vessels were put to the severe test of pro- 
longed service at sea, under conditions for Avhich they 
were never intended, and they were also engaged in 
attacks upon land fortifications, and in some caSeg in 
engagements on the sea. The result of this test has 
been, on the whole, quite as satisfactory as could have 
been expected. 
The possibilities of the yacht fleet at the present time 
for conversion to war uses were, even from a theoretic 
standpoint, far from promising. Many of the vessels 
were ill-fitted in model for real service at sea; there was 
a lack of displacement for the added weights of anna- 
ment and ammunition, of berthing space for crew, of 
bunker space, and sititable locations for magazines. The 
nominal speed, in many cases low in itself, was not 
realized even in .smooth water, and in a sea there was a 
serious loss of the average working speed. There was 
no protection, no distilling apparatus ; the capacity of the 
water tanks was generally inadequate, and the decks were 
not designed to withstand the shock of the guns. The 
draft as a rule w-as greater than was necessary or de- 
sirable. The nature and extent of these defects Were 
fully realized at the outset, but under the circumstances 
there was no other course but to take the yachts as they 
were and to make the best of them. All things con- 
sidered, they have done their work quite as well as was 
to be expected ; they have served a certain necessary 
purpose, and they were capable of doing even more had it 
been required of them. 
It is to be hoped that some of those who have had 
actual experience on board of the yacht fleet will tell us 
in the discussion the results of their personal observa- 
tions, which cannot fail to be interesting and of per- 
manent value; but, short of this, enough is now known 
to permit of a discussion of the future position of the 
yacht fleet as a naval auxiliary. 
It is impossible within the limits of the present paper to 
discuss the auxiliary fleet as a whole; but to those of 
us who have followed the discussions of this society year 
by year the exneriment must be an interesting one. The 
lessons to be derived from it are, first, the necessity for 
timely preparation in the .speedy building up of an ade- 
quate navy; and .=econd, that to be done properly, this 
work must proceed for a term of years according to a 
comprehensive and systematic programme, completed in 
advance and carried out as nearly as possible without 
change through successive administrations. A reference 
to the Transactions of the Society will show that these 
two points have been emphasized in the course of almost 
every discussion of the naval papers. 
The detail of the auxiliary fleet now under considera- 
tion, the yacht division, has, as I shall endeavor to show, 
a special lesson of its own; that the naval programme 
may be advantageously extended to include a type of 
small auxiliary indicated by the yacht, but not now in 
existence in this country. 
The present use of the yacht fleet being confessedly 
but an emergency measure, the question naturally sug- 
gests itself as to whether such a course would have been 
necessary had our navy been theoretically complete in 
all of its branches ; notably, had the gunboat and torpedo 
arms, instead of being exceedingly weak, been developed 
to the same extent as in other navies? 
This question may at once be ansWered in the affirma- 
tive, for the reason that none of the vessels of the gun- 
boat or torpedo boat types are adapted for the special 
service demanded of the converted j-achts. The high 
speed which is the leadmg motive of torpedo-boat design 
is not only needless for the w^ork now^ under discussion, 
but entails the loss of rnany essential qualities. _ Inci- 
der.tal y, it may be ob.served, there has been, with the 
exception of one yacht, Mayflower, no attempt to con- 
vert the yachts into torpedo boats; and had there been 
enough torpedo boats at hand for this service, the only 
available crews, largely made up from the Naval Militia, 
would have been unfit to handle them. 
Assuming, then, that however perfect the torpedo arm 
may be, there is still a distinct field of usefulness for 
something of the yacht type, we come to the question dis- 
cus.sed at the first meeting of this society in 1893, of the 
policy of reliance upon the pleasure fleet as a regular 
means of defense in the future. 
The suggestion has been made in this connection that 
some scheme of co-operation between the Government 
and individual yacht owners might be put into practice 
whereby, in return for certain privileges or comoensa- 
tions oil the part of the former, the latter might be in- 
duced to plan any new yachts with a direct view to their 
conversion to war uses. The objections both to this 
method of procedure and to the general policy of re- 
liance on the yacht fleet are very strong. On the part of 
the Government, the only effective inducement to be 
offered to the owner must be in some form of subsidy, a 
sort of special legislation which is practically impossible. 
On the part of the owner, his personal requirements, to 
.say nothing of the wishes of his captain, his wife, and 
his friends, are directly opposed to those of the war 
vessel. There, is, it is true, a common grotTnd whereon 
the owner 'and the Government might come together to 
mutual advantage in demanding the essentials of good 
design, a seagoing model, fair working speed, ample 
bunker space, etc., but in too many cases these are but 
secondary to the demand for spacious saloons and lavish 
display of furnishings. To the owner who is willingly pay- 
ing a very large sum for mere luxury and elegant appoint- 
ments, the Government can offer but slender inducements 
to make his vessel a ship first and a palace afterward ; 
or, when completed, to loan her for a time as a practice 
ship, as has been suggested as one feature of the scheme. 
Unless very much more can be done in this direction than 
now seems possible, the experience of the present year 
is such as to indicate that the purchase and conversion 
of yachts is in every way undesirable as a permanent 
feature of naval policy. The defects of the existing fleet 
have iDeen already indicated, many of them are mere 
matters of faulty design, due to the haphazard methods 
that have thus far largely prevailed in this country, the 
owner leaving everything to his captain, who in turn 
deals directly with a builder. This class of defects will 
largely disappear as soon as the Ameiican yacht owner 
awakens to the appreciation of the importance of the 
trained soeciaHst, the yacht designer, in the field of 
steam yachting, as he has long since done in that of the 
sailing yacht. At the same time the good qualities of a 
perfect steam yacht are not of necessity such as to make 
her an ideal picket or patrol boat; and of the fleet avail- 
able at any future time for conversion, many will be 
found to possess positive bad qualities, as in the present 
case. 
As a matter of permanent policy, however, the ques- 
tion of the efficiency of the converted yacht is but sec- 
ondary to that of the cost, always a controlling one in a- 
naval programme. The circumstances attending the pur- 
chase of yachts for this purpose are necessarily such as 
to keep the price at a fair figure, and this price repre- 
sents a large amount of furniture and decoration which 
is worse than useless, as its very removal entails some 
expense. Apart from this waste, the yacht needs to ^e 
strengthened for gun mounts, etc., and remodeled in all 
the internal details. When the emergency is passed and 
she is no longer needed, her value as a yacht will have 
seriously depreciated, and the work of reconversion must 
be far more costly than that of the first change, as 
its details are reversed. Where the furnishings were 
hastily stripped at a mere cost of labor, new ones must 
be purchased and put in place; where spars were sim- 
ply sawed off, new ones must be made and shipped ; and 
in place of a plain coat of lead color over everything, 
regardless of appearance, the entire structure must be 
scraped and redecorated by skilled artisans. When the 
present experiment has reached its final stage in the sale 
of many of the yachts, and the result is reduced to plain 
dollars and cents, there will probably be little room for 
doubt as to the unprofitable nature of the work. 
While the actual co-operation of the Government and 
the yacht owner is hardly practicable, each may stud)'' 
with profit the lesson now before them. 
It is obviou.sly to the interest of the Government' to 
encourage the building and use of yachts; apart from 
the indirect advantages of a national pleasure fleet, there 
is always the possibility of an occasion like the present, 
when the larger vessels must be depended on as a dernier 
rcssort. While nothing can be done in the way of direct- 
financial aid, it is a wise and sound policy to encourage 
yachting by the removal of all unnecessary and oppres- 
sive regulations. 
On the part of the owner, it must be apparent to him 
now, if never before, that his interest lies directly in put- 
ting his money into a vessel that as far as possible pos- 
sesses the prime essentials for conversion to war use. 
It may happen, as in this case, that the opportunity to 
sell her at a fair figure is coincident with a temporary 
inability to use her on account of war. How far he can 
go in the compromise between his individual require- 
ments and adaptability for conversion is a question to 
be settled with his designer; but he will hardlj' fail to 
realize that it is too important a matter to be disregarded 
entirely, as it has been in the past. 
A careful study of the history of the yachts in the 
present war will show two important points : first, the 
theoretic value of vessels of the yacht type; and sec- 
ond, the limited extent to which the yacht fleet as a 
whole has realized in practice its theoretic efficiency. 
The work demanded and in part accomplished by the 
yachts is not properly within the field of either the gun- 
boat, the destroyer, or the torpedo boat. The former 
is too large; the torpedo vessels, of all classes, are de- 
signed mainly for a speed which not only is absolutely 
unnecessary for this special work, but is obtained through 
the sacrifice of essentials. 
The gunboat class in the new navy had its origin in 
the Petrel, built in 1887, of 850 tons displacement, lift. 
7in. mean draft, and 11. 5 knots speed; a ves.sel now not- 
able from her part in the battle of Manila Bay. The de- ^ 
velopment of this class since then has been entirely up- 
ward, to vessels of 1,700 tons displacement; and no at- 
tempt has been made to carry it downward from the 
Petrel. Useful as they are, the gunboats now in service 
and the new ones under construction are unfitted by their 
size for the work assigned to the yachts. 
So far as the torpedo boat is concerned, the present 
war has been devoid of results ; not only is the question 
of the true relative value of the torpedo fleet as much 
an open one as it was a year ago, but false lights have 
been thrown on it (through the poor performance of the 
Spanish destroyers, and also the good work of the con- 
verted yacht Gloucester) which are calculated to mis- 
lead at least the popular mind. It cannot be too strong- 
ly stated that the idea, quite widely prevalent, that one 
converted yacht is the equal of two of the modern torpedo 
boat destroyers, is entirely erroneous. The destroyer 
and torpedo boat are to-day quite as formidable as they 
were a year ago, quite as essential, and with a wide field 
of usefulness on which nothing of the yacht type can in- 
trude. At the same time, their limitations are numerous 
and well defined; they are necessarily most expensive 
and delicate machines, lacking protection, armament, 
bunker space, and crew accommodation ; they de- 
mand special picked crews, whose endurance is 
severely tested in comparatively short trips at sea; and 
they are at all times liable to speedy deterioration. The 
value of each individual boat depends mainly on the 
.spirit and training of her crew, and her excess of spefed 
above others of her class. Had there been at hand this 
spring an ample fleet of torpedo boats, they would have 
been of but little use for the reasons that the trained 
crews to man them were lacking, and the men who were 
available, largely from the Naval Militia, were incapable 
of handling such" delicate tools. _ 
The work of the yachts, their success and failttres 
taken together, with the work of other small craft such 
as tugs, lighthouse tenders, etc., impressed into the same 
service, seems to indicate the desirability of the creation 
of a new type of small auxiliary not at present recog- 
nized on the navy list. The controlling feature of de- 
sign—the speed — may at the outset be placed at a moder- 
ate figure for this era of increasing speeds, not over 
eighteen knots. This, however, is not to be ^ measured 
by the conventional yacht standard, by which an eighteen- 
knot steam yacht takes the wash of a good twelve- knot 
tug, but means a reasonable approach to the designed, 
speed under ordinary service conditions at sea. and thi 
ability to keep with the fleet even in bad weather. The 
model should possess seagoing qualities of the highest 
class; the draft shottld be limited to 11 or even ioft. as a 
maximum ; the constntction should be durable, with 
ample scantling both to carry the armament and to in- 
sure a long life with ordinary care in laying tipj the 
engines should be strong and reliable, the bunker space 
as large as possible, and as deck and side protection will 
probably be impracticable, especial attention should be 
