January 16, 1915, 
LAND AND WATER 
THE WAR BY WATER. 
By FRED T. JANE. 
MOTB—TIU, Article ha. been .obmitted t, th, Pr„, Bureau, which d«a. not .bj.ct to th, p.blicati.n as censored, and take, n. 
reipontibllity for the correctness of the statsmentj. 
NORTH SEA AND CHANNEL. 
THE loss of the Formidable is now attributed to a 
submarine. The claim was originally made ia 
Geniiany, though, curiously enough, the number 
of the submarine has not been stated. If a sub- 
oiarine were responsible (which I still feel some- 
what sceptical about owing to the above ciroum- 
stanoe), it must have been a matter of absolute blind chance 
and of the one in a thousand variety at that ! 
The claims made in Germany about the wonderful skill 
exhibited by the delivery of a night attack are absurd. Even 
in daylight the submarine is somewhat in the position of a 
floating mine possessed of a certain amount of mobility, fail- 
ing perhaps twenty times for every success secured, and success 
IS then partly a matter of an invisible opponent having been 
blundered into by the victim. At night these conditions pre- 
vail to an enormously exaggerated degree. The boat (if boat 
there were) must necessarily have been on the surface, and she 
let fly as the Formidable unexpectedly passed her in the dark- 
ness. 
Here for a moment it may not be unprofitable to disouss 
the shoals of suggestions which have been sent in to Land and 
Watbb, though only a small fraction of them have been pub- 
lished. I would first of all refer to the " diving bell " protec- 
tion idea of Colonel F. N. Maude. This idea as an idea is 
quite sound, and, as a matter of fact, it is a regulation fit- 
ment in the most modern U.S. battleships. Given sufficient 
air pressure, a torpedo explosion— unless, of course, the 
■weapon chances to land in a magazine — must be rendered per- 
fectly innocuous, for no water could enter the hole made br 
the torpedo. 
For practical reasous, however, the system cannot be 
applied to old type ships. It has to be associated with «olid 
bulkheads, because watertight doors, whatever their theoreti- 
cal value, almost invariably give out in critical moments. The 
fault does not lie with the doors so mudi as with the human 
element concerned. Either the doors are not efficiently looked, 
or else something gets left in the way to jam them. In addi- 
tion thereunto, however, xhey are, of course, the " weak Link 
in the chain," very liable to give way omng to some struc- 
tural defect — defective rivets, or what not, starting the 
trouble. 
One waj Or another, therefore, the diving bell idea, 
though quite perfect in theory, ia in practice only really 
applicable to ships fitted with solid bulkJieads. Of these we 
have but a few. We started such bulkheads with the original 
Dreadnought, but at a later date dropped them again, because 
of the enormous inconvenience and losa of efficiency in other 
directions which they entailed. And — but here probably I am 
«pproaching the regions' of " enough said." To recapitulate: 
it is the soundest of all theoretical defences, but inapplicable 
practically to ships not specially designed for its use. 
It remains to deal with a mass of correspondence on the 
submarine defence question addressed to this paper or to me 
direct. I am afraid that (to be honest) I must say outright 
that while fully appreciating tho patriotic motives which lead 
to such suggestions, not a single one is of any technical value 
whatever. 
The Navy employs a variety of experts whose sole duty is 
to " think out things," and these experts are so multifarious 
that what one didn't think of, another would. The only 
known case of an amateur hitting on a brand new idea is that 
of Mr. Pollen with liis fire control system; and we may safely 
put that down as the " one chance in a thousand," and even 
Ht that it was only evolved by practical observation on ship- 
board. It could never have been evolved in a chair on shore. 
So I trust that readers whose patriotism has induced them to 
send in "ideas " will forgive mo for telling them that were 
there anything in any of the ideas to which I have l>©en asked 
to give publicity, the Navy itself would have hit on the idea 
long ago. 
The rock on which all " ideas " founder is technical 
applicability. At one end of the soale I will take a corre- 
srpondcnt who suggested that warships should be fitted with 
underwater windows wherefrom observers could detect ap- 
proaoliing subniarinee. The idea is brilliant, but, unfortu- 
19' 
nately it is impossibb to see under water more than two 
or three yards at the most, and a submarine attacks at any- 
thing from one to five hundred yards. 
Somewhere about the other end of the scale a correspon- 
dent suggests' steel plates stuck out all round a ship as a sub- 
stitute for torpedo nets. Up to a certain point, this is logical 
enough, and would be eSootive; but its practical application 
is to be found in the ineffective double bottom which every war- 
ship possesses — and that was invented fifty years or so ago 
by the late Sir Edward Reed. An external defence 
of a similar nature, to be in any way effective, would )>e so 
heavy that it would reduce a warsiiip to the condition of a 
floating log — fully defensive, perhaps, but incapable of effeo- 
tive attack. 
Now, the first and last axiom of the British Navy is to 
"kill the enemy." The turtle is amply protected by Nature- 
against being killed, but it is the unprotected human bipcl 
who manages to make the turtle into soup. His offensive 
defeats the turtle's defensive. 
Up to a certain point, protection counts, but when many 
years ago Sir Nathaniel Barnaby resigned his position as 
Chief Constructor of the British Navy, Ijecause the Admiralty 
authorities of those days insisted on ofience being subordi- 
nated to defence, he probably voiood an eternal truth — much 
as the " submarine menace " may seem to have altered things 
since then. 
In any case, I cannot see in anything done by German 
submarines' any reason why we should abandon the Nelson 
doctrine of " Kill the enemy." We have lost ships by under 
water attack in this war. We shall — as I Iiave regularly in- 
sisted — ^probably lose many more ships to submarines and 
mines before we are through. But whenever opportunity has 
occurred we have been the attack, and it is as' the attack that 
we shall ultimately win. The submarine is a new and potent 
arm; but everything appears to indicate that its hostile 
potency would in effect be increased tenfold were we to reduce 
our offensive power in any way in order to obtain a certain 
extra security against its attack at the expense of our offen- 
sive potentialities against larger game. Infinitely better, 
surely, was' tho spirit displayed at Heligoland Bight by Ad- 
miral Beatty when he acted on the fifty years old maxim of 
the famous American Admiral Farragut — " Damn the torpe- 
does." 
What submarines aro to us to-day, tho torpedoes (the word 
then used for mines) were to Farragut fifty years ago. There 
is every reason to SHppoae that tho principles under -which 
Nelson acted ia one era and Farragut in another still hold 
good. 
There is ju«t one other aspect of the question to which I 
should perhaps devote a little attention — the suggestion in a 
letter in last week's issue, that racing motor-boats should be 
utilised to attack enemy submarines. I am afraid that there 
is not much in this. In the first place, we already have many 
fast motor-boats employed on general patrol duty: in 
the second the sea is a big place, and the chances of a motor- 
boat and a submarine coinciding are small. Even so, there 
would still remain the question as to whether the signted sub- 
marine were German or British. 
No matt-cr how one regards the question, I cannot from 
any point of view see that any better policy thaa that of the 
British Admiralty could be adopted. 
Here we can best go to Germany for elucidation and 
guidance. We then find a curious state of affairs. In this 
country no one with any naval knowledge whatever talks of 
the "fckulking Gorman Fleet." One and all aro unanimous 
in conceding that the Germans are doing the best possible in 
the circumstances under which they have to act. W© may 
say that this or that particular act was folly and a military 
error — ^,he lx>mbardinent of Scarborough for one example — 
but wo do not condemn von Tirpitz as an idiot. 
In Germany, on the other hand, we find naval experts with 
European reputations declaiming with monotonous insistence 
that our strategy is all wrong, that Lord Fisher is an ass, 
Winston Churchill a braggart, and Admiral Jelliooe an in- 
competent. 
Now, all the«o famous experts aro more or less in close 
