December 14, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
II 
become greater, if no armament' of a smaller calibre than 
4 inch is foimd to be useful. 
Mr. Kicid is convinced that many of our difficulties 
can be overcome if tlie art of using smoke screens is 
developed to the full. If, at the fust sight of a sub- 
marine, every merchantman could envelop itself in 
smoke and retreat on whatever course promised, in the 
prc\"iiling wind, the best assurance of concealment, the 
work of the U boat commander would seemingly be 
greatly embarrassed. The new possibilities opened up by 
ilight alone would certainly be important. The obscura- 
tion of the target must cause misses and waste of ammuni- 
tion. It would delay the destruction of the ship, and 
delay might give time for calling assistance, were it 
within reach. In some cases it might facilitate ramming. 
It would make it possible to employ many methods of 
defence other than gunfire. A submarine commander, 
unable to make distant gunfire effective, might hesitate 
to close through a smoke screen. He might suspect 
tliat mines had been thrown overboard. He would not 
know if succour were near, or a ship, seemingly unarmed, 
were really a formidable enemy ! It would create 
a situation in which the enemy's nerve would not beat 
its best, and immediate scope for ingenuity, both offen- 
sive and evasive, would be given. Certainly if it com- 
pelled the U boat to close, a new value would be given 
to twelve, six and even throe pounders. Manifestly, in 
giving a special value to guns in the stern, it might get 
over the difliculties so many merchant captains have 
felt — namely, that unless ships are armed fore and aft 
and abeam they must largely be defenceless. Note, on 
this point, that the Times, in its issue of Monday last, 
had a statement on this point, in which the following 
paragraph occurs : — 
" A gun in the stem means that directly a ship sights the 
enemy submarine she must, if slie is to put up any fight, 
mana'U\Te to run awav. The very act of mancuuvre 
exposes the merchant ship to tb.c fire of the enemy ship.^. 
Tiiere is then only one course open to the merchant 
sliip, to continue to run away, firing as she flees at the 
enemy ship, which is usually faster and mbre powerfully 
armed. The whole action is distasteful to British sea- 
men." 
No doubt, what BritisJi seamen would like, would be 
to be so armed as to be pretty sure of blowing the sub- 
marine out of the water as soon as it appeared, or, at any 
rate, of fighting it on an artillery equality. But, failing 
this, surely the best thing is to fight defensively with 
success, if it is feasible to conceal a ship in .smoke 
there is no reason at all why the manVeuvre to run away 
should expose the merchant ship to fire. It is precisely 
this moment of manoeuvre that w ould be protected. And, 
once the retreat had begun, the merchant captain would 
have many courses open to him, besides carrying on an 
unequal artillery contest. 
As to the difliculties of creating and employing smoke 
screens, Mr. Kidd insists that they simply do not exist. 
Fixed cases of smoke making composition could be 
attached to the ship at various points and Slogged off 
according to the bearing of the submarine when first seen. 
These might be supplemented by clouds of steam, and the 
screen intensified by smoke bombs fired in the direction 
of the submarine out of the most rudimentary kind of 
mortars. But really the details of the means to be 
employed need hardly be laboured. Once grant that the 
principle of sea concealment is a proved accessory to self- 
defence — and indeed, in many cases, could be a sub- 
stitute for it — and the j.oint ingenuity of the Royal Navy 
and the merchant marine would find an endless variety of 
ways of bringing it into effect — and all of them fool-proof. 
It is a suggestion which, whether it has been rejected by 
the merchant service before or not, is one they can hardly 
neglect now. 
I 
A Royal Merchant Navy 
Indeed it is a question whether the self defence of 
merchant ships or their replacement by ship-building can 
any longer be left purely to individual effort. Admiral 
Sir p'rancis Bridgman has recently asked in a letter to 
the Morning Post whether the Admiralty and the Board 
r)f Trade arc co-operating as they should in securing that 
the new merchantmen, now under construction with the 
labour released for this purpose hy \Miitehall, arc both 
properly designed for carrying guns and so constructed 
so as to be, as far as possible, proof against mines and 
torpedoes ? Nor can the importance of this fpiestion 
be overestimated, if only because it raises the whole 
question of the kind and extent of ship-building to be en- 
couraged. If you ask the ship-owners, the majority will 
tell you that this is not a matter in which the State can 
advisedly interfere. Every builder in the Kingdom is 
full up with orders for the next three years, the orders 
are given by people who understand the business for 
which the ships are wanted, and you cannot do better, 
they say, than leave it to the men who o\\ n the ships to 
see that their reqiurements are satisfied by the men who 
build them. But this reasoning is far from convincing. 
If all ship-owners are to have the same rights in the 
labour now released for completing their orders, there 
is no guarantee that those ships will be finished first which 
the requirements of the situation call for. Take the 
imaginary — apd no doubt absurd — case of a 50,000 ton 
liner, under construction at the beginning of the war. 
What national object would be served by piling labour on 
to a leviathan of this kind, in order to complete it in the 
course of the next iS months or two years ? No Aowhi if 
peace came, it would be a huge advantage to those that 
had ordered it, to have the great ship ready against the 
demand of trade that must ensue. But the need of the 
moment is neither for passenger nor freight carrying ships 
dc luxe, but for craft of all kinds to meet our immediate 
civil and military needs. Ten ships of 5,000 tons would 
meet a vital need to-day. One ship of 50,000 is absolutely 
useless except as a target for submarines, and turning her 
into a hospital is apparently no security that she will not 
be so used. It is obvious, then, that private interest is 
not a safe guide in this vitally important matter. 
There is only one interest that is a safe guide. Is Qxcvy 
ship on which it is proposed to expend our rapidly vanish- 
in,g labour directly useful to us in the war ? Some of the 
jmnciples that must hold in answering are obvious enough. 
In the first place almost every ship near completion 
should have priority. Next, amongst the partly con- 
structed, those should be speeded up that can be quickest 
finished, and be put to the most urgent use when finislicd. 
Third, no ship should be put in hand not useful in the 
war, so long as any that can be useful needs work, l-'in- 
ally, in every ship near completion, partly completed or 
to be laid down, the war requirements of self defence 
should be met. One does not quite sec how regulations 
to secure public safety can be drawn up, nor, when drawn . 
up, be enforced, except under State direction. The new 
(iovernment includes at least one man. Sir Joseph Maclay, 
pre-eminently capable of taking the lead in directing 
this matter, and it is clearly one in which the ship-owners, 
no less than the ship-builders, must participate. 
For that matter it is one in which at any rate some 
ship-builders and ship-owners have already combined 
to ask for Government action. On the Wear, I am told, 
a Board of Trade representative has already been callecl 
in and by the builders to decide upon the priority to be 
observed in finishing ships in hand. < My suggestion, then, 
is only to extend a practice 'already inauguratecl 
by the shipping interests themselves. But I am not at all 
sure that what is necessary can be done if the Admiralty 
is only made to co-operate. It is possible that the best 
solution of all the shipping problems may lie in Admiralty 
direction of them all. It is a large, intricate, and difficult 
matter and it is possible that the Board has troubles 
enough of its own without throwing this upon it 
too. It would practically mean a new department, 
made up of the Board of Trade, the merchant shipping in- 
dustry and the navy, under the Board of Admiralty. Still 
the truth remains that, if victory depends upon our sea 
ser\'ices, it would be conditioned just as much by the 
right direction, and therefore the right conduct of our 
merchant ship-building, as by the right measures for its 
protectign. The conduct of the enemy in attacking 
all ships upon the sea, neutral as well as belligei-ent, civil 
as well as warships, has created entirely new naval con- 
ditions, and we may fmd that the ultimate solution is 
for the State to undertake the control of all oiu" maritime 
concerns. Should this become inevitable, the main 
direction will have to lie with the Admiralty, and it 
might be wise to make a beginning now. 
Arthur Pollen. 
