LAISU & WATER 
April 12, 1917 
The American Navy 
By Arthur Pollen 
THE Senate and the House of Representatives 
liave \oted and, in spite of a sineere effort of 
lifty well meaning, but mistaken souls in the 
House, America is committed to make war side 
by side with the Allies in luiropc, and to employ the 
whole of the forces she can raise, all her linancial j;ower, 
and all her industrial strength to bring the war to the 
speediest possible termination. Her object, hkc ours, 
is the defeat, the utter and complete defeat, of the 
military power of Prussia. 
Apart from the continuance of submarine successes — 
and there is no denying their gravity — the news from 
e\ery quai"ter confirms the view that (iermany's strength 
no longer suffices for a successful defensive. Against a 
single success on the Russian front must be set the failure 
of the vast rearguard in the West. The attack on 
Easter Monday has got home on the old lines north of 
Arras, and at Zeebrugge we have even brought off a 
welcome, if modest, naval coup. But the great Re- 
public's intervention gives new life to the finances of 
the Alliance just when it is wanted, if only because it 
relieves the belligerents of their worst fears with regard 
to the future. It holds out the promise of an indefinitely 
large military reinforcement should the war go into the 
foiu-th winter. It brings immediately into the field a 
very notable addition, not only to the actual sea forces 
of the Allies, but to our joint power of controUing the 
use of the sea to our enemy's detriment. I propose 
to-day to examine the actual ships and craft at America's 
disf o;al ; and, on a future occasion, the more obvious 
uses to which they can be put. 
In Peace Time 
As organised for peace, the ships of the American 
Navy arc placed in four groups. There are first those 
in full commission ; next, those in commission in reserve ; 
thirdly, those commissioned in ordinary; and fourth, 
those out of commission altogether. The first and 
second categories correspond with our peace-time orga- 
nisation of ships in full commission and those with 
nucleus crews. Fully commissioned ships constitute 
the Atlantic and Pacific *fleets, the cruiser, destroyer 
and submarine squadrons and flotillas, and the cruisers, 
gunboats and so forth, commissioned for independent 
duties. Amongst them are to be found fourteen battle- 
ships, of which thirteen are what is called the Dread- 
nought type ; and thirteen cruisers, classified as armoured, 
second class and third class. Of destroyers and sub- 
marines there are thirty-eight each, and the balance is 
made up of monitors, four ; transports, three ; converted 
yachts, five ; torpedo tenders five, with seven or eight 
training and depot ships, eighteen gunboats, twenty 
colliers and oil tankers. All these ships are either at 
sea or immediately ready for sea, and the main strength 
of them constitutes the Atlantic Fleet, based in the 
summer time on Newport , and in the winter and spring in 
more southern waters. 
All the Dreadnoughts are to be found in the Atlantic 
fleet; they include the Pennsylvania and the Arizona, 
the most powerfully armed and the best pro- 
tected vessels in the world. American capital ships 
have for some years been built in pairs. The first pair, 
South Carolina and Michigan, carried four double 12-inch 
gun turrets on the centre line, and thus had the same 
broadside power as our first Dreadnoughts, though 
carrying one turret less. In the Delaware and North 
Dakota a.nd the Utah and Florida five centre line turrets 
succeeded— these ships thus having a broadside of ten 
12-inch guns. Then followed the .l^/.'«;;s«s and the li'yo- 
ming with si.x turrets replacing Ave, giving a broadside of 
tXvelve 12-inch gun lire, only surpassed by the ex-Brazilian 
Agincourt, now in the liritish Fleet. In 1912 the 12-inch 
gun was given up for the 14-inch, and the New York 
and Texas were designed to carry five turrets, each with 
two guns of tliis calibre. Two years later the Oklahonui 
and Nevada succeeded with four turrets instead of 
ii\e, but two of these carried three guns each, so that the 
broadside remained the same. Finally, the Pennsyl- 
vania and Arizona, the last ships to be finished, have 
also four turrets only, but each is a three-gun turret, so 
that the broadside is twelve instead of ten. There is no 
doubt that the fourteen American Dreadnoughts — 
thirteen of which are actually in commission to-day — 
are in every respect the equals" and, in some, the superior 
of any ships of contemporary design. 
America's Building Programme 
Apart from lessons learned actually in war, tlie naval 
constructors of America have for many years been 
the equals of their fellows in Europe. And they have 
liad building problems to meet which ha\e not bothered 
luiropcan navies. What particularly differentiates the 
American building programme from the European is 
the specially oceanic character of the rtvjuirements. 
The United States Fleet was not built primarily, as were 
for example the German and British fleets, for work in 
the North Sea and Mediterranean. Their cruising 
grounds are the Atlantic and Pacific. Then there has 
been a certain vagueness as to the quarter from which 
hostilities might be expected. And the possibility of 
having to strike at a very distant foe has made it necessary 
for ships to be built to carry reserves of fuel, unthought 
of in European navies. It is in these two facts that 
there is to be found, at any rate to a great extent, the 
far higher individual cost of American ships. The third 
contributory element to this is the conviction, deeply 
rooted in American naval opinion, that no ship can be 
too heavily armoured. The American Battle Fleet, 
as it stands then, is cpiite exceptionally powerful. Sixty- 
four 14-inch and eighty 12-inch guns, all axailable on 
the broadside, make a very formidable combination. 
The 14-inch gun fires, it is true, a projectile that is no 
heavier than the later British 13-5 ; but it is believed 
that the American ordnance authorities have been 
singular in producing a weapon of this calibre that employs 
so high a muzzle velocity as 2,700 feet per second. The 
accuracy of these guns at extreme range is said to be 
extraordinary, and has only been equalled or surpassed 
by the British 15-inch guns, the shells of which, of course, 
weigh almost forty per cent. more. 
According to pre-war standards American giuinery 
was exceptionally good, both in gunlaying and in the 
long range exercises ; the performances of the best ships 
being quite equal to the known records of European 
navies. But war, as we have so often seen, has played 
havoc with the anticipations of long-range firing on 
this side ; and how far the American Navy has learned 
from the British and German failure in iirc control is 
unknown to nic. It is, however, significant that in the 
four ships laid down last year, Maryland, West Virginian, 
Colorado and Washington, the sixteen-inch gun has been 
adopted with a special view to surpassing the ranging 
capacities of the largest guns afloat in other navies. 
It must be assumed, therefore, that the attention of the 
Navy Department has been directed to the importance 
of using these new monster weapons with effect. 
Undoubtedly the weakness of the American Navy 
in commission is its poverty in cruisers. In these it. is as 
far behind the peace standard of the British Navy as 
that standard was itself behind 'the requirements of 
war. It is curious that the country that produced Mahan 
and the country from whose experiences Mahan derived 
his doctrines, ^^^ouid both have been so blind to the 
plainest of all the lessons of history. In the Revolutionary 
and Napoleonic wars we began with seven cruisers to 
each two ships of the line. By the year of Trafalgar 
they were five to one. h'our years later they were seven 
to one. Take the ships built and building, we began war 
in 1914 with a bare ratio of four cruisers to each capital 
ship. But of these four, one and a half were slow and, 
for many cruising purposes, useless. Of cruisers a knot 
or two faster than battleships, we had one to one, and 
