February 21, 1918 
Land & Water 
[Official ihoti. 
A Clyde Shipyard 
would invest the guerre de course of the future with a ruthless- 
ness so terrible as to make sea war impossible. Tlie signifi- 
cance which the development of the submarine gave to these 
doctrines would have been patent had the application of 
these never definitely been made. But, as we know, Sueter 
in 1907 and, as Lord Jellicoe has just told us, Lord Fisher in 
1912 did all they could to drive the lesson home. 
Apart from this, Cpmmander Gill sees no great surprises 
in the war. But surely no one anticipated that actions in 
which Dreadnoughts Were engaged could continue hour after 
hotir with so little damage on either side. It was a more 
general impression that a fleet action between all-big-gun 
ships would be a very brief affair indeed. Admiral Togo, it 
will be remembered, said that the Battle of Tsushima, which 
began at about half-p>ast one, was decided at ten minutes to 
two. It certainly was a general impression that modern 
armaments controlled by modem instruments would at any 
range cut this time in two. Again, was it not something 
of a surprise that, although the torpedo threat has more than 
once had a great effect upon the imagination of commanders- 
in-chief, yet in a daylight action it has not yet succeeded 
in sinking a single ship ? Commander Gill seems to be aware 
that the torpedo has in this sense been a disappointment, but 
not to ha\'e perceived the application of the lesson. All he 
says about the gun being the dominant weapon of sea force, 
and hence the battle fleet being the real palladium of sea 
power, is admirable. He says, too, that to those who possess 
, a dominant navy the submarine has brought benefits so 
small as not to be worth consideration. Yet he seems to 
approve of America's pre-war naval programme, which 
preferred to build scores of submarines in the place of 
destroyers that would have been of priceless value to-day. 
Methods of Gun Use 
It is hardly, perhaps, fair upon the author, to treat a book 
which he probably intends only to be suggestive as if it were 
an attempt to produce a treatise on a naval doctrine. But 
there is one omission and, by a curious coincidence, a mis- 
statement in Mr. Frothingham's summary of America's 
contribution to the principles of naval war wnich ought not 
to be allowed to go past without comment. In Commander 
Gill's cliapter on gun power he weighs the pros and cons of 
calibre, range, accuracy, rate of fire, etc., but is entirely 
silent as to the importance of the method by which the accuracy 
and power of the gun are to be turned to warlike account in 
action. He is, that is to say, still in the pre-war frame of 
mind of being much more interested in the material of 
apparatus than in tlie technique of its use. And this is really 
more curious in the case of an American than of an English 
writer— which lends point to the extraordinary statement 
of Mr. Frothingham. This writer, in a brief survey of the 
Wars of Independence of 1812 and of the Rebellion claims 
the following as an impressive summary of " American 
contributions to the naval weapons and tactics of to-day " : 
The development of the all-big-gun ship. 
The tacticaJ superiority of the armoured ship. 
The tactical suj)eriority of guns in turrets — and of turrets 
aligned over the keel. 
The tactical use of the torpedo. 
The tactical use of the submsirine. 
Commerce-destroying as a factor in warfare. 
Raids of an enemy's coast by an inferior navy. 
Establishment of a legal blockade of a long cojist line. 
The invention and development of the airplane. 
It is instructive to examine Mr. Frothingham's foundation 
for the first claim, for it explains why he has omitted the 
greatest of all America's contributions to the art of sea fighting. 
Speaking of the war of 1812, he says : 
" Our naval constructors, with an intuition almost prophetic, 
had built a class of frigates of which the Constitution is best 
known, and placed i^-pounders on them. Such an armament 
was ridiculed abroad, and it was predicted that such ships 
would be useless — but in the war of 1812 these frigates 
became the wonder of the world. Another extract from the 
London Times shows again the state of the public mind. 
' The fact seems to be established that the Americans have 
some superior mode of firing.' , 1 «« 1 ;*■- 
" The ' fact ' that the Times could not understand wa^ the 
great advance in naval construction shown by these frigates 
of the United States Navy. This advanced design by 
American naval constructors was the birth of the ' all-big- 
gun ship ' idea, which was destined to dominate naval con- 
struction ; and the Constitution may fairly be called the 
ancestor of the modem Dreadnought." 
It is really hardly necessary to comment on this amazing 
passage. It is, of course, perfectly true that the American 
frigates not only carried more and heavier guns than ours, 
but were built of far stouter timbers. . But it was not the 
weight of their metal that gave them their remarkable 
victories. Their victories were due entirely to the fact that 
their gunnery skill was of a kind infinitely superior to that 
of their British opponents. When Broke, who was as able 
and keen an artillerist as any American, after having Shannon 
under his orders for over a year, met the newly-commissioned 
Chesapeake the series of American victories ended abruptly — 
and this although the Chesapeake was a heavier ship and armed 
with heavier guns than the Shannon. As in all the previous 
actions it was superior skill in the use of guns that decided 
the issue. It is especially noteworthy, and of special signifi- 
cance to-day, that superior skill meant not only more hits, 
bqt a freedom in the tactical handling of ships that made 
effective defence impossible. I am grateful to Mr. Frothing- 
ham for reminding us that a writer in the Times of that day 
perfectly appreciated why we had so uniformly been beaten. 
Howard Douglas, the real founder of naval gunneiy, deals with 
this story in detail in his historic work. There is, indeed, no 
tactical development in'thc whole of naval history the exact 
character and importance of which has been more clearly 
demonstrated. And yet here wc have Mr. Frothingham. 
telling us that the fact which the Tim^s could not understand 
was the great advance in naval construction ! Surely it 
would have been just as reasonable for him to have claimed 
the Constitution as the first Dreadnought because, for her 
displacement, her timbers were the stoutest yet seen in any 
ship. Arthur Pollen. 
