CORRESPONDENCE.
A SERIOUS DEFECT IN THE NAVY. [To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPrcriTan."] Six,—The present war in South Africa has shown up some grave defects in the British Army organisation, and many people are anxiously asking whether there are also similar defects in our first line of defence, the Navy. As may be seen from the number of articles and letters appearing in the leading papers of the day, there is at least one very serious defect amounting to nothing less than an acute and ever- increasing national danger. The fact is that the Admiralty cannot get enough engineer officers to man their ships, because their prejudices will not allow them to make the reforms in the engineering branch which they know to be necessary. Owing to the increase both in the number and in the mechanical complexity of our modern warships, they are sent to sea with a staff insufficient to keep them in a state of efficiency in time of peace, leaving abso- lutely no margin in time of war, but the reverse, for then a number of ships would have to be commissioned which are now in the Reserve. Of course, if asked in Parlia- ment, the Admiralty would reply that they were not aware of any such insufficiency, for in Parliament the aim of the Admiralty, like that of the War Office, is often to mislead rather than to enlighten the public. If you want to get at the truth of the matter, go into the engine- rooms of the Fleet and witness the frantic efforts on the part of the engineer officers to get the work of three men, and sometimes four, out of one individual. Again, no doubt, the Admiralty will say that the ships are efficient. Are they really so? On paper, yes ; in point of fact, not one in ten. The regulations are complied with ; the ships struggle through somehow; the official forms are filled np, and the details are suppressed ; but what about the sinful waste of public money on wholesale repairs which might be avoided if there were sufficient officers to give all parts of the department the attention they ought to receive ? As it is, it is all they can do to get the engines to go round according to orders, and often they are not able to do that. At the present time just sufficient candidates for entry are obtained to fill the vacancies offered, but the entries ought to be erebb d, and then there would not be enough candidates without lowering the standard, and that cannot possibly be thought of. Consequently this dearth exists, and will con- tinue to exist until the Admiralty place the engineering branch on a proper footing,—the only footing which will enable them to carry out their duties properly, and the only means by which the profession can be made sufficiently popular to attract the requisite numbers of the class of men necessary for the duties it entails. And not only do the disabilities under which the engineers labour render the profession unattractive to people outside, but they also handicap the officers themselves to a dangerous and un- warrantable extent in the execution of their duties. The most important of these disabilities is the want of executive control in their own department. By "executive duty" in the Service is meant the management and ordering of bodies of men, and by "executive authority" is meant the power of punishing offences and of rewarding merit necessary for performing this duty. Now the engineers have the ordering of a number of men amount- ing in some cases to one-third of the whole ship's com- pany, and on the immediate and implicit obedience to their orders depend the steaming powers of the ship. Yet the Admiralty out of sheer prejudice and jealousy for the supposed prestige of the executive branch have per- sistently and strenuously denied them this authority. The engineers have no representative on the Board of the Admiralty, which is practically a committee of Admirals, and so this unheard-of state of affairs continues to the imminent danger of the country. What does this mean ? It means that in peace time the engineer officers are dependent mainly on their own tact and the goodwill of their men to get their orders carried out at all. Bat what will it be in war? Picture for a moment the awful isolation of the engine-room when all the heavy steel hatches and gratings of the armour deck are shut down, and the only communication with executive authority is by voice pipes and telegraphs, through which the barest orders can but with difficulty be understood amid the roar of machinery and the ter- rific pandemonium of wholesale modern gun-fire. There stands the fleet engineer alone with anything up to three hundred men who have not been brought up from their early youth to the instinctive habits of discipline, and whose adult training in the Service has all tended to demon- strate to them that his authority over them is simply a delusion and a sham. Everything depends on prompt obedience to his orders under what has been well described as "annihilating conditions." After human ingenuity and science have had their last word, the ultimate limit is in the muscle and endurance of the men who attend the fires with shovel and slicing iron until they drop. What does it avail him then to tell the Captain, " We can do no more; we are going full speed" ? We all know what will be the answer,— " D— your full speed; go on faster ! " And how is he to make those panting, sweating wretches face again with redoubled vigour the horrible, blinding glare of the furnaces at full blast ? There is hardly a stoker in the Navy but thinks he knows better than his officer bow a fire ought to be managed, and worse still, will argue the point with him, and how is he to teach the instant obedience then that they never learnt in time of peace? There is only one way. The engineers will have to go below with loaded revolvers, and let the consequences take care of themselves. And this in the Navy of civilised England, because the Admiralty are afraid of the prestige of their own branch being encroached upon. In the day of battle that authority will have to be there somehow, but woe betide the nation if it arrives too late. And, after all, what would the concession amount to 12 At present all grave offences are dealt with by the Captain of the ship. No one wishes to alter that. To quote a letter published in the Xaral and Military Record: " Punishment is the basis of a."1 discipline, and good discipline depends not so much on the punishment of graver offences (which must always be dealt with by the Captain as heretofore), but on the fact that every minor offence should systemati- cally and impartially meet with its appropriate punish- ment, due allowance, of course, being made for circumstances." The power of dealing with these minor offences is vested in the "second-in-command" or "senior executive" officer. With regard to matters outside the engine-room department any maladministration of justice reflects badly on the dis- cipline and smartness of the ship for which he is personally responsible. Bat, to quote again the above letter, " if a stoker is brought up for inattention to duty in a small matter (and, mark you, a very small inattention on the stoker's part may cost the Chief Engineer his billet or his reputation), the second-in-command has no responsibility in the matter what- ever, and if be lets the man off he deliberately betrays the interests of the Chief Engineer." Add to this the fact that the senior executive is absolutely incompetent to decide the merits of a purely technical case, and the hopeless anomaly of the situation is patent to all. This control over their own department is what the engineers require in order to carry out their duties, but to make it effective and complete it is absolutely essential that it shall carry with it the out- ward and visible signs and symbols of authority which appeal most strongly to the men under them,—namely, the military rank and title, and the distinctive marks on the uniform which advertise at a hundred yards' dis- tance to the naked eye whether the wearer can command absolute or only optional obedience from his subordi- nates. To say that the naval engineers are civilians and non-combatants is simple rubbish on the face of it. It is more absurd to deny them the military title than it would be to deny it to the Royal Engineers, for it is possible to have a land engagement without the latter, but no naval engage- ment can ever take place without the former. As to the relative rank accorded to the naval engineer, it means nothing at all, for what is Service rank but military status? To say that an engineer has relative rank of Lieutenant exactly amounts to saying : "If this individual were a ' real' officer he would be entitled to the same respect and consideration as is accorded to a Lieutenant ; but he isn't." The very word "officer" implies executive control. From a glance at the statistics of the subject, such as may be gained from an article entitled " With But After" in the April Fortm.glitly .Review, it will be seen that on an average every executive officer has charge of thirteen men, and every engineer officer of twenty-seven men. That is to say, the engineer in working hours does twice as much executive duty. The total cost to the country of training the engineer is one-third of the cost of training the executive. The recompense for this is that in the executive branch one in ten is a Captain, and one in twenty-eight is an Admiral, while in the engineering branch one in forty-five is (relatively) a Captain, and one in nine hundred, or only one (relatively), an Admiral. The Naval Estimates for the present year provide for certain improve- ments in the status of the engineering branch, but as a matter of fact these amount to very little. There has been a slight improvement in the pay of some grades, and the removal of the long-standing grievance of ranking " with but after " the junior executives, which amounted to nothing less than a gratuitous insult to the profession ; but the reform will have to be far more radical than what mere tinkering can effect. The engineers ask but little more for them- selves, but they have the interests of the Service and of the country keenly at heart. The foregoing are some of the causes which drive away would-be competitors outside, but the country at least requires that those in the profession should be able to discharge their duties properly and without the disheartening knowledge that their best efforts are neutralised. This is one of the greatest weaknesses of the Navy, an infirmity which is every day undermining more and more the power of the Fleet, and which, if allowed to con- tinue, must inevitably end in national disaster. Is this language extravagant and hysterical ? What about South Africa! Who would have dreamt that two puny little Dutch Republics could hurl defiance at the military power of England! Absurd ! But they have done it, as we know to our coat in money and blood. And is it so far-fetched and fanciful to contemplate the possibility of a combination of two mighty European Powers being too strong for us at sea, —Powers whose aim and object would not be to establish an undesirable independence of their own, but who would, if successful, be satisfied with nothing less than the absolute annihilation of British supremacy and national existence. While there is yet time, let Englishmen look carefully into the organisation of their vaunted first line of defence, not resting complacently on official statements, but examining the matter for themselves and below the surface, and perhaps they may discover some weaknesses that will surprise them. The deadlock of the naval engineers is one of them.—I am,
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