The Changing Navy
Reminiscences of a Naval Surgeon. By Surgeon Rear-Com- mander T. T. Jeans, C.M.G. (Sampson Low. 18s.) THERE is nothing thrilling or remarkable about these two books. But between them they throw a very interesting light upon life in the British Navy during half a century. Mr. Riley's record opens with the year .1872, and cloies, except for a postscript on his service as a reservist in the Great War, in 1895. Rear-Admiral Jeans first put to sea in 1894, and his story carries us on to his recent retirement.
The zest with which Mr. Riley started his career seems never to have deserted him. His book irradiates cheerfulness. This makes it pleasant reading, but the author makes so light of the hardships he had to endure, when the Navy was still under sail, that only when the author allows the bare facts about routine and diet to speak for themselves does one realize how Spartan was the regiMe under which he was trained. There are few dramatic events in this chronicle. He saw practically no fighting, and the worst calamity of which he was an eye-witness was the sinking of the Victoria' in 1893. It is for its picture of normal domestic life in the Navy of bygone days that his book should be read.
Rear-Admiral Jeans's period of service as a naval surgeon tell of more troublous and exciting times. During his first voyage in the East he had opportunities of studying the Russian Fleet and of meeting some of its commanders. This was some years before the Russo-Japanese War, which,
however, was then regarded in naval circles as inevitable. He was impressed with the Russian ships, but a fact which boded ill for their success in the coming struggle was the lack of co-ordination between their officers, due to differences of caste, and the drunken habits which seemed to characterize most of them. At the same time the author admits that he did not credit the Japanese with the fighting efficiency which they were to manifest at sea. In 1899 Rear-Admiral Jeans was present at the manoeuvres of our own Fleet in Torbay; and he draws an amusing picture of the ships that " embodied the changing designs of very nearly thirty years of naval progress and made an interesting collection of antiques.". With all their motley array of different guns, he says; " efficient gunnery was entirely out of the question, even if it had been seriously contemplated."
The author's chapters on the Gallipoli campaign will provoke discussion. He saw much of that tragedy at close quarters, and, after giving us some vivid descriptions of the scenes he witnessed, he expresses some strong opinions on an undertaking that was conceived in such a manner as to render failure " inevitable." He concludes with some general reflections upon present conditions in the Navy; and deplores, in particular, the cramping effects of their training on the minds of midshipmen, who, having their various " manuals " as the " only one source of their pro- fessional instruction," find " no scope for higher mental development." His criticisms, however, are made in a friendly and constructive spirit, and should receive attention.
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