MANNING THE NAVY.
IF war were declared to-morrow, we should be obliged to leave twenty or thirty ships in harbour because we had not got the men to man them,—and ships, remember, powerful, efficient, and in every way serviceable, not mere old hulks and discarded experiments, but vessels of the kind which all the Admirals afloat would be clamouring to have added'to their squadrons. That this is fact and not mere conjecture, was abundantly proved by the Naval Manoeuvres of this year. The Admiralty laid their hands on every available man, relied on the Naval Reserve and the Coastguard, and sent ships to sea with crews far lighter than would have been possible in case of actual war. Yet in spite of all their efforts, our harbours were full of ships which could not be commissioned for want of men. If this was what happened in peace-time, what would happen in war P Then, every sort of vessel would rightly be got ready for emergencies and to fill gaps. But when they were ready they would be abso- lutely useless, because there would be no sailors to take them over, As the war went on, the evil would increase. The waste of men would be sure to be very great, but it would be impossible to counteract this waste with fresh supplies, for none would be available, and the Fleet would gradually shrink from lack of sailors. This being the case, of two things one. Either we must stop building ships and cut our Fleet according to our sailors, or else get more men. It is mere idiocy going on building ships, if you know that you will not be able to find crews for them. It would be far better to save the money or spend it on something else. But it has been agreed on all hands that we must have not fewer ships, but more ships. It is, then, absolutely essential that we should have more sailors. This is the fact that must be kept before the British public in season and out of season, and dinned into their ears till they attend to it. We are glad to find that the Pall Mall Gazette realises this. With admirable persistence it has brought and kept to the front the manning of the Navy, and the need for a stronger personnel. The work it is doing in the matter deserves the gratitude of all who care for the national safety. Into the question of exactly how many more men we want, we do not intend to enter on the present occasion. The experts seem to agree that to keep afloat the ships we have built and are building, at the very least 20,000 extra sailors and stokers would be required. The precise number is, however, not essential ; what is wanted, is some plan by which a large Naval Reserve may be created, a force answering to that which we now possess in the Army. We want, that is, some- thing which will give us what the French have got in their Inscription Maritime,—a power to call up a large number of trained sailors at short notice. The present Naval Reserve may be a useful body, but it does not give us anything approaching to this. It appears to us that the only possible way of obtaining what we want will be to adopt some form of short service,—at any rate, for a portion of our sailors,—to pass, that is, a large number a lads through the Navy, obtaining in exchange for their keep, pay, and training, a lien on them for the future. Why should we not, every year, enlist a large number of boys of fifteen or thereabouts for the Navy, train them as sailors till they were twenty-one, and then let them leave the national service and take to the mercan- tile marine, gubject, however, to remaining in the Reserve for twenty years, and being liable, in case of war, to be called on to re-enter the Navy ? To make this right-of. call secure, the sailors should receive a certain annual allowance, and be required to report themselves once a year for inspection, either in one of the home ports or else at some British Consulate abroad. If this inspection were coupled with the giving of the allowance, the men would be sure to appear. Provision could, of course, be easily made for the case of men at sea on Inspection day. The present arrangements for managing the Navy might be maintained in addition. The plan we propose would, however, give us in a certain number of years an Inscrip- tion, Maritirne,—a list of men who could be summoned to the Fleet in case of war. There need be no fear of not getting the boys. Fifteen is the age when the pressure on the boys to earn their daily bread is greatest. Their families are expecting them to begin to earn their own living, but at the same time they have not settled to a trade. Without doubt they could be secured in the requisite numbers without difficulty. Again, there is no fear that after their six years' training they would be thrown on the world and unable to find work. The good food and good training of a man-of-war would have made them efficient seamen, and the shipowners would be ex- ceedingly glad to obtain their services. When a man leaves the Army and goes into the Reserve, civil employ- merit is always something of a difficulty. The military training has not acted as a school for work at a trade. It is a very different thing in the case of the Navy. The life on the Queen's ship has taught the lad many of the things which he wants to know for his form of civil employ- ment,—work at sea. No doubt there is plenty to be learnt before a Bluejacket can become an expert member of the mercantile marine ; but the training has been all to the good. Again, there need be no fear of the shippers refusing to engage men placed in the position we have indicated because they might be suddenly called upon to re-enter the Navy. The moment war was declared, there would be hundreds of ships laid up and crews paid off, and the Admiralty could easily arrange to call upon these rather than the men actually at work. The Admiralty, again, could arrange not to summon men actually engaged in a voyage, and could give enough notice to employers to enable them to make other arrangements Unless and until things grew desperate, the Admiralty might easily work the reserve in such a way as not to inconvenience the shippers. Depend upon it, in practice no shipper would refuse to employ a sailor because in the remote chance of war he might be called on to join a Queen's ship. In all probability the shippers would be extremely eager to employ men who had been well taught and were thoroughly well disciplined.
Very possibly the crude plan we have put forth could be shown by the experts to be impracticable in this or that par- ticular. That does not matter. We merely want to insist that some plan can and ought to be devised under which a. large number of lads shall be every year trained as seamen and then passed into an English Inscription Maritime. They will be ordinary sailors in everything, except that their names will be on the Admiralty list, and they will be liable to serve in the Queen's Navy in case of war. By this plan both the Navy and the mercantile marine will benefit. The Navy will get an Inscription Maritime, and be at last in a position to man its ships adequately. The mer- cantile marine will secure an equal advantage. It will each year be recruited by a body of young men, who have been thoroughly trained in the duties of seamen. The Navy will, in fact, become a school for seamen. That will do a great deal to solve the problem of manning the ships of private owners with Englishmen. Let us hope that the able writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, who has several times hinted at some scheme of this kind, will work it out in detail. If a definite scheme for getting a call on the services of a large body of seamen in time of war were put before the country, and pressed on the Govern- ment, it would probably be successful. The public will hear reason if only it is put to them properly. Let no one say that it would be just as good to offer a large bounty and enlist seamen out of the merchant ships as they were needed. That plan would not be half as effica- cious as the Reserve scheme. And for this plain reason. The men of the Reserve would know a man-of-war's man's duties, and would, however rusty, become well- disciplined men in a month. The raw merchantman sailor would take twenty times as long to make a tolerable Bluejacket.
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