The new shipbuilding programme provides for the laying down of
two battleships, six first-class armoured cruisers, one
second-class cruiser (improved 'Hermes '), two twin-screw sloops, two light-draught gunboats, two torpedo-boats ; and the total list of ships under construction in the year stands at seventeen battleships, twenty armoured cruisers, one first- class protected cruiser, one third-class cruiser, eight sloops, two light-draught gunboats, four torpedo-boats, twenty-one torpedo-boat destroyers, one Royal yacht. It should be noted that the Government propose, on the completion of the official trials of the 'Viper' (fitted with Parsons's turbine engines), "to make exhaustive experiments with her, as great importance attaches to this novel system of propulsion," while with regard to boilers, no fewer than four different types of the water-tube system are now concurrently em- ployed. The estimated expenditure on new construction for the coming year, exclusive of establishment charges, is less by R395,335 than the sum voted for the same purpose in the present year, the figures being f.:8 160,146, against £8,855,181 for 1899-1900, but it is larger by £1,131,179 than the antici- pated actual expenditure for this year—viz., £7,328 967—and if this larger sum should be spent in 1900-1901, it will repre- eent an expenditure larger by more than a million than has ever yet been reached.
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