"In design," said Mr. Goschen in describing these smaller cruisers to the House of Commons, "Sir William White, the chief constructor, has endeavoured to solve the problem of armoured cruisers of a very high rate of speed and of moderate dimensions. The designs have also been made out with careful consideration for the type of vessel the new ships may have to meet. Their length is 400 feet, breadth 66 feet, mean draught 24 feet, displacement 9,800 tons, speed in natural draught 23 knots, and indicated horse-power 22,000. They are to have 14 6-inch quick-firing guns, 4 in turrets and 10 in casemates, and 10 12-pounder quick-firing guns. The 6-inch guns will be of the latest type. In laying down these ships we have been simply following the plan I have indicated throughout of not exceeding the standard which we consider we ought to maintain at all events of meeting what has been done by other Powers." Seven new ships were authorized by the House of Commons in 1899. Two of these are to be battleships, two armoured cruisers of 9,800 tons displacement, and three cruisers of a smaller class; so that, including the seventeen new ships now in hand and the seven additional ones sanctioned by the House of Commons, work will be proceeding on twenty-four new British war vessels-all sanctioned by the House of Commons in 1898 and 1899-before next year's CANADIAN ALMANAC is published. The House of Commons in 1899 also voted money for an increase of 4,250 men and boys-an increase which in the year 1899-1900 will bring the strength of the navy up to 110,640, including 6,500 boys under training. The total vote for the naval services for the year was £26,594,000, an increase of £2,816,100 on the vote for 1898-99. Works, buildings and repairs at home and abroad Sec'd-class Battleships 11 10 10 23 16 16 33 14 15 17 1 1 3 4 11 795,100 650,100 Miscellaneous effective services ... Admiralty Offices.. 145,000 15,300 The extraordinary development of the British Navy 13,900 during the last quarter of a century, was well told in a Total effective services 24,302,000 21,549,800 2,752,200 reminiscence to which Mr. Goschen treated the House of Commons on March 10th, 1898, when as First Lord of the Admiralty in the Salisbury Government, he introduced the Navy Estimates for 1898-99. In the Glad22,200 stone Government of 1868-74, Mr. Goschen held the same office that he now holds in the existing Unionist Government. "To show the enormous advance which has been 33,100 made," he said in introducing the Estimates for 1898-99, "let me give one glimpse into the rather distant past. 8,600 In 1872 I stood at this table as First Lord of the Admiralty, and I proposed Estimates of which the total was 63,900 £9,500,000. To-day I ask for £23,000,000. Then I asked for 61,000 men and boys. To-day I ask for 106,000 men and boys. Then I asked for money to commission 124 fighting ships. To-day I ask for money to commission 258 fighting ships. Let me say," continued Mr. Goschen, "how matters stood only 10 years ago. Then we had 139 fighting ships in commission, and 24,800 men. To-day we have 238 fighting ships in commission, and 50,000 men-that is to say, we have in commission ships holding twice the number of crews which they held only ten years ago.' 26,594,500 23,778,400 2,816,100 .£2,816,100 In justifying these increases, and particularly those under the heading of contract work, which has reference to the ships in building in private shipyards, Mr. Goschen cited the shipbuilding now going on in other countries, including the United States-a country which he named as now one of the six great naval powers. In these countries he had ascertained that 685,000 tons of war tonnage was in building in 1899, and that 225,000 additional tons were projected. "Looking at the shipbuilding all over the world, and looking at our position, is it," he asked, "fair to say that the increase in the estimates The policy on which the Government is proceeding in making these vast additions of the last four years—the policy to which Mr. Goschen briefly adverted in his speech of March 9th, 1899, from which some extracts have been given, was explained in greater detail when Mr. Goschen submitted the supplementary programme of 1898 to the House of Commons in July of that year. "It seems," he then said, "to be considered that we act on no system in regard to the numbers of ships of different classes we construct, and that we have no strategic plans to put in force if war should break out. I do not know on what fact these views are founded except the fact that we do not talk about our schemes or about the system we adopt. Standing here as a Minister, I can assure the House that the distribution of our cruisers, for instance, has been carefully considered as regards every trade route and every route by which our food supplies arrive. There is no haphazard in regard to the number of cruisers or the class of cruisers we build. We must modify our plans occasionally as we see fresh elements enter into the situation, but there is a system, and we act on that system. Every day new features enter into strategic considerations. The balance of power varies and new fleets are created. The fleet of Japan has become a new factor in the strategic considerations of the world generally, as has the development now being witnessed in Germany. All and in Australia the stations are on King George's Sound and on Thursday Island. Nearly all the stations are on islands, and are well defended. Gibraltar and Malta are regarded by naval experts as the only coaling stations liable to serious attack, and they are so open to attack because both of them are within easy distance of European ports. Both of them, however, have exceptionally powerful defences. There have been large increases in recent years in the forces for manning the British ships of war. The increase for 1897-98 was 6,300; for 1898-99 it was 6,340; and for 1899-1900, 4,250. The last increase brought the total number of officers and men up to 110,640. In 1897, when asking for the increase of 6,300 men, Mr. Goschen assured the House of Commons that it was not the intention of the Admiralty to carry the maximum strength of the active naval force beyond 110,000 men. such things must necessarily occasionally modify our action, but at the same time we do not wish merely to say that we must ask for a few more ships in order to satisfy the public demand without knowing precisely why we ask for them or what we have in view in making our demands." In respect to coaling stations, as in respect to the size of the fleet, Great Britain is admittedly without a rival. On the trade route from England to the East, by way of the Suez Canal, Great Britain has coaling stations at Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Ceylon, Singapore, Wei-hai-wei and Hong Kong. On the older route to the East, by way of the Cape, there are British coaling stations at Sierra Leone, St. Helena, Capetown, Mauritius. In the West Indies the coaling stations are at Port Castries on the Island of St. Lucia, and at Port Royal, Jamaica. Ber. muda and Halifax are the coaling stations in the North Atlantic. Esquimalt is the station for the North Pacific; Ships which come into service after the maximum stated by Mr. Goschen has been reached, are, according to present intentions, to take the place of reserves, or replace older vessels which may have become obsolete. Like the English Army, the Navy is manned by volunteers, and there is no compulsory service in connection with it. A large proportion of the seamen enter the service as boys. They are accepted for training ships up to the age of eighteen, and when a boy reaches the age of eighteen his term of actual service in the Navy begins, and must last for at least twelve years. To be accepted for a training ship, a boy between the age of fifteen and fifteen and a half must be five feet and half an inch in height, with a chest measurement of thirty and a half inches. The height measurement is made without shoes. If accepted when between fifteen and a half and sixteen, a boy must be five feet and one and a half inches in height, and thirty-one inches round the chest. Between sixteen and sixteen and a half, a boy | between 19 and 30 years of age engaged in the coasting must be five feet two and a half inches in height, and thirty-one and a half inches round the chest. The pay of seamen ranges from one shilling and three pence a day for ordinary seamen, to nine shillings a day for chief gunners and boatswains. Men who have put in nine years service in the Navy can pass into the Coast Guard Service. Those who stay in the Navy for a period of twenty-two years become entitled to pensions. The amount of pension is from eighteen pounds a year, upwards, according to the rating on retiring from the service. The average pension for men of all ranks is thirty-one pounds a year. There are now about 27,500 men in the Naval Reserve. The seamen of this force receive about twelve pounds a year from the Government, and put in thirty days a year of training. The days can be put in, one or two or three at a time, at the convenience of the seamen ; and usually they are put in between voyages or trips, as there is a Naval Reserve ship at every important port in Great Britain. Within the last year or so the Admiralty has sought to make the Naval Reserve more attractive, and, in particular, it is now offering special inducements to men or fishing trade, or employed on yachts. These men on first joining the reserve undergo a preliminary training which lasts for six months. Naval pensioners draw their pay subject to rejoining the service in case of need; and at the Admiralty these pensioners, to quote Mr. Goschen's appreciation of them, are regarded as of "incalculable value in stiffening a newly-drilled crew." As with many seamen in the Royal Navy, service for pension begins at 18 years of age, there is always a large proportion of pensioners who are in middle life. For the work of the British Navy the world is divided out into nine stations. "Except for the small squadron France keeps off Newfoundland, and for the fleets of the States of the American Continents, we alone," said Mr. Goschen, in describing the naval stations in his speech of March 10th, 1898, "have squadrons where other nations have isolated ships. When we have to reinforce our foreign squadrons we send out fullymanned and fully-commissioned men-of-war, so that at all times, besides our squadrons, we have traversing the seas a certain number of ships in commission, ready for war, if war should occur, at any moment." |