There should be added for the general public the caution that the
difficulties, the imperfections, and the frequent halting state of
ships-of-war in commission for sea service at the present day are no
new things. To the naval historian familiar with the correspondence of
the past they are the inevitable attendants of all government action,
wherein the most economical methods are always dominated, historically,
by considerations of expediency which are political in character. The
necessity of keeping the public in good-humor, and of not laying open
points upon which opposition can enlarge, induces apparent economies,
which sacrifice not only economy, but the best results. This is a
great evil, as yet apparently inseparable from public enterprises as
distinguished from private ones. If any one supposes that the ships
with which Great Britain overthrew Napoleon, and with which Nelson
and his contemporaries won their as yet unparalleled victories, were
always or generally in good material condition, he is greatly mistaken.
What is different in our day, apparently, is a tendency in ships to
rely for their repairs and material efficiency more upon dock-yards
and workshops than upon their own resources, a disposition also to be
unduly discouraged by imperfections in the motive enginery. War will
correct this or war will fail. In maintaining efficiency while keeping
the sea, quite as much as in fighting skill, lay the supreme excellence
of officers like Nelson and Jervis. Men now ought to appreciate better
than they do what difficulties of this sort seamen underwent a hundred
years ago and how they refused to yield to them. “The difference
between myself and the French marshals,” the Duke of Wellington is
reported to have said, “was as when a man starts on a journey with a
new harness. What if something gives way, as in war something is sure
to go wrong? Shall you stop or go back for a workman? Not so; hitch up
the break with a bit of rope, or whatever comes handy, and go on. That
is what I did.”
The succession of cause and effect which has produced the present
ship-of-war will be traced in rapid outline, in order to leave as much
room as may be for the description of the essential feature of the ship
herself as she now exists.
Two chief factors concur to a ship-of-war—motive power and fighting
power. The displacement of sails by engines, and the progressive
development of the latter, are features of the general progress of the
century. The engines of a ship-of-war are differentiated from those of
merchant ships chiefly by the necessity of protection. This affects
their design, which must be subordinated to the requirement of being as
far as possible below the water-line. The further great protection now
afforded is incident rather to the use and development of armor as a
part of the fighting power.
Fighting power divides into offensive and defensive. Armor now
represents the latter. The fighting ship in every age is the product
of the race between the two, and in the nineteenth century this was
unprecedented in the ground covered and in the rapidity of the pace,
due to the increased power of dealing with materials, already alluded
to.