CHAPTER XL

STEAM RESERVE

In the days of the sailing Navy, when an accident occurred, the captain knew every method by which it could be repaired, and gave directions exactly how the work was to be done. He was not necessarily able to do the work with his own hands (although I know at least one captain who could); but (what was more important) he knew how it ought to be done. Should a topsail-yard carry away, for instance, the captain would know whether to have it sawn in half longitudinally and the halves reversed; or to cut out the damaged piece and replace it with a new piece woolded on and wedged; or to fish the yard.

There was once a captain on the China station who asked the Admiralty for a baulk of timber, because his main-yard had carried away; whereupon the Admiralty officially desired to be officially informed who had carried it away, where to, and why.

In the steam Navy, it is equally necessary that a captain should be acquainted with the various methods of handling material and machinery, in order that he may be able to direct the trained artificer. One case among many which fell under my own observation illustrates the point. A cylinder having cracked, the engineer officer proposed to drill the holes for the bolts securing strengthening pieces in a row; when it was shown to him that the result would be to make the cylinder, like a sheet of postage-stamps, liable to tear; but that if he set his holes in an in-and-out pattern he would avoid that weakness. As the captain, so the {393} admiral. Every admiral in command of a fleet should be competent to direct the execution of even the smallest repairs; for upon what seems a trifling detail may depend the safety of the ship.

Such, at least, were the considerations that induced me to apply for a dockyard appointment. And upon the 15th July, 1893, I was appointed captain of the Steam Reserve at Chatham Dockyard, under the command of Rear-Admiral George D. Morant, flying his flag in the _Algiers_, guardship of Reserve. Rear-Admiral Morant (now Admiral Sir G. D. Morant, K.C.B.) was a first-rate officer, of indefatigable energy, an excellent administrator, and a most charming chief.

All vessels under construction and repair were under the admiral-superintendent; I was his executive officer; and the object of appointing a sea-going officer was that details of construction should be tested in accordance with the use to which they would be put at sea. Let us say, for instance, that two ships were under construction, one which was 43 feet in the beam, and the other 65 feet. Awning stanchions of the same size were fitted to both ships; and when the awning was rigged in the larger vessel, the stanchions came home. Another advantage of sea-going knowledge was impressed upon me while I was in the _Thunderer_. She had some forty or fifty deck-plates, covering valves and ventilating shafts. The deck-plates and shafts were of various sizes, involving the use of a large number of spanners to fit them. These took up space and added an unnecessary weight. A seaman would have made a standard pattern with one or two spanners to fit the whole number.

It was my duty to take command in all steam trials of vessels, and tests of appliances and machinery, and to compare all work with its specification.

During 1893-4, the _Magnificent_ was being built by Chatham in rivalry of Portsmouth, which was building her sister battleship the _Majestic_. It was becoming a close thing, when the _Magnificent_ received from the manufacturers {394} a lot of armour plates, which might have gone to the _Majestic_, and which enabled us to gain a lead. The _Magnificent_ was launched by the Countess Spencer, in December, 1894. The ship was built in thirteen months from the date of laying the keel-plate; an achievement for which high credit was due to the chief constructor, Mr. J. A. Yates, and to the constructors, Mr. H. Cock and Mr. W. H. Card.

When I took the _Magnificent_ upon her trials, Lord Wolseley, Colonel Brabazon, and Mr. Baird, American Ambassador, accompanied me as guests. We returned from the Nore in a torpedo-boat, at full speed, in the dark. In those days there were no lights in the Medway; and we jumped the spit. Lord Wolseley inquired if "we always took short cuts across the land."

When a new ship was completed by the Royal Dockyards, the task of cleaning her and completing arrangements in detail was performed by working parties, which usually consisted of pensioners. The principle was that when she was taken over from the Dockyard authorities to be commissioned, she should be ready for sea. In the case of the _Magnificent_, for instance, when Lord Walter Kerr hoisted his flag in her, in December, 1895, she was absolutely complete in every detail: decks spotless, store-rooms labelled, hammock-hooks numbered: there was nothing for officers and men to do but to find their quarters.

An instance of the necessity of testing appliances according to sea requirements occurred when I was testing capstans. The ships were taken into deep water, so that the whole length of the cable was run out by the time the anchor touched bottom; and it was then discovered that the capstan was too weak to lift the amount of vertical chain specified.

When I was trying a torpedo-boat at full speed, the helm suddenly jammed, and the boat instantly went out of control in the neighbourhood of a number of trawlers. Luckily, she went round and round in a circle until she was stopped. {395} She did not hit a trawler; but it was a very lively minute or two.

A party of us went to a ball at Sheerness, going thither in a tug; and intending to return the same night, we left the house at about one o'clock. There was a thick fog, and the captain of the tug declined to start. As I made it a rule to sleep in my own quarters at Chatham if I possibly could, I said I would take the tug back. As there were no lights, I found the channel by the simple method of hitting its banks; and cannoning off and on all the way, we made the passage.

In November, 1892, the _Howe_ battleship had struck upon an uncharted rock in Ferrol harbour; and Rear-Admiral Edward Seymour (now Admiral of the Fleet Sir E. H. Seymour, G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O.) was appointed to inspect the salvage operations. These occupied nearly five months. Sir Edward gives a brief but interesting account of the work in his book, _My Naval Career_. After the _Howe_ had been floated, she was dry-docked at Ferrol, where she remained for nearly two months, while temporary repairs were being effected. When she struck the rock, her port side forward was stove in for nearly half her length, and her after part remained resting on a "rocky shoal of hard granite." Sir Edward Seymour says "that after the ship was got into dock at Ferrol, I could stand on a temporary flooring where the bottom of the ship used to be, and holding one hand over my head could not touch where the ship's bottom plates had been driven up to." He adds that "the mud, slime and dirt covering everything as the water was cleared from below, and the bad smell were almost beyond belief."

We at Chatham could confirm the observation; for it was to Chatham that the _Howe_ returned to be repaired. When she arrived, she was still coated with stinking mud, and we did our best to clean her. But notwithstanding our utmost diligence, a minute quantity of this virulent slime was afterwards found under the rolling-plate of the turrets. {396} The men who slung their hammocks near the turrets fell sick of fever; and its origin was traced to the mud.

The salving of a vessel so badly injured was a fine achievement. Sir Edward Seymour brought her to Sheerness under her own steam at eight knots. We dealt with her for a few months, until she was all a-taunto again, when she was re-commissioned and went to the Mediterranean.

It is the duty of a captain of the Dockyard Reserve to make representations, through the admiral-superintendent, to the Admiralty, with regard to improvements in construction and material. My suggestions concerning water-tight doors in ships were subsequently embodied in a paper read before the Institution of Naval Architects. In the design of the first ironclads, the vessels were actually divided into water-tight compartments by bulkheads without doors or apertures. In later designs, numerous doors were cut in the bulkheads for the sake of convenience of access, which, together with the many ventilating shafts and valves, in effect nullified the system of dividing a vessel into water-tight sections. The doors themselves were hung on hinges and closed with hanks and wedges; an inefficient method. My suggestions, which were afterwards adopted, were that the number of doors should be greatly reduced; and that they should be vertical, and made to screw up and down; and that the ventilating shafts fitted with an automatic closing apparatus which did not work should be abolished.

Among other proposals were the substitution of ships' names, plainly lettered, for figure-heads and scroll-work, and the abolition of the ram. At that time, our men-of-war were built with unarmoured ends, only the protective steel deck extending the whole length and breadth of the ship. It followed that if the side of a hostile vessel were pierced by the long projecting ram of a British ship, the force of her impact would strip her bows of the light construction above the protective deck, and she would remain toggled in the enemy and helpless. Far more effective, if ramming is to {397} be done, would be the direct blow of a vertical bow. At the same time, I continued to represent the radical weakness of unarmoured ends.

In 1894, five years after the passing of the Naval Defence Act, and the elate at which the great Spencer shipbuilding programme, involving a large increase of officers and men, was begun, the serious deficiency in the personnel became manifest. The fact was, that the Naval Defence Act of 1889 had not included proper provision for manning the new ships as they came into commission; and just when the boys who ought to have been entered in 1889 would have become available as able seamen, it was discovered that they did not exist. But by that time, of course, the Government responsible for the deficiency was out of office, and, as usual, there was no one to be called to account.

In September, 1894, Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, who has performed so much invaluable service in educating the public to logical ideas upon organisation for war and problems of national defence, began to publish his excellent articles dealing with "The Command of the Sea," in which the demand for the institution of a Naval War Staff was formulated. It was for the purpose of enforcing this necessity that the Navy League was founded by "four average Englishmen" in December, 1894. Among its original supporters were Earl Roberts, V.C., Lord George Hamilton, Sir Charles Dilke, Sir John Puleston, the Master of Trinity House, Sir Charles Lawson, Mr. Joseph Cowen, Mr. Arnold-Forster, and myself.

It will be observed that the original aim of the Navy League was to ensure the fulfilment of the idea upon which the Intelligence Department was founded upon my representations in 1888. The Navy League subsequently added to itself other objects, which perhaps obscured its first purpose. The War Staff at the Admiralty was constituted in 1912, in accordance with the recommendations of the Beresford Inquiry of 1909.

In 1893, the year before the Navy League was founded, {398} and just previous to my appointment to Chatham, I publicly advocated the institution of a Council of Defence, under the presidency of a Minister, composed of the best admirals and generals. The project was afterwards carried into execution by Mr. Balfour; but its utility was vitiated by being framed to suit the ends of party politics.

In May, 1894, the U.S. cruiser _Chicago_ anchored off Gravesend; and at a banquet given to the American admiral and officers, I had the pleasure of renewing my old acquaintance with the American Navy, begun in 1882 at the bombardment of Alexandria. Admiral Erben flew his flag in the _Chicago_, and Captain Mahan was flag-captain.

It was a great pleasure to meet Captain Mahan (now Admiral Mahan), whose classic work on _The Influence of Sea Power upon History_ came to me while I was in command of the _Undaunted_, and concerning which, as before related, some correspondence had passed between us.

Captain Mahan and myself contributed articles to _The North American Review_ of November, 1894, on "The Possibilities of an Anglo-American Reunion." Captain Mahan, preferring to postpone the advocacy of a formal alliance between the two nations, looked forward to the development of such relations as would make it feasible; while I urged the conclusion of a defensive alliance for the protection of those common interests upon which depends the prosperity of the two countries. That the English-speaking nations should combine to preserve the peace of the world, has always seemed to me a reasonable aspiration, and I have said so in both countries when opportunity served.

In December, 1894, desiring to represent the interests of the Service in Parliament as soon as might be, I applied once more to the Admiralty to be permitted, according to precedent, to count my service in the Soudan campaign as time spent in the command of a ship of war; but the application was again refused. From many constituencies invitations to stand were sent to me; among them were {399} Stockport, North Kensington, Birkenhead, Liverpool, East Toxteth, Armagh, Dublin, Cardiff, Chatham, Devonport, Pembroke and Portsmouth.

In those days Mr. W. L. Wyllie (now R.A.) used to haunt the Medway and the Nore, boat-sailing and painting. He can handle a boat as well as he handles his brush; that is, to perfection. Mr. Wyllie gave me a boat which he had built with his own hands, I think out of biscuit boxes. I tried it in a basin at Chatham, accompanied by a warrant officer of the _Pembroke_. We were becalmed; a sudden puff came; and over we went. In memory of the disaster, I gave the warrant officer a pipe, the bowl of which was appropriately carved to represent a death's-head.

While I was at Chatham, my home was Park Gate House, Ham Common. Here I had a model farm, producing milk, eggs and poultry, which were readily sold in Richmond, whose streets and thoroughfares were greatly enlivened by the daily procession of my large and shining brass milk-cans. I was not in the sad case of Captain Edward Pellew (afterwards Lord Exmouth), who upon quitting the sea and taking a farm, in 1791, complained that the crops grew so slowly that they made his eyes ache.

During my absence a burglar entered the house. The butler, hearing a noise, rose from his bed, took a revolver, and sought for the intruder, who fled before him to the roof, whence he fell headlong through a skylight. He must have been a good deal cut, for he bled all over the place. The butler, following, also fell through the skylight; but, presumably falling through the same hole, was little damaged. Continuing the chase, he was brought up short by a wire entanglement previously set by the burglar for the butler's confusion. So he sat where he was, and continued to fire steadily in the direction he supposed the burglar to have gone, until his ammunition was all expended.

It may be interesting to recall that in September, 1893, Sir Augustus Harris was appointed manager of Drury Lane Opera House by the committee which was then organising {400} the opera in this country. I urged his selection on account of his great administrative ability; and prevailed over the objection that he was only skilled in pantomime.

The committee had been formed to improve the opera, which was then performed at three different theatres: Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and Her Majesty's; so that the available talent was scattered. Sir Augustus Harris combined the three into one at Drury Lane.

In October, 1895, occurred the death of my brother, Lord Waterford, at the age of fifty-one. He had been for long completely disabled by a bad accident in the hunting field; and although his sufferings were constant and acute, he continued staunchly to discharge his many duties to the end. He was succeeded in the marquisate by his son.

My appointment at Chatham terminated in March, 1896; and a few days later I delivered at Birmingham an address dealing with the requirements of naval defence.

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