Show tie the olympia was admiral deleys deweys flagship at manila bay and the kaleigh also of the ma alla squadron was under command of capt jo coghlan of hoch der Kaiser fame the olympia la at the naval academy the brooklyn at the philadelphia yard and the raleigh at mare island the armored cruiser brooklyn built at phil adelphia in 1895 96 the largest of the vessels named she la of 9 tons displacement and was completed at a cost ol 01 the next largest of the four vessels Is the saratoga ex isea ork an armored cruiser of tons dis placement built at philadelphia in 1891 and cost ing almost as much as the brooklyn the clym pla la a second class cruiser built at ban fran cisco in the raleigh Is a third class cruiser built at at about the same time both are of the protected type some of the big armor are but recently out of commission or in reserve that means beaded tor davy jones s locker though as yet the marked down price tag has not been attached others instance the job lot of monitors would probably be at any price as floatable or fighting vessels admiral jack philips old battleship texas which bore the brunt of the fighting at santiago was the san marcos eo that her state name might be given to one of the new dreadnoughts then last spring the venerable nar horse was towed out nto chesapeake bay and bet up as a target tor the new hampshire big guns and dynamite shells to batter into scrap iron what a comedown from twenty tave years ago when the texas constructed at a cost of 4 was a beauty of the new squadron sampson s old flagship Is now the saratoga having surrendered her name to the newer new york she has been rebuilt at a cost of more than half a million dollars and Is now in the philippines the only one of the santiago lighters in actual commission today s famous brooklyn in her declining days reposes peacefully in the league island navy yard philadelphia the iowa fighting bob evana chip Is in reserve as are also the massachusetts the indiana and the bregon abe gallant battleship that captain dark brought half ay around the world in record time without a break r these and other good old timers are not yet all in by any means still they coulden couldn t hold their own in the fighting line with such husky youngsters as eay the connecticut or the north dakota today much less with the super dread nougat of the florida type of tomorrow therefore according to up to date standards they are in the obsolete when once gets there ae a rule the rest ie silence erea the proud atlantic fleet of 1907 that in december of that year sailed out of hampton roads on the famous around the world cruise the alabama illinois maine missouri ohio kearsarge kentucky biscon wiscon sin and new jer are out of the front line now some of them participated in the recent theoretical coast ma against new york and boston but they were technically sunk by the and torpedo boats for an example ot rapid tobogganing toboggan ing into desuetude look at the three stately protected cruisers st loula charleston and milwaukee which cost about 3 apiece when they were built in 1902 even then certain dick dead eyes of the navy declared that this type was obsolete before the cruiser triplets went into corn mission be that as it may at the present day these worth ot ceulers are generally regarded as three white ep hants which the navy Is bothered to know what to do with the monitors stand for a picturesque but ex pensive tad dating from the infancy days of iron in the civil war of fifty years ago when Erics sons email cheese boz on a raft in hampton roads put the confederate merrimac Merrl mac out of business and saved the nation it it were not for past performances prestige there would not be ten million dollars worth of monitors rusting in the rivers today four of these curios which have been within a decade into single turret coast defenders are the cheyenne once the wyoming the cozarte formerly the arkansas and the tallahasse and the tonopah To which used to be respectively the florida and the nevada when a special class craft Is tried out such for example as the vesuvius dynamite gunboat of nearly twenty years ago she eoon either goes to the lumber attic herself or else puts some other type in the obsolete class in either case uncle same scrap heap grows larger and more mascel laneous such Is the universal law ot naval evolution england france and germany are in this same naval junk business on a vast scale and italy and austria in a smaller way the excuse Is the general one of modern mill taoism chati competitive war preparation Is the price of peace from the financial viewpoint of the taxpayer the high cost of peace Is about the same as that of active hostilities at any rate the most recent practical lessons of war aro applied with marvelous results of progress to the world s navies and in no country Is this more strikingly exemplified than in the united states walter meriwether the well known naval authority has bbown in illustration of the development of gunnery since the spanish war in the target practice of united states war today the percentage of misses Is actually Bia aller than the percentage of hits was at san according to the authority the idea ol 01 the modern dreadnought or oriela eted in our own ny tw afore the first english dreadnought was put in commission american drawn plans for two such vessels tentatively called the feasible and the possible re posed in dusty pigeonholes in the navy depart ment at washington they were resurrected later in the light of developments abroad thirty alve seagoing battleships and dread noughts beginning with the indiana and oregon group laid down in 1891 and in eluding the new 8 dreadnoughts yolk and texas vet unborn may be said to con the main line of uncle sam s sea fight ers the other battleship groups and types in chronological are 2 iowa J kear earge and kentucky 4 alabama illinois wisconsin maine missouri and ohio 5 virginia rhode island new jersey georgia nebraska kansas connecticut louisiana vermont new hampshire shire minnesota mississippi and idaho after these beginning in 6 with the near dreadnoughts south carolina and michigan come the present dreadnought series north dakota delaware florida utah wyoming arkansas texas and new york in the meantime as demonstrated in the mimic battle of block island this summer the submarines have practically proved the battleships vulnerable therefore outclassed and obsolescent these maneuvers may be said to have borne out the prediction of a plank in the proposed plat form for the american party published in we desire that the american navy shall bo the most powerful and efficient in the world but we consider that new inventions have displaced or are about to displace the battleship cruiser torpedo boat and monitor and therefore hesitate to make further appropriations tor these types ot fighting craft conservative statesmen in the united states senate have denounced the vast appropriations for armored ships sums estimated in the aggregate at more than as a bad invest merit they have stigmatized the united baates navy as a lot of old tubs more dangerous to those on the inside than to those without even in england the day of the dreadnought Is beginning to decline while the submarine to say nothing of the war aeroplane Is yet in infancy at this rate ere long our congress may hear the cry of the armed peace advocates changing to millions for development f the diving boat not one cent more for dreadnoughts the naval men themselves are not slow to read the signs of coming change it may be only a question of a very few years when the general adoption of a 14 inch gun capa ble of shooting with accuracy at a distance of fifteen miles will revolutionize naval warfare such a gun la now in process of trying out and it proves a success it will make all abo coast defenses of today practically useless there is no doubt declares rear admiral francis bowles U 8 N retired that a fleet equipped with the new 14 inch gun of the latest type could raze new york or any other seaport in alesc than an hour it seems to foe that the answer to this problem of coast defense Is made by the submarine I 1 behave behove that th submarine Is going to be taken more seriously every year by neval experts it ie the most deadly enemy the |