Show A OFT OUR IVA R 3 ik 1 4 U 0 ah aa af ocer i 1 R 44 lff TO ME J CRA P P 0 keep a fighting navy up to date means a continual whirligig whirl a gig performance for mance of building new warships on the one hand and discarding ob solete or worn out ones on the other hand it Is not that a nation Is lim cited to just so many vessels in its fleets or that it has just so much room so to speak in which to store these sea dogs of war so that some old vessels must be turned out of house and home to make room for newcomers when the latter are corn com plated by the shipbuilders and ready to take their places in the naval family on the contrary any world power would be only too glad to keep all its old ships even though constantly adding to the col lection if it these older warships did not so corn com plemely outgrow their usefulness As a matter of fact few people appreciate hov ho v quickly such an armor clad daei become obsolete one of these massive flating fortresses con strutted ted in the staunch st manner of iron and steel and requiring two three or tour four years to build looks as though it ought to stand the wear ind tear of wind and wave rave far f centuries yet ye t as a matter of fact it Is out of date in I 1 0 I 1 0 i t 0 i I 1 f j v Rc 57 R W M the graveyard this exception Is the texas and berh perhaps officials officials were all the more ready to gat apa tIt TWy she was a A hoodoo ship readers will remember that she did not behave any too well during the spanish american war and since then she has been afflicted with such a steady run nin ot of ill luck that tha t many ot of the blue jackets grew superstitions about venturing to sea in her thereupon she was made a station ship at a havy navy yard and now within the past few weeks the navy department has decided that she Is truly useless and she will be used as a target in this function she may be ot of more benefit to the navy though indirectly than she ever was during her active t X tj A idt LIP aft 77 ekr K 1 ra j ka aa A TARGET r r the brief space of a decade or two not worn out to be sure in the literal sense of the word but so out of date that it Is not very serviceable just as Is a woman s gown made in the fashion of several years ago it Is appalling to people who think that a house or a wagon or carriage or a piano wears out more quickly than it ought to realize how much more rapidly proportionately an all metal warship built to withstand an enemy s shot and thell shell will outlive its usefulness without ever having fired a hostile shot or beep amade the tar get of an enemy s gun and the worst of it at least from the standpoint of the people who think that altogether too much money Is being spelt tor for death dealing paraphernalia Is that the active life of the average warship appears to be steade y growing shorter time was not so very long ago when the active life of a war ship was as supposed to be at least twenty years but so rapidly do fashions in war craft change in this effete twentieth century that the busy career of a fighting craft Is now much shorter than a score of years partly because of these tendencies to short life on the part of warships and partly because he has come to be the owner of the second larg est navy in the world uncle sam has been mighty busy this past year or two revising his category ot of warships he has been weeding them out right and left if such a term may be used it Is I 1 customary to say in the popular form of expression that uncle sam has been belling selling out his worn out warships and yet strictly speaking that hardly expresses the sit aft nation for one thing the ships are not liter ally worn out as has been explained above and hen again the government has not been selling out in all instances indeed in the case of some of the obsolete ships put up at auction the bids received have been so low that indignant naval officers have been wont to remark that tie vie navy department has been giving away its has beens in not a few instances the govern ment sometimes because no outsider would pay a rational price has bas been driven to using its old warships in ways never anticipated when the ships etro bialt b lilt but whatever the exact mode of disposition the significance Is the same the obsolete vessel Is considered as junk even though it still be capable of usefulness in a small way when it was announced last year that the powers that be at the naval headquarters had designated some 50 00 worth of warships to be sent to the scrap heap there were gasps of astonishment from good folk all over the land who had thought that when we built a warship we made a perma nent investment yet that shock Is likely to have frequent repetition indeed it looks as though the discards every calendar year would reach or exceed the fifty million mark on the basis of original cost the year 1911 is not very old and yet it has brought tidings of the pros compulsory retirement of a number of costly ships some of them completed only a few years ago and supposed to embody all the lessons we learned during the spanish american war every merchant knows that it Is not good pol icy to hold on to dead stock simply because he paid out good money for it once upon a time and so uncle sam Is following an approved busl bust ness principle in this scheme of taking frequent inventory of his naval possessions the plan of actually getting rid of surplus craft came about through the sale as junk a few years ago of the last of the old civil war monitors these brought fair prices better proportionately than have been bid for some vessels less ancient then all of a sudden with the appearance of the brit ish battleship dreadnought Dread naught there was anex ushered in the present era of the all big gun ships an era that in effect brought to an untimely close many promising careers in warship dom cut short in other words the use falness of a number of unarmored and lightly armored craft that might have continued in the vocation for which they were built for many years yet had it not been tor for this new fad for the heavily armored sea warrior battleships are according to present ideas the longest lived of all warships of the more than thirty heavyweights of the naval fighting force which have been constructed by the united states only one has as yet been condemned to career it Is most essential for the planning of the bat ties of the future that our naval experts shall know in advance just how modern high explosives when fired from rom present day guns of the heaviest class will act when they encounter the res resist ance of the armor on a bat tests with such armor set up as a target on shore do not give exactly the same conditions that would obtain in a fight at sea the discarded texas however anchored to re belve gun fire just as though ste were a hostile battle ship will give the naval foresee just what Is sharps a chance to happen in naval battle ot of the future and to lay their plans accordingly while out battleships even though some of them were built full twenty years ago continue in fash ion ton a very different fate has befallen the ste steel el monitors which once ranked next to battleships eshi Ps in the estimation of our naval authorities and everybody else uncle sam had nearly a dozen of these armored monitors a distinctive yankee in bention that originated during the civil war but they have all been sold off or relegated to agnoni duty this fate has even befallen the ne vada the florida later the tallahassee and the others of the quartette of modern monitors which were constructed tor for coast defense only a little more than a decade ago and cost a million and a half dollars each an immense collection of war kilps that Is rap idly passing Is that made up of cruisers such as the boston marblehead detroit and a score of others some of these have already been retired from service while others are yet employed for keeping peace in li central america and tor for patrol work particularly in shallow waters where the bat tie tle ships can not readily find anchorage however they have neither the speed nor the armor to enable them to take a hand in up to date warfare on the seas as it would be conducted in this day and generation by any up to date power and so gradually they will have to give way the same Is truo true of some of the gunboats built long ago though not a few of them are yet adapted to patrol duty where there Is no danger of heavy fighting and as tor for our pioneer torpedo boats why they are so far outclassed that the battleship fleet has been using them up one by one for several years past as targets during the semi annual target practice since the navy department found that adequate bids cannot be obtained for many of the vessels w which it Is discarding but which are perfectly ser vi ceable in so far as seaworthiness Is concerned it has been considering the suggestion made by a number of congressmen gressmen coc that these vessels be turned over to the naval militia of the various states tor for use as training ships or practice ships vessels such as the cruisers charleston and st louis would be ideal for such purpose |