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Show j 'ADMIRAL WATTS VIEW OF NAVY f v.' 45y& lilt 1 to&MifeafortiOa. Ti&$ "Ships we are going to build in the future will have even deeper drafts than thirty feet, and the depth of prominent harbors in the United States should be at least thirty-five feet," said Rear Admiral Watt, chief of the" naval bureau of construction and repair, In a statement to the house naval affairs committee. Admiral Watt 'was advocating a provision In the naval appropriation bill, which the committee soon will report to the house, to authorize a contract for use by the navy of private dry docks at Hunters point, San Francisco. Fran-cisco. Admiral Watt urged that this action was imperative. "With the opening of the Panama canal," he explained, "it is probable that our principal fleet will have periods of duty on the west coast. "This provision would permit the docking of the largest ships at Hunters Hunt-ers noint. instead of sending them to Seattle, 900 miles farther north. We cannot get the battleships to the Mare Island navy yard, and even though the channel were deep enough to send them to the yard, the present docks there would not take ten of the last vessels of the fleet. The battleships contemplated to be sent to the Pacific coast will draw twenty-seven to thirty feet. They can get a ship drawing twenty-four feet up to Mare island at low water, though dredging is being done with a view to deepening it to secure thirty feet." The admiral also told the committee that there were not enough dry docks for practical purposes on the Atlantic coast. |