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24 MARINE REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD. ADMIRAL O'NEIL ON SUBMARINES. The United States is not only attempting to keep abreast of progress in naval construction by building submarine boats but is also taking cognizance of the work of other countries in this direction and is undertaking to equip the navy with every possi- ble means of defense against them. The Connecticut and Louis- iana, which are intended to be the greatest fighting vessels in the navy, will have exceptionally large secondary batteries, which are designed primarily as a means of defense against surface and submarine torpedo boats. These secondary batteries will consist of twenty 14-pounders, twelve 3-pounders, six I-pounders of an automatic type, two 1I-pounders of a semi-automatic type, two 3-in. field pieces for landing parties and eight smaller machine uns. é "The guns from 3 to 14-pounders will be the most effective against submarine torpedo boats," said Rear Admiral O'Neil, chief of the naval bureau of ordnance in discussing submarine warfare. "Of course these boats will appear on the surface for only a moment and it will be necessary to fire very rapidly in order to destroy them. The big guns cannot be handled fast enough, but the others, being fired from the shoulder, can pour a string of shot after a submarine boat that will make it pretty warm for it whenever it comes to the surface. Fortunately for the protection of the battleships the hull of the submarine is very thin and can be pierced by anything down to a 3-pounder. The dificulty is to hit it. Some of the officers anticipate guarding against submarine boats by means of swift-moving surface tor- pedo boats, which can run down the submarines and ram them whenever they come to the surface. "When I was in the harbor of Cherbourg recently," he con- tinued, "I saw one of the French.submarine torpedo boats dart- ing around the harbor and apparently making very good speed. Tt sat very low in the water and was very pointed, and in fact you could not tell where it ended except for a little flag which rose above the surface. We know very little about the French type of boat, as they are gtiarding it with the greatest care. I wnderstand, however, that it is run by storage batteries exclu- sively. The Holland, which is as yet the only submarine boat our navy has-in commission, is operated by gasolene on the sur- face and storage batteries when running below. 'There are a great many matters to be taken into consideration in connection with the equipping of the navy with submarine boats. If we are to have a large number of these crafts we must have some place to keep them and must have quarters for their crews. They cannot go far out to sea and must necessarily operate about the harbors. It is scarcely possible to keep a crew in action on one of the boats of the Holland type for more than eight hours, as the cramped position in which the men are compelled to sit would tire them out, so that they could hardly do their best work after being in there six or eight hours." te "Then you are opposed to submarine boats of this type." "Not at all," he replied. "I think they can do very effective work for harbor defense. They must strike quickly. I bélieve submarines coming out from shore and keeping under the water would break up any blockade. The old blockade, such as we knew in the civil war, when all the blockading squadrons anchored outside the port, has been broken up anyway by the surface tor- nedo boats. We do not know exactly what our surface torpedo boats can do in action, but it keeps the officers on the battleships constantly on the lookout for them. Of course all they can do is to rush in at high speed and take a chance on successfully launching a torpedo before being destroyed. I know of no means of defense against the submarines except constant vigi- lance, which of course would be a great strain on the officers and men, who would have to pour a hail of fire into the sub- marine whenever it showed itself above the water. To do effec- tive work a torpedo craft must come within 800 yards of the vessel to be torpedoed." ' Admiral O'Niel explained the manipulation of the White- head torpedo, which is equipped with automatic devices to pre- vent it veering from side to side or swinging up and down. At its highest speed--and, he said, that in order to be most effective it must run at its highest speed to catch a swiftly moving vessel-- its range was about 800 yards, although it could run much fur- ther at a slower rate of speed. Submarine boats running under- neath the surface, would. he thought, be able to approach a battleship and launch a torpedo with less chance of discovery than a surface boat. "The first submarine boat I ever saw," he said, "was a boat called the Peacemaker, which I. with Gen. Sherman and some. others went over to New York vears ago to see. Its motive power was furnished by superheated steam. They heated the steam to a very high temperature and stored it in tanks and dis- charged it into a jacket of caustic soda, which got very hot and enabled them to use the steam over and over again. 'The boat ran along all right so far as T could see and made a number of porpoise dives. It did not carry any torpedo tubes, and what- ever became of it I do not know. At the present time gasolene and storage batteries are used on all submarine craft as far 'as ~ know. It would be impossible in those close quarters to use sccam on account of the heat. "Of course it will never be necessary for the United States to maintain as many submarine boats as France, but at the same time we should have a reasonable supply. France realizes that it [Aug. ar. is impossible for it to compete with England in the matter of battleships and cruisers, and has therefore turned its attention to the development of the highest type of submarine torpedo boats. They claim to be able to run across the channel entirely under water, and as they would probably have them ready for sailing immediately on the declaration of war, they expect to be able to launch a fleet of forty or fifty or more of these vessels and have them cross the channel and in the principal ports of England in a very few hours. The consternation it would create among the English shipping can be imagined. However, I do not be- lieve that England's naval operations, should she go to war with France, would be conducted along the French coast, but would more likely take place in the West Indies and elsewhere. The French are, therefore, dsigning their craft with offensive as well as defensive work. It is my idea, if the United States were to place $500,000 at the disposal of the navy department, we could build boats of several types and perhaps make some improvements on the Holland. I understand that the new vessels of this type which are being built fer the navy department are to contain many improvements over the original submarine boats, but as they have not been tested 1 cannot say as to them." In discussing the means employed by submarine boats of locating an enemy, Admiral O'Neil said he understood from Admiral Bradford, who had made a trip in one of the American submarine boats, that by means of. a prism, which was elevated above the surface of.the water, he could see the surrounding ves- sels and other objects very well, although some distance below the surface. TTHE IDEAL WARSHIP. "The recent gathering of warships at Spithead," the London Engineer says, "has spelled many lessons which have been inter- preted in different ways. Not always, perhaps, has the interpre- tation been correct, for the expert whose ideals are rounded off by weight of heaviest gun and: maximum thickness of armor is by no means dead yet. For him the American battleship Illinois was first with the rest nowhere. The more thoughtful, however-- and the more thoughtful now include a majority of naval officers--inclined to award the palm elsewhere. Agreement in such a difficult matter was hardly tc be expected, but the two favorites were the Russian Pobieda and the Japanese Asama. Of these, the first is frankly an intermediate--that is to say, a ship that is battleship or cruiser, according to the needs of the moment. The second is officially an armored cruiser, but her armament of medium quick-firers is so large, and her protection so good, that few battleships could risk a duel with her in the certainty of victory. Both ships, in fine, are 'intermediates.' "The absolute intermediate is not yet afloat. That vessel. the ideal ship for all purposes, is, if she comes up to her design - er's anticipations, the Italian Vittorio Emanuele. Confined to existing types, few, if any, are so prominent as the Pobieda and Asama. The only types of ship able to beat them are very modern battleships, totally unable to compel the intermediates to fight. War must entail fighting, but, as De Wet has taught us, there is a wide difference between fighting willy-nilly and fighting or not at one's own choice. The intermediate as we have shown, though yet imperfect, is able to select her own time of fighting, while, depending as she does on medium guns, the odds are that every 6-in. in her is a more dangerous weapon to the foe than corresponding guns in the battleship. The piece de resistance of the battleship is the 12-in. gun, which is sure but slow. The battle of the Nile, and to a great extent Trafalgar, were won by the two-decker--by a ship of the intermediate order. Such ships have won every battle ever fought, simply because the choice of action has been theirs. As the Italian naval architect, Col. Cun- iberti, the great advocate cf intermediates, has argued, the speed of the armored cruiser does not increase the speed of the battle-- ship, nor does the power of the latter strengthen the former. They can only fight each other, battleship to battleship, cruiser to cruiser. Admiral Sir J. O. Hopkins has pointed the same lesson over here, in an article in the current 'All the World's Fighting Ships'---that the intermediate must, by the nature of things, sweep the armored cruiser proper from the sea. "An essential feature of the intermediate is already a devel- opment of the quick-firing armament, so that more is got out of it than in a battleship. The lesser dependence on heavy guns is the cause. Hence it is coming about that intermediates able to tackle battleships are building--ships sufficiently powerful to do away with the need of battleships, sufficiently swift to do away with the need of armored cruisers. We may look to it to see the future produce ships in which the engineroom is a war fac- tor fully on a par with guns, armor and torpedoes. As yet it is so rarely. Mostly the machinery is simply something to move the guns and armor from place to place. 'This distinction with a difference may be a delicate one, but war is likely to prove it all- powerful none the less." Messrs. Edward McIntyre and John Henderson, formerly of the Spedden Ship Building Co., Baltimore, Md., have formed a business partnership and will organize a ship yard and machine shop.. Their initial job was on the fruiter Barnstable which they placed in Skinner's dry dock, Baltimore, to have the hull and boiler overhauled. . go sa Ra