This article about the strength of the United States Navy was published in 1902. It is an especially interesting article. It was written at a time when the United States Navy had applied new technology in the area of rapid fire guns, and had achieved considerable success with that technology. Much interesting detail is given. —fadedpages.com

A Modern Rapid Fire Gun in Action.

All recent naval engagements have demonstrated the value of rapid fire guns. The battles of Manila and Santiago have confirmed the lesson learned from the battle of the Yalu. The great destructive agent is the small caliber gun.

The United States today possesses in its secondary batteries rapid fire guns superior to those carried by the vessels of any other navy.

When the Spanish-American War broke out, men knew that rapid fire guns were effective against an armored vessel, but the results of the battle of Santiago came as a surprise to the most partisan advocate of this type of ordnance.

Cervera's fleet consisted of four high speed battleships and two well armed torpedo boat destroyers. This fleet—allowing for the help of the shore batteries and of the Reina Merecdes, which Admiral Cervera had found at Santiago, and for the absence from the United States fleet of the New York and the Massachusetts—was not materially inferior to our own. Yet in two hours, excepting the time consumed in chasing the Colon, our rapid fire guns reduced the Spanish ships to smoldering hulks and almost annihilated their crews.

THE DEATH STORM.

Those guns, which had been deemed effective only against unarmored vessels, had swept the Spanish ships so that from their reports we learn their gun crews were renewed three times.

This was not due to injuries below the water line, nor to the piercing of their armor belt by large projectiles, nor to an occasional well aimed shell in the superstructure. It was due to the fact that the rapidity of fire from our guns was so great that there descended upon the Spanish ships a hail of steel so terrific that it searched every port or opening and drove the men from the guns before they could be fired. That was the lesson of Santiago Bay.

Although rapid fire guns have been in great part the inventions of American citizens, the United States Government for long imported its war materials from abroad. When Hotchkiss perfected his revolving cannon, he offered it first of all to the United States Government. His patents, however, were not appreciated here. He then took them to England, where he received as little encouragement. Finally Hotchkiss went to France. The memory of the Franco-Prussian War had not died out in the land and the French Government was keenly alive to any proposition insuring the improvement of her armament. Hotchkiss received an order, formed a stock company, and secured the necessary capital for the manufacture of his guns.

This revolving cannon, with its five barrels, belonged more properly to the class of machine guns, rather than to that of rapid fire guns. That is to say, it belonged to that type of gun which fires small arm ammunition and is operated either by turning a crank, as in the Gatling, or by the recoil of the barrel, as in the Maxim. The rapid fire gun fires a projectile varying in weight from one to a hundred pounds and is operated by the movement of a lever.

In the year 1880, the maritime powers began the construction of numbers of high speed torpedo boats. This created a demand for a weapon capable of repelling them. The brief interval between the torpedo boat's final spurt and the discharge of her torpedoes necessitated a gun capable of discharging a large number of projectiles within a short time to insure a hit. Moreover, those projectiles required to be of such size that a single one bursting within the hull would place the attacking boat immediately hors de combat.

THE HOTCHKISS GUN.

To meet these requirements, Hotchkiss, in 1882, invented a six pounder rapid fire gun. In this gun rapidity of fire was promoted by the elimination of sponging, due to the use of fixed ammunition—a cartridge composed of projectile, powder, and envelope, similar to that in use in small arms many times enlarged—and by effecting the opening of the breech, the ejecting of the empty cartridge case, and the cocking of the firing mechanism through a single motion of a lever.

In 1884 the United States Government first purchased guns of this pattern—importing thorn from France. These guns formed the secondary batteries of the Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and Dolphin, the nucleus of our new navy, and were the first batteries of this type purchased by any power.

OUR NEW NAVY.

From the time of the first purchase until 1888, the United States had but one design of rapid fire gun in service. With the exception of the first purchase, however, all of our guns, as well as their ammunition, have been manufactured in this country; the specification having been made in all recent naval appropriation bills that the material must be of domestic manufacture.

In 1888 the Driggs-Schroeder rapid fire gun was brought out by Commanders W. H. Driggs and Seaton Schroeder of the United States Navy. These officers were accorded better treatment by our Government than Hotchkiss had received, and, after successful trials on the naval proving grounds, substantial orders were placed with the ordnance company that had been formed. Since that time these guns have supplied the secondary batteries in a large number of our vessels. They played a conspicuous part in the battles of Manila Bay and Santiago. They Were carried by all three of the flagships in those engagements; the Olympia having twelve, the Brooklyn fourteen, and the New York eight.

It is but a few years ago since the European powers were engaged in a race to build the largest gun. At that time many of the 16 1-4 inch 110-ton guns were built. Now the tendency is towards a reduction in the caliber of the large guns. The largest carried by our latest ships has a bore of twelve inches. The caliber of the guns to which the rapid fire principle is being applied is increasing, as is the number of such guns carried by each vessel.

On many of our cruisers the main battery consists of four and five inch rapid fire guns of either the Fletcher or Dashiell pattern.

The Fletcher gun is the invention of Lieutenant Commander Fletcher of our navy, and the Dashiell gun a device of the late Naval Constructor Dashiell. Dashiell's name is honored in the records of the navy as that of the man who established the naval proving ground at Indian Head, near Washington.

THE TORPEDO TERROR.

The complete failure of torpedo attack in the Spanish War has greatly injured the reputation of the torpedo boat as the "bogie man" of the sea, supposed to strike terror to the heart of the opponent. Two actions in the late war illustrate this strikingly.

One was the marvelous performance of the little Gloucester, J. Pierpont Morgan's converted yacht Corsair, under Commander Richard Wainwright, mounting but four six pounder and four three pounder rapid fire guns, and two machine guns. She fearlessly engaged the torpedo boat destroyers Pluton and Furor, although overmatched by each in battery powder and speed.

In the words of Commander Wainwright in his report to the Commander in Chief, "It was the plain duty of the Gloucester to look after the destroyers, and she was held back gaining steam until they appeared at the entrance." He states that as soon as the leading destroyer slackened her speed "we headed directly for both vessels, firing both port and starboard batteries as occasion offered." At the end of an engagement lasting but an hour and a half, the Furor had been sunk and the Pluton driven ashore a burning wreck.

The condition of the Gloucester is shown by Commander Wainwright's report:

I have the honor to report that at the battle of Santiago, on July 3d, the officers and crew of the Gloucester were uninjured, and the vessel was not injured in hull or machinery, the battery only requiring some slight overhauling. It is now in excellent condition. The escape of the Gloucester was due mainly to the accuracy and rapidity of the fire.

The other action was that participated in by one of our scout ships. It proved that rapidity of of fire makes a better defense than forced draft. These scouts were given light temporary batteries and, owing to their extreme vulnerability, were not supposed to engage torpedo boats, much less destroyers. On the 19th of June, 1898, the St. Paul, the converted American liner, was lying off San Juan when the torpedo boat destroyer Terror, accompanied by the corvette Isabel II, emerged from the harbor.

THE GALLANT ST. PAUL.

The Isabel II carried a battery of two 7.7-inch guns, four 4.7-inch, and four smaller rapid fire guns and three machine guns. The Terror's battery consisted of two 14-pounder and two 16-pounder rapid fire guns, two 1-pounder automatic guns, and two 14-inch torpedo tubes. The St. Paul had six 5-inch guns, six 6-pounder, and six 3-pounder rapid fire guns.

A Six Pounder Rapid Fire Gun on Board the U.S.S. Columbia.

Instead of utilizing her running qualities which such an occasion was supposed to demand, the St. Paul calmly awaited developments. She was not long kept in suspense, for while the Isabel II, although keeping up a hot fire on the St. Paul, discreetly remained under the protecting shadows of the forts, the Terror, after circling three times to attain her maximum speed, dashed for the St. Paul.

The St. Paul awaited the attack lying broadside on, her towering sides and upper works forming the best target ever presented an enemy. On came the Terror at full speed, her decks swept by six and three pound shells. One of her funnels had been carried away, when a five inch shell from the St. Paul entered her starboard bow and emerged on the port quarter. During its brief transit through her interior, it completely wrecked one engine, decapitated the chief engineer, killed four and wounded seven of the crew. In a sinking condition the Terror with one engine limped back towards the harbor, and when near the entrance sank in shallow water.

Since that action the progress in rapid fire ordnance has kept pace with the great strides of the country as a maritime power. Several new guns, together with improved methods for mounting them, have been developed for both naval and coast defense purposes.

A complete scheme for the defense of our harbor mines against an enemy's countermining has been perfected. It consists of 15-pounder three inch guns fitted with Tompkins breech mechanism and mounted on a masking mount, and of 6-pounder guns with Driggs-Tasker mechanism on parapet mounts. These guns combine with great rapidity of fire a remarkably high muzzle velocity.

The Bureau of Ordnance of the navy has recently introduced a 3-inch gun using a fourteen pound projectile, and by thus decreasing the weight of shell and increasing the weight of powder charge from that of the 15-pounder, the high velocity of three thousand feet per second is attained.

The 6-pounder semi automatic gun now being supplied to the navy is the design of Commander W. H. Driggs. It differs vastly from the guns of his design used in the Spanish war. All of the functions, with the exception of the ammunition supply, are performed automatically. The gun crew is smaller by one man than formerly and the gun can be fired at a rate of seventy five rounds per minute. In those three years the gun we were so proud of in the Spanish war has been replaced by one that pours out its death blast twice as speedily.

The battleships and cruisers for which President Roosevelt has so urgently requested Congress to make appropriations, will be the most formidably armed vessels afloat. Although the battleships will have a displacement of seventeen thousand tons and the cruisers of sixteen thousand tons, the largest guns earned by the former will be 12-inch, and by the latter 10-inch. The battleships will have the remarkable secondary batteries of twenty two 14-pounders, twelve 3-pounders, and eighteen smaller guns; while the cruisers have twenty 14-pounders, twelve 3-pounders, and twelve smaller guns.

The engagement between the French cruisers and the Chinese vessels and forts of the Minn River in 1884—in which the Hotchkiss revolving cannons carried by the French ships poured in such an avalanche of projectiles that the panic stricken Chinese jumped overboard in droves—gave the first illustration of the destructiveness of rapid gun fire.

The first opportunity for drawing conclusions from a contest between modern war vessels was afforded by the Japan-China War, and the naval actions of that struggle and every one since, bear testimony to the fact that the most potent factor in their results has been the rapid fire gun.

With the signing of the treaty of peace closing the Spanish-American War, the United States was placed in the front rank of the maritime powers. Through its naval victories it had acquired a prestige greater than it had ever before held. For the achievement of these results we are in great part indebted to our rapid fire units and the men behind them.

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