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for commission. Upon a full consideration of all our possible requirements in relation to manning, it is safe to say that in 1900 we shall need about 105,000 men. This figure is in close accord with the estimate given by Lord Charles Beresford at the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. What are the numbers at present available? We have 85,800 men available for sea-service in the navy, and 25,000 men not adequately trained in the naval reserve. Some deduction being made for sickness, and for the absence of naval reserve men on distant voyages, it is clear that we shall have barely sufficient men to man all our available ships. There is certainly no margin to make good 'the wastage of war,' whether due to losses in action or any other cause. In dealing with the manning of the navy, we are bound to keep in view the large demands which would be made in order to enable the country to employ to the fullest extent, should necessity arise, its unparalleled resources for the supply of ships and war material. Our private shipbuilding yards are capable of constructing simultaneously at least twenty battleships and forty cruisers. In a struggle with a first-class naval power these splendid resources ought to be employed to their utmost capacity; but they must remain absolutely valueless to the nation without men to utilise the ships which could be constructed in a few months.

Past experience shows that the number of men required in time of peace is no criterion of the number required in war. In the three great wars in which we were engaged in the latter half of the last century, we required from four to eight times the number of men serving in the navy in the intervening years of peace. In the Crimean War we doubled the force that we had maintained in the previous period of peace; and this although we were fighting against an enemy that was not very powerful at sea. The press-gang and the bounty system were the two principal methods employed in old days to bring the personnel of the navy up to war strength. Public opinion would not allow the navy to be recruited again by the brutal method of impressment. The bounty system is costly and unsatisfactory. Obviously it must prove ineffective if the seamen were not in existence. The Report of the Committee on the Manning of the Mercantile Marine contains the latest evidence that British seamen are diminishing in numbers and probably also in quality.

Our deficiencies being admitted, what steps are we to take to remedy them? In recent years the additions to strength have been mainly in the permanent force. In nine years there has been an increase of over 31,000 in the numbers voted for the navy. During the last five years nearly 19,000 men have been added to the numbers available for sea-service. Recent experience has shown that the pay, the conditions of employment, and the prospects of promotion, are sufficient to attract as many recruits for the navy as we require. No one would dispute the contention of naval officers, that it is better to

man our ships with men who have been trained from youth in the ranks of the navy, than with reserve men who have had little if any training in a sea-going man-of-war. To depend almost entirely on a permanent force would place the country under an intolerable burden of expenditure. For the year 1896 no less than 8,000,000l. have been voted for wages, victualling, clothing, half-pay and pensions. In the Naval Works Bill are included 1,145,000l. for Naval Barracks at Chatham, Portsmouth, and Keyham, and 341,000l. for a Naval Hospital at Chatham. It must also be borne in mind that the navy estimates have not yet begun to show the increase in non-effective charges owing to the recent additions to the numbers borne. A large non-effective vote is unsatisfactory in any branch of the public service. The recent additions to the personnel must ultimately raise the noneffective vote in the Navy Estimates to 50 per cent. above its present amount; and even if a change should take place in our policy now, it would be many years before the charge could be again reduced. An addition to the shipbuilding vote is an increase for one or two years only; an addition to the number of men creates a charge on the Exchequer which will be felt for more than half a century.

In the present state of public feeling the Admiralty would have little difficulty in obtaining the sanction of Parliament for a large expenditure. The recent increase in the Navy Estimates has coincided with a revival of commercial prosperity and a budget surplus. The burden has been little felt by the general body of tax-payers. It would not be wisdom on the part of those responsible for the naval defence of the country to take full advantage of the present state of public feeling, and to rely on the maintenance of the prosperous condition of the revenue which we have lately enjoyed. In a period of falling revenue, and when the political atmosphere is less clouded, demands are certain to be made for a reduction in the expenditure of our great spending departments. Any reduction in the Navy Estimates will be made in the future, as in the past, in the shipbuilding vote. Far-seeing statesmen will do well to put some check on the disposition to be lavish in the hour of prosperity. It may be followed by a reaction, and in the end do more to endanger than to establish our naval supremacy. We believe, as we have stated over and over again, that we shall waste our national resources if we attempt to maintain in peace the full numbers required to man the fleet in time of war.

The alternative is to take steps to create a reserve strong both in numbers and efficiency. The existing naval reserve, though undoubtedly valuable, leaves much to be desired. Neither in numbers, nor in completeness of training, is the force as satisfactory as we could wish. It has been proposed that a reserve should be created by passing men rapidly through the fleet, the navy being utilised to some extent as a training ground for the merchant service. Lord

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Charles Beresford, in the address already referred to, has given a detailed scheme for carrying this policy into effect. Under this scheme, which may be briefly summarised, 5,000 men are to be enrolled annually for five years' service. On completion of their engagement in the navy, they would be entered in a first-class reserve,. and would receive a retaining fee of 121. a year subject to their putting in 28 days' drill. In addition, 5,000 men would be enrolled annually in a second-class reserve, who would get two months' training in the year, one of which must be on board a sea-going man-of-war. These men would receive a retaining fee of 81. a year, instead of the 21. 10s. now paid. Entries of second-class reserve men to cease at the end of seven years. At the end of eleven years the reserve would thus be raised to 35,000 men in the first class, and 35,000 in the second class. The total cost of a reserve of 90,000 men is estimated at 840,000l. a year, plus 600,000l. per annum for training, or a total cost of 1,440,000l. This would be roughly 201. a man, excluding officers, the cost of the existing reserve being 10l. a man, including officers.

The objections to the institution of a short-service system in the navy are too serious to be disregarded. The following are the most important:

(1) If two classes of the permanent force engaged for different periods were serving indiscriminately in the same ships, it would lead almost inevitably to a reconsideration and shortening of the longer period of service. This objection was urged with much force by Lord Spencer in the debate which took place some two years ago in

the House of Lords.

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(2) Men who have served their earlier years at sea in the navy would not take kindly to the merchant service, where the conditions of employment are not so good, and the work is harder. absolute proof that the navy is the more attractive service is afforded by the fact that there is no difficulty in securing as many boys as we want for the navy, while there is a great and increasing difficulty in keeping up the supply of British-born seamen in the merchant service.

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(3) The short-service system is very costly in proportion to the results attained. It has been estimated that every bluejacket entered as a boy costs the country 2001. before he becomes efficient. Under the system recently instituted in the Northampton,' by which boys are entered at a later age, and are only six months under training, the cost may be materially reduced. The Times' report does not tell us at what age or under what system Lord Charles Beresford proposes to enter first-class naval reserve men. In any case a reserve man under his scheme could not be created in less than five years, and of the five years he would probably be two years under training. It is true that during the remainder of the five

years he would be available for service in the fleet; but we have already more men than are necessary in peace. Our object should therefore be to keep naval reserve men as short a period in the fleet as is consistent with securing efficiency. Lord Charles Beresford points out that we must, in order to train reserve men, commission more ships and have shorter commissions. As a result of shortening the length of commissions we should have a large increase in the numbers of men practically unemployed in our home ports, and involving the necessity for additional accommodation in naval barracks and harbour ships. In the view of some of our best naval authorities, our seamen already spend too little time at sea. It would certainly be detrimental to the efficiency of the service to increase the time now spent in harbour.

Under the scheme which is described later, a naval reserve man would be qualified by four years' training in the merchant service, to be followed by serving a year or six months in the navy. As compared with Lord Charles Beresford's plan, it would be obviously less costly. With an equal number of ships in commission, from five to ten times the number of naval reserve men could be turned out in the same period. Every year that a prospective naval reserve man remains in the fleet after he is efficient his services are lost to

the reserve. He is costing the country a great deal more, and he does not increase the strength of the personnel for war purposes. somewhat similar objection applied to the recent entry of 100 naval reserve officers on the lieutenants' list of the Royal Navy.

On the above grounds we must reject the proposal to create a naval reserve through a short-service system, and endeavour to develop a well-trained reserve on other lines. The existing sources of supply for the naval reserve are the mercantile marine and the fishing population of the United Kingdom. We have a further source of supply in the seafaring and fishing population of the colonies, more especially of Canada, which has never yet been touched. Let us briefly examine the possibilities of the various resources on which we might be able to rely.

The mercantile marine has proved itself well able to supply the number of officers that would be required for the navy on the outbreak of war. If training in the navy were rigidly insisted on as a condition of promotion from the junior ranks of the Royal Naval Reserve, the reserve of officers would become as valuable from the point of view of efficiency as it already is in respect of numbers. The case is very different if we turn to the mercantile marine for the supply of men. In the Report of the Committee on the Manning of the Mercantile Marine (par. 28) we read: 'It would appear that in 1891 the whole number of seamen employed in the foreign trade of the United Kingdom was 131,375, of whom 22,052 were foreigners and 21,332 were lascars, nearly 23 per cent. in all being non

VOL. XL-No. 238

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British.' The proportion of foreigners and lascars in the different ratings is given in the following table :

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The most unsatisfactory feature in the above returns is the fact that 19,179 out of a total of 40,625 A.B.'s, or 47 per cent., are either foreigners or lascars. Bad as the situation is at present, it exhibits no tendency to improve. In a subsequent paragraph the Committee point out that the existing unrestricted admission of foreigners and lascars may eventually result in further diminishing, outside of the Royal Navy, the number of British seamen. The reasons for the change that has already taken place and is still going on are summed up by the Committee in the following sentences:

(1) The British seaman who has qualified himself for the rating of A.B. by 4 years' service before the mast may sign articles with Scandinavians and men of other nationalties, some of whom possess no proof of qualification and no adequate knowledge of the English language.

(2) Any deterioration of British seamen which may now exist is not owing to the decadence of our countrymen nor to their dislike for the sea, but to the lack of sufficient attraction in the sea service as at present constituted to draw and hold the best class of British workmen, and to the insufficient number of boys in training to supply the necessary waste in the number of A.B.'s.2

What are the remedies for the existing unsatisfactory state of things? How can the mercantile marine become again what it once was, a valuable support for the navy in time of war? The Manning Committee make the following suggestions:

(1) Training ships or schools, where boys intended for sea service could obtain technical instruction in seamanship, should be established at the public expense at our seaports. Boys of 17 years of age or over having obtained certificates of competency in such training ships should be entitled at once to the rating of O.S. (ordinary seaman).

(2) A candidate for the rating of A.B. should be 19 years of age or over, and have had three years' service at sea as a deck hand. No man should be permitted to be employed as an A.B. who cannot prove his title to that rating.

(3) The candidate for the rating of O.S. should be 17 years of

2 Similar conclusions are arrived at in the Naval Annual, p. 214.

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