United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Iroquois and her sisters, built in the fifties, were vessels of the kind to which I have applied the term corvette, then very common in all navies; cruisers only; scouts, or commerce-destroyers. Not of the line of battle, although good fighting-ships.
"The idea of combining fire-ships with the fighting-ships to form a few groups, each provided with all the means of attack and defence," was for a time embraced; for we are told that it was later on abandoned.
“At first he supposed that they were taking advantage of the absence of the heavy fighting-ships, and were making a bona-fide run for the open sea. “As superior officer, he immediately signalled the other war-ships on the station, the Vicksburg, Annapolis, Wasp, Tecumseh, and Osceola. The little squadron gave chase to the flying Spaniards, keeping up a running fire as they advanced.
As the ships-of-war grew larger, their action in concert with fire-ships became daily more difficult. On the other hand, there had already been abandoned the idea of combining them with the fighting-ships to form a few groups, each provided with all the means of attack and defence.
The long array stretched north and south for many a mile; it extended westward, far back to the distant horizon, and beyond: a countless forest of masts, a jumble of sails and smoke-stacks, a crowd of fighting-ships and transports, three-deckers, frigates, great troopers, ocean steamers, full-rigged ships an Armada such as the world had never seen before.
But it was the wisdom of England not to base her sea power solely on military positions nor even on fighting-ships, and the commercial advantages she had now gained by the war and the peace were very great.
The same false policy, as regards the sea, marked the rest of this reign of fifty-four years. Louis steadily turned his back upon the sea interests of France, except the fighting-ships, and either could not or would not see that the latter were of little use and uncertain life, if the peaceful shipping and the industries, by which they were supported, perished.
Far to the south, off the Falkland Islands, at the bottom of the sea, lay the battered hulls of what ware supposed to be the last of the German fighting-ships in South Atlantic waters. Report had it, however, that several well-armed cruisers had either escaped the hurricane of shells from the British warships, or had been detached from the squadron before the encounter took place.
So here were seventy-five million dollars' worth of American fighting-ships rendered absolutely useless and condemned to be idle during the whole war because of bad organisation.
Word Of The Day