Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/297

1885.] stores. For the completion and improvement of our maritime and marine defences (including the land defences of Chatham), for their armament, and a proper reserve of ammunition, probably from 2½ to 3 millions sterling will be required.

III. The next point for consideration is the protection of our principal mercantile ports, which, with their fleets of large merchantmen and warehouses full of products from all parts of the globe, now lie at the mercy of any enterprising enemy possessing a few heavily armed moderate-sized men of war.

The Humber, the Tyne, Sunderland, Hartlepool, the Firth of Forth, Aberdeen, the Clyde, and Liverpool, all require efficient forts, covering torpedo defences. Unless these ports are properly protected, the commercial damage which might be done, not only to this country, but to friendly powers trading with us, in the course of a few days of war time, would be incalculable. It would be no use when war appeared imminent to begin the construction of new defences. The time available would scarcely be sufficient to prepare the plans of what appeared advisable to undertake. All available guns and ammunition – which would amount to a very small supply – would probably be required for the protection of our naval dockyards, and even if a few were obtainable, their transport, mounting, and platform accommodation are not affairs which can be carried out hurriedly at a few days' notice. Many people imagine that our ports can be quickly and effectively defended by laying down torpedoes. But any one who has given any thought to the subject is aware that torpedoes without guns to cover them are useless. An enemy's boat could easily remove all the torpedoes we might put down, unless we had guns to prevent his boats approaching the sites occupied. Moreover, the proper placing of torpedoes, even if they would be of use by themselves, is a matter which requires considerable care and knowledge, and at the present moment we have neither the torpedoes, the stores necessary to explode them, nor sufficient officers and men who understand their use, to allow of their being laid down in any large numbers.

IV. It is quite possible that this country might be at war with some foreign power, whose object would not be to invade us, but to do all the injury possible to our commerce, and this could most easily be effected by the bombardment of our trading ports, and by the destruction of the fleets lying in them. Take, for instance, the United States. Although we all know that with that country war is most improbable, still we must not overlook its possibility. At the present moment the American fleet could not do us much harm, but it requires no great stretch of imagination to suppose, that after an exhausting war with some European power, during which the United States had been gradually arming, we might find ourselves, through Canadian or Fenian complications, involved in a war with that country. Russia also, as regards any part of the world except Asia, could only hope to seriously injure us through our commerce. With a few powerful cruisers, whether bonâ fide belonging to her own fleet, or equipped and manned in some foreign country, or on the high seas, she would be able to inflict serious damage on our mercantile ports in their present defenceless state, with very little risk to her own ships.