Manchester, June 27

The incredible is taking place: England is threatening Germany
with war.*”’ According to the United Service Gazette orders have
already gone out to the depot in Pimlico (London) and the
Arsenal at Woolwich to have the equipment and arms needed for
thirty thousand men ready for immediate use, and we may expect
to hear in a few days’ time that the Channel fleet has sailed for the
Sound or the Belts.*

The Army and Navy Gazette informs us of the fighting forces
available to England at the moment. It says, in its June 25 issue:

“The naval force which we have at hand and which can weigh anchor immediately
is as follows:

Horsepower Guns Tonnage Men
Edgar, wooden ship . 600 71 3,094 810
Warrior, ironcased 1,250 40 6,109 705
Black Prince, ironcased 1,250 4] 6,109 705
Prince Consort, ironcased 1,000 35 4,045 605
Hector, ironcased 800 28 4,089 530
Defence, ” 600 16 3,720 457
Aurora, wooden frigate 400 35 2,558 515
Galatea, a 800 26 3,227 515
Wolverene, wooden corvette 400 21 1,703 275
Research, ironcased 200 4 1,253 135
Enterprise, ” 160 4 993 121

a The Great Belt and the Little Belt straits.— Ed.

RR a a NTR a

Geyser, paddle-wheel

wooden steam vessel 280 6 1,054 175
Assurance, wooden

steam vessel 200 4 681 90
Salamis, | paddle-wheel

wooden steam vessel 250 2 ? 65
Trinculo, wooden

gunboat 60 2 268 24

’ “In addition, in order to have special vessels of smaller draught for the shallow
and narrow waters of the Baltic and the Danish coasts, the Admiralty has ordered
the following ships to be made ready for sea:

Horsepower Guns Tonnage Men
Cordelia, wooden corvette 150 11 579 130
Fawn, fs 100 17 751 175
Racer, e 150 ll 579 130

“Moreover, the following new-built ships will be ready shortly:

Horsepower Guns Tonnage Men
Achilles, ironcased 1,250 30 6,121 705
Royal Sovereign, cupola
ironcased ship 800 5 3,963 500
Caledonia, ironcased 1,000 35 4,125 605
Ocean, es 1,000 35 4,047 605

“In addition there are the numerous ships of the steamer reserve, and finally
those of the Coast Guard, including 15 gunboats of 60 horsepower and mounting
two heavy pieces of ordnance.”

The latter, the Army and Navy Gazette believes, would be as
troublesome to an enemy as blow flies to a horse; it would be
impossible to shake them off. (As if the Prussians did not have 22
such blow flies in the Baltic, too!)

So much for the Army and Navy Gazette on the fleet. We were
on board several ships of the ironclad fleet last year* and in
addition have carefully followed their ups and downs and their
test cruises. These have shown that none of these 1ironclads can
hold the high seas in stormy weather; last winter the Prince Consort
almost foundered in the Irish Channel during a storm, which all
the wooden ships easily rode out. Thus, these ships are only usable
in definite previously planned undertakings (sea battles or attacks
against land fortifications), and will then have to return to port

4 See this volume, pp. 289-95.— Ed.

England’s Fighting Forces as against Germany 393

each time. They are of no use for blockades, etc. Their armour is
usually a 4'/,-inch rolled iron of varying quality and applied in
varying ways; in every case with a wood backing two feet thick,
even in the ships otherwise made entirely of iron. None of this
armour resists the seventy-pound flat-nosed steel Whitworth shell,
most of them not even the seventy-pound steel Whitworth bomb
of the same form as the shell. Rifled guns are now being cast in
Prussia with the bore of the old 48-pounders, which are more or
less equivalent to the above-mentioned Whitworth cannon. Flatnosed cylindrical steel shells (without a conical point) from such
guns will penetrate this armour, even if their rear half is hollow
and carries an explosive charge. These explosive shells do not
require a fuse (as Whitworth’s tests have shown) when they are
fired against iron armour; penetrating the armour produces so
much heat that the shells become white-hot and the powder inside
them is ignited.

The armament of the ironclads usually consists of smooth-bore
sixty-eight-pounders (eight-inch calibre) as broadside cannons and
hundred-ten-pound Armstrongs (seven-inch calibre) as pivoted
cannons on the bow and the stern. Some of these ships also had
Armstrong forty-pounders and seventy-pounders on the broadside, but it may be that these are being replaced by sixty-eight-
pounders. The old sixty-eight-pounder is a very respectable, solid
and, for its calibre, manageable cannon, very effective up to at
least two thousand paces and certainly the best cannon of the
entire English fleet. On the other hand, the Armstrong breechloading guns are very unreliable, since the rifling grooves soon
become obstructed with lead by reason of the faulty attachment of
the lead coating of the shell, and in particular because the breech
block is useless. It consists of a quadrilateral piece of iron inserted
from above extending to somewhat below the bottom of the bore,
and screwed into place and secured from behind. If we consider
that in the seven-inch calibre the shell weighs 110 pounds and the
breech block only 135 pounds, we shall see that, after a few shots,
the powder residues will prevent the block from fitting closely and
it must fly out and high in the air as soon as the explosion gases
work on it from below. This happens regularly, so that these
Armstrong guns, despite their otherwise good effectiveness, have a
very bad reputation in the navy.

The Royal Sovereign will carry five very heavy guns in her four
cupolas or turrets; the nature of the ordnance is not yet known.
Her armour has no wood backing. It remains to be seen whether
this ship is of any value on the high seas.

The smaller ships, and the wooden ships in general, have as
broadside guns mainly smooth-bore thirty-two-pounders 9 feet 6
inches and 10 feet in length, very good cannon which can take
charges of up to ‘/,; the weight of the shell, which the
sixty-eight-pounders do not, and which therefore have very sure
aim, for their length. Still, even on heavy ships there are some
light eight-inch bomb-shell guns on the broadsides. The pivot guns
are either eight-inch smooth-bore of lighter or heavier construction or Armstrong guns firing long shells weighing 40, 70 or 110
pounds.

The draught of the large ironclads is at least 25 feet, so that
they are on a par with ships of the line and very heavy frigates in
this respect. This makes them useless in narrow and _ shallow
waters, but they could serve in the deep channels of narrow creeks
and estuaries to attack shore batteries and coastal forts. There they
are dangerous if the cannon of the defence are too light and their
shells are not made of steel. It is doubtful whether the Prussian
rifled twenty-four-pounder could penetrate their armour with
steel shells. The rifled forty-eight-pounder can do it, in any event,
if its shell is of steel and flattened at the nose, if it has a charge of
a sixth to a fourth of the shell weight and if the shot can be fired
at from six to eight hundred paces. Rifled guns of from seven to
eight inches, which we could have made so easily of Krupp cast
steel, if emplaced at suitable points, even in small numbers, would
soon enough make the heavy English ironclads narmless to our
coasts. Only, the shell must be of steel and cylindrical, and must
not have a conical or rounded nose so that it will catch the iron
armour with its sharp edge even if the impact is_ oblique.
Whitworth has penetrated the armour with such shells even at an
angle of incidence of over fifty degrees. Further, with such heavy
guns it is best to leave any experiments with breech-loading quite
out of consideration; beyond a certain calibre they are certainly
worthless, and there is no more time for protracted tests.

So much concerning the navy; now let us hear what the Army
and Navy Gazette can tell us about the available land forces:

“Cavalry. 4th, 5th, 6th regiments of Guards Dragoons; Ist and 2nd (Dragoon);
3rd, 4th, 8th (Hussar); 9th (Lancer); 10th, llth, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th
(Hussar) regiments. Each has 650 men, including officers, a total of 10,700 men.

“Artillery. Ten batteries of horse-artillery (six guns each), 26 field batteries
(horse-borne) also of six guns each and 25 fortress batteries. In all, 216 field guns
and 13,700 men.

“Engineers. 20 companies and two train companies, in all 2,700 men.

“Infantry. The first battalions of the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 11ith, 13th,
14th, 24th, 26th, 29th, 31st, 32nd, 37th, 41st, 45th, 49th, 53rd, 58th, 59th, 60th,

England’s Fighting Forces as against Germany 325

Gist, 64th, 69th, 73rd, 74th, 75th, 83rd, 84th, 85th, 86th, 87th regiments; the
second battalions of the Ist, 12th and 60th regiments. To this should be added the
first battalions of the 21st, 39th, and 62nd regiments, now on the way from
America, making a total of 39 battalions. Excluding the depot companies, about 780
men per battalion are left ready to turn out, or a total force of 30,000 trained men. In
addition, there are the depots of the entire army, a total of 18,000 men as first
reserves, and finally the Guards (1,300 men of the cavalry and 6,000 infantry).

“In all: cavalry 12,000; artillery 13,700; engineers 2,700; infantry 54,000. Grand
total: 82,000 men. But in estimating the number of troops we could send into the field,
we must first deduct the depots with 18,000 men and a further 25% for those not
available for service, and those who must be employed at home. We should then have
some 48,000 well-drilled and well-seasoned troops, ready to go anywhere and do
anything, if properly aided by the auxiliary and administrative departments. A first
reserve of recruits would come to about half this number. We do not know the actual
strength of the militia assembled at the training which has just concluded, but it
should be a larger number than in 1863, when it turned out 102.000 strong for
inspection. Finally, the volunteers amount to about 160,000.”

This is what the Army and Navy Gazette reports. These statistics
may suffice for today, since we plan to give your readers an exact
report on the English forces on land anyway. However, your
German troops should realise one thing: If they come up against
Englishmen, they will be facing quite a different opponent than
the brave, but badly-trained, slow Danes.