President: Rear Admiral H. P. NORTON, U. S. Navy. Secretary-Treasurer: Lieutenant Commander F. W. STERLING, U. S. Navy (Retired). Council: Rear Admiral H. P. NORTON, U. S. Navy. Rear Admiral T. W. KINKAID, U. S. Navy. Captain ROBERT STOCKER, (C. C.) U. S. Navy. Lieutenant Commander F. W. STERLING, U. S. Navy (Retired). SUBSCRIPTION RATES. The subscription price of the JOURNAL, postpaid to the United States and possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico, is $5.00. Single copies, $1.30. To other countries in the Postal Union, $5.40. Single copies $1.35. All subscriptions are payable in advance. Make checks, drafts and postal orders payable to AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NAVAL ENGINEERS. Advertising rates will be furnished on application. It is earnestly requested that prompt information be given of changes in address, or of failure to receive the JOURNAL. Address all communications for the Society to AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NAVAL ENGINEERS, Navy Department, Washington, D. C. Copyright, 1919, by the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NAVAL ENGINEERS. The Society as a body is not responsible for statements made by individual members. COUNCIL OF THE SOCIETY (Under whose supervision this number is published). Rear Admiral H. P. NORTON, U.S.N. Captain ROBERT STOCKER, (C.C.) U.S.N. Commander W. W, WHITE, U.S.N. (Retired). Rear Admiral T. W. KINKAID, U.S.N. Lieutenant Commander F. W. STERLING, U.S.N. (Retired). THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF NAVAL ENGINEERING IN THIS WAR.* BY LIEUT. COMdr. William L. CATHCART, U. S. N., R. F., MEMBER. During these more than four years of war we have heard. much in criticism of the Silent Fleets of the mute guns of that vast Allied Armada waiting tensely, like a crouching lion, for the German High Seas Fleet, which, save for its half-hearted dash at Jutland, never came, until the end in a surrender so ignoble that it sickened the hearts of seamen. And yet, notwithstanding these criticisms, the ex-Kaiser, his craven commanders on land and sea, and now all Germany know that to those Silent Fleets is due primarily the shattering of their dream of world dominion—a dream whose realization meant to us and to our allies but world despair. This assertion of the paramount value of sea power involves no detraction from the honor fitly due those magnificent *This address was delivered before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and printed in an abridged form in the Journal of that society. It is here published in full with additions. allied armes, the white crosses of whose dead crowd all Europe. And i minimizes in no way the achievement of the superb troops de American Expeditionary Force, who, in but half a year's hand fighting against the flower of Germany's armies, have won tying glory for our flag. But, predomina ng a power was the foundation on which all of these victories on the land were based. From the beginning, the British Fleet attained the ultimate object of all sea warfare, in making impotent the enemy's naval strength in surface warships-the only kind that count in the end-and that impotence has had a vital effect on the conduct and success of the war we have waged. The reason is clear. Every one knows now that an army on the land or a fleet on the sea becomes helpless if its lines of communication with its base are cut. In this conflict, the Western front was the decisive theater of war. And for the allied armies on that front the ultimate bases of supply and reënforcement lay beyond the sea-in Great Britain, her colonies and Dominions; in India and Algiers; and, most important of all, in distant America. . So, the absolutely vital lines of communication of those armies stretched like a vast network across the Seven Seas; and, if Germany's High Seas Fleet had been free to wreak its ruthless will, those lines would have been quickly cut, England would have been isolated, America powerless to aid, and, long before we could have entered it, the war would have ended in bitter tragedy for all mankind that is worth while. OUR NAVY IN THIS WAR. While the defeat of the Central Powers is thus due primarily to the early strength and continuous growth of the British fleet, our own Navy has had a far from inconsiderable part in the decisive work of the war's last year, in its service in the Atlantic and the North, White, and Mediterranean Seas, with the ships of the allied navies. On the world's seas, wherever war clouds lowered, our flag flew. 1 |