at a lower price than any of his competitors. deemed possible, and he was therefore the lowest bidder. On the whole, the contracts were $315,000 below the next lowest bids, and $774,100 less than the estimates of the Advisory Board.

Contracts for the Atlanta, the Boston, and the Dolphin were signed on July 23, 1883, and for the Chicago on the 26th. It is worth mention, too, that following the completion of these contracts Mr. Roach was obliged to contract with three iron mills besides that one at Thurlow for the production of steel for the work he was to do, and it was with the signing of these contracts that the industry of steel making first obtained a permanent foothold in this country.

The year of 1883 is notable. For the interest of this history it is chiefly so because in that year the building of the White Squadron, as we afterward affectionately called our fleet, was actually begun. But it should not be forgotten that August 5, 1882, was the day on which the first act for the building of the new navy was signed by the President. On the whole we are entitled, as a nation, to all the satisfaction we feel in recalling those days of small beginnings. But for the sake of the future, the reader, who has heard so often in this year of 1898 that it was the man behind the gun who brought us honor, should consider the following extract

from the report of the Secretary of the Navy

for 1883:

66 PERSONNEL OF THE NAVY.

The Act of August 5, 1882, provided for a gradual reduction in the number of officers of the navy until a standard should be reached corresponding to the necessities of the service. This gradual reduction is now in progress, and should be allowed to continue."

In the very act that first provided for the building of war-ships fit to represent the American people, it was also provided that the younger officers of the navy-the very men in whom the country must of necessity trust when the new ships were completed-should have their hope of promotion and fair reward for honest service cut off.

CHAPTER IV

ARMORED CRUISERS AND BATTLE-SHIPS

BUILDING OF THE ILL-FATED MAINE-THE NEW YORK AS AN
MAKER OUR BATTLE-SHIPS

ERA
THAT HAD PART IN THE WAR

WITH SPAIN WERE NOT WHOLLY FREE FROM MISTAKES-THE
BEGINNING OF OUR INDUSTRIAL INDEPENDENCE-THE
SIAN PLANS FOR CRUISERS.

HES

IT has been worth while describing the early work on the White Squadron in considerable detail, if only for the reason that to consider it well is to save our honest pride from degenerating into vanity. That there is danger of national vanity will appear when the story of the war is reached, but we may refer to one fact by way of illustration-the fact that we are loud in boasting about our marksmanship, although in the only battle where shots and hits were counted, we scored but three times in a hundred shots.

Having made a beginning in the work of building a new navy we held our course without deviation, though the speed was very slow.

The exigencies of politics favored the work in curious fashion (as I have told in detail in Volume V. of "The History of Our Navy")

and there was an abun

dance of money in the Treasury.

A "Gun Foundry Board" appointed in 1882 made a report in 1883 that, a year later still, led Congress to appropriate a million dollars for building guns. Then a new Administration came that carried on the work with increasing vigor and success, although

one singularly disheartening mistake was made. Secretary Whitney seems to have entirely overlooked the fact that we needed to develop naval architects, as well as ship-yard mechanics, and went abroad for plans for the new ships Congress authorized him to build. This is a most. important matter. The employment of Hessian naval architects was at least as great an evil as the employment of Hessian crews to man the completed ships would have been. For it was not so much the new ship of the highest quality that we then needed as it was the ability to

produce the best ship wholly from our own

resources.

Fortunately the plans that were purchased abroad were in not one case perfect. The ships we built from them were the Charleston, the Baltimore, and the Texas, and these were all very good ships; but it was three years after we bought the plans of the Texas before they

Charleston, Protected Cruiser. Dimensions, 312.7 x 46.2; draft, 18.7; displacement, 3,730. Speed, 18.2 knots. Main Battery, two eight-inch, six six-inch slow-fire guns.

were altered into a shape where a practical ship could be made from them, and radical changes had to be made by our builders in the plans of the others before the ships could be completed.

However, Mr. Whitney amply atoned for this error by his tact in handling the rather niggardly appropriations given by Congress. He stopped the practice of buying steel forgings abroad. Forgings for our first eight-inch