The building of the new navy actually began, one may say, when Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt appointed a board of naval officers, with Rear-admiral John Rodgers at its head, “to determine the requirements of a new navy.” These officers considered the matter jointly for a proper time, and then reported that the United States should have twenty-one battle-ships--ships fit to meet the best floating forts of the world; seventy unarmored cruisers of various sizes, twenty torpedo boats, five torpedo gunboats, and five rams. [Illustration: Hauling a Vessel into Port a Hundred Years Ago. _From an old engraving._] It was not an extravagant estimate, and it was approved, in a way, by the nation. Did we build them, or any considerable part of them, straightway? Not at all. We could not build even one of the armored ships. We had saved the expense of experimenting; we had allowed other nations to do our experimenting for us. “Right smart” economists we were. When European experiments had fairly shown what European practice was likely to be, we started in to adopt the European ideas, and suddenly learned, what had never occurred to us as a nation, that the foundation of all sea power is a shipyard. We had been able in the old days to set afloat efficient wooden fighting machines in four months, but when we started in to build an ironclad navy of the modern style, we found that we could not roll even the thinnest of modern armor-plates, and that we could not make a gun that would pierce even the cheap armor carried by the old-fashioned monitors we had lying up in ordinary. The opportunity for showing how easy it was to take advantage of the experiments of other nations was at hand. We had a book knowledge of everything that had been done abroad, but instead of starting in with a ship that should excel, or even equal, say, the _Téméraire_ of the British navy, not to mention the contemporary (in design) _Edinburgh_, we found we must do a little experimenting and gain a little experience for ourselves. [Illustration: The White Squadron in Mid-ocean. _From a drawing by R. F. Zogbaum._] We had some shipyards that were supported by the coastwise trade, and to them we went. The _Chicago_, the _Atlanta_, the _Boston_, and the _Dolphin_ were the result. Instead of building battle-ships, we built, for lack of experience, third-rate cruisers. We also concluded to complete an old monitor or two that for long years had been lying on the stocks. To do this Rome went to Carthage to buy shields for its legions--we bought our armor-plate in a foreign market. We had to do it or go without. The writer remembers the day when we even imported the bunting of which we made the “gridiron flag”! [Illustration: U. S. S. _Charleston_, San Diego Harbor. _From a photograph._]