CAB9-1_PT1 — Page 234

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Printed for the use of the Colonial Office. June 30, 1894.

CONFIDENTIAL.

87. R

VICTORIA.

No. 6075.

[For consideration of the Secretaries of State for the Colonies and for War, and of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.]

VICTORIA.

Annual Report of Military and Naval Commandants for

the Year ending December 1893.

Remarks by the Colonial Defence Committee.

AN examination of the Schemes of Defence proposed for several fortified ports in the Colonies has obliged the Colonial Defence Committee to consider to what extent the possession of local floating defences adds to the strength of a place.

As long as the fixed defences of a port, which it has been decided to fortify, remained incomplete, the employment of floating defences helped to give the place security, and was therefore, if not permanently, at least temporarily, necessary.

The completion of the batteries and other fixed defences has greatly modified these conditions. The gap in the defences, which floating defences were intended to fill, no longer exists; and it is found that in some places the floating defences cannot be employed without imposing serious restrictions upon the efficiency of the shore batteries by interfering with and limiting the arcs of fire of the guns. Where this is the case, floating defences, so far from adding to the strength of a place, distinctly weaken it.

Where there is a sufficiently spacious area of navigable water behind the fortifications to permit local defence vessels to manoeuvre, their employment does not interfere with the efficient working of the guns in the batteries; but, even when this is so, it is generally difficult to obtain from floating harbour defences an effect commensurate with the outlay entailed by them.

W. PEACOCKE, Secretary,

Colonial Defence Committee.

(Signed)

June 27, 1894.

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Page 235 Printed for the use of the Colonial Office. June 30, 189Page 235 of 425

CONFIDENTIAL.

VICTORIA.

VICTORIA.

No. 6075.

Annual Report of Military and Naval Commandants for the Year ending December 1893.

Remarks by the Colonial Defence Committee.

1. THE military portion of this Report is, to a great extent, a protest against the late reductions in the military forces of the Colony.

These have been necessitated, in the opinion of the Colonial Ministry, by the financial condition of the country, and the only course open is to accept this necessity-which it is hoped may be only temporary-and to make the best possible arrangements under the altered circumstances. The Colonial Defence Committee can fully understand and sympathize in the Commandant's regret at seeing the Defence organization, to which so much work has been devoted, dislocated and stinted in strength and necessary equipment through these retrenchments; but the necessity is unavoidable, and if, as stated in the Report, the late reductions completely destroy the Scheme of Defence as previously drawn up for the protection of Melbourne, the only thing to be done is to prepare an ad interim Scheme to take its place, suited to the reduced force available. This the Committee would have been glad to receive. If such a modified scheme has not been drawn up, they recommend that steps should be taken without delay to do so. Its preparation might possibly lead to a somewhat more sanguine view of the situation, and show that though, so long as the present retrenchments continue in force, it may be out of the question to dream of furnishing any contingent, which, with the full establishment, would have been available, for aid to another Australasian Colony, or for the Federal offensive force, on which so much stress has always been laid by the Colonial Defence Committee, still, the reduced establishment is not hopelessly inadequate for the actual defence of the Colony.

Under the heading of "Militia Infantry" reference has again been made to the possibility of a force of 10,000 men landing to attack Melbourne, and it is implied that the full establishment before reduction would have been adequate to meet such a formidable attack. A Scheme dealing with a hostile force of this magnitude is unnecessarily extensive. The Colonial Defence Committee, in their remarks of November 1889 and of May 1892, pointed out that such an estimate of the hostile force of any Power which could be reasonably expected to make its way into Australian waters was excessive, and the increased naval strength now maintained on the Station renders this still more true at the present time. They also at the same time indicated the scale of attack to be anticipated. This was one which even the reduced defensive establishment would probably be able to meet.

The reference given at p. 3 as an example of what might happen at the present day contains its own refutation in its concluding sentence commencing "Of course if we had now the same perfect command of the sea, &c."