Naval Construction in this Country, 29 



at whose expense it is supported ; it is certainly a cruel one 

 of those who have been induced, by the fair and brilliant pros- 

 pects held out to them of support and encouragement, to devote 

 their lives to this branch of the public service. 



But to return to the Experimental Squadron : it is with regret 

 that we must conclude, upon a careful consideration, that, 

 although the experiments are carried on with so much vigour 

 and interest, they are evidently founded on imaginative views, 

 and that there cannot exist any thing like legitimate data where 

 so many failures and anomalous results obtain. Who can read 

 the account of the first Experimental Squadron^*, without im- 

 mediately perceiving that the constructors of the contending 

 vessels, however sanguine each might have been of the success 

 of his particular fancy, met with nothing but the most perplex- 

 ing results ? We see sometimes one and sometimes the other 

 vessel claim the palm of excellence, and finally leaving the sub- 

 ject as much in the dark as ever. This is the natural conse- 

 quence of the non-application of inductive philosophy to the 

 question before us, and the most important conclusion that can 

 be gathered from the experiment is, that we have begun at the 

 wrong end, and that it is high time to employ analysis instead 

 of synthesis to effect the desired objects : for in the present 

 state of the theory of naval construction in this country, there 

 are yet no data existing to effect with precision and confidence 

 the synthetical composition of a ship. 



We cannot refrain here from noticing the paucity of informa- 

 tion contained in the reports hitherto made on the first Experi- 

 mental Squadron. The best one* is but little removed from a 

 ship's log book, and in some respects is inferior to it : it is of 

 such a scanty nature, that we can scarcely inform ourselves on 

 any point, and that only in a relative degree, of the qualities of 

 the vessels composing it : we cannot find out any mention of 

 their absolute velocities on the different points of sailing, which 

 is a most important omission. We are neither informed in what 

 way the observations were conducted, whether they were made 

 simultaneously or not : unless the former, any attempt at com- 

 parison must be very doubtful, if not entirely fallacious. Cir- 

 cumstances of wind and weather may very widely alter in the 



♦ Vide No. 1 of the Papers on Naval Architecture. 



