26 Observations on the State of 



some minds, an inaptitude of scientific perception, which induces 

 unwiUingness to acknowledge the advantage that results from 

 the application of the exact sciences to the useful arts. 



This neglect of scientific principles is nowhere more manifest 

 than in the affairs of naval architecture, and it is not confined 

 to the Royal Navy, but extends also to our mercantile shipping ; 

 and hence it is that our commercial marine is in some respects 

 behind foreign nations, especially the Americans, in the forma- 

 tion of its ships : our merchantmen are, almost without excep- 

 tion, the most unsafe* and slowest ships in the world. The 

 ship-owners, therefore, would do well to consider this circum- 

 stance, and endeavour to devise means of introducing science 

 into the merchant yards. The establishment of the new 

 university in the metropolis affords an opportunity of doing 

 it at a comparatively small expense, by the foundation of 

 Lectures on the theory of Naval Architecture ; and the 

 support even of a separate institution in the vicinity of the 

 merchant yards of this great port, for the education of ship 

 surveyors, would soon be repaid by the improved character of 

 our merchant shipping. 



If the science of Naval Architecture depend on certain 

 physico-mathematical laws, as no doubt it does, it is monstrous 

 to imagine for a moment that such laws can be developed by 

 a flight of fancy, or that a man is born with unintuitive optical 

 perception of the lines of least resistance, &c., or, in the jargon 

 of the craniologists, that he has a naval-architectural bump on 

 his skull ; yet one would think that such was the case, when 

 we see men, we cannot say philosophers, start up and loudly 

 assert that they are in possession of the secret of construction ; 

 and they are believed because their hypotheses are never sub- 

 mitted to the examination of those who are capable of detecting 

 their fallacy. 



The Experimental Squadrons have, with a multitude of per- 

 plexing results, elicited, it must be confessed, at least an 

 interesting fact, viz. that there has been an establishment 

 seventeen years in this country, in Portsmouth dockyard, for 

 the scientific education of naval architects, for the Royal 



■ * By referring to Lloyd's List, it will appear, upon a moderate average, 

 that three English merchant vessels are lost every two days ? 



