58 Naval Affairs of Great Britain. 



powers have done and are still doing ; that is to say, let us build 

 de novo, for assuredly in no other way can we fairly cope with them. 

 In speaking of the flush-deck vessels of the United States,, Admiral 

 Penrose informs us, that the Americans say, " that their corvettes, 

 armed with long twenty-four pounders for chase guns, will be able 

 to beat off our eighteen-pounder frigates ; and certainly, if their supe- 

 riority in sailing be equal to their extraordinary weight of metal, such 

 an event is by no means impossible." This being the opinion of the 

 admiral, whose inference is made by himself to depend entirely upon 

 superiority of sailing, we cannot but wonder how he could recommend 

 the conversion into corvettes of a class of frigates, among whose miserable 

 qualities that of bad sailing is notoriously not the least apparent, and 

 which, as they must necessarily continue, in their metamorphosed state, 

 with the same construction of bottom, would be as inefficient in one 

 shape as contemptible in the other. Pursuing the subject, our author 



" The French, I hear, are building some of nearly equal force : and shall we, 

 while these improved and superior vessels are rising up on all sides around us, 

 obstinately persist in our old system, until defeat and shame too late convince us 

 of our error ?" 



Yes, judging by experience, it is to be feared we shall do so ; for 

 our " defeat and shame" in the American war has not been productive 

 of the good lessons usually to be learned of adversity. It would seem 

 as if we were covetous of " defeat and shame ;" for though our men 

 in power cannot but be aware that the French are not only building, 

 but have built and put into commission, frigates of superior force to 

 any we possess (witness those employed in the present expedition to 

 Algiers*), still no measures are taken on our part to place ourselves on 

 an equality, in this particular, with other maritime powers. It was not 

 until we lost three or four frigates in the American war, that we 

 thought it might be rather advisable to cut down two of our seventy- 

 fours (the Majestic and Saturn), and form them into what are called 

 razees, that they might be sent out to the American coast to drive 

 into their own ports those frigates of the United States which, until 

 then, with no other opposition than our frigates of comparatively small 

 size, had successfully swept the seas. It is hardly necessary to observe, 

 that our heavy squadrons could have no effect on the fast-sailing frigates 

 of America ; and our own ships of that denomination, which could alone 

 bring the enemy to action, had no chance from being so incomparably 

 inferior in force. 



With reference to another class of vessels, still more calamitous in 

 their employment than the frigates just spoken of, namely, Ten-gun brigs, 

 the use of which we deprecated in our last number, the admiral says, 



" I further recommend entirely discontinuing our ten-gun brigs, considering 

 them most inefficient vessels of war, and the expense they occasion a most 

 complete waste of the public money. A certain number of the eighteen-gun 

 brigs, on the contrary, as brigs, would, I have no doubt, always be found very 

 useful as small cruizers when judiciously employed, and kept chiefly on those 

 stations (the West Indies, for instance, and the Mediterranean) where enemies' 

 vessels of their own class are principally to be found. To employ them indis- 



* These frigates mount sixty thirty-two pounders, and each ship carries a crew 

 consisting of five hundred men. 



