346 On the Farce, Construction, Sfc, 



so important to a ship-of-war, and, indeed, to vessels of every 

 description. 



It is unfortunately out of our power to give any comparative 

 statement with respect to the stabilities of the ships we have 

 been analysing ; and for this reason, that the position of the 

 centre of gravity is only given in the Swedish ships. We can- 

 not regret too much, that, for want of knowing the position of 

 this point, the stabihty of a British ship of war has never yet 

 been ascertained with anything like precision, notwithstanding 

 a scientific experiment of the simplest description would put 

 every information necessary to its correct determination into 

 our hands*. At a period when the failures of empiricism shew 

 so plainly that naval construction is not a mere matter of fancy, 

 it is surprising that so little anxiety should be manifested in 

 the collection of experimental data. A simple order from the 

 proper Authorities directing the performance of the experiment 

 alluded to, whenever a ship leaves port for a cruize, would 

 complete the practical application of the mathematical theory 

 of the stability of floating bodies to the ships of the British 

 navy, which we should no longer see undergoing the clumsy 

 and discreditable correction of doubling, after having been 

 built and found deficient in such an essential quality j. 



We cannot quit this part of our subject without further 

 remarking, although at the hazard of being thought digressive, 

 that there are two methods of ascertaining the stability of a 

 ship ; viz. the French or metacentric method, published in 

 the Traits du Navire of Bouguer in 1746, and the more recent 

 and general one of Atwood, of which Bouguer's is a particular 

 case, but which some are contented, for the sake of saving 

 trouble, to adopt as a general method of calculating the stability 

 of a ship, instead of Atwood's. We cannot, however, concur 

 in recommending this unwarranted extension in the use of the 



♦ In addition to the necessity of knowing the position of the centre of gravity 

 for the determination of the stability, we may observe that we should be enabled to 

 obtain other important results connected indirectly with its situation. 



f The experiment for determining the height of the centre of gravity of a ship, 

 first very obscurely and imperfectly hinted at by P. Hoste in 1 696, was fully de- 

 scribed by Don Juan D'UUoa, in his "Examen Maritime," in 1771. Chapman in 

 1787 published a similar mode of operation in the Transactions of the Swedish 

 Academy of Sciences. A modification of the same may also be seen in the first 

 volume of Morgan and Creuze's papers on Naval Architecture, and in the Annals 

 of Philosophy fox November, 1825. 



