628 Naval Administration of Great Britain. [[JUNE, 



nage. Now it should have been well known at the Admiralty that tonnage, as 

 taken by the old rule of admeasurement, neither expresses accurately either the 

 displacement or capacity of a ship ; and although I perfectly agree with them in 

 thinking that the constructors should have been obliged to build their ships nearly 

 of the same size, yet my opinion was, that the great object being to obtain as per- 

 fect a specimen of each class as possible, the restriction should have been on the 

 length only, and that they should on this occasion have had a carte blanche as to 

 their model in all other respects : and this was the more necessary in the pre- 

 sent case, because the besetting sin of our naval constructors having been hitherto 

 an invincible unwillingness to give sufficient breadth, and the consequence a 

 failure in point of stability in most of our ships, it became of more importance 

 to prevent the surveyors of the navy, by insisting on a restriction of this nature, 

 from bringing down all the other ships to the level of their own. 



" What was the result? Captain Hayes, contrary to his own judgment, but 

 not choosing to sacrifice length, built both his ships considerably narrower than 

 he otherwise would have done : and the consequence was they failed in stability. 



" Professor Inman, fully aware of the advantage of breadth, gave up a part of 

 the usual length of ships of that class to obtain it. Captain Symonds followed 

 his example, and, as might and ought to have been foreseen, both the Sapphire 

 and Colombine, although possessing many excellent qualities, and very superior 

 to most ships of their respective classes, were still much inferior to what might 

 have been expected, if their ingenious constructors had been left to the uncon- 

 trolled exercise of their own judgment." 



This is truly lamentable ; and the wonder is how, under such circum- 

 stances, our Navy should have maintained its pre-eminence. But let the 

 government look to it in the event of a future war. Pursuing the subject, 

 Sir Charles says, t( What, however, was the result of that which actually 

 took place? In the first trials, the ships built by Professor Inman, 

 Captains Hayes and Symonds, although, for the reasons I have already 

 stated, far inferior to what they might have been, were superior to those 

 built by the Surveyors of the navy : one of the latter, the Tyne of twenty- 

 eight guns, was actually sent back to Portsmouth as totally unfit to compete 

 with the remainder; and although, after various expensive alterations, 

 they were all considerably improved, especially the two corvettes (which 

 I understand were pretty close imitations of the Champion and Orestes, 

 and very unlike the Pylades), yet it was quite clear that our official 

 naval architecture ought no longer to be implicitly relied on." And yet 

 the head surveyor has been designated by high authority <f the Heaven- 

 born architect !" In justice, however, to the present Board, we may 

 state (if there be any consolation in the thought), that their predecessors 

 were as backward to be instructed as themselves. In a letter dated 1792, 

 from Admiral Patten to Sir Charles Middleton (afterwards Lord Bar- 

 ham), the following passage occurred: " In this country, the study of 

 the theories of floating bodies, and resistance of fluids, has been totally 

 neglected. In France the very contrary has been the case ; men of real 

 genius and observation have employed their talents in improving this 

 science, and have brought it to a considerable degree of perfection. 

 What was known in France, near a century ago, to every person who 

 pleased to make it any part of his study, is not at this moment known in 

 England to many of those who, as professional men, fill the first depart- 

 ment in their line under government." And yet we call ourselves a 

 maritime nation and a thinking people ! 



After alluding to abundant instances of mortifying failures, as well in 

 contests with French as with American vessels of the same class, but of 

 superior force in men and metal, all which failures were " attributable 



