240 THE NAVAL ARSENALS. PART VII. 



establishment, he was well aware that the more the 

 several branches are kept apart from each other, the 

 less is the efficiency secured, and the greater is the waste 

 of material as well as loss of time. He therefore urged 

 above all things concentration, and he broadly held that 

 without it economy was impossible. 



Portsmouth, Plymouth, Sheerness, Chatham, Wool- 

 wich, and Deptford were mostly far apart, some of them 

 very badly adapted for the purposes of royal dockyards, 

 and at nearly all of them the same costly process of 

 patching, cobbling, and waste was going forward. In- 

 deed, he held that it would be much cheaper, viewed 

 as a money question only not to mention the increased 

 despatch of business and the improved quality of the 

 work done to construct an entirely new dockyard, where 

 every department could be laid out in the most com- 

 plete and scientific manner. These views looked so 

 reasonable, and they pointed to results so important, that 

 the Board of Naval Eevision determined to pursue the 

 investigation ; and they requested Mr. Eennie to examine 

 all the royal dockyards, and report as to the im- 

 provements that might be made in them with the above 

 object ; and also on his plan of a new and complete 

 naval arsenal suitable to the requirements of the nation. 



The result of his inquiries was set forth in the elabo- 

 rate report delivered by him on the 14th May, 1807. 

 He had found most of the royal harbours in a state 

 of decay, silted up with mud or sand, and in a gene- 

 rally discreditable condition. Of all the naval arsenals, 

 he found Plymouth had suffered the least, in conse- 

 quence of less alluvial matter flowing into the harbour . 

 from the rivers discharging themselves into the Sound 

 the principal objection to that port being that it was 

 exposed to the violence of south-westerly and south- 

 easterly winds. Portsmouth he found to be in a very 

 defective state, much silted up with mud, the depth on the 

 bar having become reduced within a century from 18 to 



