1190 REPORT—1885. 
general equipment, 270 tons. A detailed description bristles with the word 
‘steel,’ and enthusiastic newspaper reporters sent down to Chatham Dockyard can 
no more ‘spin out their copy’ with Cowper's oft-quoted lines on the ‘ Launch of a 
First-Rate : ’— 
. ‘Giant oaks of bold expansion 
O’er seven hundred acres fell, 
All to build thy noble mansion, 
Where our hearts of oak do dwell.’ 
A latter-day poet might boast of 700 acres being exhausted by a single vessel, but 
it would be a coal-field and not a forest. Accepting Professor Phillips’s estimate of 
the average rate of formation of coal, it may be shown that a hard-worked American 
liner during her lifetime burns as much coal as would be produced on the area of” 
700 acres in a period of 2,000 years. We are thus with our steel ships using up 
our primeval forests at a far more extravagant rate than that at which our imme-- 
diate forefathers cleared the oak forests. Coal is the great stimulant of the modern 
engineer. Pope Pius the Second has left on record an expression of the astonish- 
ment he felt when visiting Scotland, in the fifteenth century, on seeing poor people 
in rags begging at church doors, and receiving for alms pieces of black stone, with 
which they went away contented. To such early familiarity with coal may, how- 
ever, be due the fact that Scotland has ever led the way in the development of the 
steam-engine, and that at the date of the battle of Waterloo she had built and 
registered seven steam vessels, whilst England could boast of none. 
Probably none but a poet or a painter would wish for a return to our old oak 
sailing ships. Some few people still entertain the illusion that the picturesque old 
tubs were better sea boats than our razor-ended steamers ; but, speaking of them in 
1846, Admiral Napier said, ‘The ships look very charmingly in harbour, but to 
judge of them properly you should see them in a gale of wind, when it would be 
found they would roll 45° leeward and 43° windward.’ Even our first ironclads. 
were not so bad as that, for although, according to the T%mes, when the squadron 
was on trial in the Bay of Biscay, the ships rocked wildly to the rising swell and. 
the sea broke in great hills of surf, yet the maximum roll signalled by the worst 
roller of the lot—the ‘Lord Warden ’—was but 35° leeward and 27° windward—a 
total range of 62°, as compared with 88° in the old line-of-battle ships. 
We have heard much about the state of the Navy during the past twelve months. 
A dip into the publications of the British Association—which in this, as in other 
respects, afford a fair indication of what is uppermost in people's minds—will show 
that similar discussions have recurred periodically, at any rate, since 1830. If we 
consult Hansard, as I had occasion to do recently, we find the same remark applies. 
to periods long antecedent to 1880. 
It amounts almost to a religious conviction in the mind of a Briton that Pro- 
vidence will not be on his side unless his fleet is at least equal to that of France: 
and Russia united. What would be said now of a minister who met an attack on 
the administration of the Navy by demonstrating that we had half as many line-of- 
battle ships as Russia; and yet that was literally done less than 50 years ago.. 
Speaking in the House of Commons, on March 4, 1839, the Secretary of the 
Admiralty said: ‘ For the last six months unceasing attacks have been made upon 
our naval administration, describing our Navy as in a state of the utmost decrepi- 
tude, and Tory papers say that shameful reductions have been made in the Navy 
by the present Government. It will be a consolation to my honourable friends to 
be assured that we have for years lived unharmed through dangers as great as that 
to which we are now exposed. In 1817 we had 15 sail of the line in commission, 
and Russia had 30; in 1823 we had 12, and Russia 37; in 1832 we had 11, and 
Russia 86 ; and now we have 20, and the Russians 43, having raised our ships to 
nearly half the number of those of Russia.’ 
Now as to our guns. The past twelve months is by no means the first occasion — 
on which the armament of our Navy has been attacked. Three years subsequent to 
the speech of the Secretary of the Admiralty just referred to, Sir Charles Napier 
made a statement from his place in Parliament of so extraordinary a character that 
