284 REPORT—1862. 
Your Committee have the pleasure of stating that, at the unanimous 
request of the members of the Committee, his Grace the Duke of Sutherland 
undertook the office of Chairman. The Committee have, since February last, 
held monthly meetings, and intermediate meetings of a sub-Committee. 
Your Committee have pleasure in reporting very satisfactory progress, and 
that they have had an increasing amount of useful information placed at 
their disposal. Much greater interest is now taken in the objects of the 
inquiry, and a still increasing number of observers have adopted the forms of 
the Committee, for recording the performances of vessels. 
The importance of the information collected by your Committee is attracting 
the attention of steamship-owners, as well as scientific investigators ; and it 
is hoped the result of greater efficiency and economy in the application of 
steam, as well as improvements in the construction of steam-yessels, will be 
the result of these Reports ; and your’ Committee have reason to believe that 
considerable advantages have already been derived from their labours by 
steamship-owners. 
The Royal Navy.—Your Committee, in their Third Annual Report, stated 
the results of their communications with the Admiralty, and have now to 
report that the objects of your Committee continue to meet with the approval 
of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and of the intelligent scientific 
officers in that branch of Her Majesty’s service ; that your Committee have 
been furnished from time to time with accurate returns of the performances 
of the more important steamships in Her Majesty’s service which have been 
tried at the measured mile during the last twelve months, and also some 
similar returns, received too late for insertion in the Report of last year. In 
the Appendix will be found a selection from these returns, preference having 
been given to the returns of vessels of which the future steam performances 
at sea have been promised. 
Your Committee have received several returns of performances of Her 
Majesty’s ships at sea, the publication of which, owing to their being incom- 
plete in some important particulars, and to the lateness of the time at which 
they were received, is necessarily postponed. 
Your Committee call attention to the selection they have made, which will 
be found in the Appendix. 
As numerous inquiries have, from time to time, been made of your Com- 
mittee as to the particulars of certain of Her Majesty’s steamships, the per- 
formances of which were noticed in previous Reports, your Committee, with 
a view to avoid unnecessary correspondence, and to give the required infor- 
mation more fully than can be done by written communications, determined 
to include in the present Report three sets of tables of trials of H.M.’s ships, 
which were officially tabulated by the Admiralty, but not issued by them to 
’ the public. 
The reprinting of those tables, and the textual information accompanying 
them, in the Appendix to the present Report will now supply those who 
possess the previous Reports of your Committee with the means of comparing 
the results obtained upon the trials of nearly the entire of the steamships of 
war composing the British Navy, and will also enable them to compare with 
the results of such trials the performances whilst at sea of very many of the 
vessels included in the complete and extensive lists to be found in the three 
Reports previously published, and in the present Report of your Committee, 
without the necessity, which before existed, of searching elsewhere for the 
information. 
The publication of the three Admiralty Tables will also render it un- 
