6o Work Done by British Association Committees. 



as to the merits of '' wave line " forms, " hollow" versus " full " 

 lines, and the like. The Association, however, got together a 

 committee of men, including Mr. Froude, Professor Rankine, 

 Robert Napier, and others, who really did understand what 

 they were about, and, after a few years, placed the question on 

 a proper basis. In about ten years, that is m 1874, ^^e 

 Admiralty became so impressed with the importance of this work 

 that they established their experimental tank at Torquay for the 

 testing of ship's models, and the German and U.S. Admiralties or 

 Navy Boards have since followed suit. It may seem strange 

 that a body so difficult to move in any new direction 

 as the British Admiralty is commonly assumed to be, should 

 have taken up this matter before any private shipbuilder or 

 foreign government did, but apart from the fact that govern- 

 ment departments occasionally have the sense to act rightly, 

 the difficulties of predicting, even roughly, the speed and horse- 

 power of new ships always pressed much more severely on the 

 Navy designers than on others, partly on account of the pro- 

 portions of the ships they dealt with diverging, as a rule, much 

 more from the ordmary types of cargo or passenger steamer 

 than these do from one ancther, and paiily from the wide 

 differences between different ships ot tiie Navy itself, specially 

 accentuated at the time referred to, by the then recent intro- 

 duction of ironclads. Besides this, the Admiralty had received 

 a very severe lesson on the unwisdom of neglecting good advice 

 from sensible people, it having been made abundantly manifest 

 that, it they had attended to reports on the stability of ships 

 which had been pressed on their attention by the British 

 Association about 1863, and carried out very simple tests fully 

 explained theiein, but which the Admiralty officials stated were 

 not practical, the " Captain " would have been ascertained to 

 be unfit for being sailed in the way which led to her capsizing. 

 After the accident of course, it was found that the tests of 

 stability proposed were quite easy to carry out, and they 

 have been ever since made on every new ship in the 

 Navy. 



