XL] 
BRITISH OAK. 
6 9 
addition of* £ 5 per cent, to the contractor to compen¬ 
sate him for the loss of the bark. The state of the 
materials when the ship was taken to pieces confirmed 
the conjecture which had been then formed, as the iron 
fastenings, above the water-line, were in general good, 
proving the absence of acrid juices in the timber. 
“In the year 1755, Mr. Barnard, of Deptford, con¬ 
tracted to build a sixty-gun ship, named the ‘ Achilles/ 
for His Majesty’s service. She was completed in 1757, 
and taken to pieces in 1784. It was not known that 
any peculiar circumstances attended the construction of 
this ship, until Mr. Barnard was summoned to attend a 
Committee appointed by the House of Commons, in 
March, 1771, to consider how His Majesty’s navy might 
be better supplied with timber. He then gave it as his 
opinion that the method to be observed in felling timber 
should be by barking in the spring, and not to fell it 
until the succeeding winter, and added that he built the 
‘Achilles/ man-of-war, in 1757, of timber felled in that 
manner. 
“The ‘Montague/ launched in 1779, was built of 
winter-felled timber, and its superiority is forcibly at¬ 
tested by the fact that she had only one frame-timber 
shifted, from the time she was built up to 1803, when 
she was repaired. Mention is also made of this ship 
being in active service and in good condition in 1815; 
that is, thirty-six years after she was launched. It was 
thought there was a striking coincidence between the 
durability of this ship and that of the ‘ Royal William/ 
* A much higher premium than £5 P er cent, in addition to the contract 
price of spring-felled Oak timber was offered and paid by the Government 
a few years since for winter-felled Oak, without, however, being able to 
obtain more than a fraction of the quantity required for the royal dock¬ 
yards. 
