The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

seen on a near approach to be mere shells, which a strong
man could overthrow. The desolation and silence of the
grass-grown streets, the course of which is marked out by
heaps of white stone in fragments or in blocks, piled con-
fusedly on each other as they were thrown down by the
shock of explosion or the actual agency of powder, are
appalling. One may wander between these walls of debris,
which look like ruinous trenches, for hours without
meeting a soul, or hearing even a sparrow chirp. If a
stone disturbed by his tread falls clattering among the ruin,
the stranger accustomed to the profound noiselessness of
this new Palmyra starts as though Sebastopol were in the
Great Desert, and untrodden by any but himself. All the
roar of the batteries, the smoke, the tumult, the shouting,
the tramp of men, the stern life of the trenches, and the
labours of the siege have died away, we cannot trust for
ever, but let us hope for many a long year to come. Alone
unchangeable, the blue sea sparkles on the sunshine
between the white forts and the sheer headlands of the
roadstead, and ripples over the sunken fleet, which just
rears its mastheads above the waters. The harbour is
still there, the Dockyard Creek, the Careening Bay—all
ready once more to lend their aid to man in forming a new
Sebastopol. The Tschernaya still flows into the deep bay,
and can bear on its bosom countless tons of freestone
from the quarries of Inkernaann, which are to all appear-
ance inexhaustible, and which may well contain a new
Sebastopol. Let the rotting skeletons, the heaps of humnn
bones, the debris of ragged uniforms and equipments, the
remains of the fierce struggle which ended in that ravine
still scattered over its side, preach a lesson to whoever is
about to build the city again. An engineer officer re-
marked the other day that he never saw a city which could
be so soon reconstructed. The very ruined mansions and
the stones of the houses could be used to fill up a small
ravine which intersects the city, and to form quays by the
waterside. As to [the sunken ships, there are various
opinions. Some say they are by this time utterly ruined,
others contend that they can be weighed and rendered fit
for service; but for the most part they are only sailing
vessels of the old build, short and tubby. I have seen a
piece of teak cut out of one of them, which was as per-
feotly sound and good as it was the first day it was used.
The deal of which the submerged gun•carriages are made
has, however, suffered from the ravages of the worm. All
operations against the ships must now be hopeless.—Tines
eor., April 8.

THE CRIMEAN INQUIRY.
ADMIRAL SIR EDMUND LYONS was examined before
the court on Monday, and gave the most important
evidence of any witnes' hitherto. In reply to the
question as to whether he had ever been applied to
for sails or canvas as shelter for the cavalry horses,
Sir Edmund Lyons said he had not been applied to,
and he did not believe that the idea was ever enter-
tained, it was obviously so useless. Moreover, had
he been applied to, he could not have furnished any
such quantity of canvas as would have been required.
As to there being fifteen sail of the line off the coast,
Colonel Tulloch was wholly wrong ; there were never
more than eleven, and then only for a few days, the
average number being seven. In further reply to
Colonel Tulloch's question whether ho could not
have spared carpenters from the fleet in sufficient
numbers to construct shelter for the whole of the
cavalry, Admiral Lyons said

No; we had already thirty carpenters attached to the
Naval Brigade, under Captain Lushington, and there were
thirty more at Balaklava, all employed in service connected
with the army. Colonel Tulloch seems to be under the
impression that we had fifteen sail of the line, whereas we
had not quite half that number. He seems also to have
looked to the establishment and to have concluded that
the complement of every ship was complete, whereas we
had hardly half the complement. It results, therefore,
that, as far as the line•of battle ships are concerned, we
had only one-fourth of the number of carpenters which
Colonel Tulloch imagines. But then he is also under the
impression that we had thirty or forty steam-vessels, whose
carpenters, or a portion of them, might have been em•
ployed in the set vice of the army. But those steamers
were employed ou various duties, such as going backwards
and forwards to Constantinople for supplies, blockading a
thousand miles of coast, including the coast of Circassia,
lierti.h, the Crimea, the Dnieper, and the mouths of the
Danube ; and when those vessels rejoined the fleet, instead
of their being able to spare carpenters for the army, we
were obliged to give them carpenters to complete their re-
pairs. It results, therefore, that we had not one man who
could by any possibility have been spared for the army
from those vessels. Colonel "Istilloch also, as I said before,
seemed under the impression that the fifteen sail of the
line of which he spoke were lying in a snug harbour.
Colonel Tulloch was not there, and of course he believes
it, bat he has been misinformed. Now, what was the
fact? The vessels were at anchor in forty fathoms of
water, within a mile of the rocks, and only just out of gun-
shot of the batteries of Sebastopol; indeed, on one oc-
casion the Royal Albert drove within gunshot. I should
observe also that the state of the weather was such as to
render it absolutely necessary to prepare for every emer-
gency. The board may judge of the state of the weather
when I tell them that in one gale the Royal Albert lost her
rudder, which broke in two; she was thirty-one days at
anchor before Sebastopol without a rudder, and I see by a
note from Sir Thomas Paaley that all the carpenters of
the fleet were employed during those thirty-one days in
repairing the rudder. The rudder of the Algiers was also
very much damaged ; and, as a proof of the suddenness
with which the gales come on, I may mention that the
second in command and some of the captains of the fleet
having come on board my ship were obliged to remain on
board for several days and nights. Now, under those cir-
cumstances, it must be apparent to everybody that the

SATURDAY,

boats of the fleet, upon which the supplies of the army
were very much dependent, must have been constantly
getting out of repair, and therefore that all the carpenters
of the fleet were required afloat. Colonel Tulloch asks
what there was to prevent me from sending on shore one
hundred out of in) two hundred or three hundred car-
penters. Now, speaking from memory, I believe we nevi?
had more than fifty or sixty carpenters available. It must
be remembered, too, that I had the supplies of my own
fleet to think of. The fleet experienced very great diffi-
culties as regarded its resources, and the on1\• reason why
this was never publicly known was because these difficul-
ties were overcome.

In the course of further cross-examination, Admiral
Lyons said that all the spare canvas they had was
sent on shore for the use of the Naval Brigade :

It must not be supposed that the spare sails were over
and above what was required for the safety of the ship.
Those spare sails might at any moment be required, and
without them no ship could be considered efficient, pain-
cularly on a coast like that. As to procuring a supply of
canvas from Constantinople in a very short period, there
were other persons who could answer that question better
than he could. He had never had cecasion to send for it.
He could speak more confidently with regard to the possi-
bility of procuring carpenters from Constantinople. They
were so badly off for carpenters in the fleet that he was
obliged to write to the Admiralty, stating that Admiral
Grey in the Bosphorus and Admiral Boxer were both con•
stantly applying for carpenters, and that there was not
enough to keep the ships' boats in repair. In reply, the
Admiralty said they thought his application fur more car•
penters a very• reasonable one—they were surprised, in-
deed, that so much had been done with the means at the
disposal of the fleet—but they could not possibly send any
more, for there were none to be got. Instead of being
able to procure carpenters from Constantinople, Admiral
Grey was obliged to send to Malta and offer very tempting
wages to the Maltese to come and perform the indispen•
sable duties of the fleet in the Black Sea and *he Posphorus.
In reply to General Berkeley, as to whether he had
remarked any want of promptitude and ingenuity in
sheltering the cavalry horses, Sir Edmund Lyons
replied " Certainly not. Everybody appeal ed to me
to be hard at work and doing his best. They were
always doing, and always appeared very hard at work."
The gallant admiral, at the conclusion of his evidence,
gave a rapid and concise sketch of the different ser.
vices of the Black Sea fleet during the war, with the
view of disabusing the public mind that the navy did
not do for the army as much as lay in their power,
but, on the contrary, to prove that "neither labour
nor material were sparingly or tardily given by the
navy when required for the use of the army." Sir
Edmund Lyons recalled to the memory of the court
the disembarkation of the troops at Old Fcrii the
embarkation of the wounded after Alma, the making
742 cots in three days for the sick, 20,000 cartridges,
the erection on board the Sanspareil of the first
coffee-roasting apparatus, the stabling the mules it
Balaklava, the building wharfs and landing-places,
and the vast assistance generally rendered by the
Naval Brigade in the front. At the conclusion of
Admiral Lyons' address, Major Conolly and Colonel
Low were briefly examined with respect to Lord
Lucan's desire to get the cavalry under cover, both
officers asserting Lord Lucan displayed the utmost
promptitude and anxiety, when the court adjourned
till Friday.
On Friday the court reassembled, when Colonel
Tulloch read his statement. First alluding to the
difficult position he was in, either to come forward
under every disadvantage and defend his report, or
to leave it to the mercy of those who had charged
the commissioners with distorting facts, the gallant
colonel proceeded at length to point out the difh-
culty of finding with whom responsibility rested,
and the certainty that a want of promptitude was
exhibited when t'aree months were allowed to elapse
before the order :or sheltering the horses was
attended to, and insisted that plenty of shelter could
have been obtained for the horses at an earlier
period. Colonel Tulloch then reviewed the evidence
of the principal witness in detail, and concluded by
defending himself and Sir John 111'Neill irom the
charge of having exceeded their instructions. He
looked upon the approval of the report by the Go-
vernment and the country as a complete refutation
of the charge.
The court adjourned till Monday, when Lord
Lucan will deliver his final reply, and the case of
Lord Cardigan be commenced.

THE AUSTRIAN CONCORDAT shows its cloven foot
in many ways. Hitherto it has been the custom in
Austria to inter the Roman Catholics and Protes-
tants in the same cemetery. But of late the Minis-
ter of Public Worship has received information that
a number of cures have refused to allow Protestants
to occupy a grave in the common burial-place. This
line of conduct, which they found on the decrees of
the Council of Trent and on the late Concordat, has
caused much agitation in many districts.
BARON STEIGLITZ, the Russian Rothschild, is at
present attempting to found a Credit Mobiler Com-
pany at St. Petersburg, in connection with that of
Paris. Various negotiations are also at present
going on with the Amsterdam house of Hope and the
capitalists of Berlin and Vienna.

11

APRIL 26, 1856•