The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-17 00:00:00

121 115

727 646
113,871 1C 3,511
2,0,6 1,910
27,853 15,695
23,489 21,128
B,' 43 6, 70
2,315 4,395
19,155 17,120
1,649 1,314
1,554 1.329
2,222 1,643
51,419 45,971
5,2 i 4 5,109
1,582 1.691
2,704 2,758

5S3i
1005

252
19i
113
1:-J8

75i
306

1051
10
431
31

231
185
185
1081
Ito
1302
033 j
1135

24,675 22,774
61,216 58,131
3,11 8 3,131
9,001 8,349
953 815
6,731 6,255
5,7,8 5,724
954 495
4.910 4,157
29,371 28,599
5,779 5,831
2,360 2.638
230 214
2,910 2.531

387 450
1,507 1.4;4

48}
1713
1494

105
1444
680
196

8 ,5 799
1,835 4.872
G 37 6' 8
075 8 1
917 803

12,000 31,699

293 294
2,107 1,60
5,861 5,7r8
5,581 5,100

71,976 61,471
2',713 19,111
2 ,031 18,24
6,03)
8,101 4,923
5,5 7 5,043

CO3- 630
11,35 k 8,746
5,781 4.195
19,262 18,363
1,733 1,0 .8
61,724 59,373

395 368
153,440 139::98
72,813 ;t8,795
6:,5 527

59,018 !9,131
35,531 34,105
9,3 t i 7,738
412 391
1,332 1,24
59,692 56,033

Naval and Military Intelligence.

The'Royal Sovereign turret ship, Capt. Sherard Osborne,
C. 8., now at Portland, has been-almost daily under weigh
since the Ist September, testing her many novel fittings
and accustoming her officers and crew to working her guns
and turrets. Tha ship, from her extraordinary beam of 63ft

4in and her barrel-shaped bottom, tests the turrets to their
utmost, and it may be safely said that when they can be
worked in such aship with such ponderous ordinance as her
present 12 ton guns, they will work anywhere. The ship
never was intended for and never can be a seagoing ship.
Some of our contemporaries run away with the idea that
Capt. Osborn is testing the sea-going qualities of the Royal
Sovereign, whereas he is merely testing the sea-going
fighting qualities of the cupolas or turrets. The guns were
worked and have been repeatedly fired with the ship rolling
10 and 12 deg. each way in a minute. No ship, it is sup-
posed, in the service could have cast loose a 100 pounder of
five tons under similar circumstances without some serious
accident, The 12 ton 150 pounders have now been fired 30
times each, and not a single breeching has been carried
away. We know a ship in the Channel Fleet which can-
not fire a 100 pounder five or six times in a seaway without
calling for a fresh breeching. The wooden gun carriages
show symptoms of the trial to which they been subjected,
and all on board the ship call for iron carriages as well as
icon guns and turrets. The unaccountable manner in which
the Royal Sovereign was sent away from Portsmouth with-
out defects and alterations being competed, although the
dockyard found time to plaster 40 tons more of wood and
iron over the already overladen sides of this ship, has occa-
sioned great discomfort to all on board during the broken
and rainy weather recently experienced, and prevented all
the experiments being carried out which Capts. Osborn and
Coles would have desired. Had she been an Admiralty
pet, no care or expense would have been spared ; as it is,
no one, we are told, at Whitehall would break their hearts
if the crew of the Royal Sovereign declare her to be every-
thing that was wretched.

The iron-clad frigate Achilles, 20, 1,250-horse power,
commissioned at Chatham on Thursday afternoon by Capt.
E. W. Vansittart (Jan. 9, 1856), is to have a complement of
705 officers and men, for which number she is to be at once
stored. She will be ready to receive her Royal Marines and
Marino Artillery on board on Monday next, as soon as the
exact detail of her number have been received at head-
quarters from the Admiralty. The work of fitting the frigate
for sea has proceeded very, rapidly, during the past few
weeks, and there is comparatively little in the way of dock-
yard fittings remaining to be executed on board. Steam was
got up in her boiler a few days since, under the direction of
Mr J. Lays, the chief engineer, when the whole of the ma-
chinery was found to work satisfactorily. As already re-
ported in The SUM, the bottom of the Achilles has become
exceedingly foul from the length of time she has been lying
in Chatham harbour, which will necessitate her being
docked immediately she reaches Portsmouth.
Yesterday Mr E. J. Reed, the Chief Constructor of the
Navy, visited Chatham dockyard, and, accompanied by the
heads of the shipbuilding department of the establishment,
spent some time in the inspection of the Bellerophon, 14,
4,246 tons, 1,000-horse power, and the Lord Warden, 24,
4,067 tons, 1,006-horse power, ironclad frigates under con-
etrnction, and during his visits examined the principal por-
tions of each vessel, in order to ascertain the progress made,
as well as the quality of the work in both frigates. Although
only commenced in April last, the Bellerophon has already
more than half of the inner portion of her plates fixed in
readiness for the course of planking to which will be bolted
the 6inch armour-plating. The progress made in the con-
struction of the Lord Warden is equally satisfactory, moat
cf the teak planking on both her port and starboard sides
being completed and waiting the reception of the armour,
while the first portion of the inner lf-inch plating is now
in course of being fixed, Notwithstanding that the Lord
Warden is not so forward as the Lord Clyde, building at
Pembroke, which will be ready for launching in the course
of the ensuing month, there is now no doubt that the Lord
Warden will be afloat early in the approaching year, should
anything like the same energy be continued which has teen
displayed in her construction during the past few months.
Upwards of 2,000 tons of 11-inch, 5-inch, and 6-inch armour
plates for both the Bellerophon and the Lord Warden have
been received at Chatham dockyard from Millwall and the
Atlas Iron Works, Sheffield; and as the whole of the addi-
tional machinery for preparing and fitting the plates of the
size and weight intended for the two ironclads has been
erected at the dockyard, no possible delay will arise in the
work of fixing the armour to the sides Of both the frigates
as soon as they are ready to receive it.
In accordance with instructions to that effect received at
Chatham from the Controller of the Navy, the workmen
, employed in the saw mills at Chatham dockyard have clis.