The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-25 00:00:00

the

ade.

(From the Supplement to theZondo;Gazette of yesterday

FOREIGN OFFICE, JUNE 24.
The following note has been received by Ear,
Russell, her Majesty's principal Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, from the Danish Minister at this
Court :--

" Legation of Denmark, June 24.
" Lord,--By your Excellency's note of June
14, I was requested to give information as to
whether, in the event of hostilities being renewed
on the 26th inst., and a blockade of German ports
by Danish ships of war re-established, due notice
of such blockade would be given, and due time
afforded to British merchant vessels to leave the
ports proposed to be blockaded. I did not fail to
submit at once your lordship's note to my Govern-
ment, and I have now the honour to state in reply
that if hostilities should be renewed on the 26th
the blockade of the ports of Cammin, Swinemunde,
Wolgast, Greifswalde, Stralsund, Birth, Dantsic,
and Pillau in the Baltic, as well as the blockade of
the ports and inlets in the Duchies of Schleswig
and Holstein, which was raised on the 12th of May,
in conformity with the stipulations of the suspension
of hostilities, will immediately be re-established;
that neutral ships which, after the renewal of the
war, might attempt to enter any of the blockaded
ports, would not, however, be subject to cap'ure
unless where previous notice of the re-establishment
of the blockade had been received by them, either
in the ordinary way or through the ships of the
blockading squadron itself; and that a short but
sufficient space of time would be accorded for leaving
the blockaded ports to those neutral ships which,
atthe time of the re-establishment of the blockade,
might be in those ports.

L" I have, &e.,

T. BILLE."

The Royal Sovereign,

The turret ship Royal Sovereign, manned with a
crew from the Steam Reserve at Portsmouth, and
under the command of Capt. H. Caldwell, C. 8., left
that harbour yesterday morning for Spithead to
more fully test her powers of• circling under full
boiler power with the use of the pilot house wheel
(the only wheel she would steer with when under
fire), and also to test the steam capstans with whieh
she is fitted below in weighing anchor by steam, and
also by manual labour in the ordinary method with
capstan bars, and her fittings on deck for ratting.
and fishing her anchor, &e. The two experire4ntai
circles were first made with the pilot he
.;use wheel,
the first being made to starboard., with 12 men at
the wheel, and the rudder ho
241 deg. in 59 sec. D e over to an angle of
The -half circle was made in 3
min 5 See' and ems- -half
to the full circle in 6 min
49 s". ThP. second circle was made to por ,
t and the
railer was hove over to an angle of 214 deg (12
meta at the wheel as before), in 1 min. 10 sec. The
half circle was made is 3 min. 1 sec., and the lull
circle completed in 5 min. 54 sec. In the first circle
the wheel had 64 turns, and in the second 7 turns.
The diameter of the circles was apparently about
three times the vessel's length. The ship was next
placed in the channel between the Noman and Dean
shoals, and, stern way having been got on her, her
starboard bower anchor was let go in 174 fathoms,
and the cable veered to the fourth shackle at the
hawse-pipe. The chain was then unbitted and
brought to the steam capstan (Brown and Harfield's
patent) on the 'tween decks, and the anchor hove up
again. The object of doing this was, on the part of
the officials from the dockyard, merely to test offi-
cially the powers of the steam capstan, but to Capt.
Coles, who was present, and to Capt. Cardwell it
proved the power of the Royal Sovereign to weigh her
anchors under circumstances where most other sh:
would be obliged toslip them. She might ba 1- pa
ying at
anchor in a river and be suddenly attacted by other
vessels or a boat flotilla, and unable, to show a man
on deck, or she might have to
defend herself and
get her anchor with her
crew weakened by the
absence of men in boa* crew
or by sickness, and in this
case a very few trial could, with the aid of the steam
capstan, run
anchor up to the bows, while the
remind:a could work the guns in the turrets, and
ll°_ a man need show himself to the enemy. The
port anchor was afterwards let go, and weighed
again in the ordinary manner with capstan bars by
the crew, exhibiting, however, very clearly the
superiority of steam power for the purpose. A
fear had been expressed that the shackles would
not pass round the capstan so securely as the links
of the cable, and, to test them fully in the manner,
they were passed round both vertically and hori-
zontally. They " bit" well in both positions, but
it required care to deliver the chain safely off
the capstan and round the rollers. The cat and
fish gear for securing the anchors, novel of their
kind, like all the other deck fittings of the ship,were
next tested in their turn, and it was found that,
with a few slight modifications, they will answer
their purpose admirably. This concluded the day's
tests, and the Royal Sovereign steamed in through
Spithead and the Channel fleet, and returned to her
berth alongside the dockyard about 5 p.m. The
steering gear fitted to the pilot-house has a lead of
four-fifths the length of the ship to the rudder-head
aft, and under such circumstances neither ropes nor
chains fitted in the ordinary way could convey the
whole of the work of the wheel to the rudder. To
meet adequately a contingency of this kind, the
ship's pilothouse wheel is connected with the
rudder by metal bars forward and a disc aft, the
result being that there is no "give" of rope or
chain, while the disc imparts the full amount of the
force created by the wheel to the head of the rudder.
We understand this is an improvement on a plan
somewhat similar to the one fitted on board the
mail steamer Adriatic by one of the shipwright
officers of Portsmouth Dockyard.