The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-17 00:00:00

TRUTT.

PLYMOUT

This Day,

PLYMOUTH, Saturday, 11 a.m.
Mr. R. P. Collier, the newly-appointed Solicitor-General,
was re-elected to-day without opposition.

Naval and Military Intelligence.

THE NAVY.
Mr. J. Stansfeld, M.P., Junior Lord of the Admiralty, is
at present daily engaged at Portsmouth Dockyard in inves-
tigating the dockyard system of account-keeping and the
mode of carrying out work in the different departments of
the yard. The system of keeping the accounts of the yard
may certainly be very much simplified, and there is no doubt
Mr. Stansfeld will, in the end, have reason to be satisfied
with the reforms he may effect. He will, however, be much
less at home in dealing with the great question of labour in
the yard. It certainly is a matter of surprise to those who
frequently visit our great national dockyards that so little
work is done in them. The visitor hears of thousands of
persons employed, and yet sees no work executed to be
compared with what he would expect in a private yard of
the same magnitude. This is precisely the situation at
present in Portsmouth Dockyard. Repairs are being made
(a work taken in hand certainly not a day too soon), tram-
ways laid down, sheds, stores, and workshops cleansed and
whitewashed, ornamental grass plots formed, trees planted,
and hideous old figure heads stuck up in different parts of
the yard. There are men at work on the Royal Sovereign
certainly, but she is not more than three parts completed,
and 35 or more hands have been taken off her during the
past week, on the plea that employment cannot be found
for them on board. There is a delay in the delivery of
the armour plates for her turrets, the officials say, and
therefore the men are sent from her to other work. However
the case may lie between the Admiralty officials and the
contractors, certain it is that now, instead of having the
Royal Sovereign afloat by Christmas, as was looked forward
to as a certainty a month or two back, that event is post-
poned until March next. It isimpossible to look at the Royal
Sovereign without coming to the conclusion that while the
vast resources and labour of Portsmouth yard have been so
long employed, and are still employed, in simply converting
a broadside into a turret ship, Mr. Laird's yard at Birken-
head—a comparatively petty establishment—turned out
three new turret ships. Can Mr Stansfeld grapple with this
labour question satisfactorily ? If he deals with it on the
broad basis of an ent ire reform of the whole system, he may
achieve, possibly, a satisfactory result, but if he has only
Power to deal with it on the grcund of retrenchment, he will
fail utterly, as others have failed before him. The dockyard
system, like the Admiralty system, is rotten to the core, and
to effect any beneficial reform the existing state of things
must be entirely swept away, and a new one substituted. It
is admitted now by all parties, except among those person-
ally interested, that no permanent reform or good of any
kind can be effected with the Board of Admiralty until it
ceases to be a political board, closely connected with t,-0
Ministry of the day. A similar radical change :mist take
place in our dockyards before any permanent good in them
can be effected. Take the shipwrisslaS as an example of the
employed skilled labour Of ate yards. A man receives 4s. 6d
n
per day he welts, s.. a
i gang of 20, superintended by a
leading bstsild who has over him an inspector, a foreman
being over all. Now, one man in this 20 may not earn more
than 3s, per day while the man working next to him may
65,, yet both are paid alike. A discretionary power of '
earn
measuring work is vested in the master shipwright, but is
never exercised except when extra hands are placed on a
ship and the work is hurried. In such cases, if a man is
found to have shirked his work he is mulcted in his pay ac-
cording to the established scale of prices. It is needless to
say that if a man is found to have done more than his re-
quired quantity of work, he is not paid the extra money for
it. It certainly seems that here a system of payment accord-
ing to the work done could be introduced with advantage.
It might be so, but not under the present " system." The
"leading hand," who has the most immediate charge of the
gangof2o men, is but one of themselves, and receives only
6d. per day over the pay of the men under him. Another
aspect from which the employment of labour in our yards
may be viewed is in the repairs of ships in commission, say
the Channel Fleet. The fleet, or a part, as is at present the
case, arrives at Spithead, and every ship requires repairs of
Two, perhaps, of the ships go into harbour,
some kind or other which must be carried out by the labourers
and
dthtehysairsceic.essary wt.ork,, goes o without any loss of time
what " reu us and «nsystem" impose. The ships
abte
must remain th
ysopnidthead ere, for the moorings in the
harbour are taken up by harbour ships or useless hulks, and
therefore there is no room for ships that have come in from
sea
wanting repairs, however urgently their services may
be required, even if an enemy were off in the channel. All the
ships, however, must be repaired, and so men and materials
are sent
, off to Spithead. The amount of daily work which
can be done by 200 workmen under such circumstances is
very
small indeed, as every Commander of a ship that has
lain
at Spithead " under repairs" can well remember to his
infieite disgust. When a war comes upon us with any great
naval Power, our " heads of departments" say we shall clear
off all the old craft up the harbour, even if we shoved them
on the mud, and remove the present craft off the dockyard
Lao for a dozen ships to come in to from sea
moorings higher up, so that the mootings off the yard
their repairs when not in dock. Now,
this be done in times of peace?! Why
until a war " comes upon us tb provide
wawnho
duy
lield
s hbsoe
tu alsvdvaait I
during
ut
must we
suddenly
continuefroth sea
sq.fao
ar n rdeopt
in stirsg os
or
the necessary means for the due reception of our ships
shouldi n
w. e
refit? Why, in a , ,
many thousands annually in this one item alone when the
obvious ? Ships and shipwrights have been
remedy is so
with
referred to thus in connexion
Mr. Stanfeld's visit to
Portsmouth yard simply because they are naturally the most
in harbour onf comingot
prominent features in our dockyards, but there is no single
department in those establishments but what cries out loudly
for reform.
A change is going on in Portsmouth yard, which
has perhaps
attracted much notice, from the fact of its oc-
curring during Mr. Stansfeld's presence at the yard. The
steam factory is quietly absorbing the steam reserve.
Whether this process will be finally and successfullyaccom-
plished, and,
if so, whether the Admiralty will sanction and
remainsto be ascertained,
A it, yet rem _
A letter received at Plymouth from a naval officer at
Jamaica states that on the 24th of September there were in
Port Royalm hal boar her Mae 's screw steamship Aboukir,
Commodore Peter Croft, C. 8.; the screw steam
86, Com()
frigate Art
iadne 26, Capt. Ed ward W. Vansittart ; the
_ .._team sl
i arr a c o eta' 6
p ddlewheel team s coop
3 Commander George
Ja Malcolm ;s the screw ya
sop Petrel, 11, Commander
George W.
Watson; and the screw steam gunboat Cn
5, Commander et,
Walter S. De Rautzon. The vessel last
named returned from Port Antonio on the 13th with
machinery damaged, after an ineffectual attempt to save a
stranded
(the Quick Step), the cargo of which had
schooner
been previously landed. The Barracouta left Port Royal on
endeavour to
the 19th of September to . settle a disturbance
Cart at Pedro I where
the Americans (Northern States) had
•
landed a gun. Having accomplished her object, she re-
turned to Port Royal, and was preparing to proceed to St.
here an insurrection had broken out among the
w
s. The screw steam gunvessel Landrail, 5, Com-
mander
wr .
Arthur, left Port Royal on the 13th of Sept.
The screw steamsloop Desperate, 8, Commander Arthur T.
Trapp, from Truxillo, arrived on the 18th, and left on the
22d for England, via Bermuda,
The .Bermuda Royal Gazette of September 15 states that
the Plover, 5, Capt. the Hon. Amar L. Corry, which arrived
there from Halifax on the 10th, left again on the 12th for
Charleston, South Carolina. It was stated that when the
Challenger arrived in Hamilton she would bring instruc-
tions for the Immortalite, Capt. Hancock, to proceed to
New York, for the purpose of taking the Commander-in-
Chief, Admiral Sir
Alexander Milne, up to the city. The
United States' war ship Fort Jackson, Capt. Allen, three
days from Hampdon Roads, anchored at Murray on the 9th,
and left the same day for Rio Janeiro.
The screw steam corvette Pelorus, 22, Capt. Boys, left
Plymouth Sound on Thursday for the Cape of Good Hope
and China,

The Dauntless, Capt. J. B, Dickson, is ordered to proceed
from Southampton Water to Spithead, to change some of
her guns. She bent sails yesterday morning.
An official intimation has been given that the next exa-
mination of candidates for admission to the Royal Military
College at Sandhurst will commence on Thursday the 17th
December next at Chelsea Hospital, and that fOr admission
to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich on Monday,
the 4th January, at the same place.

THE BLAKELY GUNS AT CHARLESTON. —We
are given to understand that the heavy gun made on the
Blakely pattern, which recently burst at Charleston, was
constructed at Richmond. The 800-pounders sent from
England were only being mounted when the latest advices
left. The Prince Alfred gun, manufactured by the biers!),
Steel and Iron Company, is now the property of Captain
Blakely.

ROMANTIC STORY,—Upwards of 30 years ago
a marriage took place in this (Liverpool) neighbourhood, the
man and wife being in humble circumstances. After living
together till after the birth of a child, the husband went to
Australia to seek his fortune, His wife never heard from him
after he left her, and, supposing he was dead, on the lapse of
seven years she married a widower with three children. To
this number, in her second married life, she added five, mak-
in-; her whole family, including the child by her first husband,
nine. Some time since the second husband died, and she was
left to struggle with her large family. To her great surprise,
at the beginning of the present year her first husband made
his appearance in Liverpool. During his 30 years' absence
he had prospered in Australia, and was a large landed pro-
prietor there. Ho had heard of his wife's second marriage,
to
but as the fault was his ho never thought of returning
England until he heard of the death of the second husband.
To make amends for his former neglect of his wife—for not-
withstanding her second marriage she was still his wife—
snntsekrentothaslml haerndehthile-
dh
ree
nb hgaavveed
tihne them c
oms
tol syt
ohuat
fin dt
amned
Ina
has
wife to his early affections out With him to the l
adoption. The wife, who has thus after an absence ofand of
his
more
than 30 years been restored to her position,
70 years of age; and so recent is their departure from this
port, that the vessel in which they sailed is not yet out of
the chapiaeli—Liverpooptercury.