The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-25 00:00:00

The Modern Arming of Achilles.

AS WONDERFULLY DESCRIBED BY CHARLES
DICKENS.

(In to-day's number of "All the Year Round," but just
published.)
Ding, Clash, Doug, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash,
BANG, Clink, BANG, Doug, BANG, Clatter, BANG
BANG BANG ! What on earth is this! This is,
or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated
ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her
now; twelve hundred men working on stages over
her rides, over her bows, over her stern, under her
keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within
her and without, crawling and creeping into the
finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible for
men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerere, mea-
surers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, ship-
wrights ; twelve hundred clingers, slashers,
dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers
bangers ! Yet all this stupendous uproar around
the rising Achilles is as nothing to the re-
verberations with which the perfected Achilles
shall resound upon the dreadful day when the full
work is in hand for which this is but note of pre-
paration—the day when the scuppers that are now
fitting like great dry thirsty conduit-pipes shall run
red. All these busy figures between decks, dimly
seen bending at their work in smoke and fire, are
as nothing to the figures that shall do work here of
another kind in smoke and fire, that day. These
steam-worked engines alongside, helping the ship
by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of
iron plates about, as though they were so many
leaves of trees, would be rent limb from limb if
they stood by her for a minute then. To think
that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank
and oaken chest, can ever swim or roll ! To think
that any force of wind and wave could ever break
her ! To think that wherever I see a glowing
red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from
within•—as I do now, there, and there, and there !
—and two watching men on a stage without, with
bared arms and sledge-hammers; strike at it fiercely,
and repeat their blows until it is black and fiat, I

see a rivet being driven home of which there are
many in every iron plate, and thousand upon thou-
sands in the ship ! To think that the difficulty I
experience in appreciating the ship's size when I
am on board arises from her being a series of iron
tanks and oaken chests, so that internally she is
ever finishing and ever beginning, and halt of her
might be smashed and yet the remaining half suffice
and be sound. Then, to go over the side again and
down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of the
dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of
dog-shores and stays that hold her up, and to see
the immense mass bulging out against the upper
light, and tapering down towards me, is, with
great pains and much clambering, to arrive at
an impossibility of realising that this is a ship
at all, and to become possessed by the fancy
that it is an enormous immovable edifice set
up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona)
and almost filling it! Yet what would even these
things be, without the tributary workshops and
mechanical'powers for piercing the iron plates—
four inches and a half thick—for rivets, shaping
them under hydraulic pressure to the finest taper-
ing turns of the ship's lines, and paring them away,
with knives shaped like the beaks of strong and
cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the design!
These machines of tremendous force, so easily
directed by one attentive face and presiding hand,
seem to me to have in them something of the retir-
ing character of the Yard. " Obedient monster,
please to bite this mass of iron through and through,
at equal distances, where these regular chalk-
marks are, all round." Monster looks at its
work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies,
I don't particularly want to do it ; but
if it must be done —1 " The solid metal
wriggles out, hot from the monster's crunching
tooth, and it is done. "Dutiful monster, observe
this other mass of iron. It is required to be pared
away, according to this delicately lessening and
arbitrary line, which please to look at." Monster
(who has been in a reverie) brings down its blunt

bead, and much in the manner of Doctor Johnson,
closely looks along the line—very closely, being
somewhat nearsighted. "I don't particularly
want to do it ; but if it must be done ---
Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes aim,
and the tortured piece writhes off, and falls, a hot
tight-twisted snake, among the ashes. The making
of the rivets is merely a pretty round game, played
by a man and a boy, who put red hot barley-sugar
in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets fall
out of a window ; but the tone of the great machines
is the tone of the great Yard and the great country :
"We don't particularly want to do it ; but if it
must be done --- !"

GENERAL AIOU---RAVlEFF:—(xeneral Prince Nicho-
las MOuravieff,Po
Poland was
has been commissioned by the
Czar to pacify
bornus in Moscow in the year
des-
patched edlione cag ommimsseinoneetdohthe s
Court
career in 1810, in the
after which he was des-
ou. °
rt of the Shah of Persia. He
saoromnyafter in
eiinvedthe Caucasus,
comraBsi
n as major-general, and
took part in the war waged by Russia
against this Asiatic Power. At
ain 1828 arid 1829
later period, in 1831, he
was actively engaged in the Palish
a
ap-
pointed lieut.-general after the battle of campaign,
and was
rierz. At the
taking of Warsaw he commanded the right
R Emperor
Russian forces. In 1832 the Nicholas commis-
sioned wing of the
him to conclude an agreement with Mehemet
and entrusted him with the command of the Russian Ali,
of the Bosphorus, and afterward,.in 1835, with that of oarm3.
.sth army corps of infantry. But a short time after he the
hadassumed the command a want of discipline among the troops
was soon manifest, much carelessness and disorder were
also displayed ir4 the army of Sebastopol, a duty which also
devolved upon Prince i‘louravieff; fur those and other rea-
sons he fell into disgrace wi h the Emperor, and retired to
Moscow, where he came forward and remained for a long
time as one of the most extreme members of the old Rus-
sian party. In 1848 he, however, again entered the service
of the State, became a member of the highest war council,
and was afterwards appointed to the command of the Gre
nadier Guards. In 1855, at the head of the Circassian
army, he took the city of Karz, and when relieved from
his command, in 1850, by Prince Bariatinski, ho retired
from the service and lived as a private individual on his
estates, there au Imperial order reached him giving him
the command of the army in Poland to suppress the in-
surrection.

The comic actor Liseagne, formerly of the
Theatre des Variete's, and who bad been fcr the last three
years in a malson de sant6, has just died at the age of 41.
The Gazette des ltrangers states that M. de
Lataartine has been authorised to establish mother lottery
of 4,000,000 of tickets et 35e, each.