The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-08 00:00:00

THE IRON NAVY OF ENGLAND,

On Tuesday evening, Mr. J. Sett Russell, of the
Great Eastern, delivered a lecture to the members
of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society on
the above subject,
Mr. T. P. TEALE, F.R,S., the president of the
society, introduced
Mr. RUSSELL, who said that when he accepted
the invitation of the Council to co-operate with
them in the good work of that excellent institution,
he did so under the conviction tnat there was no
better way of promoting the growing intelligence
of the community than by assemblages of that kind
for the mutual instruction of the members. He con-
gratulated them on the public spirit they had shown
in the good cause of education by the enlargement
of that handsome building, and said there were few
similar institutions whose lecture sessions could be
inaugurated by such men as Herschell, Whewell,
and Professor Owen, (Applause.) The subject he
had chosen was the iron navy of England, and if it
might be asked what interest they in Leeds, a peace-
ful people, had in ships of war, or indeed what did
they care about any shipping, he answered—first,
their goods went to all parts of the world in
ships ; next, they paid in taxes a very considerable
portion of the ten millions a year which the navy
of the country cost; and, third, they might desire
to know whether the fleet they possessed was
likely to protect the ships engaged in the wool
trade and the export trade from their enemies,
should some quarrelsome neighbour choose to go
to war with England, and also whether the Ad-
miralty had provided such vessels as would save
their commerce from suffering such havoc as the
Alabama was now inflicting upon the commerce of
New York. He was not sure that he could give
answers on these questions that were perfeetly satis-
factory; he was not quite sure that they had a fleet
able to protect their commerce from clever, smart,
well-handled, and fast pirates like the Alabama ;
and he was not sure that they had got value for the
thirty millions spent upon the fleet. The first ques-
tion was, were wooden ships of war worth anything
for purposes of warfare ? Sir John C. Hay, the
chairman of the committee appointed by Govern-
ment to make experiments on the effects of artillery
upon iron armour, uttered in the house this fatal
sentence upon wooden fleets :—" The man who goes
into action in a wooden ship is a fool, and the man
that sends him there is a villain." The worthlessness
of wood ships came from their combustible nature,
and arose mainly from the invention in modern times
of horizontal shell firing, which could be discharged
with tolerable certainty at distances of two, three,
and even five miles. He explained, with the
aid of the black board, &c., the construction
of the different kinds of shell used, and their
terrific and destructive effects on wooden ships.
They could, however, make iron ships incombus-
tible. A plate an inch thick had been found to
take the sting out of a shell altogether. A cast-
iron shell eight inches in diameter, weighing 681bs.
and fired with a charge of some 16Ibs. of powder,
at a distance of from 200 to 500 yards, would be
carried with a velocity of 1,600 feet a second, and
the question was, how to stop it ? Many theories
had been proposed to stop the shell by coaxing—
(laughter)—that was, by pieces of India rubber,
by bales of cotton, blankets, and other mollifying
substances, but it had been proved that nothing
would induce it to stop but presenting another
piece of iron as strong or stronger than
itself, and, therefore, to stop a 681 b. shell they
must take so thick a plate of iron that the piece
struck by it should weigh more than 681bs.
It was then a question of strength—if there
was a certain quantity more of iron in the plate
than in the shell, the plate had it, and vice versa,
but if the plate were hit three or four times in the
same place it would probably give way. Mr. Whit-
worth had been enabled with his cylindrical shot,
under peculiarly favourable circumstances, just to
punch through an iron plate of 4 inches. Of all the
hundreds of shots fired in action, very few would
have similar fortunate circumstances, and they
might, therefore, comfort themselves with the feel-
ing that at present 4k-inch iron-plates were prac-
tically shell proof. (Applause.) When 41 inches
were penetrated by ordinary guns, they must make
thicker armour, and to carry it they must build
bigger ships, or limit the battery to a smaller por-
tion of the ship. Mr. ,Russell then gave an interest-
ing description of the internal arrangements of the
Great Eastern, with the view of showing that it
was possible to make an iron ship unsinkable, after
which he proceeded to explain the different princi-
ples upon which armour plates were attached to
ships of war. The first case which came to their
knowledge of the destruction of a wooden fleet by
horizontal shell firing was the destruction by the
Russians of the Turkish fleet at Sinope. During the
same war, Louis Napoleon got his iron-plated ships
Into the Black Sea before England, and had the
opportunity of practically testing them. He was
enabled to capture Kinburn, and it was afterwards
found that in no one place had the shot from the for-
tress penetrated the armour of the two ships en-
gaged in bombarding it, Immediately after this ex-
rience, Napoleon made up his mind to have armour-
plated ships, ceased spending money upon wooden
ships, saved that money until he perfected his de-
sign, and the consequence was that he had got an
iron fleet before we knew anything about it. What
did we in England do? No sooner was this found
out than they set to work building wooden ships as
fast as possible, and the sum expended in this way
since Napoleon began saving his money was 29
millions odd. (Laughter.) A list of the " mag-
nificent fleet which now defended England" had
been recently published, and it amounted to
1,014 ships of war. This was a very formidable
inventory, bat he could give them a simple ana-
lysis of the number. Of these 1,014, there were of
wooden ships 1,010—(laughter)—of fast iron ships,
two ; and of stow iron ships, two. This was what
they now had for the 29 or 30 millions expended
since the discovery that wooden ships were incap-
able of sustaining horizontal shell firing. There was
happily promise of better for the future. They were
now constructing of the Warrior class four, of the
slow class four, and of wooden ships coated with iron
ten. He thought this was a very serious subject.
The country was spending 10 millions a year upon
the navy, which was equal to a fleet of ten Warriors
He thought they would agree with him that if War

riors were the right thing, they ought certainly to
have taken a portion of the thirty millions, and ex-
pended it upon iron-plated ships, and if they had
done so, this country would now be possessed of
a naval force greater than any that could be
brought against it. A fleet of twenty Warriors
would be more powerful than the whole of
the 1,010 wood ships put together—it would be
maintained at a quarter of the cost of the wooden
ships ; and he would go further, and say that three
fleets of twenty Warriors could be maintained for
an annual expenditure of little more than half of the
ten millions now expended on the navy. They would
naturally ask how this was to be accomplished P He
replied, they should order the Admiralty to go out
of business as manufacturers. (Hear.) They had
turned them outof business in one department—the
manufacture of marine steam engines—and the eco-
nomypa..nbuuialcdtze)
had been enormous. Why should the Admi-
ralty manufacture ships P Could theymi manufacture
them cheaper or better than they (sh
could ? If the public allowed the Admiralty to
manufacture ships they allowed them to maintain
a magnificent establishment, which they did not
like to put down. To maintain a sufficient iron
fleet they must set aside something like half a
million per annum. Let the Admiralty spend this,
and another half million in maintaining engines,
&e., and then with the rest of the money now ex-

pended in the dockyards they could provide at
least two Warriors a year. This was the simple
process by which alone they would get an efficient

navy maintained at a less cost than that which for

20 years had been the amount of the naval esti-

mates annually voted by Parliament. (Applause.)
In answer to questions from Mr. O'Callaghan, Mr.
A. Fairbairn, Mr. Sykes Ward, Rev. Dr. Brewer,

and other gentlemen, Mr. Russell ssid he thought
we should probably soon overtake the French fleet,
but what he complained of was, that the French

had been before us. They had now six iron vessels
afloat, and we had four; they had ten building and
we had about the 'Jame number of large and geveral