The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-11 00:00:00

THE ARMY•

His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, the
General Commanding-in Chief, concluded his
annual official visit to Portsmouth yesterday by in-
specting the quarters of the Field Artillery at
Hilsea, the formidable, but as yet unfinished, de-
fensive lines at Hilsea (planned by Sir John Bur-
goyne to defend the entrance into Portsea Island
from the mainland), and Portsea Island from the
main land),an d forts Widley,N elson, and Southwick,
on Portsdown-hill. His Royal Highness after-
wards returned to Government-house, Portsmouth,
and, after partaking of luncheon, left by train for
London, under a salute of 21 guns from the garrison
saluting battery, the Royal Standard at the same
time being hauled down from the flagstaff of the
garrison and the Union Jack taking its place.
The head-quarters of the 87th Regiment, under
the command of Colonel Murray, disembarked at
Portsmouth yesterday morning from her Majesty's
screw transport Meg mra, and left by South-Western
Railway at 11 a.m. for Farnborough and Aldershot
Camp.
Col. H. D. Harness, C. 8., director of the Royal
Engineer establishment, Chatham, has been occu-
pied during the last three days in making his half-
yearly inspection of the companies of Royal En-
gineers at headquarters, Brompton Barracks.
Yesterday was devoted to an examination of the
books and official documents belonging to each
company.
The hired sailing transport Norwood arrived at
Portsmouth yesterday from London, and this morn-
ing will embark the remainder of the 2d battalion
18th (Royal Irish) Regiment, for conveyance to New
Zealand. The headquarters of this regiment, it will
be remembered, sailed some ten days since in the
Elizabeth Ann Bright. •

GOING THE WHOLE HOG.—Cincinnati has lost
her chief glory, and must henceforth resign with
that the soubriquet of which she has long boasted. West-
ward the hog wends his way, and over Chicago, the City of
the Lake, his star now rises and sets. The season of 1861-
62 showed that Cincinnati was no longer entitled to the
swinish distinction of being the chief pork-packing city of
the world, as Chicago then packed 40,000 more hogs than
she did. But the statistics of the present season, just pub-
lished, reveal the amazing fact that while Cincinnati bas
packed 562,582 hogs, Chicago has, by regularly established
packers, packed no less than 970,264, or close upon a round
million. We sympathise with Cincinnati ;we congratulate
Chicago—henceforth crowned the true and undisputed
Porkopolis.—New York Times, March 28.

It is a commonly received opinion that parrots
and ravens live to a great age. From the follow-
ing statement, coming from a wealthy farmer of La Beauce,
it appears that ducks also are long-lived. In a letter ad-
dressed to a journal he says :—" I have in iny farmyard a
duck of a small breed, which my father bought 21 years
ago, and which then appeared to be very old. She has
laid regularly every season since, and raised several good
broods. She laid her first egg this year on the 28th ult.
In beak and plumage this duck is very much like a wild
one. I have never been able to learn where she was bred.
—Gaignani.

In accordance with the recent determined spirit
evinced by the Lords of the Admiralty to make
themselves as useful as possible, by seeing with
their Gwn eyes all that relates to armour-plating,
from the first rolling of the mass of iron to their
final destruction in the form of targets at Shoebury-
ness, their lordships paid a long visit on Thursday
to the great Armour-plate Works recently erected
by Mr. Brown, the Mayor of Sheffield, and on that
day opened and worked for the first time in the pre-
sence of a number Gf distinguished visitors. The
manufacture of armour-plates, we may premise, has
withir the last few months been in as fluctuatieg and
uncertain a state as that of either the guns or pro-
jectiles to be used in destroying them. The experi-
ments at Shoeburyness at first gave very varied re-
sults, and it was not until after some time that they
at last pointed almost decisively in favour of rolled
plates instead of hammered. The fibre in the for-
mer was found to be stronger, the texture of the
metal in every part more even, and the average of
perfect soundness throughout altogether of a higher
standard than could be relied on from the work of
the steam hammer. Still, even with these data
from which to start, there seemed a great difficulty
in obtaining any large supply of really good plates,
even when made of what is now thought to be the
minimum thickness of 41 inches. We hear con-
stantly of the Armourclads on the other side of the
Atlantic being coated with 12 and even 15 inch
plates of iron ; but, in plain truth, these plates are
mere shams, being built up by bolting together one
inch or two inch plates till whatever thickness is
required by the Government is attained, and by
this manufacturing ruse the Federal authorities get
a built-up plate of 12 inches with scarcely the re-
sistance that belongs to a solid one of four. But
what the Yankee Navy-yard has to endure from its
contractors is not tolerated for an instant in the
supplies required for Chatham or Portsmouth,
where the standard of excellence is so high
that even very recently one eminent firm has
had as much as £15,000 worth of its finished
plates returned upon their hands for defects that
were little more than trifling. In fact, every day
has shown for some time past that the manufacture
of plates on a remunerative scale is only to be
secured by those who embark their capital and en-
terprise in it as a business of its own, and put up
the extensive and very costly plant which is re-
quired to bring the manufacture of these gigantic
slabs of armour to perfection: It was exactly these
conditions which large manufacturers, as a body,
did not care to fulfil, fearing that by the time their
capital was sank a gun might be invented which
could sink armour-ships too, and so render the pro-
duction of plates a worthless and no longer needed
process. Fortunately, all manufacturers were not
to be deterred by these remote evils or the near ap-
proach of Mr. Bright's millennium from throwing
themselves heart and soul into the new business, and
especially have the chief firms of Sheffield come for-
ward with a zeal in the cause which is likely to
secure for their town a long monopoly in the lucra-
tive manufacture of ship's armour. Assuredly it
has not been before it was sorely needed that the
trade of the town has received their additional
stimulus. The 150 tons of crinoline steel made
almost weekly at Sheffield, and the quantities of
" hardware" ordered by the Federal Government,
have poorly compensated for the general stagnation
of trade, and, above all, for the steady decline and
departure from Sheffield of the trade in very cheap
cutlery, which seems to be fast leaving the country.
Accordingly, the winter, in spite of its mildness, has
been one of unusual distress around Sheffield, and
it will prove a perfect godsend to the town if more
mills for making armour-plates are opened in Shef-
field on the same extensive scale as that opened at
the Atlas Works by the visit of the Lords of the
Admiralty on Thursday. Making crinolines for
frigates will be found a much more lucrative em-
ployment than making it for ladies, and the
fashion is now more likely to be permanent at
sea than on land. Most of our readers will recol-
lect an armour-plate from the Atlas Works shown
in the eastern annexe of the Exhibition last year,
which was 22ft. long and 4ft. wide, and the pro-
duction of which was regarded as a perfect marvel,
even by our own manufacturers. It serves well to illus-
trate the giant strides with which the new manu-
facture has advanced since then, when we state that
on Thursday last a plate of upwards of 40ft. long,
4ft. wide, and 41in. thick, was rolled with the most
perfect ease and success in the presence of the visi-
tors. It is only a few months since some 7t-in, plates
from the Atlas Works were tried at Shoeburyness,
and proved that plates even of this great thickness
could be made with the most perfect certainty. Yet
on Thursday a glowing mass of almost molten iron,
weighing more than 20 tons, was rolled into an
armour-plate 19ft. long, 3ft. 9in. broad, and 12in.
in thickness.

The Atlas Works are situated on the outskirts of
the town, where a good deal of interest was evinced
in the visit of their lordships ; most of the people
appeared to keep high holiday on the occasion, and
all the streets had more or less of fidgs, which, when
they could be seen, contrasted favourably with the
thick atmosphere of murky smoke in which they
floated. At 10 o'clock Mr. Brown was at the old
mills to receive his visitors, Among them were
the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Somerset, the
Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Hartington,
Viscount Galway, Earl Fitz williara, Earl de Grey,
Lord Wharncliffe, Lord Clarence Paget, Lord Alfred
Paget, Mr. Roebuck, M.P., Mr. Grenfell, M.P.,
Mr. Robertson, M.P., Hon. J. Stuart Wortley,
Hon. Col. Monckton, Capt. the Hon. J. Drummond,
RN., Sir J. D. Hay, M.P., Admiral Robinson,
Admiral Spencer, Col. Boxer, R.A., Capt. Blake-
ley, Capt. Harrison, Mr. Pole, C.E,, Mr. W. Fair-
bairn, Mr, Whitworth, Mr. Bessemer, Mr. W.
Fowler, Capt. Maury, Mr. Clay, Mr. James Luke,
Inspector for the Admiralty, &c.
Before proceeding over the works the members of
the corporation of Sheffield were introduced to
their lordships, and presented them with an ad-
dress, to which the Duke of Somerset briefly re-
plied, pointing out how at the present time the
navy of England was in a transition state, and
that it was the intention of the Government to
persevere, not impatiently, but steadily, in ex-
perimenting and improving the naval arma-
ments of the country, ready for the occasion, if ever
the unfortunate occasion should arise, to be used
efficiently in its defence. The visitors were then
conducted through the extensive new and old mills
and workshops, where some 3,000 hands were busily
engaged in melting, bending, hammering, and
twisting great masses of seething iron into every
conceivable form its stubborn nature could be made
to take. It was really a wonderful sight. On
every side, amid thick smoke and deafening cla-
mour, the blazing rites of Moloch—the furnace God
of old—were being celebrated. Great furnaces blar-
ing in the fierce white glare which shone from their
crevices were stuffed to the mouth with monstrous
cranks and shafts, and uncouth bosses of red-hot
metal. Every now and then some one of them was
opened, with a flash that filled the smokyam aat,asJoosf
phere with a glare as from snow, and
of sp arks,
metal, seething and sputtering in a
blazme uch wax,
was dragged off and moulded, like
building
thatB made. the
under the blows of steam hammers
earth tremble and the whole toj amt. p
.and
chatter under the stroke as iffrem t e s o a little
wonderful to see toes kill with
earthquake. It was w
which thegroups of vvorkmen,uniting all their indivi-
dual exertions in contrivedes of violent ffort s like a weird
species of dance, to hedge and move about
the great masses on the anvils, so that the hammer
struck only where and how they chose. White the
heat lasted in the mass, and that was for a long
time, they never paused or slackericd in their work,
and though literally almost scorched by their proxi-
mity to red heaps they kept on toiling till the work
was done, and the lump that a quarter of an hour

tion to this glowing scene of industry. Though
not the first, yet by far the most important process
which their lordships were shown was the opera-
tion of rolling the great plate—by far the largest
single plate that has ever yet been rolled in the
world. This took place in what are called the New
Mills of the Atlas Works, which were used on
Thursday for the first time, and where great ranges
of furnaces have been erected, with their mouths
opening on the iron tramway which leads direct to
the dcuble rollers through which the plate passes.
One may guess at the solidity required for mills of
this kind when it is stated that some of the rolls
used at this mill on Thursday have a first founia-
tion of no less than 60 tons of solid iron, resting on
masonry carried far below the earth. The rolls
themselves are 32in. in diameter and Bft. wide, and
are turned by an engine of 400 horse power, putting
in motion a fly wheel large enough apparently to
make a world rotate, if only well balanced on its
axis. A powerful screw, applying its force through
compound levers, allows the distance between the
rollers to be adjusted to the fraction of an inch, so
that the plate which on its first rolling is forced
through an interval of, for instance, 12in. apart, is
on its next wound through one of 10, next through
one of 8, and so on till the required thickness has
been carefully and equally attained by tremendous
compression through every part of the metal. There
were a great many visitors to see the rolling of this
formidable mass, which was fortunate, as one would
certainly be frightened to witness the terrible pro-
cess alone. After some delay and quick glimpses
made by the most hardened workmen, who,
rushing up to the door of the' furnace, got a
half-blinded glance into its white interior, it was
decided that the mass was ready, for, strange as it
may seem, an armour•plate requires more than mere
heating, and has to be cooked and watched in its
cooking with as much care as if it was an omelette,
and the plate that is drawn before it is " done to a
turn," generally remains a permanent ornament of
the unlucky manufacturer's workshop, which no
One will have at any price. When at last this
eventful moment had arrived on Thursday the door
of the furnace was slowly raised and a colossal
pair of pincers, with very long handles fastened to
a chain drawn by machinery, was swung in. For
an instant some men rushed forward, and, shield-
ing their faces from the deadly heat that shot from
the furnace, adjusted the bite of these forceps on
the plate, and then ran back as the chain began to
tauten, and the great inmate of the blazing den
was slowly dragged forth on to the long iron trucks
in front of the door, and there lay in its huge
length and thickness a mass of living fire, which
none could approach, or scarcely even look at, so
fierce was its glow and terrific heat. The chains
that should have pulled it forthwith to the rollers
were too slack, and then arose shouts, and cries,
and commands, as the men did battle with this
mass of fire, coming so near it in their attempts