The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-04 00:00:00

THE SUN; LONDON, FRI OAY EVENING, APRIL 4, 1862.

that Fort Monroe could not silence the Merrimac,
and that this was made so plain that the import-
ance of furnishing Spithead with Monitors is proved
to be greater than that of supplying it with forts.
As we do not want to be spending on both at once,
and as the floating iron batteries are the proved
necessity, which cannot yet be said of the forts, we,
with the evident majority of the House of Commons,
demand to spend the money first on the floating
batteries. We can attend to the forts at leisure,
when we have made it impossible for any power to
bombard our arsenals from a ship which laughs at
forts. "We thank Mr. JONATHAN for teaching us
that lesson."

The Duke gives us this consolation, that we are
as well off at present for iron-plated vessels as any
other nation. Altogether, we have ten iron vessels
in hand ; four of them tifloat ; another to be launched
in August; another early next year. Small, indeed,
is, therefore, at this moment, what may be called
our effective fleet. The Americans have shown that
in three months, and certainly in a half year, any
power, with competent iron manufactories, could
construct two or three ships which might send all
our frigates and liners to the bottom. The truth,
therefore, is that should war against us be the pur-
pose of any other nation, they now know how to
render our naval supremacy, on which we so fondly
rely, a very doubtful thing. We are not, we admit,
just at this moment at the mercy of any power—but
we are at the mercy of what any great power can
do in a few months. The nearest great rower
might, beyond a doubt, be, by the end of the sum-
mer, in a position to threaten any port and arsenal
in the kingdom—that is, unless we accept at once
the " Monitor's " teaching.
The Duke of SOMERSET describes the addition to
Our knowledge in consequence of the American
battle to be precisely this—that whereas he before
supposed we could keep our ironsides at home to
defend our own shores, we now know that we must
have them wherever in our colonies and dependen-
cies we have a harbour to defend. As we have
already endeavoured to enforce this lesson, we are
thankful the Duke should accept it also. But from
the statements he made, he evidently sees also that
for purposes of offensive war at sea, wooden vessels
will now be useless. They will cease to be able to
enforce a blockade, and they will no longer be com-
petent to face the fleet of an enterprising and active
enemy. There is no help for it; we must convert
the greater part of our magnificent and beautiful
sailing ships, as fast as we can, into the ugly
uninteresting monsters which alone can face
each other and make us secure. Lord HARD-
WIME, with. the feelings of an old sailor,
looks on the days of old seamanship as fast pass-
ing away, and we most thoroughly sympathise
with him. To stand at the entrance of a port
and, instead of the noble, graceful form, and
ship-of-the-line, to see
sails, and trim, of a Queen's
two or three ugly iron things gliding into port—
to see our gallant ships giving place to creations,
reminding us more of the huge marine antedilu-
vian Saurians than of anything else, may well evoke
-
a sentimuntal sigh. We do not like it. However,
warts an ugly thing, and modern science is driv-
ing as to the conclusion, that war at sea must be
a battle between ugly things. Indeed, as Lord
HARDWICKE has it, the time is at hand " when a
ship would be fought by an engineer, a stoker, and
artillerist," and when the sailor, like the soldier,
would live in towns and away from the coast.