The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-04 00:00:00

PRICE 4d.
STAMPED sd.'

inboard, and thus enable the battery guns on 'the
fore and aft port and starboard sides to be fired
either ahead or astern. The gates are fitted with
the ordinary nettings for stowing the men's ham-
mocks. In addition to the 6-ton guns which the
Favourite will carry, she will also mount a couple
of the large 30-pounder smooth-bore muzzle-load-
ing Armstrong guns.

The screw gun-vessel Griffin, 5, 80-horse power,
recently paid off into the third division of the
Chatham Steam Reserve, from the West Coast of
Africa, has been placed in dock, where she is under-
going a complete repair and refit of both hull and
machinery. She is to be furnished with new decks
and her defects made good ; in addition to which
she is to be supplied with new boilers, and her ma-
chinery generally thoroughly overhauled.
The screw gunboat Hasty, 2, 60-horse power,
Lieut,-Commander T. M. Campbell, tender to:the
Royal Naval Reserve training ship Castor, 22, has
been taken into the north basin at Sheerness, where
she is making good her defects. She is having new
boilers, and will undergo a thorough refit, which
will detain her at the dockyard for about two
months to come.

The books of the screw steam Coastguard ship
Blenheim, 60, Capt. T. H. Mason, now at Devonport,
were closed on Thursday, and will be opened again
when the Revenge is ready to receive her crew with
an addition of 30 Marines. The Revenge will, it is
said, be commanded by Capt. Geo. Le G. Bowyer,
of the receiving ship Canopus, 8, in Hamoaze, the
command of which will be transferred to Capt. Ma-
son. It may be six weeks or two months before the
Revenge will be ready to take the Blenheim's recent
duty at Pembroke.

The screw steam frigate Constance, 39, Capt. E.
K. Barnard, has been refitting in Plymouth Sound.
Her topgallant masts were sent up on Thursday, and
she will soon be ready for duty on a foreign station.
The new iron cased screw steamship Lord Clyde,
24, now in the south basin of Keyham Steamyard,
may be ready for trial in about a month. In conse-
quence of the protrusion of her stem (a brass cast-
ing weighing five tons) her hawse holes are so much
within the plumb that she was obliged, on arrival
from Pembroke, to leave an anchor in the Sound.
To remedy this defect a wooden casing, 2ft. to 2ift.
thick, is being fitted in the hollow part of the bow
just under the hawse-hole, to keep the anchor fur-
ther off when weighing. Her engines, of 1,000-
power, are from the manufactory of Messrs. Raven-
hill and Salkeld.

The petroleum boiler at Woolwich dockyard,
lately experimented with, is now undergoing consi-
derable alteration, in order to assimilate it more to
the simple form of the present marine boiler. The
long course of experiments under Mr. Richardson's
supervision at Woolwich, has proved the system to
be not only available but utterly free from danger.
The experiments are now to be carried on with
greater vigour. When the alterations are completed
the boiler will be able to burn the Rangoon, Barba-
does, or Tzinidad petroleum, together with the Eng-
lish coal and whale oils alternately, as well as every
other kind of hydro-carbon, to obtain any degree of
speed that may be required, and without waste.
The following appointments were made on Satur-
day at the Admiralty.—Capt. T. H. Mason, to the
Canopus, vice Bowyear; Capt. G. L. G. Bowyear to
the Revenge, vice Mason ; F. Law, master, to the
Constance; Thomas Roche, assist.-surg., to Haslar
Hospital, vice Lockhart; Martin Magill, assist.-surg.
to Haulbowline Hospital, vice Atkinson ; Robert
Atkinson, assist.-surg., to the Prince Consort, vice
Magill ; Wm. B. Clenerly, second-class assist.-engi-
neer, to the Scorpion ; and Edward J. 0. Lanham,
second-class assist.-engineer, to the Excellent, for
the Stork.

DEPARTURE OF THE FRENCH FLEET.

The French fleet quitted our shores on Saturday
morning, not many hours after its officers had danced
through the last dance at the ball given by the Ad-
miralty at the Royal Naval College on Friday night.
Of this ball it may with truth be recorded that it was
eminently brilliant and successful. The spacious tent
in which it was held, and which occupied the whole
quadrangle in the rear of the college, had, since the
Admiralty banquet given in it on Wednesday, been
still further decorated. The approaches to it too had
been most extensively illuminated, under the super-
intendence of the Messrs. Defries, of London. Over
the gateway leading into the dockyard shone the
same mass of light which had been shining there each
night since the banquet on board the Duke of Wel-
lington.. Once inside the gateway one saw nothing
on both sides of the avenue leading up to the college
—which was belted for its entire length of 200 or 300
yards with tricoloured lamps, but lights red and white
and blue, shining forth in a great blaze, thrown back
by innumerable crystal reflectors, or twinkling with
a more subdued radiance in oil lamps from beds in
the plots of grass in front of the college, where
they seemed to have usurped the place of flowers.
Variegated lamps formed the entire outline of the
front of the building itself, and over the central
porch the word " Welcome," in large white letters
of light, expressed the spirit in which the enter-
tainment was given. Shortly before ten o'clock the
first rank of a long line of carriages began in rapid
succession to set down the guests under the orna-
mental porchway which had been constructed in
front of the entrance-hall, and from that time until
11 o'clock, when the numbers in the ballroom at-
tained their greatest height, ladies in rich dresses
and gentlemen in uniforms looking richer still, there
being very few in simple civilian attire, streamed
into the hall of the College, which was decorated
on each side with those most tasteful of all orna-
ments—beautiful plants in flower. On each side of
the ballroom, which was made dazzling bright by
the light of 30 candelabra, there were alcoves with
seats, in which the ladies, when fatigued with the
dance, rested themselves until tempted to rush into
its whirl again. In the centre of the room and on
the right-hand side of the entrance, busts of her
Majesty and of the Emperor of the French were
placed opposite to each other in a recess, the hang-
ings of which were of crimson cloth. Two bands—
those of the Royal Marine Light Infantry and the
Royal Marine Artillery—stationed in recesses on the
other side of the room, played very efficiently the
music to which the dancing took place. At the end
of the room opposite the entrance a spacious door-
way led into a refreshment-room, large indeed, but
yet not large enough to accommodate without much
squeezing the numbers who hoped to find in it not
only refreshment but relief from the pressure in the
ballroom, which at midnight and for some hours
after was so thronged with a company numbering
over 2,000 as to render dancing, except at particular
points and within very limited circles, almost impos-
sible. The door-wayleading to therefreshment-room
was oftEn in the night the scene of as protracted
a block-up as one' ever witnessed in the Strand
or Cheapside. Opposing streams of guests met,
and the result was that both were brought
to a standstill, fortunately at a point where two
welcome fountains cooled the air. Despite of heat
and pressure, however, dancing was somehow or
another kept up in the ballroom, some young French
midshipmen, in particular, entering into the spirit
of it with all the abandon of their age and nation,
as they had done at the ball on the Governor's-
green on the previous evening. It on some of these
occasions happened that neither the lady nor her
partner could convey to each other their sentiments
very freely in words, but somehow they did manage
to effect an interchange of thought, a fertility of re-
source under the circumstances being exhibited, by
the young lady especially, which went far to corro-
borate the soundness of the doctrine maintained by
those who contend that one tongue is enough for a
woman. Whenever the attempt to converse became
rather embarrassing there were the mazes of the
waltz to resort to, which to both was common
ground. During the evening the Lords of the Ad-