The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-26 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26. 1849.

Numerous as are those grievances in the manage-
ment of the British Navy to which we have already
very recently made allusion, they constitute only a
fractional portion of the evils requiring to be
gradually rectified and ultimately dissipated in that
department of the public service of England. The
impossibility of promotion to junior officers without
interest is sufficiently deplorable. The extravagant
increase of admirals and post-captains to a number
preposterously superfluous when contrasted with the
maritime forces of all the other nations of Europe, or
even with our own marine power during the time of
our bloodiest wars with NAPOLEON, is a piece of
prodigality and ostentation enough to provoke the
reprehension of the least economical. The total
absence of any rational system for the manning of our
vessels of war is another and an ample testimony
of the want of some complete re-organization in the
conduct of the Admiralty. Important, however, as are
these themes for consideration, among those who
would further the cause of reform in the Royal
Navy of England, they are nevertheless in a great
measure subordinate to a matter not. yet, or at least
not very recently, referred to by ourselves, a matter
affecting the very basis of our strength as an empire,
at once insular, colonial, and commercial. We
allude now to the egregious want of all reasonable
forethought, of all wholesome thrift, and of all mo-
derate circumspection in the construction of those
great instruments of our national grandeur,
of our imperial supremacy, and of our mercantile
aptitude, upon the conservation of which not only our
fame and our vigour, but our influence and our very
existence are dependent. We allude to the faults
perceptible in the regulation of our dockyards. We
allude to the deficiencies visible in the plans from
which our war vessels have hitherto emanated. We
allude to the squandering, the blundering, the timi-
dity of improvement, and the destructive procrastina-
tion which glare upo❑ us whenever we have the heart
to investigate the chaos of our arrangements fur ship-
building, the labyrinth of our schemes of naval archi
tecture. _ _

According to the notorious custom of our maritime
administrators, the vessels of war constructed
to sustain our greatness on the ocean, to
protect our enormous commerce, and to bind together
our vast and scattered dominions, are brought forth
through more perils and agonies than man himself,
the grandest of all the miracles of creation. In the
navy of England the labours of animal parturition
are unutterably surpassed. Talk of the sufferings
and difficulties consequent on utero-gestation, forsooth,
hear tell of those coming under the cognizance of our
maritime accoucheurs, of the male midwives of the
dockyard, and be dumb ! Of all the disclosures of
a like kind, commend us to the obstetric revelations
of our shipwrights for whatever is most marvellous,
preternatural, and very nearly b!?yond the limits
of comprehension. It will there be seen, that while
humanity requires at the most only a preparation
before birth of some nine months, a vessel destined to
bear "the flag that's braved a thousand years the battle
and the breez-," must needs be allowed tarrying.
time before birth of a period of the most unconscion•
able duration. It is calculated that on the average—
just as the gravedigger iu Hamlet says, ruminatively,
" a tanner may last you some seven year"—a ship
of war may last you some fifteen or twenty years.
And yet, knowing well enough the abbre-
viated existence of this noble species of
machine, our sage and most circumspect
shipwrights, with the connivance and it may
be the direct encouragement of the Admiralty,
allow the vessels to continue year after year on the
stocks until the wood is positively decayed—new (I)
frigates and three deckers sometimes absolutely rotting
before they are launched " Thrift, thrift, Horatio!"
these superintendents of our national supremacy over
the seas are assuredly testifying very conspicuously
in all this their incapacity to sustain the maritime ,
character of England. Here, for example, they
lessen the already sufficiently brief vitality of our
ships of war on the shallow pretence that delays are
necessary for the purpose of seasoning the timber !
although they know well enough that not merely the
difference between allowing wood to ripen or to rot,
to become seasoned or to decay, but that absolutely no
delay whatever, or, at least, no delay worthy of the
name, is requisite.to effect any such object. That
consideration, however, only calls to mind another
odious and miserable characteristic of the high,
mighty, and puissant Seigniors presiding over
Admiralty—namely, their disinclination to
to any project of improvement, how-
ever feinfiible, however simple, or however
economical ; nay, the very circumstances of