The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-26 00:00:00

CONTRACT FOR COALS FOR MALTA.

Department of the Storekeeper-General
of the Navy,
Somerset-place, 24th Nov., 1800.
THE COMMISSIONERS for EXECUTING the
-A- OFFICE of LORD HIGH ADMIRAL of the UNITED
'KINGDOM of GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND, DO
HEREBY GIVE NOTICE, That on TUESDAY, the
11th Deo. next, at Two o'clock, they will be ready to treat
with such Persons as may be willing to CONTRACT for
supplying and delivering into Store at her Majesty's Naval
Yard at Malta monthly,
1,200 Tons of, SOUTH WALES COALS,
for Six Months.

The first monthly proportion to be delivered at Malta by
the 28th February next, and the same quantity to be delivered
monthly till the 31st of July next.
The Coals to be fit for the service of her Majesty's steam
vessels.
The said Commissioners having the power to increase the
monthly supply to auy quantity not exceeding 2,500 tons in
each month, it required, on Three Weeks' notice.
The conditions of the Contract and a form of the Tender
may be seen at the said office. No tender will be received
after Two o'clock on the day of treaty, nor will any be noticed
unle9.s the party attends, or an agent for. him duly authorised
_ _ _ _

Every render must be addressed to the Secretary of the
Admiralty, and bear in the left-hand corner the words " Ten-
der for Coals for Malta," and must also be delivered at
Somerset-place, accompanied by a letter signed by two re-
sponsible persons, engaging to become bound with the person
tendering, in the sum of £4,000, for the due performance of
the Contract. •

THE STATE OF OUR NAVY.

The following letters have been addressed to the
editor of the limes:

Str,—l have been expecting almost daily to hear
Of some fresh emeutes similar to those on board the
Princesi Royal and Edgar, which this time last year
brought such disgrace on our naval service. Those
lamentable instances of insubordination and mis-
management gave the public a slight insight into
the alarming condition to which years of neglect
and ill treatment have now brought the sailors of
the Royal Navy. These mutinies, however, only
afforded a glimpse of the real state of things. When
the men had been first condemned and then par-
doned, the captain.reprimanded,,the port admiral'
superseded`; the country had sighed or smiled
over the ignorance and folly shown in every single
stage and step of the Princess Royal affair, it
ceased to be talked of, and people hoped they had
heard the last of such misconduct and mismanage-
ment on the part of both officers and men. There
have been scores of such emeutes on a smaller scale

since then, but they have mostly occurred abroad,
or when at home have been carefully hushed up
and kept from the public ear. I shall be surprised
if this winter passes over without another outbreak,
and if one does occur, sir, mark my words, it will
spread throughout every vessel in the service. It
would perhaps be too strong to say that our fleets
are in a state of chronic mutiny ; but I know at
least that their crews are so disaffected and dissa-

tisfied that their deep, half-suppressed ill-humour
may become open mutiny at any moment. This is
well known at the Admiralty. Every captain and
commander in the service knows it to his cost: It
is only the good, easy, simple, all-paying public
who are ignorant of the whole matter, who gave
115,000,000 to the navy this year, and who hear
of, iron frigates and read in your naval intelli-
gence of long lists of line-of-battle ships coming
into port and going out, and who therefore think
they have got a fleet in return for their money.
They have got vessels enough, goodness knows ;
but in all that really makes a iieet, good,
contented, and well-disciplined crews, they may
almost be said to be without a navy altogether.
I have said this is known at the Admiralty, where
they wring their hands in impotent dismay at a
state of things which they fear to disclose, and have
not the skill to amend. They hesitate and vacillate
from one petty scheme to another. Now, with a
great spurt and splutter, they proclaim a bounty,
atid drain, at vast expense, the very scum of the
merchant service into the Navy. Next month they
intend saving the country with a naval reserve, but
the only reserve the public has yet seen has been
that of the seamen to have anything to do with the
Admiralty at all. Such spasmodic efforts, with a
vague unsatisfactory circular now and then, are the
only aids the Admiralty give us to remedy the now
really alarming condition of the Navy. It is not
three months since one of the chief offlciali 'at the
" Board" told me frankly and blandly they did not
know what on earth to do. I did not believe it
then, nor do I believe it now. They blink and
avoid the real grievances of the seamen—grievances
which, I shame to say, have made our Royal Naval
service a reproach through the world—grievances
which afflict the men
.in every stage of their life, in
the shape of bad pay, bad treatment, and bad food.
lam not now writing hastily or angrily. lam
well aware of the gravity of these charges, but I
say it without fear of being disproved, that the sea-
men of our Royal Navy are, as a body, the
worst paid, worst treated, and the worst fed class
of sailors in the world. I know that th,:re are
plenty of good and kind captains—as a rule the
great majority are always so. Some of these may
possibly feel inclined to try and contradict my
statement. If such there be, I challenge them to
send with their reply to this letter the total num-
ber of punishments they have inflicted since their
ships have been in commission, and the number of
their men who have deserted and fled the service in
the same time. Desertion ! Why, sir, the word gives
no idea of the way in which men now risk life and
limb to escape from their ships. They forfeit arrears
of pay, chances of pe-nsion,years of good conduct ser-
vice—anything in the wide world, so they can only
get away. It is not a year since that when, failing all
other means of manning the Navy, a £lO bounty
was offered to seamen. Well, nearly 11,000 were
raised. The year is not yet out, and lam told that
already nearly half have managed to escape ! Thus
not only money is wasted, but men are driven out
of their •country's service, for they must always
keep in foreign ships if they wish to avoid the
almost certainty of apprehension and imprisonment
on their return to England.
Let us, however,Jeave the question of desertion

to another time, and look for a moment how the men
are paid. If you or I, sir, want a footman to wait
at table, and. be always sleek and comfortable, we
must pay him well, and feed him well, too, or he
gives us notice. But if the nation wants able sea-
men, then a very different scale of remuneration is
proffered, and the country which prides itself on
its race of blue-jackets is not ashamed to offer to
grown men, who have spent years in learning their
most hazardous calling, and who ship into the
Navy to meet war risks and sea risks of every kind,
the sum of 10s. a week ! The pay of an able sea-
man who ships for 10 years' continuous service is
£2 9s. a month. Very few, however, do enter for
10 years,. so that the average of able seamen's
wages in the Navy is only about £2 2s. a month,
which for the calendar month gives them, if any-
thing, rather less than 10s. a week. Occasionally
the public see in your columns a letter from a
country clergyman, detailing cases of agricultural
distress, instanced by some labourer with eight or
ten children who only earns Bs. a week. These
cases (though the fact that the children nearly all
earn something is generally kept out of sight) are
sad enough, Heaven knows. But compare them
with the case of the able seaman, who, in addition

to being absent from his family for years together,
has to encounter every vicissitude of war, weather,
and unhealthy climates, and support his family at
home out of his miserable weekly allowance of 10s.
" ! but," say the Admiralty, there'sthe pension."
The hope of pension, Sir, is one of the most gigantic
and cruel frauds which any Government ever
perpetrated on its seamen. Let us put it in
plain figures, and see what this pension means.
Every able seaman can earnein the merchant
service from £3 to £3 10s. and £4 a month ;
in the Royal Navy he gets a little over £2. He
has entered the service; but still he demurs to this
reduction, and is told, " Why, my man, you don't
get such high pay here, because we deduct for the
pension you are to have after 20 years at sea."
"Oh ! but," says Jack, " I hav'n't come for 20
years. I have only shipped for this commission, to
take a turn` with you, and see how I like it." But
poor Jack has shipped, and is made to abide by
the regulations of the. service. If he has entered
for continuous service, he is entitled to a pension
after 20 years. If he has not so entered, as now very
few do, he is never entitled to any pension
at all. Thus, according to the seaman's notion
(and it is not far wrong), more than one-third of
what he is entitled to for his labour, and nearly half
what he can earn in easier and better services, is
withheld from him to form pensions for somebody,
but to which the poor fellow learns, to his dismay,
he will have no claim whatever unless he enters
for continuous service. Continuous service, too, for
20 years ! Twenty years; before a seaman has
been six months in a man-of-war he is scheming
and plotting night and day how he can manage to
desert and fly, not only his ship, but the very
land he was born in. Not one per cent. of the
seamen in the Royal Navy serve or live to claim the
paltry pension, to form which more than 30 per
cent.
.is deducted from the wages of all. And this
miserable fraud on the men, which would be un-
worthyneediest firm, the Admiralty are so
to think forms one of the attractions
of the service.
besotted theas
But I don't ask you, Sir, or the public, to believe
mere assertions. Let any of your readers who will