The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-07 00:00:00

vilE SUN, LONDON, _MONDAY EVENING, MAY '7, 1860.

IMPERIAL CONTINENTAL GAS ASSOCIA-
TION. Incorporated by Act of Parliament.
Notice is Hereby Given, That the HALF-YEARLY OR-
DINARY MEETING of the Proprietors of the Imperial
Con-inental Gas Association will be field at the office of the
Associat on, No. 7, White H .rt-court, Lombard street, Lon-
don, on WEDNESDAY, the 30th May, 1860, at 2 o'clock in the
afternoon precisely, when a Report will be made to the Pro-
prietors and a Dividend declared for the half year onding3lst
Dec., lti9.
By order of the Board,
WILLIAM WALTON, Secretary.
Dated this 2d day of May, PAO.

SPECIAL NOTICE.

CLERICAL, All?iiiat,-& GENERAL LIFE
ASSURANCE SOCIETY.

Established 182 t,

All persons who effect Policies on the Participating- Scale
before June 30, 18tI., will be entitled at the next Bonus to one
year's additional share of profits over later Assurers,
Tables of Rates and Forms of Proposal can be obtained of
any of the Society's Agents, or of
GEORGE CUTCLI I4TE, Actuary and Secretary.
13, St. James's-square, London, S.W.

OFIRISTY'S MINSTRELS, Polygraphic Hall,
V King William-street, Strand.—Farewell Season in Lon -
ion, previous to the retirement of Mr. J. W. Raynor on the
2d of August. —Every Evening at 8, and every Saturday
Morning at 3o'clock. Tickets and places may be secured at
the Hall from 11 till 4, and at Mr. Austin's West-end Box-
office, St. James's Ball, Piccadilly.—Sole Proprietor and
Manager, Mr. J. W. RAYNOR.

,A RGYLL ROOMS, Windmill-street, Picca-
dilly.—Open every Evening, with the celebrated Band
conducted by Mons. Lamotte (chef d'orchestra to the Em-
perm Napoleon). A magnificent SMOKING SALOON
added to this Establishment. Doors open at 8 o'clock. Ad-
mission, ls.

Licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament..

THE NATION,AL2ASSEMBLY—RDOns,
• MGR HOLBORN.
This Establishment, pre-eminently distinguished for the
elegance and matchless beauty of its decorations, combined
with the perfection of its management, is OPEN EVERY
EVENING for DANCING. The celebrated band, under the
direction of Mr. Vf. M. Packer, plays a nightly-varied .elec-
tion of the m, t approved classical and modern music.
Doors open at half-past 8. Overture at 9. Closing at, 12
punctually. Admission, ls.

IN' A. V

The reports of our "Malta, correspondent come
down to as late a date as the 30th of April, on
which day the following ships composed the magni-
ficent fleet in port :—The Marlborough, 131 (bear-
ing the flag of the Vice-Admiral Commander-in.
Ch'ef, A. Fanshawe, C. 8.), Capt. Lord F. H. Kerr;
Hannibal, 91 (with the flag of Rear-Admiral G. R.
Mundy, C. 13., second in command), Commander
Parkins; the St. Jean d'Acre, 101, Capt. T. P.
Thompson ; the James Watt, 91, Capt. E. Codd ;
the Agamemnon, 91, Capt. Thomas Hope ; the Re-
nown,s9l, Capt. A. Forbes; the London, 90, Capt.
H. Chads; the Neptune, 90, Capt. F. A. Campbell;
the Cressy, 80, Capt. Hon. C. G. J. Elliot, U.B, ;
the Cadmus, 21, screw steam corvette, Capt. H. S.
Hillyar, C.B. ; the Scylla, 21, screw steam corvette,

Capt. R. Lambert ; the bledina,4,steam surveying

vessel, Capt. T. A. B. Spratt, C.B. ; the Firefly, 4,
steam vessel, Commander A. L. Mansell ; the Cara-
doe, 2, Lieutenant-Commanding C. B. Buckle ; the
Boxer, Lieut. S. Graham ; the Hibernia receiving
ship (bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral A. J. Cod-
rington, C. 8.), Capt. Hon. A. Hobart; and the
Hearty tug steamer. The Assurance steam gunboat
left Malta for Sicily on the 23d, and returned
on the 28th, after having visited Trapani,
Palermo, and Messitta.e The Cadmus steam corvette_
Beyrout on the 24th, and was
to leave very shortly for the West Indies. Six of

he line-of-battle ships in Malta harbour were tak-

ing on board provisions for ten weeks and stores for
six months, to be ready for a start at any time. The
Massilia (Penrnsular and Oriental Company's new
steamer) accomplished her first voyage from Malta
to Alexandria and back to Malta in some hours
short of seven days, including stoppage to get out
a heavy cargo.

The Powerful, 84, line-of-battle ship, which has
been some time in dock at Chatham, undergoing
preparations for her conversion to a screw steamer,
has, upon examination, been found to be so very de-
fective that the orders for her alteration have been
countermanded by the Admiralty, and she is to be
put out of dock.
The line-of-battle sailing ship Bombay, 84, now
attached to the reserve at Devonport, has been se-
lected to undergo the necessary alterations required
to convert her to a screw steamship, and will be
sent to Chatham Dockyard for that purpose, when
she will occupy the dock vacated by the Power-
ful, 84.

The Trincomalee, 24, one of the sailing frigates
at Chatham designed by the Admiralty to be used
as training ships for the Naval Coast Volunteers, is
to be fitted for that service, and, when completed,
ill be sent to one of the ports on the eastern coast
of England.
'1 he Victoria, 121, screw, steamed out of Ports-
mouth harbour yesterday and proceeded outside the
Nab Light vessel on the contractors' trial of her
machinery. The engine and boilers wozked in a
satisfactory manner. To-day she will make her
official trial trip at the measured mile in Stokes Bay.

The Medusa, 4, paddle, Commander W. Bowden,
arrived at Spithead early on Sunday morning, from
Sierra Leone, touching at Teneriffe, Madeira, and
Ferrol, repairing damages to her rudder in the
latter port. She brought home three passengers and
a few supernumeraries. At Madeira she landed a
case of small-pox. Her crew have been healthy
throughout the commission. She awaits orders at
Spithead.
The crew of the guardship of steam ordinary
Wellington, 72, Capt. Robinson, in Hamoaze, were
paid wages on Thursday, in the presence of Rear-
Admiral Superintendent Sir Thomas S. Pasley, and
obtained leave of absence.

The crew of the gunnery ship Cambridge, Capt.
Arthur J. W. Jerningham, in Hamosie, were paid
wages on Thursday, in the presence of Capt. Wood-
ford J. Williams, of the flagship Royal Adelaide,
and granted leave of absence.
The ships in Plymouth Sound attached to the
Channel squadron crossed topgallant and royal
yards on Thursday and got in boats. The screw
steamship Trafalgar, 90, Captain E. G. Fan-
shawe, and the Centurion, 80, Captain H. B.
Rogers, C. 8., made sail in the afternoon, and pro-
ceed for Portland with a fresh breeze from south-
east. The screw steam-frigate Diadem, 32, Capt.
Cockburn, followed them in the evening.
Her Majesty's paddlewheel steamvessel Pluto, 4,
Lieut. and Commander Cortland H. Simpson, ar-
rived at Woolwich on Saturday, to be stripped and
paid off, having been two years in commission on
the West Coast of Africa.

The paddlewheel steam storeship Dee, 4, Master
Commander J. C. Pullen, from Woolwich, arrived
at Plymouth on Saturday morning, with boilers for
the Howe, 121, and machinery, and was taken into
Keyham-yard in the afternoon.

The paddlewheel steam-frigate Terrible, 21, Capt.
H. H. Glasse, C. 8., left Plymouth on Saturday for
the Mediterranean. Several of the crew are absent ;
the vacancies were filled from the flagship Impreg-
nable.

The screw steamship bonegal, 101, Capt. Henry
Broadhead, sailed from Plymouth on Friday, for
Spithead, calling at Portland.

The screw steamship Royal Albert, 121, Capt.
H. J. Lacon, was taken out of the Queen's dock at
Key ham on Friday, and moored in the basin, where
she got up steam, to prove her boilers, on Satur-
day. The flag of Rear-Admiral Sir C. Fremantle
was hoisted on Saturday. The Admiral was ex-
pected at Devonport in the evening.
The screw steam-frigate Euryalus, 51, Capt. J.
W. Tarleton, from the eastward, arrived in Ply-
mouth Sound yesterday morning.

On Friday morning a court-martial assembled on
boardrtby he,r
shipto
Pr Majesty'seut. sitTihpomas Simeon, of her Ma-
Victory, in Portsmouth
harbour,
Perseverance, on the following charges :
Ma-
jesty's asa:r
—l. For having, on or about the 16th of February,
1860, been guilty of neglect of duty, while officer
of the watch at sea, by playing at quoits on the lee
side of the poop, and for having been guilty of
falsehood or gross prevarication by saying that he
was not playing at quoits, 2. For having, on or
about the 19th of February, been off deck in his
watch to the neglect of his duty, and in disobe-
dience of the special orders of Commander Power,
his commanding officer. 3. That on or about the
19th of February he was guilty of falsehood in tell-
ing Commander Power that he had not shut the
commander's cabin door, when he had done so. The
members of the Court comprised :—Rear-Admiral
Hon. G. Grey, President ; Captains R. Harris, R.
S. Hewlett, C. 8., T. Wilson, J. U. Strange, R.
Coote, J. Raton, E. W. Vansittart, D. M: Macken-
zie, and Mr. W. J. Hellyar, Deputy Judge Advo-
cate. The defence was read by the prisoner's friend,
Mr. Hoskins, in which the attention of the Court
was called to the fact of his having been recently
tried and acquitted on charges preferred against him
by Commander Power, and he emphatically denied
having been guilty of any act of falsehood in his
replies to Commander Power. The defence was of
some length, and at its conclusion a number of cer-
tificates of service were handed in by the prisoner,
and read
the Deputy Judge Advocate. The pri-
soner no witnesses. The sentence of the
Court
read by the Deputy Judge Advocate, to
wascalled
the effect that the Court, after maturely and deli-
berately weighing the evidence for the prosecution
and defence, and also what the prisoner had to
say in his defence, found that the first charge had
been partly proved, inasmuch as the prisoner had
been guilty of neglecting his duty in throwing
quoits when officer of the watch ; but the Court ac•
quitted him of any intentional falsehood or preva-
rication. The second charge was proved, and the
third charge not proved. The sentence of the
Court was that the prisoner be dismissed her
Majesty's ship Perseverance, and be placed at the.
bottom of the lieutenant's list.

The announcement which appeared in The Run

on Friday last, of the defective state of the gun
vessel and mortar boats undergoing- a careful
survey at Chatham Dockyard, merely described
the condition of those vessels so far as could
be ascertained at tlie time that report was written.
The survey of the two mortar vessels numbered 30
and 32, in the first dock has, however, been con.
tinned, the result showing that the statement pre-
viously given in The .Sun conveys but a very modi-
fied description of the actual state of those vessels
as ascertained from an extended examination of
their timbers and frames. Both these mortar ves-
sels were built about five years since towards the
close of the Russian war, and were constructed by
contract at private establishments, without, as it
would now appear, even the slightest supervision
on the part of the Admiralty to insure that good
workmanship and sound materials were used. Not-
standing the short time they have been built, and
the fact that they have seen little or no service, the
materials of both the vessels are found so seriously
rotten and the boats altogether so defective that on
the receipt of the report made by the dockyard
officials directed to survey them the Lords of the
Admiralty forwarded an order to Chatham Dock-
yard for both the vessels to be broken up, their
condition being such as to render them altogether
unfitted for any service whatever. Not only are
some of the timbers-liberally marked- with "sap,"
but, from certain unmistakeable symptoms now ex-
hibited, this fact must have been known to the
builders at the time, and yet, extraordinary as it
may appear, there would seem to have been no
supervision nor controlling power on the part of
the Admiralty to prevent the gross deception and
the scandalous fraud perpetrated. The two mortar
vessels which have been ordered to be broken up at
Chatham Dockyard were taken, we believe, pro-
miscuously from the squadron of that class of ves-
sels lying in Hoo Creek and hauled up at the dock-
yard, and as the first two thus selected for survey
are found to be so rotten as-to require to be taken
to pieces, fears are naturally entertained lest the
greater, if not the whole, of that costly fleet of gun
and mortar vessels will not, upon survey, prove
equally unfit for further service, and at a time, too,
when the aspect of affairs leads to the supposition
that their services may be required at no distant
date.

A further course of experiments is ordered to be
entered into in the gun-factories at Woolwich with
cast-iron guns, hooped on Sir Wm. Armstrong's
principle. They are to be fired with increased
charges until they are destroyed, so as to ascertain
the extent of their endurance, and also to decide
the practicability of the principle at present consi-
dered by officers of the army and navy to be ex-
tremely doubtful, from the result of the late trial
and failure of one of the guns under proof, as noti-
fied in The Sun. The attempt to strengthen cast-
iron guns by means of wrought-iron hoops, suitable
to the new principle of rifling, is stated to be very
questionable policy, as a comparison as to price
has proved that they cost nearly as much :as the
genuine Armstrong, and will consume about au
equal amount of time to manufacture, and will un-
dergo but comparatively little use, while the latter
may be considered as everlasting. The gun facto-
ries are now at work night and day on a prodi-
gious scale forging the Armstrong guns of all sizes,
from 6 to 100-pounders. It is expected that 1,200
guns, chiefly of the larger description, will be made
this year. During the nine months since the fac-

tory has been in operation 48 complete batteries of
field artillery have been turned out and equipped
for service, as well as 200 40-pounders for naval
use, besides a large number of 100-pounders in
progress of manufacture, and which will be ready
for use by the Ist of August next.