The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-02 00:00:00

TILE GUNBOATS AT UASLAR.

The Portsmouth correspondent of the Times says:
—Several letters having appeared in the Times
from well-known shipbuilding firms, claiming
exoneration from the charges contained in your
leader of the 25th ult., relative to the condition of
the gunboats at Haslar-yard, will you allow me to
state, for your own and the public information,
that none of the boats upon which my report to
you was based were built by either of those firms ?
My report did not apply to those vessels the defects
of which were solely owing to their having been
hastily constructed with unseasoned timber, but to
those the destruction of which has been caused by
their having been built of timber totally unsuited
to shipbuilding purposes.
The four boats on the condition of which I framed
my report I will call by numbers-1, 2,3, and 4.
No. 1 I find to have been launched from its builder's
yard in May, 1856, and hauled up beneath Haslar
sheds for her preservation on the 31st of March,
1857. No. 2 was launched in March, 1856, and
hauled up on the 30th of January, 1857. No. 3,
partly repaired, was launched in April, 1856, and
hauled up on the 30th of February, 1857. All
three of these vessels had their copper kept on until
shortly before the recent investigations. No. 4 was
completed in her repairs at a cost of about £1,400,
the estimated sum to re-copper her i, say £5OO,
making a total of £1,900. She was launched in
May, 1856, and was hauled up on the 2d of Feb.,
1857, and her copper stripped off for the preserva-
tion of her bottom. The repairs to No. 1 are for
the present suspended, a special report having been
made of her condition. This is the boat whence were
extracted the short copper bolts. No. 2, like No.l,
has her repairs suspended for the present, and is
also, in a similar manner to No. 1, stripped of her
planking. No. 3 is partly repaired ; but her de-
fects have been but little short of those of Nos. 1
and 2. The three foregoing vessels belong to what
is termed the " coppered" class, their copper having
been kept on their bottoms until the commencement
of their repairs. No. 4 belongs to the " uncoppered"
class, her copper having been stripped off on her
being hauled up underneath the sheds. Not only,
as I have before stated, are the majority of the tim-
bers of Nos. 1,2, and 3 liberally marked with "sap,"
but in several instances they have been barely
squared, and plainly show the growth of the wood.
No. 1 is also conspicuous for the slightness of her
frame as compared with any other boat now under
repair. None of the other five boats under repair
at this time in the yard show such an extent of this
all-destroying sap as the vessels I have numbered.
The planking of nearly all the boats, both under
repair and those that have been repaired, is, I,
ever, stated to have been more generally affected,
and a great number of them have been found faulty
from this cause to an extraordinary degree. Plank
with the " sap" on it has not only been used freely,
but the faulty side of it has been bolted next to the
vessel's framing, and communicated its rot to the
timber of the vessel itself. The planking on the
outside thus presenting a hard, firm appearance, has
been found one of the most difficult points to deal
with, and I am assured on competent authority that
this great evil in the construction of the vessels has
proved to be the " rule," and not the " exception."
Some of the boats repaired have shown excellent
workmanship combined with bad material in their
original construction, while others have shown
exactly the reverse. Of the decay of a vessel from
having been hastily built of unseasoned wood, one
vessel now under repair in the third division of the
shed affords a very good illustration ; she is named
the Albacore, and was built by Messrs. White of
Cowes, was launched in April, 1856, and was hauled
up in her present berth on the 26th of January in
the following year. The greater part of this vessel's
fore timbers, planking, stem, and cutwater have
been removed, and will have to be replaced with.
new ; but, as this has been caused solely by using
unseasoned timber at a time when, perhaps, other
could not be procured, the defects may be said to
proceed from natural and unavoidable causes, as has
lately been the case with the Princess Royal, and
must be expected in that of many other vessels lately
built in the Royal dockyards. The two boats which
have borne away the palm from all others hitherto
examined for excellence of both workmanship and .
material—are those built by Mr. Patterson, of
Bristol, the Earnest and Escort. Many yet remain
to be examined which have not been placed under
sheds and carefully protected from the sun, wind,
end rain, in a like manner to the boats in Haslar
yard, and it will be next to impossible to form a
correct judgment of the state of those vessels until
some of them hav e been opened and examined. One
of the boats hauled up at Hasler on the 20th of
last month, the Fancy, has been in commission,
and has been on service in the Black Sea. As she
is in need of repairs, a strict scrutiny into her state
of planking and timbers, as far as relate to her ori-
ginal construction, would tend to throw consider-
able light on the probable condition of the remain..
der of our gunboats, both at home and abroad. The
boats that I have numbered in this letter 1,2, and
3 were considered, prior to their real condition being
ascertained, to be three of the most sound and effec-
tive boats in the navy list. Had not these dis-
coveeids been made, they might possibly have been
ddspatched to reinforce the China squadron, and
gone down from beneath the feet of our officers and.
men.

siINFLUENCES OF THE " SEASONS."--Nature has
wisely ordained, that the year should be divided into four
seasons. Two of these in particular, Spring and Summer,
possess very powerful attractions, and operate very bene-
ficially on the human. heart. Were it not for such golden
opportunities, man would be a greater savage than he now
is, and blunted against all the finer feelings that
should animate his system. Nothing but an occa-
sional interview with Nature, whose lovely handiwork at
these seasons possesses a charm that affects almost every
human heart, could render this world of ours even tolerable.
Let us thank Nature then, with all our best devotion, for so
considerately and wisely keeping us in our own proper
places ; and for softening those hearts which, during the
seasons of gaiety, fashion, rioting, and frivolity, have been
all-but alienated from the enjoyment of every wholesome
social virtue,--detwit Kidd's" Honest Thoughts for Honest
People,"