The Sun.
London, England, 1858-07-05 00:00:00

". -1 THE

THE NAVY.

(Flom the Times.)
A. story is told of the famous French financier
Ouvrard, when he had fallen into disgrace with
Napoleon on the failure (.4 his great Spanish opera-
tion. The Emperor, whohat a very masterly method
of conducting an argument, :wound up the dispute
by committing his antagonist to solitary confine-
ment at Vincennes. Ouvrard w,Ns not afraid but
that in due course he would recover his liberty as
soon as the Imperial finances fell into confusion ;
the point was, not to go mad in the inteval. The
change from the fierce excitement of his ordinary
life to the unbroken monotony of a prison..room
was more than man's intellect could bear and yet
remain in a sane condition. Ouvrard managed to
procure for himself a packet of pins ; he counted
them carefully, so that he should be sure of his
reckoning, and then tossed them up to the ceiling,
that they might be scattered as confusedly as pos-
sible over the floor of his cell. He then steadily
went to work to pick up the pins, and never rested
until the tale was complete. Again and again,
and clay after day, the operation was repeated, un-
til Ouvrard regained his liberty. Now for the appli-
cation of this little story. It would be profane to
speculate upon the hopes and fears of the Lords of
the Admiralty as to their future intellectual sanity,
but they have been handling the British fleet ex-
actly as Ouvrard handled his packet of pins. They
carefully count over the number of ships in com-
mission, and they do not exactly toss them up in
the air, for that would be difficult, but they paythem
off. When they are paid off they re-commission
them, and so on. On one point the analogy between
the two cases breaks down, for Ouvrard's idea was
an economical one ; it entailed no expense either
upon himself or anybody else. The practice of the
British Admiralty is, however, one of which the cost
is frightful, and still worse remains behind. When
you have altogether exhausted the chapter of cost,
it must further be considered that by a repetition
of this ingenious process one ship's company after
another is broken up, and cannot again be re-or-
ganised without infinite trouble, and after great
loss of time. If these painstaking gentlemen—for
they do take great pains in the wrong direction—
would, but consider what a complicated machine a
I ship-of-war is when, by the energy of her com-
mander and the exertions of her officers, her crew
has been brought into a perfect state of discipline,
they would not be so ready to resolve this compli-
cated piece of workmanship into its component ele-
ments. The human machinery is far more difficult
to fix than the cranks, and cogs, and levers, and
piston-rods with which the engineer's room is fur-
nished. To make every man know his fellow, to
make each rely upon all, to make each man do his
best in the post for which he is best fitted, is not so
simple an operation as it would appear at first sight
to be. _

A return to an order of the House of Commons
has just reached us, which gives us the cost of re-
fitting and re-commissioning in 1858 the follow-
ing ships, which were paid off in 1857. In this
estimate is included the value of the stores re-
turned as no longer serviceable when the ships
were paid off, and also of those which were sup-
plied in their place :

Expense of re-fitting on
Name. re-commission In 1858.
Duke of Wellington £17,650
Arrogant 39,913
Cretisy
Nilo
Enryalus
Exmouth 11,912
That is to say, in the aggregate, this series of
operations has cost the country no loss a sum
than 81,3881., and all to what end ? It can scarcely
be said, that la: cause the time of service had expired
therefore it was impossible to keep the crews
together. Sailors, when they are well treated, are
glad enough to remain in a ship which has become to
them a borne, and with messmates to whom they
have laJen long accustomed. Beyond doubt, Jack
will take a run ashore, in order to convince himself
by personal experience of the exceeding discomfort
of absolute liberty ; but a very few days, in ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred, will see the end of his
run. In the case of a comfortable ship; well com-
manded—that is to say, where steady, not worrying
discipline, is enforced—the great bulk of the men
would be willing to engage themselves again before
going down her side, upon no harder condition than
that of leavefor a few weeks' run on shore. Regular
men-of-war's men will come back as it is ; but then,
under the present system, a good ship's crew gets
scattered about among half-a•dozen ships, in place
of bring kept together, which is the c?esirable point.
We are well aware that the red-tapista, or let us
say the blue-tapists, of the Admiralty, will be ready
to point to endless regulations of their own devising
which would render such a measure as keeping our
trained crews together next to impracticable ; but
they should consider that the regulations are for the
benefit of the service, not the service for the benefit
of the regulations. It is certain that the thing
could be done, if the gentlemen at head-quarters
would but set to work about it. Even if the cap-
tlin must be changed in order edorteos
notgivefootlllioewr ctahpattatihnse
a chance of employment, it
ship's cempany should be broken up. Surely any
officer who succeeded to the command of any one
of the ships which we have named would have been
too glad to find a well-trained crew ready to his
hand.
This question is one of the most important
which can be brought under the consideration
of the Admiralty. Now that we have given up
impressment it is, confessedly, a very difficult
matter to procure a sufficient number of seamen for
the naval service of the country. The inducements
held out in our own mercantile marine are very
great, and many a wandering tar is induced by fair
promises of higher pay to ship in the service of a
foreign flag. This tendency could, of course, be
corrected by raising the scale of wages to a point
which would render the position of a seaman in
our navy better than any which he could hope to
attain elsewhere. But this is a policy to which we.
have not yet had recourse either for the navy or the
.anny. It is, indeed, possible, by entering into

certain calculations, by taking one scrap of advan-
tage here and another there, to prove that a well-
conducted seaman who adheres to the royal
service is, in reality, bettor off than one in the
mercantile marine. The mere rate of wages at any
given time is far from being an accurate test of a
seaman's position. But how can we expect that
ignorant and impulsive men should consider this
question in a spirit of cool calculation and fore-
thought ? The position of a seaman in the British
navy is not at the first glance so superior to tliat
of a merchant sailor that we can hope to convince
seafaring men of their advantage in taking service
under the Government. We can, however, do
much by consulting, within legitimate limits, the
feelings and interests of the men. Any sailor would
in the first instance prefer the service of the coun-
try. He lives in far greater comfort on board a
Queen's ship than in a merchant vessel. He does
not dislike order, discipline, regularity ; convince
him that he has not necessarily resigned his liberty
for too long a term, but that it depends upon him-
self to renew his service, and he will be ready to
do so, if he likes his messmates and his ship. We
now break up the crew almost as soon as it is well
formed. The Admiralty seem to think that as soon
as a body of seamen have been trained to act to-
gether and to know each other well, the best thing
that can be done is to scatter them again about
the world. Any naval officer would tell his supe-
riors, if he were not tongue-tied, the difference
between a ship's company which has been afloat for
a couple of years and a company taken out of port
for the first time. Such a fleet as that under Lord
St. Vincent, towards the end of his Mediterranean
command, we shall not readily see again ; but if
the late Baltic Fleet could have been held together
we should not have heard much discussion as to
the best method of manning the British Navy.