The Sun.
London, England, 1804-03-16 00:00:00

until there was. something like' It ease made cult
against them. With regard to the number of sea-
men that had been obtained since the War, he
begged Gentlemen to consider the difficulty of rai.
sing men so soon after a War. Most of the men
who had been discharged would rather have been
shot than enter again. He therefore thought the
exertion to obtain men had been unequalled. He
concluded with expressing his admiration at the vi-
gilance and skill wtich bad been displayed by our'
Fleets during the present War, and said he consi-
dered every day. that the Enemy was blocked up as
a day of triumph to the Navy.
Admiral BETiKELEY said, he approved of the
Motion, but,he declared that in supporting it he was
not aauated by any personal motives against Lord
ST. VINCENT. With respeft to what had been said
by the Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr. TIERNEY)
about the number of men that had been raised, he
begged to observe that he had counted' the Marines
twice, and that instead of wanting 1,700, he be-
lieved they wanted t 0,000.. The. Right Honour-
' able Gentleman had talked of Launches, but no.
body would compare, at least 'no Naval Officer
would compare a Launch with a Gun-boat. 'He was
convinced that if a sufficient number ofGun-boats had
been prepared as they might have been in a short time
after the -commencement 'of the War, the Enemy's
Flotilla would never have been able to collea at
Boulogne. He only begged Gentlemen to look
at the Gazettes, and they would find it conszantly
stated that the Gun-boats escaped because our Fri-
gates could not follow them into shoal water. The
Right Hon. Gentleman had talked of a Naval Force
of above isoo vessels, but many of them were no
better than cockle-shells, and could not sail from
Portsmouth harbour to Spithead. He contended
that there were not a sufficient number of Frigates
and small Vessels employed for the Channel Service
and for Convoys; if there were, we should not have
lost nineteen sail out of one Convoy, ner would a
rich West Indiaman have been taken between Ports-

mouth and the Downs. He said he was so -con-

vinced of the necesity of employing small vessels
of the sort mentioned by his Right Hon. Friend
(Mr. PITT), that he had offered a plan to the Ad-
miralty for that purpose, and he was convinced that
too of them might have been equipped in a very

short time.
lie observed that a Gentleman who had devoted
much of his attention to the Naval Defence of this

Country, had made cut a plan which he thought
might be extremely useful': he went with it to one
of the Officers of the Admiralty, Who said, that the
plan might be a very good one, but that he should
not have any thing to do with it. He took it to
another, who said, that he knew nothing of the
matter, and so the plan was rejetled. His objeaion
to the Motion of his Right Hon. Friend was that it
did not go far 'enough. He thought the charaaer
of the Achniralty was at stake. He wished to see
the Motion go further —to the disposition of the
Ships themselves ; to the quantity of Stores in our
Dock-yards ; to the state of those Dock-yards ;
to the number of Artificers who are in these
Dock-yards .; and for what reason ? (he dared to
say for a good one when it came to be explained).
• These Duck- yards Were eight hundred Ship_
wrights short of their usual and necessary comple-
ment. First, then, he said that his Right Hon.
Friend's Motion did not go far enough, and in the
next place he thought that unless the present system
of the Admiralty was charged, he did not say the
Board of Admiralty itself changed, but if the system
of the Admiralty be nut changed, he apprehended
some great calamity might soon befall this Country.
Sir CHARLES POLE explained.
Sir EDP:I ARD PELLEW spoke in so low a
tone as rendered it impossible, for us to hear all he
said. We collected however that he was decided
in support of the System adopted for our Naval De-
fence by the present Board of Admiralty. It was
said that a great force of the Enemy's Flotilla was
at Boulogne; he was glad to hear that they. were
in one place; for thus knowing where they were
in great force it was the better worth our while
to watch for them.- It was said we had not gunboats
fit for our purpose—We had them in the mouth of the
Thames—He said we had Gun-boats for the purpose
for which we wanted them. We had them at Deal—
We had them at Yarmouth, and we had them every
where they could be useful, and that ' was only
in shoal water, and the small ones were the better
in such cases, because they were the most aftive ;
they could be useful when large Gun-boats could not
aft : we had a number of these small ones ; we had
a number of small vessels also ; we had ships in the
Downs also, sufficient for our purpose, ready to be
active at a moment's notice : our blockading Sys-
tem had been carried on without the least defet : it
had been carried on in Holland ; we had kept the entire
command of the seas more this war than we ever did
before. All ranks and descriptions of men in the navy
had she 'u more zeal and ardour in the Service than
was manifested at any former period. As to the Con:
traas for building Ships with Merchants, it was to
be observed. there were Ships in. our Dock-yards
which ought to be finished first. He knew some
instances of Ships built by Contra tors, which, in-
stead of lasting as they ought to have done for twenty
years, were out of repair in one year. This was
most remarkably the case with the Ajax, andit
was the case With many others which were built by
Contraaors. In a word, he thought that whenever
we could do without building Ships by'contrad, u e
Should do so. As to Gun-brigs, some persons cal-
led them Gun-boats, hut itOproperly, for Gun_
brigs were different from Gun-boats, and we. had
enough of them for our present purpose ; they were
useful in their way, but he would not take them
for the use which some persons thought of employing
them in, and the same thing might be said of gun.
boats and all other small vessels, they were all use-
ful in their way, and we had enough of them for
all the purposes for which he thought they were
useful ; if any of them were worked up, they were
supplied by others that loid been built in- their
stead, to keep up the proper quantity of that sort
of stock ; but if there were any more of them built
for our. defence, .he had no difficulty in saying, lie
had no doubt but that they would not he • wanted,
for that the Eremy could not pass cur ships in any
part of the Channel with secrecy ; it was impossi-
ble for them to come out in any thing iike con-
siderable numbers on any expedition, however