The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-10 00:00:00

The Channel Fleet.

On the morning of Friday, the 3d of August,
Admiral Yelverton left the harbour of Portland and
put out to sea. His flag was flying in Her Ma-
jesty's ship Caledonia. The Hector and Pallas
made up the iron-armoured squadron. The Liver-
pool had come over from Ireland by some mistake
a day or two before, and probably the Lords of the
Admiralty thought it might be as well to have her
handy as a lifebuoy in case any of the ironclads
came to grief. A small two-funnelled despatch
steamer called the Helicon was there with a pro-
jecting bow like that of the ill-fated Amazon, and
so, with a fresh breeze from the westward, the out-
ward ships hoisted their jibs, hove up their anchors,
and, rounding the end of the noble breakwater,
stood towards the south in two lines. The Lord
Clyde was just coming in from Madeira ; she made
a long signal to the Admiral, and passed into Port-
land. The Achilles was seen outside, and joined
the Channel squadron.

The Caledonia, Hector, and Liverpool formed the
weather line ; the Achilles and Pallas the lee line ;
the Helicon was stationed one mile on the weather
beam of the Caledonia; and the order to make
sail was signalled. The wind fresh, and the topsails
had one reef. The weather was thick and threaten-
ing, and there was quite enough sea on to show what
the heavy ironclads could do. They fired a few
shots each at imaginary targets, stood on a wind off
and on all night, and when morning dawned they
were off the Bill of Portland, and the Pallas had
dropped a long way to leeward. She is a strange-
looking craft, with two deep nicks cut into each
side, but she made tolerable weather of it, although
the seas curled up her bows and rushed in broad
white sheets off the ledges formed by the nicke in
her sides which were intended to allow her guns to
fire fore and aft. The Achilles is a fine, buoyant
ship, and the Caledonia and Hector seemed quite as
comfortable as wooden two-deckers would have
been under similar circumstances, and quite as well
able to use their guns.
On Saturday the wind and sea had increased.
The signal was made to drop targets overboard, and
steaming round them in line to fire away in succes-
sion with broadsides on to the Wind and sea, while
the flagship drew aside to allow the others to pass in
review. The gunners could not clearly see the tar-
gets, but the practice was pretty fair, and the results
seemed satisfactory to prove that the ironclads were
not quite such dummies as some had thaught them.
The wind continued blowing fresh from the south
and west, but there was not much of a sea. The
two pairs of ironclads were going along comfortably
enough. The Hector seemed to sail best ; the seas
came creaming up her bows at every plunge, and so
they did all along the indented sides of the Pallas.
The ships carried all plain sail, and used steam to
keep their stations and for the purpose of going
about—tacking or wearing, as the case might be.
The result was that after two days beating to the
westward the whole squadron found themselves 10
miles to the eastward of the Bill of Portland, whence
they started ; but they could all float and sail like
heavily laden merchant ships, and they could have
used all their guns by keeping a good look out for