The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-11 00:00:00

THE NA Y'.

Orders have been received for the Spithead
division, under Rear-Admiral Erskine, to proceed
from Portland to Plymouth, and there, forming a
junction, to sail round the coasts of Ireland and
Scotland; The supernumeraries were discharged
into the Donegal, which ship was to be the first to
leave Portland for Plymouth. The Diadem, 32, screw,
has remained at Portsmouth to pick up stragglers
belonging to the fleet, and they unfortunately are
rather numerous, and so the poor simple-minded
blue-jackets will ever be on the black list until
severe punishment is inflicted on the accursed
crimps and sharks that infest the dens of infamy in
the vicinity of Portsea, for within 24 hours of a
ship paying off at Portsmouth the lads are shoeless,
penniless, and almost lifeless. Many a promising
young sailor, rating AB, with £4O in his pocket,
on leaving his ship, is seized upon by these male
and female wretches, and the next morning he is
picked up senseless, bleeding, and nearly naked.
The Fury, 6, paddle, Commander Bedford Pim;
arrived at Spithead last evening from China and
the Cape, with the following passengers, marines
and seamen, on board :—Sixty of the Royal Marine
Battalion, under Lieut. Godfrey; the crew of her
Majesty's gunboat Starling, lately paid off at Hong
Kong; part of the crew of her Majesty's troopship
Assistance, lately lost in the China seas ; Lieut.
Gordon Stuart, frrm St. Helena ; Capt. Phillips,
R.N., and Mr. J. E. Boileau, from the Cape of
Good Hope. The Fury sailed from Hong Kong
Jan.
15;Cape, April ; St. Helena, April 20 ; and
Ascension, April 28 ; Cape de Verdes, may 16, and,
Teneriffe, May 26. Fine weather has been expee,
enced the whole passage home, but has been gr,ne..
rally attended with head winds. The Fur-
y was
commissioned on July 28,1856, and he. been con-
stantly engaged in the China Seas since-that time.
She has taken part in all naval operations durin
the war, and was the only vessel that shared n an.
three of the attacks on the Peiho forts, The Fury
during her commission has steamed and sailed
59,180 miles, while her towing services in the
China Seas represent an expense of fuel to the
amount of £35,624. The ship's company are a fine,
seamanlike body of men. They show signs, b.tow-
ever. of the effects of the climate in their spare
frames and countenances.
The Hon. I. R. Drummond, Commodore Superin-
tendent of Woolwich Dockyard, yesterday recei-fed
the appointment of Lord Commissioner of .the
the
Admiralty, in succession to Rear-Admiral the
Hon. Frederick Thomas Pelham, C. 8., reargued.
It is rumoured at Woolwich in official
carters
that Capt. W .Houston Stewart, C. 8., ofthe flag-
ship Marlborough, in the Mediterrateean, Will be
Commodore Drummond's successor.
In addition to the Achilles, 44., iron steamer, and
the Royal Oak, 50, iron-plater!. frigate in progress
at Chatham, the Lords of the Admiralty have given.
directions for the following line-of-battle and other
steamers to be built at the same dockyard :—The
Pitt, 91 ; the Boadicea, 51 ; the Pomona, 51; the,
Ganymede, 28 ; the Falmouth, 22 ; the Tees, le.) •
the Diligence, 17; the Albatross, 4; and. the
Salamis, 4.

The Bombay, 81, line-of-battle screw steamer,
which is being fitted with engines of 400-horse
power in Chatham harbour, has the engineers em-
ployed on her from an early hour in the morning
until late at night, in order to complete her for the
steam reserve. Her four boilers, each weighing
upwards of 20 tons, have been shipped on board by
means of the powerful floating sheers.
Orders have been received at Devonport for con-
verting the Ocean, 91, laid down as an ordinary
screw steamship, into an iron-plated ship. As the
vessel is not far advanced the alterations will not
involve much loss. As there are 1,000 tons of iron
plates to be used this weight will be met by an
addition of 60 feet to the length of the vessel, which
will now be 275 feet. She will also be reduced one
deck from the original design.
A series of interesting experiments was last
week made at Shoeburyness, with a view of testing
the effect of heavy shot on iron batteries, which
had been previously found to stand any amount of
pounding with the lighter projectiles from a 68-
pounder smooth bore. The battery was built up
as a solid wall of iron, 10 inches thick, on Thorny—
croft's system of dovetailing, and was backed up in
the strongest manner with heavy timber, and
braced with iron bars. It conveyed the impression
that, after having stood the brunt of so much
firing, the battery might, for all practical purposes,
be considered indestructible. The first shot was
fired from an Armstrong 120-pounder shunt gun,
with a projectile weighing 1261 b. ; and such was
the effect of this mass, combined with its velocity,
that at a distance of 600 yards it cleared out one of
the plates 10 inches in thickness, and, at the same
time, carried away the back fastenings. The second
shot was fired frit= an ordinary 100-pounder Arm-
strong, with a solid projectile weighing 1101 b.
lhis struck the battery at another point, but with-
out doing equal damage with the first shot, yet
making a breach clean through the entire structure,
and so weakening it as to insure its entire demo-
lition by a few more shots. One more sufficed for
the purpose, and this, the third, was directed to a
part affording some stability to the superabundant
mass. The missile, weighing again 1101 b., was, as
before, fired from a 100-pounder gun, and it brought
the whole battery, above the point struck, imme-
diately
-to the ground.

The following appointments were made yesterday
at the Admiralty :—Edward Jones Butler, assist.-
surg., to the Mutine ; George Patrick, acting second
master additional, to the Southampton ; Richard
Cowan, chief engineer, to the Agamemnon;
George Trevess, chief engineer, to the Asia,
for the Euryalus ; William Oliver, chief engineer,
to the Asia, for the Prince Regent ; James Leys,
chief engineer, to the Cumberland, for the Bombay ;
George Crichton, chief engineer, to the Cumber-
land, for the Cressy ; John Roberts (a), acting
chief engineer, to the Cumberland, for the Barossa ;
William Wilkinson, acting second-class assist.-en-
gineer, to the Asia, as supernumerary ; and William
Mackay Haddow, acting second-class assist.-engi-
neer, to the Cumberland, as supernumerary.