The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-12 00:00:00

DOCKYARD EXPENSES.

It should be admitted, in estimating the expenses
of our Dockyards, that the Admiralty does not
stand quite 011 the level of a private firm for the cost
of its vessels—that it has not so simple and unre-
stricted a method of purchase open to it. A private
mercantile firm makes its bargain with the ship-
builder, and procures what it wants for the proper
market price, which is regulated by competition.
Nothing can be more simple than such a process,
because in practice every difficulty of the estimate
is solved for you by facts, and competition is the
ready-made key to fix the price and guarantee its
justness. But the Admiralty cannot, it seems, have
recourse to private yards ; that is said to be a recog-
nised principle. " There are, no doubt," Mr. Lind-
say says, "objections to building ships for the
Royal Navy in private yards." Nobody seems
prepared as yet to assert this emancipating prin-
ciple in behalf of the Admiralty, to fling open the
gates and give it unrestricted liberty as a pur-
chaser. There are doubtless reasons for this, though
we may
.observe that. the Russian Admiralty goes
to American and English private yards. The risk
as regards the soundness of the workmanship, and
especially of the materials, appears to be feared. A
private firm has a sharp eye for this risk, and
cannot be tampered with. A public Board is not
so sharp a customer—it wants the keen inexorable
vigour of self-interest to sustain it in coping with
all the snares of the open field of competition,
and its business is also rather too large a one
to be made dependent on such an extremely jealous
vigilance as this plan would require.
But, because the simplest method of purchase
was not open to it, and it was obliged to be its own
shipbuilder, the Admiralty appears to have adopted
exactly the most cumbrous, unmanageable, and in-
tricate plan of labour that could be devised—a
plan which defies supervision, and leaves the Board
no true gauge and test whatever of the amount of
labour bestowed, thus depriving it of the 'very first
condition of a moderate and just cost. The whole
work of our dockyards appears to be done upon
the " task or job system," a system involving some
thousands of different items, each of which has its
appropriate scale of wages. The " measurer " is
supposed to ascertain accurately every day the
amount of work done, and thus to protect the Ad-
miralty against the undue claims of the shipwright;
but such a vast quantity of items must leave him
in a great measure—even if he is the most honest
man in the world—at the mercy of the simple
statement of the shipwright, and the difficulty of
supervision is increased by the mode of payment
adopted for the "leading men," who conduct and
control the shipwrights' work. These are paid
according to the amount of work done, and there-
fore have the strongest interest in overstating the
amount of that work.
The result of this system is that the cost of our
ships, varies in different dockyards. We have
the curious fact, that the Pearl, at Woolwich,
cost £6 18s. od. per ton building ; the Satellite, at
Devonport, and the Racoon, at Chatham, £4 6s. 6d.
per ton. The Pelorus, of Devenport, cost in ship.
wrights' wages £6,712 ; the Scylla, of Sheerness,
£8,621. These are all vessels of the same size and
burden. But the most wonderful result of this
system of unestimated, or rather of self-estimated
labour was the discovery which was made in 1822,
—that a reduction of £2O per cent. on shipwrights'
wages produced no difference in the cost of vessels.
The Government of that day was struck with the
inexplicable serenity with which this large reduc-
tion was received by the workmen ; it was more
than could have been expected. A shipwright as
meek as an angel or a lamb upon one-fifth of his'
wages being struck off was a puzzle,—an enigma
to the Admiralty, till the appearance of the next
perturbability and equanimity as the men
balance-sheet, when the figures showed exactly the
same im
had. One riddle of course solved the other, and a
comparison of the reduced shipwrights' wages in the
case of the Espoir, built after 1822, with the unre-
duced ones in the case of the Brisk, built before that
date, showing an increase of 6s. 2d. per ton in the
interval, explained the mysterious and supernatural
calm of the Dockyard upon an intelligible principle.
The rational plan, as distinguished from this
vague, loose, and blind one, which makes the ulti-
mate cost of a vessel, as far as shipwrights' work
is concerned, the simple aggregate of so much
previous untested and unascertained labour, would,
fix on the proper price of the vessel,
and to work up to thatrice. But
bbeeforehand,