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

DOCK] ARD _EXPENSES.

It should be admitted, in estimating the expenses
of our Dockyards, that the Admiralty does not
stand quite on 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
it
s
justness. key to fix the price and guarantee
justness. But the Admiralty cannot, it seedis, 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 lie is the most honest
man in the world—at the mercy of the simple
statement of the shipwright, and the difficulty of
supery sion is inereased by the mode of payment
adopted far the " leading men," who conduct and
control the shipwrights' work. These are paid
according to the amount of work dono, 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 donkyards. We have
the curious fact, • that the Pearl, at Woolwich,
cost £6 18s. sd. per ton building ; the Satellite, at
l)evonport, 4nd the Racoon, at Chatham, £4 6s. 6d.
per ton,' The Pelorus, of Devonport, cost in ship-
wrights wages 6,
all
712
vessels; th
o
eSctvtl
he
l a,
soafme Sheerness,size and
£8,091. These are
burden. Rut the most wonderful result of this
system of uneatimated, or rather of self-estimated
labour
t was
edtulice dtioinscoofy exr2yowpheirc he ewn
ta. so
nmsandi de
wi nr
ilgBh2t2e,
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
balance-sheet, when the figures showed exactly the
same imperturbability and
equanimity as the men
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
a
calm of the Dockyard upon an intelligible principle•
rrhe
of rationala vessel,pin,
vague, loose, and blind one, which makes the ulti-
mate
as far distinguished from this
far as shipwrights' work
is concerned, the simple aggregate of so much
previous untested and unaseertained labour, would
ve
ssel
beforehand, to fix on the proper price of the
beforehand,and to work up to that price.
But cost