The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-01 00:00:00

TErIE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 1, 1861.

remembering hop t egregious is the anomaly pre-
sented to 'view by the Board of Admiralty
as at preser 1t constructed. The curiosity

felt by' V.ttle OLIVER TWIST, in his
early childb ood as to what a " Board " could pos-
sibly be, m v, in simple truth, be only likened in
its intensity' to the marvel of any rational adult

in these isle finds when he comprehends fully what
the particular Board referred to last evening by
the hon. Baronet, the member for Portsmouth,

in his bold and comprehensive resolutions,
really and actually is. Boards might, by the
cynical philosophers of our day, by critics like
CARLYLE for example, be generally defined
as what their names might almost seem
to suggest etymologically—things essentially
wooden-headed ! But the Board of Admiralty—

the Board especially set apart with a View to the
better construction and preservation of the wooden
walls of Old England! That Board in particular
might, without much exaggeration, be especially
designated as in this way facile princeps among all

he various Boards familiar to Englishmen. It is
no such exceeding wonder, therefore, 'after all,
it is not in any way so excessively marvel-
lous, recollecting the past history of this
amazing Board of Admiralty, to find a mem-
ber of the House of Commons like Sir J. ELPHIN-
STONE propounding to the House a distinct plan
for its abolition and for its replacement by some
totally different scheme of administration. The
resolutions of the hon. member for Portsmouth,
numbering in all " eleven," proposed, among other
daring schemes of a reconstructive character,
to secure, as the first essential for the good ad-
ministration of the Royal Navy henceforth, that
personal responsibility which is wholly awanting
in our present Board of Admiralty, composed of
professional and unprofessional Lords Commis-
sioners. According to Sir J. ELPHINSTONE'S plan,
and as the readiest means of ensuring this guarantee
of good government henceforth in our maritime
department, there might be substituted for the
Board of Admiralty a Minister of Marine, with a
Secretary of the department, chosen from among
the number of the popular representatives. Pos-
sibly—probably indeed—we may in the fulness of
time obtain this Minister of Marine, as well as our
long talked of and long hoped for Minister of
Justice. But in the meantime, before any such
sweeping measure of reconstruction or absolute
transformation ca►n be seriously thought of or de-
cided upon by the Legislature—there are changes,
modifications, improvements of the most various
kind being perpetually introduced at the Admi-
ralty by the mere pressure of events, by the mere
necessity of the times, by means of which many of the
more flagrant anomalies of the Board are rendered,
to a considerable extent, innocuous : those benefi-
cent changes, modifications, and improvements
happily taking place simultaneously with another
and more material " Reconstruction of the Navy"
—a reconstruction brought about in the
dockyards of Old England by the hammer
and the adze of her shipwrights. Those
who may chance to be still in doubt as to the
extent of the good progress already made, and still
resolutely making, at the Admiralty and in the
dockyards of this country with a view to the
reconstruction and rehabilitation in a very great
measure of the whole soul and body of our Maritime
Power, will do well to turn for a moment to the
frank, sailor-like words addressed last evening to
the British House of Commons by the noble and
gallant lord, the Admiralty Secretary. It will be
there seen how cheerily, and with what infinite
good humour Lord CLARENCE PAGET snaps his
fingers in the pale face of the Alarmist.

The launch of the Black Prince reminds us that
the wooden walls of old England are becoming
matter of history. We must remember them only
with an antiquarian sigh. Through their good
help we have continued to enjoy immunity from
conquest, and from anything like serious invasion
for eight hundred years, and the want of them
was the cause of successful invasion in earlier days.
We must now, however, drink to the memory of
our wooden walls, and with all convenient speed
ensconce ourselves behind our iron wails. Heart
of oak has been hitherto unsurpassed, but heart of
iron is certainly better ; and be it remembered, if
oak be British, iron is pre-eminently so. No
country in the world is such an iron country
as ours. Nowhere else do the iron ores,
and the coals which convert them into
iron, lie in such close proximity ; nowhere else
do the requisite capital and the timber of
skilled mechanics and adjacency of water render
so facile the building and the launching of the
largest iron fabrics.
Our readers will peruse with interest the account
of the Black Prince, launched at Glasgow last
Wednesday—the sister ship in almost every re-
spect to the Warrior. They will be the more in-
terested if they remember that these must
be the future models, only, of course,
improving on them, of our Navy. It may
be, and it is mortifying, that after the enor-
mous expense we have incurred for the new navy
which Sir JOHN PAKINGTON began to build, we
should now be called on to build a new iron fleet
in its place ; but there is no help for it. The
great change has taken place. It has become as
certain that a fleet of wooden ships could be
destroyed almost with impunity by a fleet of iron
ones, as that a fleet of old sailing vessels would
have been at the mercy of a fleet of screw steamers.
The wooden ships will also still be of use for a long
time to come, where they will not be matched
against iron ; but they will no longer be our
reliance on our own coasts and in the Mediterranean.
' It is possible, too, that some of the wooden ships
will be capable of bearing a covering, more or less,
of iron plates, and serve in our ports as blockships.
It will, however, be observed that two such practical
men as Mr. LINDSAY and Sir MORTON PETo both
declared the day of wooden ships of war to be over,
and agree on the necessity of replacing them by
iron ones as speedily as possible. One very con-
solatory view of the matter was given by Sir M.
PETO ; that ultimately iron ships would be the
more economical. And he would seem to be right
—for, as he observed, an iron ship was as good fifty
years after she was built as ever; he knew from
experience that the wear of iron under such cir-
cumstances was scarcely appreciable. It is cer_
tainly not subject to dry rot or any of the other ills
that timber is heir to—while we know but too well
that a wooden ship is soon out of repair. In 1859,
Sir B. WALKER reported that there was scarcely a
ship, unless she had been built recently, that could
go to sea without " extensive repairs."
Sir MORTON PETO laid his finger on the cause of
the evil—that of persevering in building wooden
ships after the only nation with whom we can come
into competition had ceased to build them—when
he told the Government that they did not act like
men of business. The latter would not think of
going on building and spending on an antiquated
and exploded system, but the Government had got
its dockyards all arranged f for building with wood,
its mechanics all trained to work in it ; and if the
Government constructed iron vessels their occupa-
tion would be gone—but this was not to be a reason
why the millions of the country were to be wasted

on building what could no longer be of use for its
defence, nor so permanent as the new iron ships.
It will be seen what splendid specimens of iron
shipbuilding as the Warrior and the Black Prince
are—for Mr. LINDSAY had been on board both
the Warrior and La Gloire, and said that speaking
with a sailor's eye, he should not be afraid on board
the Warrior to fight two La Gloires—yet, iron ships
will be still susceptible of considerable improve-
ment. Another 1,000 tons would have enabled
the Warrior to have borne the weight of iron
plates covering her completely from stem to stern,
But the greatest improvement of all will be that
of building the ships of iron entirely. Now,
they have a wooden casing inside, of
twenty-two inches of teak ; but, !with-
drawing this, and making suitable arrange-
ments to enable the iron to bear the concussion,
and consequent vibration, and starting of rivets,
caused by the impact of shot, the iron plates might
be another inch thicker, in which case they would
be' perfectly invulnerable. One thing perhaps,
the most important of all, is the illustration
afforded by the launch of the Black Prince
from a private yard of our real sources of
strength. Happily on the prospect of any emergency
we have something better than Government Dock-
yards to rely on, in which the mechanics and their
masters can only work in wood. The Messrs.
NAPIER have launched this splendid vessel in only
one year and two days, since the first plates of
her keel • were laid. And this same yard could
complete three such vessels, if necessary, now, in
one year ! ! All the shipbuilding yards in the
hands of private firms in France altogether could
not, probably, complete one in a year. We ques-
tion whether the Government yards could do as
much. While, therefore, we must not go to
sleep, we certainly have no reason to fear the
mperial shipbuilder.

ADMIRAL FITZROY'S P.ROGNOSTI-

CATIONS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR,—In the Times of this day it is stated :

" Her Majesty's troopship Dee was yesterday
hauled out of basin at Woolwich, laden with a cargo
of steam gear for Plymouth and Glasgow, the heavy
portion of her freight being necessarily on deck.
Before the Dee left the basin information was re-
ceived from Lloyd's of Admiral Fitzroy's prognos-
tications (hitherto found to be exceedingly truth-
ful), indicating an approaching gale, and a caution
to that effect was transmitted round the coast. The
Dee, however, is a good sea vessel, and is commanded
by a cautions and most experienced body of officers,
well accustomed to the dangers of the voyage, who
expressed no disinclination to proceed. She con-
sequently sailed from Woolwich at 4 p.m."
I feel it a duty to lose no time in saying, that no
such " prognostications" were made by me—that
" Lloyd's " did not send any such to Woolwich or
elsewhere—and that officers in her Majesty's ser-
vice do not hesitate to obey lawful orders, rather
than their own inclinations.

Here I might stop—but the opportunity of offer-
ing a caution may excuse another sentence.
Persons who profess to know, intuitively, more
than real philosophers, and the most experienced
men have learned—have " prognosticated," or, as
some say, " prophesied" changes, or storms, at
definite times, upon some vague ideas of " lunar"
influence, or (so-called) " Astro-meteorology."
Perhaps the Alchemists and Astrologers of old
were wiser in their generation than these
prophets.

ROBT. FITZROY.

DEATH OF THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND.

TRENTHAM, FRIDAY MORNING.

The Duke of Sutherland died last night, at Trentham,
at twenty minutes past nine, in the 75th year of his age.
The deceased nobleman was born Bth August, 1786 ; suc-
ceeded his father as second Duke 19th July, 1833; inherited
the Scotch honours upon the decease of his mother in 1839;
married 27th May, 1823, Harriet-Elizabeth-Georgians,
third daughter of George, sixth Earl of Carlisle, and has
left issue three sons and four daughters. The deceased
nobleman is succeeded in his titles and estates by the
Marquis of Stafford, who was born on the 19th of Decem-
ber, 1828, and married 27th June, 1849, Anne, only child
of the late John Hay-Mackenzie, Esq., of Newhall and
Cromarty, and has issue two sons and a daughter. The
late duke was summoned to Parliament in the lifetime of
his father as Baron Gower. He was high steward of Staf-
ford, lord lieutenant of the county of Sutherland, and cus-
tos-rotulorum of Staffordshire.

By the elevation of the Marquis of Stafford to the peer-
age, a vacancy occurs in the House of Commons for the
county of Sutherland,

HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE.

Mr. Wallace's new opera, " The Amber Witch," was
produced last night with complete success. The principal
singers, Madame Sherrington, Miss Huddart, Messrs.
Santley, Patey, and Sims Reeves, the composer, and the
manager, were recalled after every act ; and at the end of
the opera a similar compliment was paid to Mr. Charles
Halle, the conductor. The music is almost as complicated
as it is beautiful, and too much praise can hardly be ac-
corded to the orchestra and chorus under Mr. Halle's con-
trol—both, by the way, having been materially reinforced
for the occasion. The house was enthusiastic in its demon-
strations of approval, and the applause was incessant. The
performance did not terminate till nearly midnight.

LAriEF NEWS.

REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.
THE FRENCH FUNDS.
PARIS, FRIDAY, 12.20 r.m.
Three per Cent. Rentes, 68f. 05c., 68f. 10c.
Inanimate—rather firm.

NAPLES, FEB. 27.
The hieghts commanding the citadel of Messina
have been occupied by the Sardinian troops.
The representatives of the foreign Powers have
protested to the commaider of the citadel of
Messina against any damage being caused to the
city.

The Neapolitan Minister of War has notified
that all foreign soldiers who may have belonged to
the Bourbon army, or been in the military service
of the Pope, and who should join the reactionary
bands in Southern Italy, will, if made prisoners,
not be treated as soldiers, but will be punished with
the greatest severity.

CONSTANTINOPLE, FEB. 23;

The Levant Herald says :
" The Porte intends a new issue of 100,000,000
kiames. A change in the Ministery is expected.
Aali Pasha, it is said, will be Grand Vizier, and
Achmed Veffik Effendi Minister for Foreign
Affairs."