The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-29 00:00:00

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assist.-surg., to the Spider; Daniel O'Connor, assist.-
surg., to the Trafalgar; Thos. Colahan, assist.•surg.,
to the Revenge; Richard Crabbe, clerk, to the Tra-
falgar; and J. Allen, assist.-clerk, supernumerary,
to the Fisgard.

sently, had proved that the plates and the side of
she ship generally were practically invulnerable to
the fire of artillery, no matter how concentrated,
the Thames Company were offered their own terms
to manufacture 1,000 tons of similar plates for the
dockyard at Toulon. This propositicn the Thames.
Company declined, alleging, truly, that they :had
already as inany ordere of the kind in hand fur our
Government as they could compass.
had only one
or two plates been ordered, it would have meant'
nothing more than that the French were about to
experiment on them as we had done ourselves. But
with the Protectionist leanings of French dock-
yard officials, it is not too much to presume that
after the trial at Shoeburyness they
known that their own armour plates wnle1:0-4 havevasf
y
inferior to the Warrior's when they went the ex-
treme length of trying to get for themselves no less
than a thousand tons of such plates from an English
firm. The experiments upon the target, the success
of which was s unequivocally endorsed by our
neighbours, took place at Shoeburyness, in the pre-
sence of the Lords of the Admiralty and a large
number of naval and military officers, scientific gen-
tlemen, and others. The target was a perfect section
of the Warrior's broadside, 20 feet long and 10 high,
made by the Thames Iron Company, of exactly the
same materials as the Warrior itself. This was
erected at 200 yards distance from a battery of six
guns—two solid 68-pounders, three of Armstrong's
100-pounders, and one 120-pounder shunt gun.
Every one knew before the experiments commenced
that such a target would stand an immense amount
of pounding, and the chief curiosity was evinced to
see how the teak hacking would support the plates,
and, above all, how the rivets in the ribs would re-
sist the tremendous concussion. No one, however,
was prepared for the astounding success of the re-
sult that did ensue, and which showed itself at tho

close of the experiments, during which the target
was subjected to every conceivable ordeal of artillery
practice, yet survived comparatively uninjured, and
practically as invulnerable as ever. The guns were
fired in volleys of threes, and fours, and sixes simul-
taneously. Their shot were concentrated upon white
spots painted on what were supposed to be the parts
most likely to yield. On these the fire of the most
tremendous missiles-100-pounders, 120-pounders,
and even 200-pounder bolts—were directed, with a
force and weight that seemed irresistible ; but in
vain. The shot flew off in ragged splinters, hissing
through the air, the iron plates became almost red
hot under the tremendous strokes, and the whole
target rang like a huge gong, but nothing more.
As a rule, the 68-pounders left their mark in mas-
sive dents more deeply than the 100-pounder Arm-
strongs, but the live percussion shell of either did
little more than discolour the plates with the smoke
of their impotent explosions. Two discharges, each
of three 2001 b. cast-iron bolts, were fired in succes-
sion at two different spots, but though of course
the plates had been often struck before in the same
places, the additional injury was comparatively
trifling. A grand final salvo was given with all the
six guns, trained three on each of the already bat-
tered spots. As the guns were loaded each with
161 b. of powder, this volley, in fact, was equal to a
600 lb. shot fired at the target with 1001 b. of powder.
The effect of this tremendous trial was to make a
gap on one side of the target 15 inches long and five
deep, driving the iron, in fact, almost into the teak.
Some bolts of the plates were also loosened, and tho
plates themselves began to crack under their long
ordeal. Yet, strange to say, even under this the
strong teak backing was still undisturbed, and
not even the paint on the rivets had started. In
fact, as representing the side of a ship, she would
still have been perfectly water-tight and uninjured.
The tonguing and grooving by which the edges of
the plates are dovetailed into each other had given
way, as we always maintained it would, and some
of the plates themselves had started outwards as
much as an inch and a half. But the target, as a
target, was as good as ever. There is only ono
possible condition in which the Warrior could be
placed to be exposed to a concentrated fire as severe
as that to which her section was subjected at Shoe-
buryness, and that would be if she stranded within
200 yards of the guns of a powerful fortress. Even
then, in such a last extremity, we are very much
inclined to believe the Warrior would be quite as
formidable to the fort as the fort to her.

The practical result of this grand experiment has
been to show that nothing is gained by backing up
the armour plates with such a tremendous thick-
ness of teak as 20 inches. It is found that prac-
tically 10 inches will do as well as 20, and that the
saving thus effected in the reduction of weight will
allow another inch thickness of iron to be used
in the plates themselves. Thus the " improved
Warriors," now building, instead of 41 inches of
armour and 20 inches of teak, are to have 10 inches
of teak and 51 of iron—an addition to the metal
covering which is really unnecessary, as they are
already invulnerable, in the most perfect and literal
sense of the term, to all the efforts of artillery. Be-
fore speaking of the intended Warriors, however,
we must refer for a moment to those we have got.
In their construction, the Admiralty very wisely
abandoned mere routine, except on two points,
where it was rigidly adhered to—in the rig and the
number of the crew ; and it is exactly in these two
points that the Warrior is deficient. Routine per-
sists in considering this tremendous vessel—larger
than three line of-battle ships, and a match for
half a dozen—as an ordinary frigate, and so she has
only an ordinary frigate's crew of 600 men. Had
she been a vessel of the Hero class—that is to say,
nearly two-thirds smaller—she would have been
manned with 850 or 900 men ; but being more than
double the size of the largest three-decker in the
navy, she gets 600. Every one knows how this
grievous disparity tells on the crew ; how, no
matter what the weather or the hour, all hands
must be o❑ deck to perform manoeuvres which the
watch of a line-of-battle ship can do with ease. In
fact, the Warrior has more than a line-of-battle
ship's sails and spars, with less than half the num-
ber of men to handle them that are considered
absolutely necessary in a ship 3,000 tons instead of
7,000. All hands would be a whole day holy-
stoning the Warrior's deck, and it will not keep
clean an hour longer than a smaller vessel's. In
short, unless the Admiralty want to make these
ships unpopular with the sailors, by exacting from
their crews an amount of work out of all propor-
tion to their number, they will allow them the crew
which their size and importance require. With
regard to the rig, all practical ship-builders were
most strongly of opinion that she ought to have
had a fourth mast, and the late experimental
cruises of the Warrior have proved the correctness
of their judgment. Her mainmast is so far aft that
the power exerted by her sails is most disadvan-
tageously placed, and the result, it is said, is
that the Warrior is rather unmanageable under
canvas alone. We believe that these facts are so
well known to the Admiralty that a special rig,
giving them four masts and more fore and aft sails,
will be adopted for the ships now building.

THE SOUTIIERN ARMY.—According to accounts
from Washington the Southern army is composed of 460,000
men. This calculation is based on the annual report of the
Comptroller-General of Georgia, just puplished. That State
has now in the service of the Confederacy 40 regiments,
which, assuming each regiment to be full and containing
1,000 men, would be one out of every 15 of the free popula-
tion, The other Confederate States have apparently fur-
nished the following numbers :—Eastern Virginia, 54,000 ;
North Carolina, 45,300 ; Georgia, 40,000 ; Alabama, 31,000;
Texas, 27,000 ; Mississippi, 27,100 ; Tennessee, 57,13i0u0a:
Louisiana, 23,G00; Arkansas, 22,000 ; South
20,800; Florida, 5,400; total, 337,000, which does Kent
elude the troops furnished by Missouri, ttekCensus
ecanwo tani
d
y
Maryland, amounting to about 100,000 men.
son n
so
d
of 1860 the fighting population, or males
beta eme 8
45, in the Confederate States arc upw
ar • first and second
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s.l,wps o f amountswatro, blol.l7gsv'essels,whisleecNovni with
chartered ones the grand total is 311,
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