The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-20 00:00:00

MANNING THE NAVY.

Just now every Briton must ardently desire to
have our Navy thoroughly efficient, and must be
well aware that it can only be made so by the hearty
co-operation of our seamen. They are the life and
soul of our ships, and they hurl "the thunder"
which strikes down the enemies of England, and
preserves her in safety, by securing her the do-
minion of the sea. Every man must now accord-
ingly be pleased with the well-meant efforts of
Ministers to revive and Arengthen the attachment
of the seamen to the naval service. They are very
properly also taking measures to inform the seamen
of the advantages they are sure to find from serv-
ing the State ; ,and the contrast now exhibited of a
captain of her Majesty's Navy gathering the hardy
seamen of the North around him, and publicly
explaining to them that wages are higher in the
Queen's service, the treatment while afloat better,
the labour lighter, the danger less, and the provision
for old age and decrepitude superior to those of the
merchant service ; with such an officer, in former
times, arming a pressgang, and sending it ashore at
dead of night to carry off these seamen and force
them to serve On scanty wages and hard fare, is as
great as it is instructive.
Captain Pim, at two meetings which he has
already held at Newcastle and South Shields, was
extremely careful to show the seamen that those
who serve her Majesty are now well paid, that the
provisions supplied to them are abundant, the slops
cheap and good, the pensions large, and discipline
mild. He explained that the seamen are no longer
exposel as formerly to be arbitrarily and indis-
criminately flogged—that " the use of the cat" is con-
fined to" lazy skulking characters," that every officer
is not allowed to punish men at his pleasure as for-
merly, and that even the captain is now compelled
to institute an inquiry, and allow a certain number
of hours to elapse after pa'ssing sentence before he
inflicts punishment. Captain Pim could find a foil
for the Navy in the case of the man recently tied up
on board a steamer and burnt to death, and told the
seamen that no such cruelties were perpetrated in
her Majesty's ships. His appeals to the reason of
the seamen, contrasted with the violence formerly
employed to seize them and the florid declamation
used to delude them, are infallible signs that the
heads of the naval service have at length arrived at
the conclusion that seamen are rational beings
whose services to a-ny amount are to be obtained,
like those of all other men, by fair treatment and just
rewards.
The pains now taken by the naval authorities to
inform the seamen that discipline in the Navy is no
longer the arbitrary, cruel and terrific rule which
prevailed to the close of the great French war, when
for the first time a trifling restriction was laid on the
power, previously unlimited, of inflicting any and
every kind of punishment, is in fact a public recog-
nition of the injuriousness of the old system. It is
an ample justification of those benevolent indivi-
duals who continually endeavoured, . with
only slight success, to abate the old cruel-
ties, and of those right minded officers
who denounced the system and preferred the
sacrifice of their professional hopes to keeping
silence on its. enormities. But if it be necessary
and advantageous to get rid of some of them, why
leave any in existence ? The use of the cat is an
old barbarity—a part of the system which Captain
Pim and the Admiralty take credit for having
amended. At the South Shields meeting, Mr.
Charles Liddel, a seaman, said the Government
" had not treated the British sailor in a proper
manner. He referred to the use of the lash as an
objection to seamen joining the navy." Mr. John
Fish, 'veteran, claimed for the seamen the same
privileges as are awarded to the officers. Now the
officers are in no manner subjected to any such
degrading punishment, and the captains are no
longer allowed, as they once were, to the young
gentlemen to a gun and flog them. To prohibit
flogging for them is to condemn its use • for if it
be horrifying to flog young gentlemen, why should
grown-up men be flogged P The use of the lash on
board ship is a remnant of the old system of which
impressment was a part, and to continue it is wholly
incompatible with the appeal now made to the
reason, the feelings, and the interest of the seamen.
The merchant shipowner may possibly complain
of an increase of bounty and wages, which he must
equal to retain the services of the seamen, but he
would make no objection to an amelioration of the
system which would remove the chief impediment
to well-bred youths going to sea, and increasing by
hundreds and thousands the number of seamen
ready to serve either the Government or the mer-
chant, Both must be served. Defence and trade
are equally necessary to the national welfare ; and
Government still takes a very narrow view of its
duties, where it prefers entering into a pecuniary
competition with the merchant for the services of
a very limited number of seamen, to providing by
rational treatment for such an increase in them as
shall supply both. The males in Great Britain, at
the soldier's age of 20 to 40, amounted in 1851 to
3,193,490, according to the census Commissioners,
and of them, without including youths between 20
and 14, many of whom are available, and indispen-
sable to service on board ship, surely one-tenth, or
300,009, could, without difficulty, be obtained for
both services. Never yet have the two together
needed or had so many. When we consider the
vast number of our people qualified by age for
seamen, and the number required for both services,
we at once conclude that only an obstinate and
blind adhesion to some antiquated barbarities, such
as the use of the cat,
,prevents our spirited male
population from crowding to our ships, and at all
times supplying as great a number of hands as the
two services can possibly require and adequately
pay.

Now that the Government is sensible of the pub

lie advantage of ameliorating the old system, why
does it not carry the principles it professes to admire
fairly out ? Why should it still retain any of the
old barbarities which have helped to degrade the
merchant service as well as the Royal Navy, and
continually terrify many of our youth from a sea
life ? It makes a maritime life unpopular, and
wastts the public money in a competition with
merchant shipowners to counteract the effects of
its own adhesion to unlegalised errors. Had it com-
menced soon after the peace in 1815, as was then
recommended, to cleanse the Naval Service from all
those old usages which make it hateful to our
youth, and had Government employed all thefunds
appropriated to the Naval Service to rear and
nourish only seamen, not soldiers, in our ships,
setting a good example by its humanity and
justice to the merchant shipowners and forcing
them to treat their servants with more kindness '
and equity, there can be no doubt that now more
than 300,000 seamen of a superior character could
be readily found for both services. Had the Go-
vernment, when administered by the Whigs, fol-
lowed their liberal teaching, the State would not
now be disgraced by a puffing. competition with
trade to obtain customfrom the.seamen. Unfortu-
nately the advocates of old practices look merely at
discipline, though it be in the main only a bundle
of petty and mischievous restraints, and entirely
overlook., the larger social and national interests to
which these practices are fatally adverse.
What the Government has done and is doing is
mostly in the right direction, but it does not go
fast enough, and far enough. As it has begun to
consult the feelings of the seamen and the maritime
population, it has no alternative but to do what
they. justly require. They demand more limited
service, and pensions and rewards in propor-
tion to their rank, similar to those of the officers.
They emphatically demand "better treatment," a
fair day's pay for a fair day's work," wages at the
market rate, with as much freedom as is compatible
with efficiency. They must be consulted, not the
old arbitrary principles of the Plantagenets and
the Tudors followed. The use of steam in naviga-
tion has introduced new classes of men and different

moral treatment into the navy. Engineers, like other
artisans, must be fairly treated, and their services
fairly paid for. A different rule cannot now be
followed for the seamen. Yet a lingering dread still
remains, should war break out," that they will

again be impressed, and Capt. Pim could only try
to assure them by expressing a hope that there
would be no occasion to resort to such a means of
manning the navy. To entertain such a notion is to
be lukewarm in favour of the measures which must
yet be taken to make the navy agreeable to the sea-
men. The Admiralty should for ever discard it, and
should join the seamen in reprobating the injustice
of which, as they are now keenly sensible, they have
so long been the victims. If it thus demonstrate its
readiness to rely exclusively on voluntary service, it
may be sure, in the present disposition of the people,
ready to form Volunteer Rifle Corps in every town
and county, that the maritime population will flock
to the Royal Navy. They will then have in the
Government, which has hitherto been their enemy
and their oppressor, a friend and a protector, and
they will joyfully rally round its standard.—baily
News.

TILE IRON STEAM FRIGATES OR
RAMS.

It is now decided that the Thames Iron Company
is to build the first of the huge iron-coated steam
frigates or rams for the Royal Navy. The design
selected by the Lords of the admiralty was prepared
by the Surveyor of the Navy at the beginning of the
present year, before the competing designs lately
submitted to them were sent in. It is due, however,
to Mr. Scott Russell to say that he had previously
placed a design in the hands of the Admiralty; but
with the details of this we are not at present
acquainted. We have .on former occasions spoken
of the marked ability with which the construction
department of the Surveyor of the Navy's office is
conducted. One or two facts connected with the
design for the singular ship now about to be built
may be cited in confirmation of this view.
No less than 15 designs were submitted, to the
Admiralty by Messrs. Laird; Mare, Napier, Palmer,
Scott Russell, Samuda, Thames Iron Company,
Westwood and Baillie, and the Master Shipwrights
of her Majesty's dockyards. The only conditions
stipulated for were that the ship should carry 36 guns,
with certain men and provisions for four months,
should travel at 14 knots per hour, and should be
covered over a certain portion of its length with 4
in. iron, backed by two feet of solid timber. All
other elements, such as dimensions, horse-power,
&c., were left entirely to the 'discretion of the
designers. And strangely indeed did these gentle-
men differ from each other in their idea of what
these undetermined elements were required to be !
We are not at liberty to publish an analytical
statement of the elements of the whole; but we
may mention some of the extremes between which
certain measurements of the several designs ranged.
While the length, for example,of the least was 340
feet, the length of the greatest was no less than
430 feet. The breadths varied between 52 feet and
60 feet ; the draughts of water between 21 feet 9
in. and 26 feet 6 in. ; the horse power between
1,000 and 1,800 ; and the tons burthen between
4,887 and 7,544 ! In order to afford to the ship-
builder some clue as to the kind of structures
proposed, we may also add that the proportions of
the weight of hull per ton (exclusive of armour
plates) to the burthen in tons, ranged between •48
and .86.

Now, the curious fact to be noted, and one
which speaks so strongly in favour of the Ad-
miralty contractors, is this—that
their design,
which was prepared, as we have said, before the
others, turns out to be, in all her principal elements,
as nearly as possible, a mean of the other designs.
That is to say, if the average length of all the other
designs be taken you get her length, which is 380
feet ; if their average be taken you get her breadth,
which is 58 feet; if their average displacement be
taken you get her displacement ; if their average
horse power be taken you get her horse power,
which is 1,250. The average quantities obtained
are not, of course, exactly her's in any case ;;but
they are so nearly her's as to fully justify the view
of the facts here presented.
These facts, it will be admitted, although they
demonstrate nothing, serve nevertheless to indicate
both the skill and the care exercised in the con-
struction of our ships of war. It should be remem-
bered, moreover, that the design in question was
for a ship of an altogether novel character ; on this
account the department deserves the greater
commendation. It would be well, indeed, for the
country if in all our public departments the ability
of the servants of the Crown was found to bear so
severe a comparison with the privale talent of
the country with so much honour to itself.—
Mechanics' Magazine.