The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-27 00:00:00

MEETING OE PARLIAMENT.

The following circular has been addressed by the
Premier to the presumed supporters of his Govern-
ment in the ensuing Parliament :
"94, Piccadilly, 29th April, 1857.
" Sir, —I take the liberty of informing you that
the House of Commons will meet on Thursday, the
30th of this month, and will proceed on that day
to the choice of Speaker ; and that the address in
answer to the Queen's Speech will be moved on
Thursday the 7th of May.
" I hope it may be consistent with your con-
venience, attend on those days.—l have the honour
to be, your obedient servant, '‘ PALMERSTON."

Her Royal Highness the Princess Alice completed her
fourteenth year on Saturday. The royal standard was
hoisted at the usual places. Saturday was also the
birthday of her Royal Highness the Duchess of Glou-
cester, whose illness occasions such anxiety and regret
in all circles. The august and venerable lady was born
on the 25th of April, 1776, and is therefore now in her
81st year.

Their Royal Highnesses the Princess Alice, the
Princess Royal, Prince Arthur, and the Princesses
Helena and Louisa honoured the Princess's Theatre
with their presence on Saturday evening.
On Saturday the Princess Alice, the Prince of Wales,
the Princess Royal, the Princesses Helena and Louisa,
Prince Arthur, and Prince Leodold honoured Madame
Tus6aud's Exhibition, in Baker•street, with a visit. The
royal suite comprised Lady Caroline Barrington, the
Hon. Lucy Kerr, the Hun. Mary Bulteel, Lord Alfred
Paget, and Mr. Gibbs.

A Cabinet Council was held on Saturday, at the
official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, in
Downing•street. The Minisers present were :—Viscount
Palmerston, the Loid Chancellor, Earl Granville, the
Earl of Harrowby, Sir George Grey, the Earl of Cla-
rendon, Mr. Secretary Labouchere, Lord Panmure, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Hon. R. Ver-
non Smith, Lord Stanley of Alderley, the Duke of
Argyll and the Hon. M. T. Baines.
The First Lord of the Admiralty, the Right Hon. Sir
C. Wood, Bart., arrived at the residence of Sir Augus-
tus Clifford, at Ryde, Isla of Wight, on Friday, and
crossed over to Portsmouth ou Saturday to witness the
launch of the Royal Sovereign—returning in the after-
noon in the Fire Qteen, steamer. On Monday (to-day)
Sir Charles visits Haslar, to inspect the slipway for
hauling up the screw gunboats.

The Prince Laoien Bonaparte and his Excellency the
Sardinian Minister were among the fashionable company
attending the Royal Italian Opera on Saturday evening.
Too Earl and Countess Spencer are expected in town
in a few days from Althorp Park, where they have been
entertaining company for some, -time past.
The Earl and Countess of. Egmont are expected in
town in a few days from Co weray, Sussex, for the sea-
son.

The Earl and Countess .o•C Kintore have left the S.
Gr±orge's Hotel for Brighto n.

The Viscoui&ms Palna.erston left town on Saturday
afternoon for St. Leonal.A's-or.-Sea.
Her Majesty's Ministers and chief officers of state are
invited to dine with t.fas President and members of the
Royal Academy of Arts, on Saturday next, at their
apartment 3 at the Na' .ional Galley.
Captain the f. R. Drummond, C. 8., has been
appointed Private F ,ecretary to Sir Chas. Wood, First
Lord of the Admiral ty, in the room of Mr. T. G. Baring,
M.P., resigned.
The Bishop-nonni inate of Norwich (the Hon. and Rev.
J. T. Pelham) has appointed the Rev. J. J. S. Perowne,
8.D., Fellow of C orpus Christi College, Cambridge, and
Lecturer iu lleiY eew and Divinity in King's College,
London, to, tie 11'.is examining chaplain.

LAUNCH Or. THE ROYAL SOVEREIGN,

(FURTHER PARTICULARS.)

PORTSMOUTH, SATURDAY.
Another noble steam three-decker has been added
to the British fleet this day, with unsurpassed, if
not unequalled éclat so far as the successful launch-
ing and the interest manifested in that event can
indicate. No launch within the remembrance of
any shipwright or spectator present was ever more
dashingly exhibited than that of the Royal Sove-
reign. She is the most perfect model three-decker
afloat, and an improvement upon all others. She
was originally designed and framed as a sailing ship
of 110 guns, after the sample of the Queen, and
was commenced building in December, 1849, but
after the success of the experiment of cutting the
Windsor Castle, (similar ship) in two, and making
a steam 131-gun Duke of Wellington of her, and
the satisfactory repetition of the experiment with the
Marlborough, it was ordered that the Royal Sove-
reign should undergo the like process, and about
two years ago, when up in frame, she was length-
ened 23 feet amid-ships, 7 feet for the screw aper-
ture, and 5 feet on the bow, and thus we have the
splendid and powerful screw 131 gun battery of to-
day. She is the production of the present Naval
Architect General, Capt. Sir B. Walker, Bart.,
K.C.8., and has been built under the immediate
direction and personal superintendence of Mr. R.
Abethel, the master shipwright of Portsmouth
Dockyard. We gave her dimensions an.l armament
in The Sun of Saturday, but we repeat the former
for the purpose of showing the growth of our
first-class line-of-battle ships as compared with that
time-honoured hulk of the same class of the last
century (the Victory), and to found a few prelimi-
nary remarks upon the development of the
steam fleet generally. The first steam-vessel that
carried the Admiralty pennant, we believe, was
the Comet, built by Mr. Lang, at Deptford, in
1822, but she was not built to carry guns, as may
by imagined by her circumscribed dimensions and
tonnage

Length between perpendiculars Feet. Inches.ls 0
Length of beel for tonnage lOl 2t
Breadth, extreme
Depth in hold
Burden in tons, 238
She was a paddlewheel vessel of 80-horso power,
with beam engines by Boulton and Watt. This at
the time was a "wonder" in the fleet. The little
pioneer has done much work in her time, and done
it well, and we never heard of her engines break-
ing down. They are as good now as they were at
first, and she is still doing duty. The first attempt
at a steamvessel to carry guns was the Salamander,
builr ten years after the Comet (1832), by Mr.
Seaton, at Sheerness, of 818 cons, 220-horse power,
paddlewheel, and which realised a maximum speed
of 8.9 miles. She was one of a batch comprising,
among others, the following :
_

When and where Horse
built. Tons. pwr. Builder.
Dee Woolwich, 1852 704 200 Seppings& Lang,
Radamanthus Plymouth, 1832 815 220 Roberts.
Phcenix
Dee Woolwich, 1833 835 359 Lang.

These mounted from two to four guns, and were
considered steam-sloops ; but five years later we
attempted a vessel of the dimensions of a frigate,
and classified as a steam-frigate ; this was the
Gorgon, of 1,111 tons, 320 horse-power, and who3e
greatest speed recorded is 11.1 miles per hour.
She carried six upper deck guns, and was pierced
for a maindeck armament (designed by Symonds,
and launched in 1837), and this is the official record
of her character—" Failed to carry her guns ; could
not steam off a lee shore." The next attempt at a
steam-frigate was the Cyclops, also by the architect
of the Gorgon, but larger and 12 feet longer ; she
was launched in 1839, was of 1,195 tons. 320
horse power, and pierced for an upper and main-
deck armament ; she "failed to carry her guns."
These two vessels when introduced to the service
were the admiration and pride of the navy, and
the Gorgon created as much curiosity as did the
Great Britain when she first lay alongside Black-
wall pier as a show ship. But, alas for the muta-
bility of naval as well as human things, the Dee,
Rhadamanthus, Cyclops, &c., have been long
transports of stores from port to port, and the
Comet, often an Admiralty, and once the Queen's
yacht, now fills the office of a supernumerary tug
in Portsmouth harbour.

The attempt at building a steam-frigate having
failed, the designer of those notahilities turned his
attention to the production of one out of a sailing
frigate already male. For this purpose the Pene-
lope, of 42 guns, built at Chatham in 1829, was
taken in hand. She was of the following propor-
tions :

Feet. Inches.
Length between perpendiculars 215 2
Breadth, extreme
Depth in hold 26 8
Tons burthen 1,616
Horse-power (paddle-wheel) 650
Her character is handed down to posterity in these
terms :—" A French frigate ruined. Converted
to a steam-ship. Useless except as a troop-ship.
Slow. A 42-gun sailing frigate, lengthened amid-
ships 63 feet, and fitted for sea as a steam-frigate
with engines of 650 horse-power, at an expense
for hull and machinery of 59,489/. !" Converted in
1842. Her greatest speed was 9.6 miles per hour.
Another hand was commissioned to produce, (if
possible) afloatable and fightable paddlewheel steam
frigate ; the French Gomer having in the interval
of the advent of the Penelope and the order for an-
other attempt made her appearance in this harbour
with the late King of the French, here was a model
to be copied and improved upon, and in 1845 we
have the four•funnelled monster Terrible, built by
Mr. Oliver Lang, of the following dimensions :
Length
Feet. Inches.
226 2
Breadth 42 6
Depth 27 4
Toes 1,850
Horse power (paddle) 800
Her greatest speed recorded is 12.5 miles per hour ;
the official opinion registered of this ship is, that
" from her large power and size she should have
done 16 miles au hour with ease. She cost
101,000/. ;" and this to carry only 21 guns, but
then we eclipsed the Gomer, and that was con-
sidered something. Paddles still reigned the
fashion at Whithall, and hull after hull was
launched constructed for that rapidly dying out
means of propulsion. The great historical fact re-
mains that about this time the Admiralty barge was
towed (their Lordships being in her) at the rate of
10 miles an hour on the river Thames by a vessel
propelled with the screw. The day after this won-
derful experiment an official letter was received by
the inventor to the effect that the screw was " not
applicable to her Majesty' service. ' The little
Rattler in the meantime had been developing seri-
ous and important advantages of the screw over
the paddle in numerous experimental trials on the
Thames and the Channel, and, all the enormously
poWered paddle steam frigates having yielded so
little serviceable efficiency in return for the great-
ness of their cost, the Surveyor tried his hand at an
old sailing frigate of the Seppings' build, and con-
verted her toa steamer with a power of a 300-horse
screw as an auxiliary, and in 1849 produced the
Amphion at a cost 76,411/. Her dimensions were :
Feet. Inches.
Length 177 0
Breadth
Depth
Tonnage 1,474.
She was fitted with Count Rosen's rotary engines,
and has d:stinguished herself and her numerous in-
ventors and experimentors by breficiog down
oftener than any other steamer afloat. The cost of
76,4111. was up to the time of her leaving Sheerness
" converted," but since that time (1847) we believe
she has cost a good proportion of the same sum.
She is now in ordinary at Sheerness. Conversion
having done so little to produce either a good paddle
or a screw steam frigate worthy of the name, a new
hand was commissioned to build a " genuine"
frigate, and in 1848 Mr. Fincham gave to the navy
the Arrogant

Feet. Inches.
Length
Breadth
Depti

Tons 1,862
Horse power (auxiliary) 360
This was a decided success. At last we had achieved
the object for which so many hundreds of thousands
of pounds had been spent, and a model was set up,
from whidi have sprung the Imperieuses, Euryal-
uses, and shannons of the navy. The Arrogant was
the pioneer of the new system, which has gone on
improving iu success with each attempt under the
present sc entific and practical constructive depart-
ment of tie navy and under the surveyor-general-
ship of Si] Baldwin Walker.

Toe net important adaptation of the screw was
to line-oi-battle ships, and the French haling
stilted the construction of "block" ships, we began
to look around for some " old materials" out of
which to "convert" the new class of bulwark. The
experimert was unhappy. The selection fell upon
the Blenheim, built at _Deptford in 1813 by the then
" surveyors of the navy ;" she was a 74, fitted out
at a cost cf 80,080/,, repaired from 1814 to 1844 at
a cost of '4,4551., fitted for a steam blockship on
leaving Sieerness for Portitnouth (October 27,
1847) at afurther cost of 76,9981. We thus get a
blockship which steams about seven miles an hour
with 450-lorse power at a total " trifle" of 231,5331.
We nov come to the steam three-decker of to-
day, as conpared with the sailing three-decker of