The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-26 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 26, 1845.

Those who are in the habit of reading our articles of
Naval Intelligence" must have remarked that, although
we are told, from time to time, that a 12-gun brig, or a sloop,
or a small frigate of 32 or 36 guns, has been laid down, we
hear of scarcely any " new lines" for ships of war, of the

first, second, third, or even fourth rates. As for those enor-
mous war-steamers, of which the country has heard such
abundant promises, since Sir C. NAPIER'S show up of their
cardinal blunders and organic deficiencies of construction,
their utter incapacity—in some, to bear even—in others
to find working room for—the heavy armament
which they were expressly designed to carry, they seem to
have ever since slumbered in the limbo of good intentions.
They are, as it were, high and ambitious visions of Admiralty
dreamers, reduced, it is true, into substantial frameworks of
• timber andiron ; but, for any purposes of completed efficiency,
as utterly unavailable to the service of the country as the
spectral craft of the " Flying Dutchman." They are
instructive specimens of the ingenious art of producing
ships, pierced for guns of very heavy calibre, which
when got on board they cannot safely carry, or for
which, if they can carry them, there is not room
and space enough provided to work them. It must
not, however, be supposed that, practically, there is any
formidable difficulty in the way of building war-steamers of
capacity, armament, and immersion, in all respects accu-
rately fulfilling the conditions of their design. We need not
go far for the proof of this important fact, seeing that in
the Great Britain our builders had already accomplished
more than the exigencies of such war-steamers would de-
mand. The Great Britain (perhaps too enormous to be pro-
posed for a model in this case) can readily carry forty-four
heavy guns. We have not, at present, a single war-steamer
turned out in any of her MAJESTY'S dockyards that
can do the same. But other maritime powers (we ought to
blush at the acknowledgment) have far exceeded us in the
magnificence of the war-steamers they have built. True,
indeed, for capacity and tonnage, the world has not yet seen a
rival to the " Great Britain." If, however, the United States
have not, in their naval architecture, yet turned out val
bulwark of 3,480 tons, they two years since sen rth
their " Missouri" for the admiration and wonder of
Europe, with her tremendous armament of forty heavy
guns, her length of 250 feet from stem to stern,
and her capacity of 2,300 tons. A month has not
elapsed since we saw, riding in an English harbour, a steam
frigate of equal dimensions and armament from Russia, and
under the Imperial flag ; but she, too, was built, it appears,
by the builders of New York. The Missouri, it is well
known, was utterly consumed in the Bay of Gibraltar; but
the Russian has gone to exhibit her strength and her pro-
portions in the Mediterranean or the Black Sea. It is high
time that the public should be apprised to what the invincible
reluctance of the Admiralty to take the lead in turning out
first-class models of first-class war-ships is owing. It is in vain
for them to fall back on the professional reputation of the Go-
vernment surveyors and builders. Whether the fault be attri-
butable, which we do not believe, to the defective science or
care of the naval architects, or to injudicious and arbitrary in-
terference with them in other quarters, which we strongly
suspect to be the case ; the fact of excessive failure in the
royal building yards is too notorious to be disputed. Sir C.
NAPIER and Captain BERKELEY have demonstrated, beyond
'all cavil, the absurd discrepancies between the calculations
relative to extension, displacement, &c., &c., and the ac-
tual results, after launching and stowing, of a dozen of
these lamentable and very costly impositions in
the shape of new sailing ships and new steamers
produced by her MAJF.sry's servants. But on the face
of these exposures, despite of these practical admonitions, we
do not even attempt the building of these superior steamers
whose employment must exercise so large, not to say pare:
mount, an influence on the event of any future naval war. All
that is done (we do not now speak of what is promised), in the
way of ship building, is, to turn out small craft exactly of the
kind which all the odds imaginable would devote to imme-
diate capture or destruction, if we did not know against
what adverse superiority the intrepidity of our seamen can
contend. But it is absolutely wicked, as well as presumptuous,
to permit it to be risked in the sort of contest
against overwhelming forces, to which, as we are now
goingon, we are abandoning it, and with it the lives of the
many brave and devoted Britons who will assuredly exhibit
it. Why, we repeat, does the Admiralty studiously refuse
to imitate the example of the United States' Naval Depart-
partment in the timely improvement and organisation of the
service confided to it? Is the same petty, illiberal, jealous,
and over-vaunting spirit still in its councils, which, under
the disastrous Secretaryship of Mr. WILSON CROKER, conti-
mued not only to send out, but tobuild 32 and 36-gun frigates
to fightegainst the great 44 and 50-gun frigates of ,AuleOca, j