The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-10-27 00:00:00

vents of the colonies studiously omits it alto-

As a specimen of our contemporary's
e the summary in question ; and ask

y,we

Le candid r
" Ist. The

s a fair c

i of this country, say these
- naval power can
nt and unfailing
accomplished

ned by rearing a co

ply of hardy seamen

al marine earionly

only b

means of colo-

and coloaial protection

is country the lesson will

.ed in almost ever

zlorious ac

ntively the his-
rave been con-

—in the narrative of

.hievem t -of our naval arm—that

or colonies were the fulcra of the lever, with which
Teat Britain, during the late war, overthrew the
)mbined power of the whole world banded together
it her humiliation and destruction. With the West
dies for a point d'appui in the South Atlantic;
ith Malta for a station in the Mediterranean, and
ibraltar to guard the pass of that sea; with the
t. Laurence, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia in the
"orth Atlantic ; with friendly harbours to run into
it shelter or refitting in every portion of the globe,
it Howe's and our Nelson's possessed sources of
rength which their enemies, driven to skulk besieg-
I in their own harbours, would have given worlds
have been able to wrest from their hands. And,
7en in later times—in our Chinese quarrel—where
'ould have been the resources of Great Britain
'ithout her Indian empire ? and what is that empire

t a colonial posseEsion, in which to marshal .our
.ength, and horn which to draw our warlike

iices ?

1, how in

ly more so mu

they be in any

ture struggle in which we must be engaged, now
at the introduction of steam h- ht about so
!portant a change in wry,'

What would

open
it day

ons ut a west Italia squadron in the
should we hear of the fruitless cruizes

search of an enemy's fleet, wasting perhaps an
tire season, of which the history of the late war
Certainly not ; a British

so mar

lie safely har

)oured in any of our trans-

ntic ports, whilst a fast

sailing

,earner would

. _
scouring the seas ready to bring us down upon
enemy at a few clays notice, and with a certainty
finding that enemy which, hitherto, the sailor has

ver enjoyed. For such steamers too, of every
ibre—and he is a blind man who cannot see that
am is ultimately destined to furnish the chief si-

of the naval arm—our colonies in every portion
globe would form depots for fuel, without
i the paddle or the screw would be alike power-
As affording r • convoys, in time of
our colonies offer an-

ations for
for our merchant fleets

advantage, which the application of steam
r to naval warfare, would render doubly striking

and efficacious

Our contemporary, of course, will see nothing in
arguments and facts. He says, indeed, of one
se important stations :—" If our West Indian
Les did not produce a pound of sugar—if an
hquake were to bury them all in the bosom of the
---our mercantile marine would have as much
mployrnent in the transporting of sugar, and our
!anal supremacy be fully as safe as it is now." He

would, perhaps, tell a different tale, however, after
he had paid war rates of insurance upon a few Bra-
cargoes, or had a few of them carried into
',rest or Toulon. But, the supposition of an earth-
ake is a violent one. The British West Indies
-ery likely to remain above water ; and if we do
lue them aright, there are other powers quite
.elieve us of their burthen. We ask the
.„an, therefore, with Jamaica, St. Thomas's,
nidad, and the rest of our West Indian pos-
sions in the hands of a rival and a hostile power,
v much employment would our mercantile ma-
have in transporting sugar from any portion of
South American continent, of which these im-

portant naval stations, so far as the commerce with
Europe is concerned, form the keys ?
With respect to the claim of the colonies to con-
sideration, as furnishing, to use the language of the
memorialists, " the means of rearing a hardy and an
experienced race of seamen to man the nation's
fleets," the Guardian argues that our foreign trade,
being more extensive than our colonial trade, and
employing a greater amount of shipping, is capable
of affording a more ample supply of seamen for the
navy ; and, hence, that colonial protection and the
colonies themselves should be swept away, inasmuch
as they interfere with the unlimited expansion of
our foreign trade. But has the Guardian ever re-
flected how much of the present growth of our
mercantile navy is to be attributed to the impetus
first given to the enterprize of British merchants
,and shipowners by our colonial system? Our colonial
trade, the pages of history skew us, was that which
laid the foundation of the vast commerce and gigan-
tic mercantile navy which this country at present
possesses ; and at this moment it constitutes the
keystone of the prosperity of that commerce, and
of the foreign and commercial marine which it
employs. From our West Indian possessions we
first stretched our arms to grasp the commerce of
the new republic, and empire, of South America.
From these possessions our merchants first made
their acquaintance with the commercial wants and
resources of that vast continent—first angled timidly
and cautiously in that mine of wealth, from which
we now draw so largely for the support of the in-
dustry of the nation. From India we first made
our footing in the immense market now opened
freely to our enterprize in the wealthy and populous
Chinese empire; and by our Indian power alone
can we hold our present advantageous position
amongst that singular people. By our command of
the St. Lawrence we have afforded us a strong
check against the exclusive commercial policy of the
United States ; whilst other colonies, scattered over
every sea, afford not only depots for our commerce

with other and distant nations, but safe and friendly
harbours of refuge as well for the shipping which
that commerce employs. Admitting, therefore, as
a necessary conclusion, that our more numerous
mercantile marine contribute a larger quotum of
seamen to our navy than our colonial, we must
bear in mind that the former is only the offshoot of
the latter; that the foreign commerce which em-
ploys it has been created and stimulated to its present
greatness—has been protected through the hazards
of a long war, when nearly every power in Europe
was arrayed against us, struggling to destroy or to
cripple this great feeder of the national resources—
by our possession of those very colonies which a
shortsighted manufacturing intere't, guided by such
philosophers as our contemporary of the Manchester
Guardian, would destroy as worthless and injurious.
If an earthquake were to bury our colonies in the
sea, the Guardian says " our naval supremacy would
be fully as safe as it now is." How miserably
ignorant or unmindful of all the lessons of history
must be the author of such an assertion ! What
great naval power ever sprung up in modern
Europe, the foundation of whose strength was not
the possession of colonies ? Portugal, when her

. _ .
fleets swept the sea in every direction, was a colo-
nizing nation, with rich possessions in almost every
zone. Her decline as a naval power was concurre t
with the gradual loss of the colonial empire. Hol-
land, when she contested with us the mastery on
the ocean, possessed a colonial empire ten times
greater in extent than the territory, which the in-
domitable industry of her people had won and
fenced in from the tides; and the naval power of
Holland has declined before the growing colonial
system of Great Britain. How fallen is the naval
power of Spain since the days when her armadas
threatened to overwhelm us even in our island
home ! Turn even to France. What is it which
has even paralized her in her efforts to rear a navy
to compete with the fleets of England ? Ask her
great emperor. Look even at her pacy during the
last fifteen years. See her deluging with the blood
of her warmest soldiers the barren wastes of Algeria
—turning men into blood-hounds and generals and
lieutenant-generals into fiends—desolating villages
with her razzias, and even outraging Heaven a4l
nature with the groans of human victims offered
up in fire upon the smeared altar of her ambition.
See her again engaged in a petty quarrel against a
defenceless female for the possession of the petty
iir island of Tahiti. Of what is this grande 7 lion in
search? For what does she now outrage ' anity,
and now sully her tricolor in a petty , ...eer's
quarrel ? For the possession of colonies ; for the
possession of those naval stations and military posts,
without which her statesmen know that they may
build fleets and man them and sand them to sea to
measure their strength against the naval power of
England, without reaping any other harvest but one
of humiliation, defeat, and almost annihilation.—
" Our naval supremacy" (without colonies) "fully
as safe as it now is!" The dream of a child is wis-
dom compared with such an assertion.
But there is another light, and an important one,
in which to view the commercial usefulness of our
colonies—namely, as furnishing posts of commercial
communication with foreign markets. Where is our
route to India, with Malta " swallowed up by an
earthquake," and Europe embroiled ? Where our
rapid mail communication with Brazil, the River
Plate, or the countries of the Pacific, without the
'West Indies to serve as stations for our fleet of
steamers ? But the subject is not worth pursuing.
The folly of denying the usefulness, for this purpose,
of these great aids to our commercial and political
strength is too transparent to need further notice.
We have not hitherto referred to the statistical
matter contained in the Guardian's article. Indeed
we have not examined its correctness. On another
occasion, however, we may do so; and unless we
greatly mistake we shall find his figures about as
correct and honest as his facts and arguments. At
present however our space is exhausted.

We have abstained hitherto from (,ffering a word
of remark upon the subject of the recent loss of one
of the noblest vessels—whether viewed as a success-
ful effort of naval architecture or as a triumph of
modern science—which ever cleared out of a British
port. Perhaps in doing so we neglected somewhat
our duty as British journalists. It is undoubtedly
due to the community, where lives are liable to be
jeopardized by the ignorance of commanders or
their carelessness ; by the unseaworthiness of the
vessels they command ; by the incorrectness of
charts, the variation of compasses, or the failure of
other nautical instruments, that the circumstances
attending such a disaster as the stranding of the Great
Britain, which might have been attended by such
fatal results, should be strictly scrutinized,—not

the advancement of nautical science and the better
elucidation of the intricacy and the dangers of our
channel navigation. We have however the powerful

plea for silence to offer that, up to the present time,

we nave never naa the whole case, on the part of
the Great Britain, properly before us; and we can
safely assert that, had we offered any remarks, in

e of such a statement as that with which
we are now furnished by the letter of Captain Hos-
ken—the substance of which we give elsewhere—
we should probably have done some injustice to that
gentleman and to the officers under his command.
The statement in question conveys a much more
favourable account of the whole transaction, as far
as the conduct of Captain flosken is concerned,
than the apology for his friend, volunteered by Cap-
tain Claxton, and removes several most injurious
conclusions of the public. Captain Hosken's ac-
count of the voyage, from the time of the Great
Britain leaving port up to eight o'clock in the
evening, is substantially the same as that of Captain
Claxton and the account given by the ship's log.—
At ten minutes past one, the ship was fairly under
weigh abreast of the Bell Buoy, going, by the log,
at a speed of 10 to 11 miles per hour. At about
half-past five, Captain Hosken " caught a glimpse
of the Isle of Man, but what part of the island ex-
actly, or how far off, he could not decidedly say, as
it was then getting dark and the weather becoming
thick." Under such circumstances perhaps he
ought to have concluded that the island was nearer
than he seems to have imagined from his remark at
seven o'clock, after an hour and a half's steaming
at n knots, or even the 1.0 l which he allowed for,
that they " must be well up with the Calf." Soon
after thi'S, he says,—

bsenc

" I told the first officer to shorten sail at S o'clock, take
in top-gallant sail, two reefs in foretop sail, one in the
main, and haul the foresail up, as I should alter the course
to N. by E. (which is higher than the North Channel
course), and go easy all night, feeling sure the ship was
past the island. The course was altered at eight, and sail
shortened accordingly."

So far the vessel was all right, and in a fair course
for making ,the channel passage, although it is clear,
from Captain Hosken's subsequent admission, and
from the interval between her leaving the port and
striking in Pundrum Bay, that the westerly set of
the tide had not been allowed for, and that, in con-
sequence, she was much nearer in to the Irish coast
than she ought to have been or her captain calcu-
lated. Here, then, commenced that fatal error in

judgment, to which doubtless is attributable the
disaster which followed. At a quarter past eight,
Captain Hosken says, the officer looking out on the
forecastle reported a light on the port or larboard
bow, which the captain concluded must be a ship's
light, until after being lost for a short time in the
thick weather, it again shewed itself in a revolving
light. "I immediately," he says, "kept the ship
off her former course, exclaiming, how is it pos-
sible she has not run her distance ; what can have
held her back ?' taking the light for one of the Calf
of Man lights, and supposing the other hidden by
the thick weather." The helm was then put about
to N. W. by N. We ought, in justice to Captain
Hosken, to mention, because the contrary has been
freely taken for granted, that he had been from half-
past five o'clock and remained, with the exception
of five or ten minutes, up to the moment of the
ship's striking, on deck, watching with his officers
the navigation of the vessel.
There is an important variation between Captain
Hosken's account of the time at which this light
was seen, and that given by Captain Claxton. By
the latter we are not told that the course of the ship
was altered at eight o'clock, but are rather led to
conclude that she kept on her original course until
the light of St. John's Point was seen, and the
vessel was within a few minutes of striking. We
have thus the impression conveyed to us—certainly
a most erroneous one according to Capt. Hosken's
statement—that, had St. John's light never been
seen at all, the only difference would have been that
the ship would have been driven, probably at full
speed, upon some other part of the bay, with her
own almost certain destruction, and that of her
crew and passengers. It is clear that the light did
mislead, and was in some measure the cause of the
catastrophe which followed ; although it appears also