The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-10-08 00:00:00

MEETING OF SHIPWRIGHTS-LAST EVENING

A meeting of the operative ship-carpenters was held
last evening at the Concert-hall, Lord Nelson-street.
The room was entirely filled by operatives and other per-
sons connected with the shipbuilding trade ; most of them
of very respectable exterior, and all exhibiting the most
orderly demeanour. On the platform, amongst others,
were the following persons ; —Messrs. Boyd, Grattan,
Davies, Bonham, Garrett. Hough, Keating, Cowall, Mur-
phy, Hughes, Wainwright, Dalton, Smith, Laytham,
Fagan, &c.
Mr. HUGH BOYD was called to the chair, and opened
the business by reading the placard convening the meeting,
from which it appeared that the, principal object of the
meeting was, to afford the operatives an opportunity of
rebutting the charges against them implied in the evidence
of the witnesses recently given before a committee of the
Town Council. He expressed a wish that every speaker
would keep his temper, and not make any offensive
personal allusions in giving utterance to his views. He
would draw their attention to certain statements calcu-
lated to underrate the mode of conducting business in,
and the men employed, by " pitch-pot" yards. Now, he
told them that he served his apprenticeship in one of these
yards, having been employed by Messrs. Clayton and Co.
His experience in that firm enabled him to rebut the insi-
nuation that the work was done in an untradesman-like
manner, be had always been told to execute his work well
independently of considerations of time and expense. As
to the inefficiency of the Liverpool ship-carpenters, he
knew that as much work could be done in Liverpool for
five shillings as in any port in Great Britain. (Hear,
hear.) As for the statement that ships had been com-
pared, in which one was instanced as having cost hundreds
less than another in the item of labour, he would remark
that he himself had been employed at a yard, in Wales,
in which Liverpool men and Cumberland men were
employed. Now he would confess that the Cumberland
ship-carpenters stood almost unrivalled ; yet the Liverpool
men beat the Cumberland by three days in caulking a ship.
It was true that some exception was taken to the mode of
the caulking ; but the foreman of the Cumberland men
himself acknowledged to the employer that the Liverpool
work was the better of the two. It had been laid to their
charge that they were incapable of coupling the frame of
a vessel ; why, he would appeal to every practical man
present whether coupling a frame was not the simplest
part of shipbuilding ? With some further general obser-
vations, the chairman resumed his seat, and

Mr. GRATTAN rose to propose the first resolution,
which was to the following effect :—" That it is the opi-
nion of this meeting that private graving docks would be
most injurious to the merchants, shipowners, and others
interested in the shipbuilding trade; likewise, detrimental
to the interest of the Corporate Estate at large." He
said he appeared there merely to rebut the statement that
private graving docks would be conducive to the interests
of the trade ; and, in doing so, he would refer to the evi-
dence given before the committee of the Council.
At the sixth page of that evidence Mr. -Royden was
asked if the attaching graving docks to private yards
would he an advantage ? To this his reply was,
in the affirmative. Mr. Chaloner, too, was asked a similar
question, and his reply was to the effect that he had no
doubt the work could be done much the aper, if such
were the case, than it could be done now. Mr. Steele had
also expressed an opinion that it was essential
to the cheap execution of work that graving
docks should be attached to private yards.
Mr. Wilson had given a still stronger affirmation to the
query. He found they were all unanimous in asserting
that great advantages would result from the establishment
of private graving docks, but he would ask them how
they, the ship carpenters, would be benefitted by such an
arrangement ? The merchants would also suffer with
them, for if private graving docks were established the
result would be this;—when a ship should be taken into
a particular graving dock, there she must remain until
repaired, unless the owner chose to go to the expense of
floating her into another private dock. Thus he would
be cherishing a monopoly on the part of that particular
shipwright; and then for the men, their lot would be
worse than at present, as these repairs would be done by
the men regularly attached to the yard, and it would
thus create and maintain a monopoly to those men
connected with certain yards as well as to their masters.
He could assure them that if ever the project were car-
ried out it would no longer be a boast that, out of 1600
ship-carpenters, only one was in the workhouse. He
wanted to know who Mr. Royden was that he should
take such high ground ; he had himself served part of
his apprenticeship in a " pitch-pot" yard, and owed his
present position to the working of the system as it was,
by which a man without large capital could undertake a
repairing job.
Mr. JOHN MARR seconded the resolution in a lengthy
speech, which bore upon the facts adduced by the pre-
ceding speaker.

Mr. 'WILLIAM DALTON proposed the second resolution,
to the effect that no confidence could be placed in the
evidence of Mr. Wils.m, inasmuch as he has evinced a
mo-t anxious desire in his testimony to secure to himself,
at the expense of individual shipwrights, the exclusive
right of repairing all vessels coming to this port. The
speaker went on to denounce Mr. Wilson and his
motives, which he considered as selfish, in terms which
we shall not attempt to give verbatim. He proceeded
at length to controvert the evidence of Mr. Wilson
as to the superiority of private over public graving docks,
which he considered unfounded, and commented severely
upon Mr. Wilson's expression of his desire to drive
repairing concerns out of the town. The speaker next
remarked upon the discrepancy of Mr. Wilson's decla-
ration before the committee, that he would never
accept a yard in Liverpool if he had the land gratis,
with his letter to the Mayor and Council, expressing
his wish to give up his Birkenhead contract, in
order to avail himself of the facilities now offered by
the Council at the north end of the Liverpool Dock
estate. Having commented upon a discrepancy between
certain portions of Mr. Wilson's evidence, as to the rela-
tive number of his apprentices to that of his journeymen,
and his statement that a large graving dock, capable of
holding such a vessel as the Atlantic, would accommodate
two short vessels shored side by side, the practicability of
which he treated with ridicule, he proceeded to remark
upon some points of Mr. Tobin's speech, stating that
vessels had been in the habit of going to Belfast to be
repaired. Ships, he contended, could be repaired in
Liverpool as cheaply and as well as in any port in the
world.

Mr. WILLIAM KEATING seconded the resolution, and
commenced by stating that, under the old system, the
masters used to employ apprentices almost altogether, a
practice, which was only checked at length by the Ship-
wright's Association. After that, seeing the profitable
nature of the trade, their foremen began to send in esti-
mates ; and, ultimately, a competition sprung up between
these new parties, by which prices, both of building and
repairing, were forced down, until this became the cheapest
port in the world, They did now double the work for the
same money. The speaker gave the comparative prices
of several kinds of work in 1840 and 1850, in proof of his
assertions.

Mr. MAXWELL supported the resolution, and retorted
upon the master builders in the town the onus of having
originated the rules, regulations, &c., and being cogni-
zant for years past of the restrictions of which Mr.
Wilson and others now complained. The speaker de-
fended the regulations of the shipwrights' club in a very
humorous speech. _ _

Other resolutions followed, and were supported by their
several proposers and seconders with an earnestness equal-
ling that of the early speakers.
The meeting was protracted to a late hour, but we are
prevented from giving fuller details, owing to that circum-
stance.

CHURCH MUSICAL SERVICES.—We are extremely glad
to find that Mr. 'William Sudlow, the talented and expe-
rienced honorary secretary of the Philharmonic Society,
has consented to give a series of lectures on the Musical
Serices of the Church of England. The lecturer is well
qualified to impart instruction on this important subject ;
and we are not surprised to find that considerable interest
is manifested in the musical world with reference to the
forthcoming lectures, as from Mr. Sudlow's practical
acquaintance with Church music he is expected by his
addresses to effect a very beneficial reform in the musical
arrangements of many of our ecclesiastical choirs.

DEATH. OF SIGNOR SARTI.-It is with extreme regret
we record the death of this eminently scientific gentleman,
the proprietor of the admirable collection of anatomical
models at present exhibiting in Liverpool. Signor Sarti
was the first to introduce into this country the ingenious
and elaborate specimens of Florentine art, showing the
structure of the human frame—models which we have
reason to believe have most widely and beneficially dif-
fused a sense of the weighty truth of the psalmist's words,
" ehWe r
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to found in London a national museum of pathological and
anatomical wax specimens similar to the famous one
founded in his native city, Florence. With this view he
visited the continent, and undertook the collection of
some of the finest specimens of Italian plastic art, in
human, comparative, and vegetable anatomy ; he also
purchased the copyright of Mascagni's colossal engravings.
After immense toil, anxiety, and effort, he succeeded in
gathering a most admirable and extensive collection of
models. &c. To his great grief, however, and that of a
number of philanthropic friends, he failed to meet with
that support from Government he and they had fondly
anticipated. He had now no alternative but himself to
present his collection to the public as an exhibition. It
was, however, too expensive to travel with, so, dividing
it, he committed one portion to the care of his sister,
(that now in Liverpool,) and the ether, after having been
exhibited in London, he himself took to the United States.
After a prolonged stay at New York, he proceeded to
Boston, where he was at the time of his death. About
two months since he complained of a painful sensation in
the chest—the symptoms getting worse, he was confined
to his apartment • a fortnight after this he ceased to exist.
His death, though somewhat sudden, was calm : his last
words, uttered to his wife, with a placid smile, were,
" Peace, peace." A post mortem examination of the body
took place, and his medical attendants, including the most
was eminentcanc
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of the 24th ultimo, in noticing his death, says :—" He was
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widow, an English lady, of rare excellence, who, by this
sudden bereavement, finds herself alone in a strange land,
those who will not readily yield her their sympathies and
though not, we believe, among strangers to her worth, or
friendly counsel."
How TO KEEP PRESERVES.' Apply the white of an
egg with a suitable brush to a single thickness of white
tissue paper, with which cover over the jars. The paper
must be sufficiently large to cover over the edges an inch
or two, and will require no tying, becoming, when dry
inconceivably tight and strong, and impervious to the air.