Richmond enquirer. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1815-1867, 1818-06-23
REMARKS ON TIE ABOVE.

4 r l..
ii was not until amer the war with rTr-
pol that our ships mounted more guns
than they rated, and The cause Of their
mounting more then was the adopting the
use o.! carronades In our service The
Constitution; thePresident and the United
States, were built tor as, aud until that
period, mounted only the rumher at which
they were rated. The chesapeake was
also intended tor a u, but finding she
would only bear 80 long guns, she was
rated 80. The Philadelphia and Con-
ste'latlon were built To carry 36 guns, and
carried no more They are rated al SOS.
and have always been so rated ii is
well known that III the action witil the In
surgent mounting II, and with the Ven
Seance mounting 80 guns, the Consteila-
ton mounted only &C. The first shin
armed on the upper deck with cargon.
AIDES, III our service, was the Chesapeake.
When Com. Decatur took command of
her, after the attack of the Leopard, he
adopted the British plan of carronades,
on the torecast!e and quarter deck, and
they being lighter than long guns and
OF greater ca!ibre ii was found thai their
number, and consequently the force of
the ship, might be considerably increas-
ed, without increasing the weight of me-
tai. The practice was believed TO be
good one, and was adopted i'll our service
generally, whence arose the circumstance
OF their mounting more guns than they
rated. 1t was not done, in our service,
with view TO deceive, whatever might
have been The object III the British The
laws authorised the building of ships 10
carry certain number of guns and they
were built and mounted, with one excrp-
ton (tlIe Chesapeake) tile number speci-
he'd. The laws were made public, and
there could have been no disposition What
ever, at the time they were built, of prac-
tislng deception OH the world in expecia-
ton OF naval contest 18th Great Britain.
The three ships spoken Of in The Secreta-
rvs report (adUiiting the report TO be ge-
nuIne) were built under a federal admit
nistratIon with views TO a co operation with
England against France, and lCere so en-
Pf0yed. lie Navy was strenuouslV OPP
posed by those of different politics, not
from feelings of hostility 10 the Navy
itself, but from apprehensions as to the
motives of those then in power. The
force authorised was very limited one,
and the administration was no doubt de-
slrous of making The most of ii; but take
the report in IFS utmost latitude, it can
only prove that the Ships were built lar
ger than the first draft, on lie most ap-
proved construction, possessing the adj
vaniages of great fleetness and buovan-
cy, not that they carried more guns than
they raled-and it is not the dimensions
OF ship, but the number Of guns she
mounts and her metal, that renders her
formidable i'll war. These advantages
we have never denied, and sever shall
deny. We believe our ships to be better
than those of the same class in the Brit
| Ish Nayy-Day, We believe our officers
better, and we believe our seamen and our
discipline better, but we deny that we
have practiscd any deception, the Secre-
tary OF Wars report to the contrary not
outstanding. OF this report have on
~ to say, that bavesearched the records
of the Var and the Navy Office, and
can find none such in either, nor do be-
lieve it ever existed, but in " James Ma
val occurrences of The late war"
j shall not enquire into the comparative
force oftbe EDdymion and The President.
Had the President been taken by the En-
dymion alone, il might then have been
worth while; but if The Endymion "A is
not so large as the President "A by up
wards of 200 tons, LIDO assert. that the
President is exceeded az much by other
AS in the British service, as she exceeds
the Endymion. The Java, the Leander,
the Liverpool, the Newcastle, and several
other AS, are at least 200 tons larger than
the largest American frigate-and the f
gyptian rated only 40 Guns, equally ex-
ceeds them in size. IN the fall of 1905,
she lay at Lisbon near the Constitution,
then cOmmandedby Commodore Rodgers
both ships were GIeasured by their Off
GERS, and on a comparison il vas found,