New-York tribune., 1875-10-16
TBE NAyY DEPARTMENT WAKES UP.

These rllmOrs of impending activity at our
various navy yards are inexpressibly comfort
ing. All manner of troubles have been brewing
for q long time, and the Navy Department has
taken no notice of them. Here are the Turks
and the Servlans hurting menaces at each
other across Herzegovina, and the British
Minister quarrelng with somebody in China,
and all sorts of dreadful complications hap
pening in Central Africa, where an American
citizen has had fight with some king or
other, and is liable at any minute to call
for q steam frigate as orr counsel dld al
Tripoli when the natives came into his garden
without leave and asked for match. Here
are the British iron-clads denrolishing one
another and the Prince of Wales going to
India. Russia is suspected of designs upon
the Iiimalaya Mountains, and the Grand Lama
il dead in Thibet where, for aught we know,
the most serious international difficulties may
have sprung up over the succession. III we
look at home things are no better. Gov.
Ames has an insurrectOn on hand III Mlssis-
sippi. There is danger of war among the
Black Hills; while the Erie Canal is in tur-
mo all along the line, contractors throwing
up their contracts and engineers getting ar
to know has the American navy made for such
multitude Of emergencies. All tins time
Secre airy RobesOn has been junketing about
the country, as Jolly and rosy and unconcerned
rs if there were not cloud upon the nautIcal
horizon
AT last, however, we are assured that the
Government is awake~to the urgency OF the
situation. and from now until election day
the nayy-yards will rcsouEd with the hammer
ard the adze. BY setting two or three hun
he'd able-bodicd voters at work upon each OF
the hulks that have been r0ttlng on the stocks
longer than the Oldest quartermasier can
remember, much can he accomplished, and Il
great quantity of money can be placed where
if will do good There Is fine old sailing
frigatc on the ways AT Charcstowp, and there
is-or was a few years ago-another Oh
the same sort at Sacketts llarbor. Right
over here in Brooklyn we have the
hull of sloop-of-war which has been
slowly dropping to pieces for about t"clve
Years. and having been originally built of bad
timber it now presents IN unlivalcd opportunity
for being finished at the greatest possible cx-
pendture of labor and waste of money. There
is perhaps a score of these skeleton and ghostly
SHIPS, remnants DI lnt ltdtloHE 'A'i"'"-
cant experimental era of thc war, or relies of
Il still more ancient and obsolete period, which
have cunlbcred the yards for years and years,
boring places for worms and voters. nat
a sight it would be if MIR. Robe@on, III
the course Of the pending political cam
paign. should finish them and set them actually
anoat If the Spanish Armada could rise from
the deep it would hardly make il more re-
markable show than fleet of these venerable
hrirlooms, drifting out of the East River, IN
every variety of aniquacd shape and rig
with fresh paint piastrrcd over their ancient
sides. countless tons of oallum stuffed into
their yawning seams and their timbers crcak-
ing and crumbling under the strain of the
voyage.
But bless US, what diiiiicnc" does il make
whether the fleet can float or noi We all
know what tie emergency is that calls for It's
fitting out, and we know that none of those
old ships upon which so many hundreds OF
Thousands of dollars have been spent will ever
touch the water. They are worth too much to
the Government where they are ever to be
GniShpd