and aft, five 32 feet pinnaces in lieu of paddle-box boats, as from the great height of her boxes from the water it has been considered not to be safe to lower them into the sea, as with the motion it might endanger the boats and the paddle boards in the wheels. She can stow 600 tons of coals or more if required in sacks, if wanted for a long voyage; can berth a regiment of soldiers between decks, under cover, and from the construction of the four boilers can save her coals by using only one, two, or three boilers, as with half fuel she will steam 8 knots head to wind, and with 400 tons of coals, her power full speed may be made 14 knots or upwards. In fact it may be safely said that she could steam 30 days, if required, even if she were not to use her sails but steam alone. She has four small guns for boat service, in addition to the sixteen large ones before mentioned.

SHIPWRECKS.

Rio Janeiro, Feb. 21-3y the English ship Ontario, arrived here on the 16th inst. from the coast of Patagonia, we received news of a severe S.S.E. hurricane, having swept on the morning of Jan. 3rd, about 60 miles up the coast, from the Bay of Camaras to the Island of Desejada, causing the loss of the following vessels:- In the bay of Camaras, barque Edward, Cuthbertson, from Sunderland; Expositor, Northwood, from London; barque Integrity, Hutchinson, from Liverpool; Eagle, Kerr, from Liverpool. In the bay of Malespina, Mercy, Norris, from London, Achilles and Minerva from Liverpool. On the island of Desejada, ship Elizabeth, brig James Dickson, and and Catherine of Whitehaven. In Porto Mello, American schooner Emma, and Brilliant from Liverpool. The crew of the Mercy were all drowned; those of the other vessels saved. More than 200 vessels are said to have been loading more to the southward, and it is feared that should the hurricane have extended to that quarter, many others will have shared a similar fate.

THE EXPERIMENTAL FLEET.

The St. Vincent, 120, the flag-ship of Portsmouth, Capt. Sir R. Grant, the first of the three-deckers, has left Portsmouth harbour, and anchored at Spithead. She went out under all plain sails, and with her fresh painted blacked rigging looked what she really is-a most beautiful ship in most perfect order, and a perfect British man-of-war three-decker. The Trafalgar, 120, Capt. J. B. Nott, the flag-ship at the Nore, the smartest ship in the last squadron, anchored at Spithead. The Queen, 110, Capt. Sir Henry Leeke, flag ship of Devonport, saluted the Admiral on her arrival and anchoring. The above are the three three-deckers.

The Rodney, 92, Capt. E. Collier, C.B., sailed out of harbour to her anchorage at Spithead. The Albion, 90, Capt. Lockyer, c.B., saluted and anchored on her arrival with Queen, and the Superb, 80, Capt. Corry, has been at Spithead for some time. Thus with respect to sailing vessels we have at Portsmouth at present, five out of the eight sail of the line, and to these will be added the Vanguard, 80, Capt. Willes, on her way from Cork; the Canopus, 84, Capt. Fairfax Moresby, C.B., on her way from Halifax; the Raleigh, 50, Capt. Sir T. Herbert, expected from the Nore.

The steamers are, the Terrible, 20, frigate, Capt. Ramsay, at Spithead; the Retribution, 10, frigate, Capt. Lushington, in dock; the Cyclops, 6, Capt. Lapidge, and Scourge, 2, bomb-sloop, at Spithead ; and the Rattler, 5, screwsloop, Commander Smith, in Portsmouth harbour; but to these will be added

the Gladiator, 8, frigate, Capt. Robb, and the Devastation, 6, sloop, Commander Crouch, both under orders at Woolwich for Spithead.

We may present in a tabular view the ships and steamers named as the squadron assembled and to come.

Of the above, the Queen, Albion, Superb, Vanguard, Retribution, Gladiator, Cyclops, Devastation, Scourge, and Rattler, were constructed on the designs of the present Surveyor of the Navy-ten out of sixteen. The St. Vincent was built from a design furnished by Mr. Roberts, late master-shipwright of Devonport dockyard; the Trafalgar partly on the same lines, and partly from Mr. Lang's and the surveyor's suggestions; the Rodney is the design of the late surveyor, Sir R. Seppings; the Canopus was designed by Sane, built at Toulon, and was captured at the Nile; the Raleigh by Mr. Fincham; and one only of the whole list of steamers by a different constructor, Mr. Lang of Woolwich.

At Spithead, the St. Vincent was anchored to the westward, then the Rodney, Trafalgar, Queen, Superb, and Albion, the latter being the most easterly ship. They were nearly in line, but they have not yet taken up their exact position. The steamers Terrible, Scourge, and Cyclops were lying inside. The Superb is to have some more doctoring before she proceeds, and is going into dock for that purpose.

Only a few cables' lengths from the Albion rides her principal rival, the Rodney. "What a striking contrast," says a correspondent "does these two ships present. In the Rodney is seen all that constitutes a real ship of war, whilst in the Albion, built to eclipse her, we behold a splendid yacht of gigan-tic dimensions."

But this is neither the time nor place to draw comparisons. It is to be hoped that in the course of a few weeks we shall have an opportunity of hear

ing of those two ships under other circumstances. One thing may be stated; before the Albion left Plymouth she took on board five months provisions, and the hold was was so full up to the hatches that it was impossible to stow another cask; she is as deep as a sand-barge. No trial of sailing took place with the Queen on the passage from Plymouth, but those on board the Albion say that enough was seen to satisfy them that she has not improved in her sailing qualities as to fore-reaching. She steers, however, a little easier, and holds rather a better wind.-Nautical Gazette.

NEW BOOKS

A FEW WORDS ON NAVAL CONSTRUCTION AND NAVAL PROMOTION, by Commander Adolphus Slade, R.N. Saunders and Otley, 1846.

We wish to call attention to this pamphlet, in which Commander Slade brings forward several suggestions worthy of consideration, on two of the most important points of naval administration of the present time.

He begins with allusion to the general impression that the French ships have answered their constructors design without those trials and alterations which our own have been obliged to undergo, and infers, that with our extensive fleets and the acquired experience of such alterations, this waste of labour and expense must be owing to the defective state of our system, and is principally to be referred to the want of science in the dockyards, and of sufficient examination into the capabilities of constructors. He cites the ten-gun brigs and the "forty thieves" as proofs of this defective system, and considers that such an alteration as that of a seventy-four into a better frigate than she made a line of battle ship, argues a complete mistake on the part of her constructor. On the other hand, the Canopus, built near fifty years ago, proves the advance of the French school at that time. He notices the employment of defective ships as a great hardship on those officers who have not interest to get them changed, and quotes a case in point. Commander Slade is of the opinion, held by some others, that the Swedish and French schools excelled in line of battle ships, but that they carried their principles too far, and made their small vessels too clumsy; and that the surveyor's ships err generally on the opposite side. He considers that one of the principal points on which to form a udgment of a line of battle ship is her rolling, because in large vessels the too sudden checking of the motion of such an enormous mass of timber, guns, &c., strains the structure, while the same amount of rolling in a smaller vessel, has little or no such effect; also, when the roll is moderate and easy, the aim is steadier, and wounded spars are less exposed to strain and the risk of falling. He considers that far too much stress is laid on the sailing, as a primary quality of large ships, whose motions in the fleet are never such as to depend on this quality exclusively, being necessarily regulated by the worse sailers.

In alluding to the establishment on board the Excellent, Captain Slade observes that in France the attention is paid to the proficiency of fire during motion, and the certificates assez bon tir, bon tir, and tres bon tir, have reference to such fire.

On the proceedings of the late experimental squadron, Captain Slade remarks in page 15, that "the sailing qualities only of the ships were tested. The question of fighting their lower deck guns in a sea, and enduring a continuance of heavy weather, remained undecided, though of far greater importance; for it cannot be too constantly borne in mind, that speed has little to do

with general actions, which is the chief purpose for which line of battle ships are built. Resting their merits entirely on their sailing is a practical delusion. In experimental trials of our men of war, we rarely consider their fighting capacities; reports and diagrams without number, are made about the relative sailing of two ships, but scarcely any interest is expressed about the firing of their lower deck guns in a sea, or the strain on their masts and yards, in anticipation of shrouds or a stay being shot away."

We entirely agree to the above remarks on the unsatisfactory and incomplete method taken to discover the relative capabilities of our ships in trial cruizes. It is often difficult enough to discover whether one ship did or did not beat another in sailing alone, which is a question of fact, but how much the more must be difficult to decide whether one ship was easier than another, which is a matter of feeling. On the same points we find flat contradictions. Except that the diagrams, when they are given, show the positions of the ships at certain points of time, the whole result is a matter of opinion. We have sometimes thought that three or four officers might be appointed to pass a certain time on board each ship in succession, thus constituting a sort of visiting or roving commission, which, by not living constantly in the same atmosphere of opinion, might be free from some of those prejudices to the forming of sound views, which Bacon calls "idols of the den." But whatever might be done towards the collecting of better opinions in such cases, nothing will be definitive until the attention of the officers is directed to certain specific points, and these points are represented by numbers. Thus, if the rolls of the ships during a certain portion of time were registered, as to their number and extent, the question whether one ship rolled more or less than another in a given time and under the same circumstances, would be reduced from one of opinion to one of fact. If the several important elements were thus prepared beforehand by tables arranged so as to meet the varying circumstances, there would remain only to fill up the columns during the cruize, and to inspect the tables when it was over. Without this final appeal to facts and figures, the whole subject must ever remain floating in the same uncertain state. Individual observations may go for nothing, but there is no answering the results of large averages. We cannot place this in a clearer point of view than by referring to Bessel's determination of the parallax of the star sixty-one cygni. The quantity itself is far too small for any single observation, and several observations in succession differ by quantities far exceeding that which is the object of enquiry; yet the average of observations taken for several months at one time of the year, is found to differ from that of similar observations at another time of the year, and hence astronomers consider that a case is made out.

Captain Slade thinks that undue importance is attached likewise to the carrying of stores, as a primary quality of a line of battle ship, and that the objection made to the surveyor's ships on this ground is not worth consideration. At page 16, he notices the resemblance between the surveyor's ships and the merchant vessels of the Adriatic and the Ottoman men of war, built for a smooth sea.*

Our author is of opinion that the too often fruitless endeavours to deduce certain data for naval architecture from the results of our trials of ships of various constructions, according to the different ideas of their builders, might be remedied by a Board, composed of a practical ship builder, a naval officer, and some person of high scientific attainments. He considers that the examination which the different plans proposed would thus undergo, would save the country the expense of many a costly experiment; that its sugges

* Captain Slade, as many of our readers will remember, accompanied the Captain Pacha on a cruize in the Black Sea in 1829. 2 N

NO. 5.-VOL. XV.

tions would command attention, and the inestimable advantage would follow, viz., the digesting and classifying the data which are now virtually lost. To much of this we cannot but assent, but we are not partial to Boards, and do not expect a Board to originate these suggestions and improvements which emanate only from individuals of talent and industry, and which a Board, generally speaking, is as likely to discourage as to promote. An individual again, has responsibility, and feels it; a Board has none. Responsibility does not follow the law of proportion as other things do; if the Board of three, for example, had fifteen hundred pounds to divide among them, there would be no difficulty about that, but if it deserved to be hanged, what proportional punishment could be awarded to its three members? Boards are very well for established routine business, but we should be sorry to see a man of talent and enterprise, at the head of a subject, which, more than any other depends for its success on all sorts of trials and experiments, displaced for the conventional usages, slow convictions, or vicious habits of a Board. The advantage of such a Board, however, in registering and analyzing the results of trials, would be incontestable. What would be thought if the Admiralty were continually to employ surveying officers in different parts of the world, and there was no hydrographic office at home to organize the results. Yet our ships and fleets are from time to time sent to sea, at an enormous expense, for the purposes of trial, and the results are not, at least in any satisfactory or systematic manner made public. For example, we have heard it reported of Sir Thomas Hardy, that he had, previous to the experimental cruize of 1827, considered that a ship might be pressed by sail to a degree prejudicial to her velocity, but that from what he saw on that occasion, he altered his opinion. Now here is a point of considerable importance decided, and one which alone would be worth an experimental cruize. The professional point is remembered by those who have heard it as an anecdote of a distinguished officer, but the naval public is none the wiser.

On the subject of the screw-propeller, Captain Slade remarks that its popularity is premature, as it is by no means certain that the present form of steam vessels is adapted to that mode of propulsion, and in the event of failure, expensive alterations might be entailed. Indeed, when it is considered that in paddles the moving force is applied, in the case, to the vessel above the water, and in the screw below it, an essential difference of construction seems almost necessary. Captain Slade thinks that steam will ultimately be applied to ships in three different ways; but we have room only for a word on naval promotion. Captain Slade devotes some pages to a comparison between the French system and our own. The two systems are the reverse of each other. Ours is a selection for the junior ranks, and seniority for the higher; the French junior ranks succeed by seniority, the higher promotions go by selection. "This plan *** ensures officers having sufficient practice in the inferior ranks, and does not prevent their attaining the highest rank before the working time of life is past. Seniority is allowed to advance pari passu with merit, to a certain extent, but is not allowed to extinguish it by its dead weight at the period when merit is distinctively required." It must be confessed that this system is clear of two evils which must vitiate our own: first, that young men of energy, love of the service, and talent, are not doomed to remain in the lower ranks, while others, possessing none of these recommendations, are passing continually over their heads, until these qualities, the cultivation of which is so important to the service at large, are blunted and destroyed; and secondly, that the admirals, whose position should point them out as the examples of energy and vigilance, are not all men whose advanced age and increasing infirmities would suggest their retiring from every other situation of active life. We must here refer the reader to the pamphlet for many details, as we entirely agree in the general tenor of Captain Slade's remarks, through the modification of our system, (for that it must be modified is a growing impres