§ House in Committee.
§ MR. WARD intended to propose a vote on account, under three different heads, without taking the whole estimate for any one of them. The first vote he had to ask for was a sum of 300,000l., on account of wages, &c., of seamen for the year ending 31st of March, 1849.
§ CAPTAIN HARRIS said, in reference to the fitting out of line-of-battle ships as flagships on foreign stations, that he had observed that the Admiralty had sent out to the West Indies and East Indies as flagships two line-of-battle ships. They had given to the West Indies the Wellesley, a ship he knew well enough, having himself 1426 once belonged to her. She was one of the worst ships and one of the dullest sailers in the service. He would just suggest to the Lords of the Admiralty the probability that in the event of a war, that ship, if left on the West India station, would find itself in the same predicament as was the flag-ship in which he (Captain Harris) served in the West India Islands. In 1840 he served on board the Winchester, a heavy frigate, stationed as a flag-ship in the West Indies. It was during the administration of M. Thiers, and at a time when there was a great apprehension of a breach between France and this country. The French collected, from different ports in the world, no less than five heavy double-banked frigates, and sent them to Martinique. Now, supposing such a case to occur again, this country would have the old Wellesley in the same situation as the Winchester, and she would be a match for little more than one of those frigates; whereas, a ship like the Vanguard, in the hands of an able seaman like Lord Dundonald, and well manned, would, both in sailing and working, be a match for three of those heavy frigates. It appeared to him that for the sake of a little economy, perhaps to the amount of some 3,000l. or 4,000l., they were putting the country to the risk of sustaining a very severe loss, if not disgrace, by sending out ships which in the event of the breaking out of a war might be called upon to cope with a very disproportioned force. He observed also that the Hastings, a ship of the same class, had been sent to the East Indies with the flag of Sir Francis Collier, while the Americans had sent out to the same station several line-of-battle ships, all heavy ships, some of them 90 gun ships, and some carrying 100 guns on the two decks. The Hastings, it must be obvious, could not by any means be a match for ships of that kind. He would urge on the Admiralty the consideration whether it would not be prudent and advisable to send out to those stations some heavy line-of-battle ships more commensurate with the services which they might be called upon to perform.
§ ADMIRAL DUNDAS said, the great object of the Board of Admiralty was to wear out the old ships. The two flag-ships had been sent out to relieve the two frigates that were stationed as flag-ships in the West and East Indies. He must say that the two ships so sent out were remarkably good ones; and he could assure his hon. and gallant Friend that if the Government 1427 should happen to hear of any squadron being about to be fitted out by any other nation, this country would be perfectly prepared to meet it.
§ MR HUME said, there was one class of persons connected with the Navy whose case he was anxious to call attention to; he meant the class of assistant surgeons. It might not, perhaps, be generally known that those persons were required to possess far higher qualifications than was necessary for those who derived their powers to practise from the College of Surgeons. It was necessary that they should attain an efficiency in three or four branches of knowledge beyond what was required by the colleges in Edinburgh and in London; and yet these assistant surgeons when put on board ship were compelled to associate with mere boys; they were placed among young midshipmen, and were in no respect treated as gentlemen of acquirements ought to be. The House would be surprised when he told them of the fact that a week ago there was not a single assistant surgeon a candidate for the Navy—not one. If Sir W. Burnet, a man whose whole life had been devoted to impart the highest qualifications to the profession—if he had been asked to provide an assistant surgeon for any ship, he would have been compelled to admit that there was no candidate for the appointment. Such was the reluctance, nay, the aversion of professional men to enter the naval service in the capacity of assistant surgeons. This arose entirely from the neglect shown by the Admiralty to the application made on the part of the assistant surgeons five years ago. Since that application was made, the Admiralty had put an assistant engineer in the same position as the lieutenants, the very situation in which they said they had no accommodation for a medical man. There was no other branch of the service, above the rank of a private, in which there were not candidates innumerable for vacant situations; and he submitted this subject was worthy of being taken into consideration by the Admiralty.
§ CAPTAIN BERKELEY said, that the Board of Admiralty were willing to do everything they possibly could to provide good surgical assistance for the Navy; and this was the first time he had ever heard of there being any difficulty in getting assistant surgeons. With regard to what the hon. Member for Montrose had stated about accommodation having been provided for an assistant engineer, the hon. 1428 Member should bear in mind that an assistant engineer was not wanted in a sailing ship, and that if he had a cabin in a steamer, it did not interfere with the gunroom arrangements. But it would be totally impossible, if an assistant surgeon were obliged to go into a small brig, to provide him with a cabin; and the consequence of yielding to the suggestion made by the hon. Member would be to make these young men shirk an unpleasant duty, as well as require more pay. if they went into the ward-room. He must say for himself, and for those with whom he now acted, that be thought it would be of the greatest possible injury to the service, if the Admiralty were to put these young men over the heads of the mates, who were in all respects their superior officers.
§ MR. COBDEN: I am anxious to take this opportunity, the first which has been afforded me, of recurring to a subject which was discussed on a former occasion, but to which, though in some degree personal to myself, I should not have adverted, if it did not also relate to the efficiency of the public service. It may be remembered by some hon. Gentlemen, that, on a former occasion, a reference was made to a statement which I uttered in Manchester on the subject of the time during which line-of-battle ships lie in harbour at Malta. I was speaking at Manchester in the midst of a number of personal friends, and I told them that I had gone from Malta to Egypt and back again, and found the same ship lying in the harbour of Malta which was there when I set out. In saying so, I referred to a period dating several years back; and that statement of mine was laid hold of, as if I had said that such was the custom of line-of-battle ships now; but those to whom I spoke were well aware that I was in Egypt ten or eleven years ago. No one would attribute to me so much folly as to make a public statement of what I knew to be false, and which was sure to be contradicted. In consequence of the quarter-deck sort of contradiction—though given with all good humour—which I received from the gallant Admiral (Admiral Dundas), with reference to the ships lying in the harbour at Malta, a stranger gave me certain dates, and advised me to move for returns from the log-books kept at the Admiralty. I moved for and obtained those returns, and now I have the authority of the Admiralty for the facts I am going to give. I alluded at Manchester to the year 1837, as the pe- 1429 riod when I was at Malta. I find by the return that the Princess Charlotte, a line-of-battle ship of 104 guns, lay in the harbour of Valetta from the 8th of November, 1838, till the 20th of May, 1839, a period of six months. Then, again, the Queen, of 110 guns, was lying at Malta from the 7th of October, 1842, till the 15th of September, 1843, without ever raising her anchor—a period of eleven months and eight days; and I am assured by my friend that the expense and demoralisation incurred were ruinous, and that when that ship went out of harbour, several of the crew were so sea-sick that they could not perform the ship's duty. When the statement which I made at Manchester was referred to in the House by the hon. and gallant Admiral the Member for Greenwich, he read a letter from the Admiral on the station, Sir W. Parker, in winch he expressed his astonishment at the statement which I had made, and left no doubt an impression on the minds of Members of the House that nothing of the kind had occurred under his command. But I find that the Hibernia, of 104 guns, Admiral Parker's own flag-ship, lay in the harbour of Malta, from the 26th of August, 1845, till the 28th of March, 1846, a period of seven months and two days, without ever raising her anchor; a much stronger case than any I ever referred to. I mention these facts upon public grounds. It requires no nautical skill to be able to see that if a ship of the line, with 800 or 900 men on board, is lying in harbour, there must be great idleness and demoralisation going on. I have heard it estimated that a first-rate line-of-battle ship costs 200l. to 300l. a day. I hear an hon. Gentleman below me say that the expense would be greater if she were at sea; but we pay these ships because we want them to be useful. If they are to lie in harbour, we may as well have them lying in ordinary at Portsmouth. Besides, there cannot be found a more demoralising place than Malta. We hear it stated that the midshipmen are men of family, noblemen's sons, and others, and there would probably be thirty or forty of these on board one of these ships at the same time. Could anything be more demoralising? I think it would be satisfactory to the House if the hon. and gallant Admiral would state whether he thinks it consistent with the interests of the naval service that line-of-battle ships should lie so long in harbour?
§ ADMIRAL DUNDAS: I am quite ready 1430 to say, that since we have been in office, ships have not stayed so long in harbour as they used to do, and that I think their remaining too long in harbour is contrary to the interests of the service. But the statement of the hon. Member which I contradicted was of a different kind. His statement was, that while he was at Malta he saw a ship arrive with 1,000 men on board, and that she lay there in the harbour while he went to Egypt and back again. I said, that he never saw a ship arrive at Malta, with 1,000 men on board. The hon. Member told this story to his constituents, supposing that what he said would never go forth to the world; but it did, and the Admiral on the station received a letter from the American Consul, which he enclosed to me, declaring that he never did give that information to the hon. Member which the hon. Member stated that he did give him. Since I have been in office I have always urged it upon my Colleagues—and I have succeeded in my object—that ships should not lie so long in harbour; but, if you do send ships to sea, you must expect that they will cost six times as much as in harbour. Ships are exercised in harbour as well as at sea, and they are always ready to put to sea, and to do their duty when required. The Princess Charlotte, for instance, lay in harbour during the winter, but what had occurred the next summer? The bombardment of Acre took place, and she did her duty there. She has since been to Portugal and round Sicily; and I believe she has never been one month in Malta since we have been in office. I do not recall one word of what I said before. I received the letter of the American Consul and read it to the House; and, if I had known that this subject would have been again discussed, I would have brought it with me, and read it again.
§ MR. COBDEN: It is very possible that my informant at Malta might have misled me as to the number of the men I saw there, and therefore that I did not see any ship with 1,000 men. One of these ships, however, the Queen, is stated in the official return from which I have just quoted to have had 1,119 persons on board. But that is not the question. The question is, whether the broad facts I have alleged are not deserving of the attention of the House and the Admiralty? I say it with all good humour; but the hon. and gallant Admiral meets my statement in a way which an independent Member of this House has a right to complain of. He 1431 gave an official contradiction, which carried with it all the weight with which such statements are usually regarded; and but for an accident I should not have known how to set myself right with the House. So, again, when I said some time ago that we had no ship of war in the harbour of Canton when the Canton massacre took place, the hon. and gallant Admiral got up and contradicted me. I subsequently received a letter from a merchant there, stating that we had no ship of war in the harbour of Canton at the time; and when I showed this letter to the hon. and gallant Admiral his reply was, "Then I can only say, that one ought to have been there." I submit, that, however this might do on the quarter-deck, it is not exactly the mode of doing business on the floor of this House; and I hope that when he contradicts me again, he will take care that the information on which he proceeds is correct.
§ CAPTAIN BERKELEY explained that the Admiral in the Mediterranean held, so to speak, a diplomatic situation, and that Malta was the point at which he could receive the quickest information. The hon. Member's return was extremely fallacious, for had he moved for a return of the whole log, he would have seen that the Princess Charlotte was not one day in harbour during the whole of the preceding twelve months. It was a well-known fact that Sir W. Parker had hardly enough ships at his disposal to meet the demands upon him for protection for the merchant service. In one case the moral effect of a vessel of 18 guns in a port— [Mr. BRIGHT: Oh, oh!] Yes, he repeated it, the moral effect was sufficient to put an end to the civil strife; both parties being willing to be bound by the dictum of the captain of a small cruiser, and the horrors of civil war were thus averted. In another case a captain risked himself and his boat's crew by getting in with his pocket handkerchief displayed, at the moment the belligerents were about to come into collision; and neither dared fire a shot after his communication with them. Within the last twelve months transactions of that kind had repeatedly occurred; and even in these times there was great confidence created by the presence of a British ship in many parts of the Mediterranean. With these facts before his eyes, he could not for a moment entertain the idea of the hon. Member that our men-of-war were a useless expense.
§ MR. B. COCHRANE had read the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member 1432 for the West Riding of Yorkshire, and he must say that it did impugn the character and the usefulness, not only of the British Navy, but of both services. The hon. Member was not satisfied with saying merely that the vessels had lain long in the harbour of Malta, but he said they were "skulking" there. He did not think the hon. Member at all justified in the use of such an insulting expression, or in calling, as be had done, the greatest man of the age—a man in whose achievements and fame the nation justly gloried—a "drivelling old man." He complained of such language being used by the hon. Member, and would tell him that a general feeling of indignation was excited throughout the country at his having dared to apply such language to the English Navy and to England's greatest hero. The hon. Member seemed to glory in it; but it was disgraceful to a Member of that House to have applied such language to the Duke of Wellington. Last year he was at Athens, and there were there six first-class French vessels — a ship of the line, two large steamers, and three armed brigs—while England had not a single man-of-war. Indeed, it was the general complaint that the English force was insufficient even to perform the private service. He could not remain silent when he heard the hon. Member palliate that speech, on the ground of his being an independent Member; and he, with the same independence, would tell the hon. Member that he did, in that speech, make use of language wholly unbecoming a Member of that House or an Englishman.
§ CAPTAIN HARRIS said, the hon. Member had made use of expressions derogatory to the service, and had wound up those expressions by others still more derogatory to the greatest man of the age. The hon. Member felt that he had fallen somewhat from his celebrity, and, in addressing his constituents immediately after his rambles in other countries, forgot how true the hearts of Englishmen beat towards their country. The hon. Member, however, instead of apologising, now sought to set himself right on a question of fact. The indignation with which that speech was regarded a week after its delivery was too universal to have been raised by a mere question of the months ships lay in harbour. But the hon. Member was not so free from censure on that point as he wished it to appear, for he spoke of being in Malta in the winter; that was to ordinary 1433 apprehension last winter, and not a winter ten years before. And that construction was the more inevitable, for in the same breath he had been alluding to the squadron lying at Lisbon in a manner which left no doubt of the time being recent.
§ Mr. BROWN thought that, in judging of the remarks of the hon. Member for the West Riding with regard to the Navy, the nature and character of the audience to whom they were addressed should be considered. He was speaking to an audience in Manchester, all of whom knew well that he had not been at Malta or Egypt for a period of ten years.
§ Vote agreed to.