MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.

HC Deb 11 March 1878 vol 238 cc1057-125

MR. SEELY,

who had given Notice of his intention to move— That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the system followed by the Admiralty in obtaining and settling designs for ships of war, and carrying such designs into execu- tion when adopted; and to report whether any and what improvement may be effected in that system, said: The Motion which I have put upon the Paper is apparently of a technical character, but in reality it is not so; for it is not my desire to express any opinion upon the comparative merits of various types of ships, or anything of the kind; nor do I wish to weaken or lessen the responsibility of the Board of Admiralty. All I ask is that the House should appoint a Committee to inquire into the arrangements which at present exist for designing and building ships of war; and I think I may say that those who have paid any attention to this subject are aware that those arrangements are not very perfect—to say the least. Many of those who are acquainted with the system under which our ships of war are designed are of opinion—and I am one of them—that a considerable amount of money has been foolishly expended, and that our ships have not been made as efficient as they might have been. On the other hand, there are those—in fact, this is very evident, because the system has remained without much change from year to year—but I say there are those who think that the system is, at least, tolerably perfect. I now ask that a Select Committee shall be appointed to examine into these opposite opinions, and to advise the House whether or not any improvements can be effected. I do not think there will be any difference of opinion between myself and my right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. W. H. Smith) as to what the present system is. Nominally, the Controller of the Navy is responsible for all the designs of our ships of war. He it is who, nominally, advises the Board of Admiralty; but we are well aware that, practically, the Controller of the Navy is not the real man who does advise the Admiralty. He knows but little of naval design— indeed, he knows nothing but what he may have picked up when he has been the Superintendent of a Dockyard; and the men who really design our ships of war are five naval architects at Whitehall, assisted occasionally by two engineers. They are termed the Council of Construction, and they make Reports to the Controller. Sometimes the Report is signed by the President of the Council, and occasionally he says his col- leagues concur. Sometimes a particular member of the Council reports independently of the Controller. I take this from evidence given by Mr. Barnaby to the Magara Commission (Report, page 381). And sometimes the designs are made by order of their superiors in office, but not approved by the Constructors themselves. I state this on the authority of my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed). In a letter to The Times of the 19th January, 1877, my hon. Friend said— There are two or three ships now in the Navy, designed by myself in accordance with instructions from those who were above me in authority, some of the leading' features of which I never approved, and the origin of which I never knew. Then I say that, this being the system, there is but little responsibility—it would be difficult to fix where the responsibility is. And here, again, I must quote the opinion of my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke, because, when I brought forward my Motion on Admiralty Administration last year, which he did me the honour to second, he said that— He was convinced that responsibility for the construction of the Navy there was none— that it was a gross absurdity to speak of it. There was absolutely no one who, if a ship were designed ever so badly, was responsible for the fact; or who, if an engine were ever so defective, could be held responsible."—[3 Hansard, ccxxxii. 1480.] We are, in fact, dependent upon this Council of Construction at Whitehall for all our designs; and that this system has been objected to from time to time is tolerably evident. In 1860, Lord Clarence Paget, who was then Secretary to the Admiralty, said (Royal Commission on Naval Yards, 1860, Report, p. 32) that the master shipwrights and others should prepare plans—as well as the authorities at Whitehall—to be considered by a Committee. I am giving the sense of what was said, in order to avoid taking up too much of the time of the House. The Duke of Somerset, when he was examined before the Select Committee of this House on the Board of Admiralty in 1861 (Report, p. 67), said that we ought to seek information in every possible way, by all forms of inquiry, and that then the Admiralty should take the responsibility of deciding. In 1861, also, Admiral Elliot, when before the same Committee, said he thought it desirable that there should be a Committee of scientific men—he went so far as to say that they should be independent of the Controller—to which Committee all designs should be submitted. In 1868, upon a Motion which I brought before the House for a scientific Committee of Inquiry with regard to our ships of War (3 Hansard, exciii. 1139), my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) expressed his wish that some plan could be adopted by which the Admiralty could obtain a certain amount of scientific inquiry and advice from outside. In 1871, the hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth (Sir James Elphin-stone) brought forward a Motion in this House (3 Hansard, ccv. 1823–6) for a scientific Committee. The late Mr. Corry, in speaking on that Motion, said that he had served with throe Controllers; that he was never satisfied altogether as to designs; that he should like to see them referred to a Committee of scientific men, including naval officers; and that he had often had most valuable suggestions from naval officers with regard to the designs of ships; but unfortunately they generally came after the ship was built. And on a Motion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Brassey) for a Royal Commission, on the 28th March, 1876 (3 Hansard, ccix. 247), my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen) pressed upon the Admiralty the great advantage of getting the brains which were outside the Constructors' Department. Sir Spencer Robinson—a man of great experience and of large ability—in a letter to The Times on the 1st January, 1878, advocated the appointment of an Examining Council to check the calculations of the Constructors, and to obviate the necessity of repeated and extensive alterations while ships are in course of building. The Times, the leading journal, which has paid, perhaps, more attention to naval matters than any other journal in the Kingdom, and whoso statements are generally tolerably accurate, has often expressed doubts with regard to the present system; and on the 29th November, 1875, it had an article containing this paragraph— Admiral Sartorius and Mr. Nasmyth join in the cry that we ought not at the present time to leave the design of the Navy, both in kind and in detail, exclusively to the three or four naval architects who form or direct the Constructive Department at Whitehall. There is no other country which entrusts so much power and responsibility to so small a body of public servants. I Lave thus quoted four First Lords, one Secretary to the Admiralty, one Controller of 10 years' standing; Admiral Elliot, who was a Member of the Committee on Designs in 1871; Admiral Sartorius, Mr. Nasmyth, and The Times. And when I mention these First Lords, the question, of course, naturally occurs —If it was their opinion that the Constructive Department might be improved, how was it that that was not done? It is impossible to say; but there may be an atmosphere surrounding official Gentlemen which is very different from the atmosphere that gives what I may call light and strength to the world outside. But be this as it may, the fact remains that they have expressed doubts as to the system; and the fact also remains that that system is still what it was years and years ago. I must also refer to the fact that there have been many Committees—both of the Admiralty and of the two Houses of Parliament—that have sat to inquire into the designs for our ships of war and matters connected therewith. In 1841, 1842, 1847, and 1848, there were Committees of master-shipwrights and scientific men appointed to examine, and sometimes to make, designs. In 1860, there was a Royal Commission to inquire whether the system of shipbuilding in the dockyards had been efficient and the expenditure judicious. In 1861, there was a Select Committee of this House appointed with the same object. In 1869, there was a Committee to investigate the design of the Devastation. In 1871, a Committee was appointed "to examine the designs upon which ships of war have recently been constructed," and to advise what improvements and modifications might be made, therein. Now, that this was a Committee throwing considerable doubt upon the merits of the Constructive Department is evident from the observations of Sir Spencer Robinson, who, in writing to the then First Lord (Mr. Goschen), on the 25th November, 1872, said this Committee's appointment was— An expression of doubt on the part of the Admiralty of the day whether they, their predecessors, or their servants, were competent to fill the posts entrusted to them; and an accusation against all the public officers who had administered the Naval Service —especially the Controller (Sir Spencer Robinson) and the Chief Constructor (Mr. E. J. Reed). Then, in 1871, also, there was a Committee of the Lords to inquire into the practical working of the Board of Admiralty. In 187G, my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Brassey) brought forward a Motion for a Royal Commission; and the late First Lord (Mr. Hunt), whose loss we all deplore, said he was prepared to agree to the appointment of a Committee such as sat in 1871; and— It seemed to him not unreasonable to accept all the assistance they could obtain, both outside and inside the Admiralty, as to this important question, upon which the safety, honour, and dignity of the country mainly depended."— [3 Hansard, ccxxix, 254.] By consent, that Motion was withdrawn, and the Committee was never appointed; but the reasons for appointing that Committee are, I hold, as strong now as they were when the consent to it was given. Well, we then come to the case of the Inflexible; and I venture to say that if there were only that case of the Inflexible to which I could point, it alone would justify me in submitting this Motion to the House. The Inflexible had been four years building; she was estimated to cost £521,000; but she will probably cost much more. She was expected to be the most powerful ship in the world; yet, on the 18th June last year, the country was startled by the announcement in The Times that the ship had "no stability, independent of her unarmoured ends," and that she would capsize if her ends were destroyed or injured to a certain extent. The article in The Times in which that assertion was made was supposed by some persons to be based on a statement furnished by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke. But two days later The 'Times said it relied on its own calculations and investigations entirely. On the evening of the day on which that alarming statement appeared—June 18th, 1877—my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke, in answer to a Question which I put to him in this House, said that the Inflexible — Might go to sea with perfect safety for any length of time, provided she did not enter on a naval engagement; but that if she did enter on a naval engagement and was attacked by a shell fire and her unarmoured ends were destroyed, she would be left without stability, and would then capsize."—[3 Hansard, ccxxxiv, 2010.] Naturally, an investigation was asked for; perhaps I may say, naturally, it was refused; and it was not until the country spoke out, and it was evident that Members on both sides of the House were determined to have an investigation into the case of the Inflexible, that the Admiralty gave way and appointed a Committee to inquire whether that ship—which had only just been built— had any stability whatever, and whether, in fact, she might safely be sent to sea. Well, then, I have quoted various statements and referred to many Committees, extending over a period of 36 years— from 1841 to 1877. I know very well that it may be said—"Oh, these are only opinions;" but I will now direct the attention of the House to the results of the system, for by them it must necessarily be judged. First, I complain of the manner in which the Constructive Department have clung to old types long after the outside world was satisfied that they were obsolete and ought to be altered. I would especially refer to four matters—The screw propeller, the clothing of our ships with armour, the introduction of the turret principle, and the adoption of compound engines. Now, in 1844, Admiral Bowles, who was a Lord of the Admiralty, wrote a letter to the First Lord (Lord Haddington) stating that France had lately built 17 war steamers, carrying heavy guns, and able to carry large numbers of troops (Appendix, Select Committee, 1861, page 654); but no notice was taken by the Constructive Department of this announcement. In 1847, it came to the knowledge of the Admiralty that France was building an 80-gun screw war-ship. The Admiralty then sent for the Surveyor —he was at that time called the Surveyor of the Navy — Sir William Symonds; and they told him he must build one of these vessels; and he resigned, as he did not like screw vessels. The Admiralty ordered a ship of that sort to be built in 1847—at least, they or- dered a design to be prepared in 1847. They ordered her to be built in 1849; but it was not until 1852 that her engines were first tried—that is, eight years after Admiral Bowles had called attention to the fact that screw propellers were being used extensively in France. Well, there can be no doubt about the value of the screw. It was evident by what the Admiralty did afterwards that there was no doubt; because, although in 1850 they had not a single screw-ship of the line, in 1860 they had 53 line-of-battle screw-ships, and 30 screw-frigates. (Royal Commission, 1860, Q. 9,983.) Well, I come now to the case of our ironclads. In 1858, France was building four (Appendix, Report of Royal Commission, 1860, p. 600), when we had no thought apparently of building any; for, when the Navy Estimates for 1858 were introduced, there was no mention whatever of any sum of money being asked for for an iron-clad. Wooden ships were provided for, although Sir Charles Napier and Lord Clarence Paget warned the Admiralty that in a few years from that time wooden ships would be obsolete; and I may say, too, that the experience that was gained during the Crimean War ought to have convinced the Admiralty that the time for building wooden ships without armour had passed by. But they took no notice. However, at last, the Warrior was ordered to be built. She was an iron ship, and plated with iron armour; and we then thought that we were going steadily on in the road to improvement. But, in 1863, Mr. Lindsay, then a Member of this House, moved that it was not desirable to proceed with wooden armoured ships; and, in the course of the speech he made on that occasion, he stated that— Although the Admiralty admitted that on the whole an iron ship was stronger than a wooden one, they argued— and this he took from a statement signed by the Controller, and issued by the Board— that it was advisable, for certain reasons, to continue the construction of wooden ships, to be plated with iron. Among other reasons for so doing, the Admiralty said they never could depend on the quality of the iron."—[3 Hansard, clxix. 1333–7.] So that, in a country which owes its superiority over other nations to its iron, we have in a public document an official declaration that the Admiralty could not depend on English iron. Well, then, we come to the question of the turret and low freeboard. From 1859 up to 1865, or 1866, Captain Coles was continually battering (if I may so say) at the Admiralty, in order to get them to adopt the turret and low freeboard. At last they did adopt both. They, in 1869, were building only ships with turrets and low freeboard; and then again they reversed their policy, and are now, I believe, building ships with a higher freeboard than ever. I come next to the case of compound engines, as another proof of the dilatory way in which the Admiralty manage their improvements, and refuse to adopt improvements which are recognized as improvements by almost all the outside world. I need scarcely say that the steam engine now forms a more important part of a ship than it ever has before done, and is year by year becoming more important. It will be seen what a great change has been made since engines were first introduced into our ships of war, when I compare the Warrior with the present ships. The Warrior had a tonnage displacement of 9,681, and her horse-power was 5,092. The Dreadnought has now 10,866 displacement, and 8,000 horse-power. And with regard to the superiority of compound engines over ordinary engines there can be no question. Sir Spencer Robinson, when he was examined before the Committee on Designs, in 1871 (Report, page 168), said that they had tried four or five such engines in the Royal Navy; and that the compound engines used 13–10ths pounds per hour, where the old engines consumed 3½ pounds. The Committee on Designs reported that the use of compound engines had become very general in the mercantile marine, and that all ships which were to be built in future ought to have them, and that they ought to be applied, wherever practicable, to old ones. Since this Report, Mr. King—to whom I shall have to refer hereafter— he is the Chief Engineer of the United States' Navy, and was sent to this country in order to report upon European Navies—in his Report to his Government, says that there are now nine large armoured ships and 66 other vessels, built or building since 1871, all having compound engines, except a few gun-boats. But the marvel is that the Admiralty did not use them before. There was abundant evidence placed before the Committee on Designs in regard to this question. Messrs. Elder and Co. had been making compound engines for the mercantile marine for 17 years or more. The Pacific Steam Navigation Company began to use them in 1855, and had in 1871 all their 41 ships fitted with compound engines. The Peninsular and Oriental Company had been using them for 10 years; and Messrs. Laird, Brothers, said that all new ships at Liverpool were supplied with compound engines, and many old ones had been re-fitted with them. Now, as an example of the loss sustained by the country in consequence of this slowness on the part of the Admiralty to adopt improvements, I will give the case of the Euphrates. Mr. King says— The Euphrates, built and engined by Messrs. Laird, Brothers, nine years ago, at a cost for the machinery of 364,500 dollars. This would be £72,900; but our official Return says £45,315. He goes on to say— Though the machinery was in all respects in good order, it was last year removed to the scrap-heap, and compound engines and accompanying toilers substituted by the same firm, at a cost of 267,300 dollars and the old machinery. That would be £53,460, besides the value of the engines and boilers removed. I will give another illustration of the evil effect of this dilatory policy on the part of the Admiralty. There are 15 of the existing sea-going ironclad fleet that have non-compound engines. They have a total horse-power of 78,869; and if they had been fitted, with compound engines they would have saved, when at full speed, 35 tons of fuel per hour, or 840 tons per day. That is supposing they saved only one pound per horse-power per hour; but, according to Sir Spencer Robinson, they would have saved nearly double. All these iron-clads have been built since Messrs. Elder and Co. began to put compound engines into mercantile steamships; yet they have only the old engines. Now, I will turn to the ships built since 1861; and this is the most important part of the question. I will not deal with the unarmoured ships, for my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Brassey) —who will do me the honour, I believe, to second my Motion— will take that part of the subject, which is one with which he is well fitted to deal. I will take only our iron-clads. I will take those built and completed up to the year 1876. I take that date because my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed), in 1876, invited the attention of the House to a comparison of our iron-clad Fleet with the iron-clad Fleets of other nations; and the statements that were then made were of a character to fix the facts, so that there can be no doubt or dispute between myself and my right hon. Friend (Mr. W. H. Smith). Now, my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke began by stating that he would "throw out of consideration all wooden vessels covered with armour plates"—there were 14 of that class—as already condemned by the Admiralty, or "far gone into decay." There were three other classes that he excluded from the list, represented by the Hector, the Defence, and the Warrior; and these were 10 in number. Therefore, he excluded from what we may assume to be our efficient Fleet 24 of those 39 sea-going iron-clads. Two of the 39 were sunk—the Captain and the Vanguard; and one—the Waterwitch —was of a doubtful character; leaving only 12 effective iron-clads out of a total of 39, built since 1861. The late First Lord, in reply to my hon. Friend, said— The hon. Gentleman (Mr. E.T. Reed) spoke of only 12 ships in our iron-clad Fleet as being worthy to he taken into account as fighting-ships, He (Mr. Hunt) would take the number at 11, excluding the Penelope, and the seagoing rams."—[3 Hansard, ccxxvii. 1905.] And my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen), in speaking on that occasion, said that if the statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke was "only approximately correct, our naval power was in a state that ought to be remedied." If any corroboration of this be needed, I would refer to the statement of Mr. Hunt—who was then First Lord— in moving the Estimates for 1874, in which he practically condemned 18 of these 24 ships. A gentleman writing to The Times, on the 16th October, 1876, under the signature of "Navigans," gave a list of 20 iron-clads which were either "obsoleteor deficiently protected by armour;" and these 20 formed part of the 24 excluded by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke. Mr. King, the gentleman to whom I have previously referred, names in his Report to his Government 22 non-effective and only 12 effective ships; and the 22 non-effective ships are included in the condemned list of my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke. So that I should say the corroboration is complete; and it is tolerably clear that, out of the 39 seagoing iron-clads built since October, 1861, 24 are comparatively useless; and this within 15 years of the completion of the first of them—the Warrior —and eight years from the launch of the last of them —the Repulse. I have references, if anyone would like to see them; but I do not want to take up more time than is necessary. The original cost of these 24 ships was £6,546,802 (Return 297, 1877)."Navigans" gives the cost of the repairs of these 24 ships at £1,076,427, and if I take the same proportion of expenditure for the other four, it will come up to £1,209,727; so that the total expenditure on these 24 ships which are obsolete so far as they are "fighting ships"—to use the phrase of the late First Lord of the Admiralty—would be £7,756,529. Now, supposing that the 12 ships that are effective were all that could be desired, and that we had no fault to find with them, there would have been a large sum of public money —I will not say thrown away, but—as I think comparatively wasted. But there are certain defects in these 12 ships; and they are defects which, as far as I can learn, ought to have been obviated, because they might have been foreseen. The designs of these ships, or at least of 10 of them—all of them with the exception of the Penelope and the Bellerophon — were submitted to the Committee on Designs in 1871, and they were divided into three classes. The first class included the Hercules, the Monarch, and the Sultan; and the Committee, in reporting, said— When we recommend, as we feel bound to do, that no more ships like the Monarch should he built, we consider that our recommendation must be taken to include the Hercules and the Sultan," Thus, three years after the Sultan was ordered, and one year after she was launched, the type was condemned. The next class was what is called the Invincible class, and it comprised the Audacious, the Invincible, the Iron Duke, the Triumph, and the Swiflsure —besides the Vanguard, which was afterwards lost. Of these, the three first were ordered in 1867 and completed in 1869–70; and the two last were ordered in 1868 and completed in 1870. The Committee recommended several alterations; the two principal alterations being that they should have stronger bottoms and thicker armour. Mr. Pearce, who is a member of the firm of Messrs. Elder and Co., and who superintended the building of the Audacious and the Invincible, in his examination before the Committee on Designs, said that the bottoms of these ships were so weak that they would go to pieces if loft aground, or with moderate bumping; and there is no doubt that 360 to 400 tons of ballast each had to be put into them after they were afloat, in order to bring them down to the proper draught of water, and to give them the requisite stability (Return 250, 1865). Well, then, we have two remaining of these 12 ships, the Devastation and the Thunderer, which were designed in 1869. They were both alike. They were to be breastwork monitors, with low freeboard. The freeboard was to be 4 feet 6 inches for a length of 200 feet, and 9 feet 3 inches for a length of about 70 feet of unarinoured forecastle. Well, the building of these ships went on with no interruption until the Committee on Designs met; and when the designs were put before the Committee, the Constructors recommended that they should have superstructures to raise their sides for about 150 feet amidships to a height of 11 feet 6 inches; so that there would be only about 70 feet left with the 4 feet 6 inches freeboard. The Constructors said it was not necessary to have these superstructures for the sake of stability; but they would increase the stability, and would be convenient. Well, the Committee made rather a singular recommendation; for they advised that the Devastation should have the super structures, but not the Thunderer; and I say this is singular, because the vanishing angle of the Thunderer's stability would then have remained only 43 degrees, and the Committee said that any new mastless ship of this sort to be built afterwards should have a range of stability of not less than 50 degrees. The Admiralty, however, ordered that superstructures should be put on both ships. It came out in the course of the examination of Mr. Barnaby, with regard to the designs of these ships, that their magazines and engines were in rather a dangerous position; for Mr. Barnaby admitted that "a raking shot, coming from aft or forward," would meet with no obstruction but the one-inch deck plating. The Committee recommended that there should be transverse armoured bulkheads before and abaft the magazines and engines, and the Admiralty adopted that suggestion. Thus, in two leading features, these ships were altered from the Constructors' designs within two years—one was altered by the advice of the Constructors' themselves, and the other by the advice of the Committee. I may here note the changes which each ship underwent. They were designed to have a draught of 26 feet 1½ inches. They floated at 26 feet 8 inches. The armour above water amidships was designed to be 4 feet 2 inches—it was only 3 feet 7½ inches. The upper deck plating was to be 2 inches — it was 3 inches. The breastwork deck plating was to be 1 inch—it was 2 inches. The freeboard amidships was raised from 4 feet 6 inches to 10 feet 9 inches. And these changes, it must be observed, were not in consequence of any new discoveries or from any increased power of the gun; but they ought to have been foreseen when the ships were designed. And I think I may assume that, if the Committee of 1871 had been consulted in 1869, then, in all probability, the changes would have been recommended before the building of the ships was begun, and would then have been adopted. Further, the Committee recommended the Admiralty to consider the suggestions of their Colleagues, Admiral Eilliot and Admiral Ryder; and that was with reference to certain suggestions they made likely to remove "grave defects" in these designs. The Admiralty did take this advice or suggestion, as was shown in the ease of the Dreadnought. She was originally designed to be a larger Devastation, and she was called in the first instance the Fury. She was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke as a type of the "monitor form;" and Sir Sydney Dacres then, I think, First Sea Lord, said—"The main feature in the veritable monitor class is the low free- board."(Appendix, Committee on Designs Report, pages 310–3.) Like the Devastation, then, the Dreadnought was designed to have a low freeboard of 4 feet 6 inches, except the forecastle, which was to be 9 feet 3 inches. In 1871, the Constructors recommended that a superstructure, such as has since been put on the Devastation and the Thunderer, should be added to the Dreadnought. But how was the ship built? She has now a breastwork carried out flush with the side, and completed across the ship, giving an armoured freeboard 12 feet high and 184 feet long. The forecastle has been abandoned, and a light flying deck substituted at the same height; the armour-belt is completed, forward and downward, instead of armoured bulkheads; the water-tight compartments have been increased, and there is a consequent increase of draught of from 6 to 7 inches. Thus the character of these ships as low freeboard monitors has been changed altogether; so that my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London, in speaking of the Devastation, was justified in saying that the low part of the ship was only 16 per cent of the whole, and it was a mistake to consider 'her' in any ordinary sense of the word a low freeboard ship at all."—[3 Hansard, c cxv. 52.] These facts seem to me to point to the desirability of strengthening the Constructive Department. But I may point out that, in addition to these 39 seagoing iron-clads, we have 12 ships for coast defence. Five of them—the Prince Albert, the Scorpion, the Wyvern, the Viper, and the Vixen —are only armoured 4 to 5 inches thick, and may be said to be obsolete. They originally cost £535,073. There are five others— the Glutton; and four of what is called the"Cyclops class"—the Cyclops, the Hecate, the Gorgon, and the Hydra. I may mention that the Glatton was laid down in 1868, and the four of the"Cyclops class" in 1870; and that all were launched in 1871. The designs for these ships were referred to the Committee on Designs in 1871. The freeboard of the"Cyclops class" was 3 feet 4½ inches; and the freeboard of the Glatton only 3 feet. The Constructors, in reporting upon these ships, said that they might go "from one port to another in favourable weather;" and if they were required to go in unfavourable weather they would have to have superstructures. My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) said they were too weak in the bottom, and that the Glatton would be unmanageable in heavy seas. The Committee reported in regard to the"Cyclops class," that they wanted thicker deck-plating, more water-tight compartments, and stronger bottoms; and superstructures if they had to "encounter waves of a period exceeding 10½ seconds." The Glatton, they said, would be better; but they doubted if she would be safe even on the home coast in all weathers; and Admirals Elliot and Ryder recommended that these ships should have superstructures fore and aft to prevent capsizing. Now, every one of these defects that were thus pointed out ought to have been foreseen when these vessels were designed. Their original cost was £756,269. The other two, the Rupert and the Hotspur, were referred to by the late First Lord in 1876, but not included in his list as "worthy to be taken into account as fighting ships." Thus of 39 sea-going iron-clads built before 1876, 24 are obsolete, 2 were lost, and one, the Waterwiteh, was an experimental ship; and 12 only remain efficient out of the whole 39. And, of the 12 home-defence ships, 5 are obsolete, 5 were condemned by the Committee on Designs in 1871, and 2 only remain uncondemned. So that out of 51 iron - clads completed up to that time—1876—we had 24 obsolete seagoing ships, 5 obsolete home - defence ships, and 5 home-defence ships condemned more or less by the Committee on Designs. The original cost of all these 34 ships, taken together, was upwards of £9,000,000. Now, there are 9 ships which have been added to the Fleet since the debate in 1876, or are now building. I have referred already to one, the Dreadnought. There are 8 others. Of these, 5 are broadside ships— the Alexandra, the Temeraire, the Shannon, the Nelson, and the Northampton. There are 3 turret-ships—the Inflexible, the Ajax, and the Agamemnon. With regard to these 5 broadside ships, in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Designs in 1871, they have thicker armour than the Invincible class, the deck-plating has been increased in thickness, they have more compartments, they have either armoured bulkheads or armoured bows. All these alterations, as compared with the latest broadside ships before them, were made in consequence of the Report of the Committee of 1871. 80 the Constructors' ideas have, in the designs of all these ships, been modified by influences outside the Admiralty. With regard to the turret-ships, I must again refer to the Inflexible. I may first say that the design of the Inflexible, if it is a credit to anyone, cannot be claimed by the Constructive Department. The design originated in the fertile brain of the hon. Member for Pembroke, and was somewhat elaborated, I believe, in the Committee on Designs; for my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen) said, in July, 1873, that the Inflexible "carried out the views of the Committee on Designs of Ships of War."— [3 Mansard, ccxvii. 908–9.] There is another point connected with this ship which I must notice. She does not carry out the views of the Constructive Department, as laid down in their own account of her design; for Mr. Barnaby, in reporting to the Controller in 1873, said— We should not be satisfied with the ship, if we could not say, as we now can, that with any possible amount of damage to the unarmoured ends by shot or shell, the ship will continue to float in perfect safety. I have already referred to what my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke and The Times newspaper said on this matter last year. The Committee that was appointed to examine the design of this ship has made a Report which is not altogether consistent; for I think that parts of the Report would seem to justify the Constructive Department, while other parts of the Report would certainly bear out the charges which have been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke. The "Summary" of the Report puts the best case for the Department. It says that the ship is a "safe sea-going vessel," when "intact;" that her "unprotected ends are as well able as the armoured citadel to bear the part assigned to them;" therefore "a just balance has been maintained," and "out of a given set of conditions a good result has been obtained." The Committee further say that the contingencies pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke would only arise if an engagement were prolonged, and if she fought against a preponderating force. They say that if she did continue long in action, and if the force against her were rather heavy, and if her ends were to be destroyed, she would have very little stability left, and must be handled with great caution. And the Committee further say that the ship would then be in a critical state; that her speed and turning power would be too small: that she would find it difficult to avoid either a ram or a torpedo — which would be fatal; that her guns must be worked with great caution; and that no repairs would be practicable at sea. Now, this hardly bears out what the Constructors promised they would do— that is, build a ship "that with any possible amount of damage to the un-armoured ends," "will continue to float with perfect safety." And what are the recommendations of the Committee with regard to this ship—the Inflexible? They are, that the cork chambers should be extended; that there should be an increase of pumping power; and that the travel of the guns on their slides should be reduced. And they recommend to the serious consideration of the Admiralty the necessity of investigating, if they build another ship of this kind, whether she should not have more beam in order to give her greater stability. I think they mention in their Report something like 10 feet more beam. Now, there is another point connected with this controversy that I must allude to. Mr. Barnaby, in writing to The Times on the 19th of June, 1877, said that she had a range of stability of 48 degrees, and that the Committee on Designs thought 40 degrees would be sufficient. But the Committee on Designs said that such a ship as this ought to have a range of stability of "not less than 50 degrees." This is a very singular error on the part of Mr. Barnaby. I do not know whether it accounts for the faults of the Inflexible. But be that as it may, the position with regard to this ship is exceedingly unsatisfactory; and if the charge brought by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke be correct, then, of course, the Constructive Department blundered the design and spoiled the ship. The cost of the Inflexible, together with her two sister ships, cannot be much less, if any, than £1,200,000. It was proposed to build another ship of the same type; and yet eminent authorities tell us that if these ships went into action as designed they would capsize as soon as their unarmoured ends were shot away. With reference to those ships there was an announcement about a fortnight ago —I do not know whether it was correct—that there were certain alterations to be made; that there were to be certain angle-irons placed on their sides, and that teak was to be put within these angle-irons. And one reason assigned was, that when one of these ships was docked in dry dock she would be liable to collapse—the weight of her armour being too great for the strength of her lower structure; and that therefore she must be shored up. Another reason given was that boats coming alongside might injure her side; so that, according to the statement of The Times, teak was to be put on, outside armour 24 inches thick, to prevent her armoured sides being damaged by boats coming alongside. If these ships are so slight in the bottom, they ought to have been made stronger. But I suppose the real reason is, that if these alterations are made, the ships would then have practically broader beam and more stability. So, first, if that is the case, the Constructors designed the ship without the requisite amount of stability; and then they are going to put wood on her sides in order to give that stability; and one of the first things to happen in action would be that that wood would be shot away. There is one other view which I would take of the action of the Constructive Department—I mean the great variety of types, and the little apparent consistency in design. Almost all our new ships differ materially one from another. And here, again, I must refer to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke; for, in writing to The Times on the 19th of January, 1877, he stated that out of nine new iron-clads then being built, there were seven varieties. I will quote his words. He said— We have, out of nine vessels, all large ships of above 5,000 tons, two instances only in which two ships are alike; or, in other words, in nine ships, all of them large, we have seven varieties. Well, there is no doubt that this must be very perplexing to our naval officers. And, according to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke, it is calculated not only to perplex naval officers, but to turn slight accidents into grave ones, and grave ones into vast disasters; while in the event of war, it would probably transform a well-planned engagement into a terrible defeat. All this my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke attributes—and I think there is a great deal of truth in what he says—to the maladministration of the Admiralty. Another evil I would complain of is the number of changes made in designs while ships are building. I have shown this particularly in the case of the Dreadnought. And I have also to complain of the changes made almost immediately after a ship has been built, even when defects have been pointed out before she was completed. Take, for example, the case of the Shannon. Before that ship was afloat, the Constructive Department were, I believe, warned that her rig was wrong, and various defects were pointed out. No attention was paid to these remonstrances, and the ship proceeded to her trial trip; and, afterwards, the very changes which had been advised had to be made, at considerable cost, and, of course, with considerable delay. And, again, another point I wish to mention is the loss of time in shipbuilding. The Dreadnought was begun in 1870, and, I need hardly say, she is not finished yet. The Thunderer was begun in 1869; she took her trial trip in 1876, and she can hardly be said to be completed now. The Inflexible has been five years building; and how much longer she will be I cannot tell. These appear to me to be rather serious evils. My right hon. Friend the First Lord seems to have a genial smile upon his face, and probably thinks these are matters of little moment; but, at any rate, I think we ought to give some consideration to them. And now I propose to refer to the mode in which the French Government proceed with regard to this question. When the Minister of Marine, who is a Minister of State, wants a ship, he first applies for a Vote. He then sends to the different Dockyards a notice that he is open to receive designs for the proposed ship. At each Dockyard there is what may be termed a Constructive Staff, who are able to design and build; and each member of this Staff may send in a design, as well as every Member of the corps of Naval Engineers throughout the Service, who number 125. They are trained to design ships and to build them; and they have experience of Dockyards, and of duty on board ship, and in Government Departments. Well, when the Minister of Marine has got the designs he sends them to a body called the Council of Works, consisting of 16 members, five of whom are naval officers, four officers of marine artillery, and four or five naval engineers, of whom the Inspector-General is one. These designs are then submitted to what is termed the Second Section of the Council, which is formed of four or five naval engineers, two naval officers, and one officer of marine artillery; so, as hon. Members will perceive, there is a majority in this Section of naval engineers. The Inspector-General—who is a person occupying a position somewhat like that of our Mr. Barnaby—is President. The Second Section of the Council of Works, when it has come to a decision, reports to the Council as a whole; and when the matter comes before the Council of Works, the design is chosen by plurality of votes. The votes are set forth in the Minutes, and nothing is carried unless with the approval of half the Council present, or of half of that part of the Council specially interested in the question. The designer may be called to explain his design; and any member differing from the majority may claim to have his opinion entered on the Minutes. The Council, when it comes to a decision, sends its Report to the Minister of Marine, with the Minutes; and he may lay the design and the papers before the Council of Admiralty. This Council consists of himself as President, five Admirals, one General of Marine Artillery, the Inspector-General of Naval Engineers, or a Director of Naval Construction, and one Commissary General of Marine. Before the subject is taken into consideration by the Council of Admiralty, notice is sent to the Council of Works that on such a day these designs will be considered; and the President of the Council of Works then deputes one of his colleagues to explain the reasons for the Council's decision, and to offer information on their part. I believe all these provisions which I have named are provisions of the law. When the Minister of Marine, who is responsible for the design, determines what design he will adopt, he then sends the design to a particular Dockyard which he selects; and that Dockyard—or, at least, the Director of Construction, at the head of the Engineering Staff of that Dockyard—then becomes responsible; and upon details he has to consult the naval officer who will command the ship, and, generally speaking, to carry out the work without any of those little petty orders which are sent from time to time from our own Department in Whitehall to our Dockyards. In selecting a design, I may explain that no preference is given to rank. The Redoubtable, the largest iron-clad in the French Navy, was designed by the youngest Director of Naval Construction; and the two swiftest cruisers by an engineer. Now, the mode in which the French Government manage these matters is almost in every respect totally opposed to ours. There is considerable rank given to Naval Architects. The Inspector-General, who I have said holds a position similar to our Mr. Barnaby, has a rank equal to that of Rear-Admiral; and the Directors of Naval Construction, one of whom is at the head of every Dockyard, would rank with Captains in the Navy. As I have said, there is a very great difference between the French and our own practice; and it would be well I think that the Committee for which I ask should see, at any rate, whether some improvement might not be made in our own system. At all events, it is clear that in France there is open competition amongst 120 persons. In England the work of designing is confined to some four or five men. In France, to be successful in design is to get increased pay and higher rank. The designs, before they are adopted, are criticized—first, by a section of the Council of Works, then by the whole Council, then by the Council of Admiralty. Here, in England, there is no one to criticize designs, except my right hon. Friend the First Lord and his four Colleagues; and I apprehend he will scarcely say that he knows much about what will be necessary for the stability of ships, and many other things which are of essential importance in designs for ships of war. Practically, the matter is left to three Naval Lords; and I think it is a question well worthy of consideration whether, not only the mode of obtaining designs, but the mode of settling them, could not be improved. At any rate, it appears to me perfectly clear that the Board of Admiralty must be almost entirely dependent on Mr. Barnaby and his colleagues. If they say they think a design good, I do not see how my right hon. Friend can say anything different. I am of opinion that under a different system from that which we have—one under which designs could be sent in from the Dockyards and the country at large, and under which they could be considered by a fairly constituted tribunal—the Audacious class would have had stronger bottoms. I think the Cyclops class and the Glatton would have been more seaworthy; and and I think the Devastation class would have had sufficient freeboard and armour-protection. Take the case of the Inflexible. Under the monopoly that we now have, we are building three ships of that class, and they are said to have great defects. I think that there, again, with open competition and proper scrutiny, the result might have been very different. And I think it is not unlikely that if designs had been obtained by open competition, my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke might have offered designs; probably others of large experience would have done so; and, at any rate, I think that could not be a disadvantage. There is only one other point I desire to touch upon. My proposed Motion refers not only to the manner of obtaining designs, but likewise to the manner in which we build our ships. This is an old subject with me, and I will not detain the House long with regard to it. I will only express my opinion by saying that I think there are strong objections to the manner in which we build our ships. I object to all the Dockyards being managed entirely from White hall. If the Controller and those who are with him at Whitehall were the ablest men in the country, I say that more ought to be left to the several Dockyards; and that we ought to be able to place more reliance on those who are in them. But I object to the present mode, not only on that ground, but because the Controller himself, who is nominally responsible, has really no knowledge, or scarcely any knowledge, of the subject; and then, again, that each Dockyard is managed by a gentleman who, whatever other qualifications he may have, certainly has not the one qualification of knowing the work he has to superintend. Instances without end come to mind, which show that the Admiral Superintendent of a Dockyard is totally unable to grapple with all the various business industries which are carried on there. I say that such a system as that which we adopt in the management of our Dockyards is almost a disgrace to us, and is unworthy to be called a system at all. It is a complete muddle. No private business is managed in a similar way, and I certainly think it would be very desirable, as The Times said on December 4th, 1875, to make each dockyard complete and efficient in itself, with its own manager on the spot, and a general superintendence only in the Controller at Whitehall. Well, I have now brought my observations to an end. I scarcely know what my right hon. Friend will say. Perhaps he may say that, after all, our Fleet is stronger and better than the Fleet of any other Power. Well, I admit that. But then, I would observe to hon. Members, that the cost is a great deal more. The second maritime country in the world does not spend more than £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 a-year upon its Navy; while we are now spending upwards of £11,000,000. And surely England, with its great shipbuilding capacity and mechanical skill, ought not to be at such a disadvantage. My right hon. Friend may say that Mr. Barnaby and his colleagues are as able men as we could get. That I do not mean to dispute. But if that be so, and if blunders and errors are so great, that only shows that the system is wrong. And, therefore, I do press for a Committee. I know my right hon. Friend may say that perhaps it would give trouble to the Department. Well, I admit that; but I say that, upon the whole, the Committee would be a benefit; and that the advantages arising from it would far outweigh any disadvantages. For, supposing the Committee to decide that the present system is the best that can be devised, and that no improvement is possible, still the advantage of having such a Committee would be great; because then my right hon. Friend would be able to ignore the opinions of my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke and other authorities. When those authorities cast discredit on the system, Mr. Barnaby and his colleagues cannot have very comfortable feelings; and it would fully compensate them for the trouble which they would undergo from an investigation by a Committee, if they obtained an opinion that such a high authority was satisfied. But if, on the other hand, it should turn out—as I expect it would —that an improvement could be made in the system; then the trouble of the Departments would be fully compensated by the national benefit and the saving of public money which would ensue, and by getting a more efficient Fleet. I should be 1oth, very 1oth, to believe that all the errors of the past were inevitable; and that a series of blunders similar to those I have pointed out is in store for us in the future. I believe, on the contrary, that with due care and with proper investigation, those errors— I do not say all of them, because we are passing through a transition state—could be avoided; but I think many of them might be avoided; and I also think that, if we will only bring the skill that is in the country to bear upon this question, we may avoid many dangers in future, which otherwise we should, I fear, encounter. I beg, Sir, to move my Resolution.

MR. SPEAKER

pointed out that this Motion could not be put as an Amendment on going into Committee of Supply. It had already been proposed and negatived.

LORD HENRY LENNOX,

who had given Notice that he would call attention to the Report of the Committee on Her Majesty's Ship Inflexible, said, he regretted he could not concur with the hon. Member who had just sat down in the course he asked the House to adopt. He could never be a party to the appointment of a Committee which he believed would hamper the action of the Admiralty and diminish the responsibility of those who administered its affairs. He once had the honour—and for some years—of holding a responsible position in that office, and he knew the very great difficulties which attended the Constructive Department, as well as the First Lord and the Board in all their proceedings where cases of novel designs were introduced. It could be clearly shown that with respect to those novel typos of ships there existed the same errors of calculation of which so much was heard in 1872. He remembered well the difficulties which occurred at the time of the building of that unfortunate ship the Captain, and all the suggestions which were made, but not listened to, and the House knew with what result. These facts made him acquainted with the difficulties with which the First Lord and the Council of Construction had to deal in reference to ships of a novel type. Because ships of the present day were less sightly than the old "wooden walls," he did not refuse sanction to the progress of science in the construction of ships. He was no alarmist with respect to novel ships. His right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) would agree with him that when the question as to the Devastation was before the House, he had done his best to allay the apprehension which prevailed; and he hoped he might lay claim to be free from prejudice in the few remarks he had to make about the Inflexible. A great deal of discussion occurred at the time to which he referred in reference to the safety of the newly-designed ships. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen) said of the Inflexible — The requisite reserve of buoyancy in the event of the unprotected parts being penetrated to any extent is secured by the central armoured citadel. The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) said— It is a matter of perfect indifference how much the ends are knocked about by shot and shell; and Mr. Barnaby's original view of the ship was— We hope, by subdivision and cellular sides, to prevent any appreciable increase of immersion or decrease of stability; but we should not be satisfied with the ship if we could not say, as we now can, that with any possible amount of damage to the unarmoured ends by shot or shell, the ship will continue to float in perfect safety before any damages are made good. If it had not been for events that occurred last summer, he should have wished to look at the future rather than at the past of the ship; but in the spring of last year attention was called to the fact that this ship in building had greatly departed from the idea of its designer. Hon. Members were aware of the Correspondence on this subject which had passed between the hon. Member for Pembroke and the Board of Admiralty and the Council of Construction. He did not desire, for many reasons, to allude to the Correspondence in detail, because there was much in it that was very painful to his mind. It showed, however, the difficulty that the designer of a new type of ship had in accepting in good humour and in good faith the criticisms which were offered upon his design. He gave the fullest possible credit to the Board of Admiralty and to the Council of Construction for their patriotic wish to give the nation the best type of ship; but he claimed equal justice for himself and for the hon. Member for Pembroke. At this point in the Correspondence, the Leviathan of the Press came down upon those engaged in it and made certain remarks upon the ship, to the effect that if the ends of ships of the Inflexible type were shot away, the vessels would be absolutely without any stability whatever and must capsize. He must here say that at the time those remarks were printed by the Editor of The Times, that statement was absolutely and undeniably true. The right hon. Gentleman the then First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Hunt), however, came down to the House and gave the most positive contradiction, on the authority of his naval Colleagues, to the statement of the hon. Member for Pembroke. He wished the House to observe that the Admiralty had already shifted its ground with regard to this ship. Originally, they said that it did not matter whether the unarmoured ends were shot away or not, and now it was declared by a very distinguished First Lord of the Admiralty, taking up a new ground, that it was impossible that the unarmoured ends could be shot away. The Report of the Committee, however, had put that point beyond all doubt. He hoped that the right hon. Member for the City of London and the present First Lord of the Admiralty would not think that he was making the slightest reflection upon their ability or their good faith in the criticisms he was about to make upon their statements with regard to this ship. Everybody must, of course, perceive how difficult it was for a civilian placed in the position of the First Lord of the Admiralty to arrive at a true judgment with regard to any proposed new type of vessels of war amid the conflicting statements made by scientific men to whom credit was equally due. He should have been willing to have allowed the matter to rest where it stood had not the Constructor of the Navy quietly stated that this was a matter of opinion between the hon. Member for Pembroke, on the one side, and himself, on the other, on a difficult and technical question; and that, as he did not agree with the hon. Member for Pembroke, were he to build another Inflexible, he should make no difference in its form and weight in the direction indicated by that hon. Member. Seeing that we had, then, already one Inflexible far advanced and two others in progress, he thought that, after that statement of the Constructor of the Navy, it was high time that the whole circumstances of the case were laid before the House, in order that the country might bring to bear upon the Admiralty the pressure of its wish that the matter should be fully inquired into. The first point which he trusted the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty would explain in his reply was one which arose out of a statement in the Parliamentary Papers on this subject, and which probably might be, and he hoped was, the result of a clerical error, although, as it stood, it vitally affected the question of the stability of the Inflexible. In these Papers there was a comparison instituted between the Inflexible and the Devastation, which was to the following effect:— Inflexible, as assumed in model, unarmoured ends giving no stability. Anglo maximum stability, 13½ deg.; range, 30.—Devastation, with forecastle riddled and giving no stability, 9 deg.; range, 34½. That would be a very fair comparison between the two vessels; but, if hon. Members would look at the diagram presented to the House, they would find the following words attached to it:— Inflexible —Fully equipped, ends only riddled, therefore still with stability. Anglo maximum stability, 13.5; range, 30. He hoped that the First Lord of the Admiralty would explain whether those figures were the result of a clerical error or not. He now came to a most important point—namely, the nomination of the Committee of July last. That Committee was appointed with the view of declaring that the ship was all that she ought to be; but he confessed that the result reminded him of the story of Balaam, because nothing could be more condemnatory of the Inflexible than their Report, when it was carefully read over. It would be the height of impertinence were he to find fault with the nomination of that Committee, which was composed of eminent scientific men, who were of the highest honour and who were most painstaking. The great mistake, however, made at the outset was in the Instructions which were given to the Committee. These were of a most faulty character. Instead of being asked to give an opinion on the properties of the ship, they were called upon to answer two or three questions which had already been decidedly answered by the First Lord. The Committee's labours were therefore cramped, and the foundation was laid for a somewhat favourable Report. He confessed that, while the facts which they gave were wonderfully interesting, the conclusions the Committee drew were purely speculative. On the subject of uncertainty of fire, they said that there would not be much danger of the ends being blown away, because of the uncertainty of artillery fire at sea. In his humble judgment, however, these difficulties would toll as much in favour of the enemy as of the ship—assuming the enemy to be of the same size and to carry guns of the same weight. The danger to ships of the Inflexible type would be increased if they had to contend against small and swift vessels throwing shells of heavy bursting power; and, furthermore, they would be in great danger if they had to fight their way through heavy batteries placed on shore, as had happened in several of the wars in which our Fleet had been engaged. On the question of injury to the unarmoured ends, the Committee had come to the conclusion that they would only be gutted and riddled, in which case the buoyancy of the ship would not be interfered with, but her speed would be reduced. On that point Mr. Froude had made some experiments for the Committee, which showed that, in the event of any serious injury to her bow or ends, she could only steam at the rate of seven knots an hour; but, in the event of her being struck in other and less critical points, she could steam nine knots an hour. If the House of Commons was content that a man-of-war should only steam at a rate of nine knots an hour, he could find them persons who would be willing to build them ships at less than half the cost of the Inflexible. In the summer of last year an article appeared in the Press asserting that the Inflexible had no stability whatever; and the following day the Chief Constructor wrote to say that the statement was not true; but, in answer to that denial, he would say that the sole amount of stability which the ship now possessed in her extreme case of riddling and gutting had been since given by the removal of her masts and the re-stowage of the chain cable, so that when the statement was originally made it was true. Then, as regarded the extreme condition of the vessel—her ends riddled and gutted and the cork blown out—in which case she would derive no buoyancy whatever from her unarmoured ends, the Committee said they considered that most extraordinarily improbable; he was glad to see they did not say it was impossible. But he would point out that it had been shown that in this condition the ship could not turn at half her speed—seven knots an hour—within an area of 1,210 feet, without meeting the same fate as the Captain. The running out of the guns, also, would be a serious element of danger when the ship had arrived at this extreme condition of having her unarmoured ends riddled and gutted. The Committee said that she had enough of stability to, make her safe in smooth water, but they followed that up by saying that she must be handled with the greatest possible caution. It was doubtful if she could turn with sufficient rapidity to avoid the blow of a torpedo, or the ramming of a larger vessel. A good deal of importance was attached to the immense floating power of cellular compartments stuffed with cork. There was a great deal of difference on this point, and his hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke told the Committee of Designs that a shell might burst in the ship and blow the cork out. He entreated the First Lord of the Admiralty to look at the recommendations of his own Committee, and especially at the passage in which they said that the best mode of dealing with shot and shell in the unarmoured portion of the ship should be made the subject of careful, systematic, and experimental inquiry. It was, no doubt, true that a quantity of water might be admitted to give the Inflexible stability; but the Constructor of the Navy said that the great advan- tage of the citadel was that it should be plated with 24 inches of iron, and if they admitted a large quantity of water, they would immensely lower her freeboard, and deprive her of the value of this thickness of plate. He earnestly appealed to the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty not to allow the Inflexible to be sent to sea until every one of the recommendations of the Committee respecting her had been adopted, and to cause the lines of the Agamemnon and Ajax, which were now in the infancy of their being, to be rectified to an even greater extent before they were added to the Navy. If war had been declared and the Inflexible had been ready to go to sea, he would have kept silence, and allowed her to take her chance; but he understood she would not be ready for two years to come, so there was ample time for the right hon. Gentleman to show how worthy he was of the high office which he held by at once setting to work to effect the changes which his own Committee recommended. There were some statements in the Committee's Report which he could not reconcile. In one place they said they considered that "a just balance had been maintained of her design," and that "out of a given set of conditions a good result had been obtained." If the ship was a model for balance, if she was the perfect structure represented, what was the meaning of this other extract from their Report — We, therefore, in conclusion, desire to bring under the very serious consideration of their Lordships the necessity, before proceeding with the construction of more vessels of the Inflexible type, of thoroughly investigating whether by more beam their safety may not be largely increased, without injuring their speed and efficiency. In conclusion, he had to say, that in offering these observations to the House, he had been actuated solely by a sense of public duty, as he was perfetly sure the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Barnaby, and the other naval authorities, had also been in all that they had done.

MR. T. BRASSEY

In seconding the Motion of the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Seely), I wish to explain that, while I give my hearty support to his proposal, I see no cause for general dissatisfaction with our Navy. The zeal and ability displayed throughout the recent crisis of preparation for war, in the Fleet, at the Admiralty, and the Dockyards, have been such as to disarm criticism. But though I gladly acknowledge that we possess a Fleet in which the country may justly take a pride, I venture to think that, with more consideration and forethought in our naval administration, we might have done better. I confidently believe that a searching Parliamentary Inquiry at the present juncture would be of great assistance in framing a policy for the shipbuilding of the immediate future. I need not enter on a long review of our past naval history in order to show that such an inquiry is desirable. In former times our ships were generally good in workmanship, though often obsolete in design. Our later ships, though admirable examples of naval architecture in their several types, are almost exclusively adapted for ocean warfare. No one will complain that we have too many first-class ships, but we have no in-shore Squadron worthy of the name. We are conspicuously deficient in ships adapted for attacks on forts and batteries. We have been warned of our shortcomings in this respect by Sir Thomas Symonds, and other eminent officers; but we have neglected their advice. All our recent ships have been of the largest dimensions; and, as an inevitable consequence, the additions to the Fleet have been lamentably few. In the five years ending the 31st of March, 1879, only seven iron-clads will have been added to the Navy, and of those five only will have been built in Her Majesty's Dockyards. The cost of our iron-clads has advanced in proportion to their tonnage. The Inflexible is estimated to cost £460,000. It seems a strange fatality that the design for our largest and costliest ship should have given rise to a controversy of unprecedented warmth. I shall not enter now upon a discussion, which will more properly be raised on the Motion of the noble Lord the Member for Chichester. It may be questioned whether the increase in fighting power is proportionate to the increase in the cost of the later ships. In comparing the Dreadnought with the Devastation, M. Dislere, the eminent French naval constructor, observes that, in order to secure a slight increase in armour and armament, the displacement has been enlarged from 9,190 to 10,900 tons, an augmentation of 1,710 tons, involving an addition of £80,000 to the cost, and an addition of 33 feet to the length. "How," he asks, "will such enormous masses be manoeuvred in the confusion of a naval engagement? How will the ram, the most effective weapon, be used to the best advantage?" These are questions on which the battles of the future may teach some unexpected lessons. I might quote opinions to the same effect from the separate Report of Admirals Elliot and Ryder, as Members of the Committee on Designs for Ships of War, and from many other officers. There is reason to fear that our shipbuilding policy is conceived too much under the influence of a spirit of international rivalry. In a country in which the action of the Government is mainly guided by public opinion, professional judgment is too readily surrendered to popular ideas. Sensational ships are built to gratify the public; and the popular view of these subjects is derived from experimental firing at targets, or from trials over the measured mile, and not from any experience or conception of the practical conditions of naval warfare. The same tendency to the sensational, which is observable in the designs for ships, is exhibited in their armament. When it is remembered how small a percentage of shot can possibly take effect when the combatants are moving at high speed, it becomes a question how far we ought to go in the introduction of 80-ton or even 38-ton guns, as the principal—in some cases, the only—armament of our ships. The increase in calibre involves not only a reduction in the number of guns, but a reduction in the rate of firing, which may prove a serious disadvantage in a naval action. The Committee on Designs recommended the general adoption of a composite armament, of protected and unprotected guns. This valuable suggestion has not received sufficient attention. Speaking generally, the armament of the most recent ships is not proportionate to their tonnage; the offensive power has been unduly sacrificed to the defensive, the gun to the armour. In a speech at the United Service Institution, on the 30th March, 1870, Captain Dawson said— In all the later iron-clads there has been a continual diminution in the offensive power of the armament. We have an instance in the Devastation, a ship of 9,000 tons, carrying only 140 tons of ordnance. That is a very limited offensive power for any first-class iron-clad. The 140 tons are divided into four untried pieces. If anything happens to any one of these four untried pieces one quarter of the armament will be lost. Captain Dawson considered that the chances of hitting at a target were as one in 10, and that they would be much less in firing in a naval engagement. The Inflexible, of 11,000 tons, carries only 320 tons of ordnance. Would not such a ship be more fitted for naval warfare by the substitution of 200 tons of ordnance for an equal weight of armour. The Nelson and Northampton, of 7,460 tons, carry four 18-ton guns and eight 12-ton guns. M. Dislere speaks favourably of the designs of these ships, but considers that the guns should be of heavier calibre. An 18-ton gun is not powerful enough for an engagement with a first-class iron-clad. On the other hand, he considers the displacement of 7,440 tons is too large for ships intended only for the protection of commerce. The same observations are equally applicable to our largest unarmoured ships. The Shah has only two guns capable of penetrating the 4-inch armour of the Huascar. In a recent lecture at the Royal Engineers' Institute at Chatham, Captain Bridge has pointed out the necessity for a numerous supplemental flotilla, to enable a fleet of ocean-going iron-clads to reduce an important fortress. He reminds us that when the Federal Fleet attacked Fort Fisher, in the harbour of Wilmington, on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of January, 1864, over 50,000 shells were fired from the ships. If the Fleet which we have stationed in the Sea of Marmora had been required to engage the shore-batteries in the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus, the deficiency of the Squadron under Admiral Hornby, in regard to the number of the guns, would have made itself felt. The supply of ammunition to Her Majesty's ships is but 85 projectiles per gun on the broadside, and in no case more than 170 per gun. With a supply of ammunition so limited, it is obvious that very large reserves would be required. Our shipbuilding policy may be tested in the most practical way by examining the composition of the Fleet under Admiral Hornby, with reference to the service in which it has recently been employed. Such a comparison will, I venture to say, afford the most conclusive proof of the necessity for adding to our existing naval force the smaller classes of fighting vessels. While the splendid ships assembled under Admiral Hornby possess unquestionably great power for battle, they were mostly designed for ocean warfare rather than for inland service. A deep draught of not less than from 26 to 27 feet is a serious drawback when operating along the shore. The Royal Commission on our Coast Defences laid it down that the maximum draught of a coast defence vessel should not exceed 15 feet. How many iron-clads do we possess drawing less than 15 feet? The coast defence vessels, while less costly than the large ships, would have been better adapted to the practical exigencies of the naval service in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Straits of Singapore, and in other confined waters where we have great interests at stake. It was for naval operations on the coast that the Americans invented the monitor. For £55,000 Mr. Erricson undertook, in the space of 100 days, to construct an unarmoured shot-proof coast defence vessel, displacing 1,200 tons, drawing 10 feet of water, and capable of going nine knots an hour. He kept his word. If such an achievement was possible in the United States of 1864, it encourages us to believe that the mechanical resources of the United Kingdom in 1878 would be capable of promptly creating a most powerful flotilla. I trust, however, that we shall not be betrayed, in reliance on our latest resources, into a policy of procrastination. Vessels, even small vessels, hurriedly constructed, must be imperfect in many ways; and hasty preparations for war, at a time when our foreign relations are becoming constrained and difficult, are necessarily irritating. No Navy has had so much experience of coast warfare, since the introduction of armour, as the American. Their officers are unanimous in their approval of the monitor for engaging batteries. The type combines in the highest attainable degree the two qualities which Vice-Admiral Touchard considers most essential in a coast defence vessel—namely, a maximum of invulnerability and a maximum of armament. Of the 30 monitors which the United States had afloat during the war, only one was destroyed by the fire of the enemy. The monitor, or armoured gun-boat, is being rapidly introduced in European Navies. The Germans have constructed two monitors, and five armoured gun-boats of 900 tons displacement, protected by 4-inch armour and carrying one large gun. Of the 27 iron-clads in the Russian Navy 22 are designed for coast defence; seven draw from 19 to 17 feet, one 14 feet, and 13 draw 11 feet and under. The latter are exact reproductions of the American types. The French have 35 iron-clads afloat, and 16 in construction. Of their 51 iron-clads, 19 are coast defenders. Six of the latter, which are now in construction, are of great power. Another deficiency may be pointed out in our Mediterranean Fleet; our large ships are unsupported by a supplemental force of steam rams and torpedo vessels. It is not necessary to insist on the offensive power of the torpedo. The House was sufficiently alarmed by the very able and stirring speech of the noble and gallant Member for Water-ford (Lord Charles Beresford), whose devotion to his profession we must all admire. It must' be obvious to those least familiar with naval matters that it would be extremely difficult for an ironclad, armed with a limited number of heavy guns, to repel the simultaneous attack of numerous torpedo boats steaming at 20 knots, and manned by determined men. Several boats might be destroyed, but others would succeed, under cover of the smoke, in striking a fatal blow. In the Session of 1876, at the Institute of Naval Architects, Mr. Barnaby acknowledged the vulnerability of our largest and most powerful ironclads, if attacked with the ram and torpedo; and he pointed out, with the concurrence of Sir Spencer Robinson, that the strongest defence against such an attack, was by a counter-attack with similar vessels attached to the largo ships. Admiral Porter, in his Annual Report to the Secretary of the United States Navy, has returned again and again to this subject. In the year 1874 he asked for 50 iron torpedo boats, of a moderate speed, and of not less than 100 tons each. He has since recommended that, besides several small torpedo boats built for coast defence, six, of little more than 1,000 tons, should be constructed of iron for foreign service. The Americans have lately built a torpedo vessel, the Alarm, of 100 feet in length, 28 feet in beam, and 10 feet draught, which carries one heavy gun, eight Gatlings, and a complete torpedo gear. The programme for the German Navy provides for 28 torpedo vessels, which are to be completed in the year 1882. Admiral Porter considers that those 28 torpedo vessels will make the 11 iron-clads which Germany already possesses, a match for an equal number of iron-clads of twice the size, without torpedo boats. Torpedo boats might be carried for the Fleet in special vessels. Boats of this description have become a necessary part of the equipment of a fighting ship. In the German Navy, the Sachsen class of armoured corvettes, of which there are to be five, with a displacement of 7,300 tons, carry torpedo boats of large size. The Duilio is fitted with special appliances for launching torpedo boats in a seaway. The Estimates which have been laid before us, provide for the construction of 28 torpedo boats in 1878–9. The number is greatly inferior to the flotilla, which, according to common rumour, was lately being prepared for the Russian Navy. Armoured vessels, possessing in a high degree the manoeuvring qualities which are essential in the ram, are another indispensable adjunct to a Fleet of larger vessels. It was stated by the late First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Hunt), in moving the Estimates of last year, that it was in contemplation to build a ram on the plans of Sir George Sartorious. I regret that no progress has been made in carrying out that intention. The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) has publicly stated that, in his opinion, before armour is superseded as a defence against guns, guns will be superseded as a means of attack; and the ship itself, viewed as a steam projectile, will be deemed the most formidable weapon. In the essay for which the gold medal of the United Service Institution was awarded, Captain Noel proposed that a group of three vessels should constitute the tactical unit of the Fleet. The group should consist of one first-class iron-clad and two armoured rams of about 2,500 tons each. Our costliest and most heavily armoured ships are too large to be manoeuvred as rams, and too costly to be risked in such an uncertain and hazardous mode of warfare. Why has nothing been done in the construction of auxiliary vessels, which are so essentially required to complete our Fleet? These small rams and torpedo boats would have cost a mere fraction of the sums expended on the large ships, around which they ought at this moment to have been grouped in the narrow waters of the Sea of Marmora. Our constructors seem to lack the courage of their opinions. Accepting the necessity of limitation in size, they must build special vessels for each arm of the Navy. It has been said by Captain Colomb that we have no ship in our Navy in which the principle of building special vessels for special services has been satisfactorily embodied; we have no ship in which the gun-power has been properly sacrificed to assist the ram, or the ram-power judiciously curtailed to admit of increased ordnance. The general policy which should guide our naval construction was well described by Sir Spencer Robinson when he said— A Fleet must be composed of ships of various classes. No single ship will be adapted for naval warfare with the means of destruction which now exist. Every ship must act in combination with other ships; she must be the unit around which other ships congregate; and when we have got the ship and her satellites in attendance upon her of the right size, sort, and stamp, then we have got the one unit of force capable of doing its duty in what may be called single action, and the concentration of those ships and their attendant satellites will constitute a fleet. The same views were expressed by Captain Vansittart in his Report to the Admiral in command of the Channel Fleet in 1868. He said— I recommend the construction of a certain number of turret ships, capable of mounting-far heavier guns than any known in the late squadron, besides some few armoured rams, simply as rams; not with the idea of substituting turrets for broadsides, but with the view of strengthening England's Elects. In short, I would adopt the old saying of not putting all our eggs into one basket. In the ship-building programme of the future, I hope to see the principle of special classification more distincly recognized. This was the policy so strongly recommended by the Committee on Designs. As a powerful armament, thick armour, speed, and light draught, cannot be combined in one ship, although all are needed for the defence of the country, there is no alternative but to give the preponderance to each in its turn amongst the different classes of ships, which shall mutually supplement each other. The first-class battle-ships of the future will doubtless be constructed after the type of the Devastation. The large ships, again, must he supported by armoured rams, torpedo vessels, and torpedo boats. For ocean warfare we require belted cruisers, of which the Nelson and the Shannon are our latest examples; for the protection of commerce we need small, lightly armoured vessels; for coast warfare, rams, monitors, and torpedo boats. The proportions in which these several types are required is a question which the Committee recommended by my hon. Friend would examine with great advantage. Passing from the armoured vessels, I must express my regret that such large sums have been expended on unarmoured vessels, in no essential respect more powerful than the fine ocean steamers which can be hired in an emergency for naval service. Large unarmoured ships, such as the Shah, Raleigh, Iris, and Mercury, in which every other quality has been sacrificed for the sake of speed, and which, from their limited coal-carrying capacity, are conspicuously inferior to the American liners in their power of maintaining that speed, give the least satisfactory result, in proportion to their cost, which has ever been obtained in any vessel built for war. In 1874, in one of his many able Papers, read before the Institution of Naval Architects, Mr. Barnaby stated the objections to large unarmoured ships in the strongest terms. He said— The matter in which the naval architect is sometimes tempted to sacrifice the just balance of good qualities — reckoning moderate cost as one of them — is in aiming at too high a speed. He may he satisfied that a certain speed is a good working rate; hut if a foreign power has a ship possessing, or reputed to possess, ever so small an advance in point of speed, there are always people ready to insist on the enormous superiority of even a slight excess in speed. If the policy of building such vessels had been deliberately examined by such a Committee as my hon. Friend, proposes, I cannot believe that it would have been approved. Here I may congratulate the Admiralty on the disappearance of the Raleigh type from the programme of the present year, and on the concentration of expenditure on fighting vessels not to be hired from the mercantile marine. A comparison of the present shipbuilding programme with that of former years, shows the following result:—

	ARMOURED.	UNARMOURED.	TOTAL.
1870–1	7,490 tons	7,742 tons	15,232 tons
1878–9	9,831 tons	3,737 tons	13,568 tons

Every ship which is specially constructed for naval warfare should be protected by a certain amount of armour. The effect of a single chance shot on an unprotected vessel was sufficiently shown in the action between the Alabama and the Kearsage, and, in the Franco-Prussian war, in the action between the Meteor and the Bouvet. The Americans protected the machinery of their vessels by using the cable as a temporary chain armour. By a slight reduction in the length and a moderate increase in the beam, sufficient floating-power would be gained to enable our larger unarmoured cruisers to carry a light belt of armour at the water-line, which would materially strengthen the bow for ramming, and protect the machinery and the boilers. The hon. Member for Pembroke has shown how this can be done practically in the three belted cruisers which he has recently built for the Japanese Government. We have not enough ships in our Navy corresponding to the useful class which have been recently built in our private yards for Japan. These observations on the designs of some of our most recent ships will, I venture to think, be sufficient to justify the proposed inquiry. Let us now examine the system adopted for carrying those designs into execution. I may here be allowed to remark that, so far as I have any means of judging, the present Controller and Chief Constructor, and the officers under them, deserve well of their country. Their mistakes have been few, and they have achieved many remarkable successes. But the present organization does not give to the Navy the full benefit of all the professional and naval experience which this country possesses. The administration is conceived on too narrow and exclusive a basis. It is too much concentrated in one or two individuals. The Constructive Department of the Admiralty is overtasked, and ought to be strengthened. The administrative, consultative, and scientific functions should not be combined in one hand; the same individuals ought not to pro- pose designs and afterwards pass them in review. In France, a large Council of Advice has been employed, and the shipbuilding policy has been settled in accordance with a programme, revised from time to time, but requiring a long period of years for its execution. In this country I should deprecate the adoption of a similar course; but if a Council has been found necessary where several ships have been built from each approved design, how much more must it be required where the same design is never repeated? It was suggested by the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction that a Council of Advice should be appointed by the Government. The evidence collected with reference to the Controller's Department of the Admiralty clearly showed that the present staff were too much absorbed in their administrative duties to be able to give a due proportion of time and thought to original investigation. The recommendations of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction were based on the evidence of such men as Mr. Froude, Sir William Thompson, Mr. Anderson, the Superintendent of Machinery at Woolwich, and the hon. Member for Pembroke. Mr. Froude told the Committee that if such a Council had existed, enormous sums would have been saved, which had been expended in the construction of ships on a scale of 12 inches to the foot. The incompleteness of the preliminary investigations has led not only to defective designs, but to wasteful expenditure and long delay. Sir Spencer Robinson repeatedly remonstrated against the alterations of the Devastation during the period of construction, which led to the inevitable consequence of delaying by one year the completion of the ship. The draught of water was increased to such an extent that the upper edge of the plating is at the bow actually below the water-line. The same delay occurred in the case of the Dreadnought, which was commenced in February 1870, launched on the 8th of March, 1875, and is not yet completed. The estimates for this ship have been steadily increasing. The estimated cost was £269,000 in 1870; it has since advanced by rapid strides to £451,000. The same thing happened in Russia, where the Peter the Great was commenced in 1869 and only completed in 1877. The most recent cases seem quite as grave as those quoted by Lord Clarence Paget before the Dockyard Commission in 1860, and they demand the same remedy which he proposed. He said— The Immortalite was lengthened forwards, amidships, and abaft, and, having been so lengthened, her bow was again pulled down and lengthened. If such a thing were to take place in a private yard, it would be considered a very unbusiness-like way of conducting operations. I am of opinion that if a fair consideration had been given to the subject of her linos—if it had been discussed, for instance, in a committee of scientific men—the necessity of lengthening her during building would have been obviated. The waste of public money through repeated modifications of a design during construction was denounced, with his usual force, by Mr. Cobden, in his well-known pamphlet on the Three Panics. These remonstrances are equally needed at the present time. Sir William Thompson believed that a Scientific Council would have prevented the fatal error committed in the case of the Captain. Mr. Anderson, who has been responsible for the expenditure of very nearly £3,000,000 of the public money, was persuaded that with a systematic investigation great improvements could be introduced. In the Government service, as he most truly said, everybody who gets any work to do worth mentioning is overpowered with work, and has too little time for deliberation and reflection. The Naval Lords cannot possibly have the leisure to consider thoroughly the numerous questions of naval architecture, tactics, and organization, which constantly present themselves. They should be relieved of much of the detail which now occupies their time, by the appointment of a captain in the Navy to act as their secretary, or chef de Bureau. Such a Council as was recommended by the Royal Commission should, for Admiralty purposes, be composed of officers who have recently served afloat, especially in fleets composed of iron-clads, and should include officers who have recently served at the Admiralty. The advice of an ex-Controller could never be without value to his successor. The members of the Council should be appointed for limited periods, and should be regarded solely as advisers to the Minister, who would retain, as now, his sole responsibility to Parliament. Nothing could more conclusively prove that the Constructor's Department is not strong enough for the work which it has to do, than the slow progress in the completion of designs for new ships which is indicated in the Estimates we are about to consider. Three years have elapsed since a new iron-clad was laid down in Her Majesty's Dockyards; and yet that interval, regrettably long as it has been, has not been sufficient to enable the Constructor's Department to determine the types of any one of the iron-clads which it is proposed to commence in the ensuing financial year. The only two iron-clads now in course of construction in the Dockyards were included in the programme of 1875–6. I have already alluded to the Council of Advice, which is permanently in Session at the French Admiralty in Paris, and in which all ships in the service, and all branches of the Naval Profession, are represented. In the French Service the Constructor's Staff is materially strengthened by appointing officers to the Dockyards, possessed of the highest scientific attainments, and capable of preparing independent designs for ships of war. It is the practice of the Council of Construction, in Paris, to fix on the type of ship required for a particular service, and having stated the various qualifications which must be embodied in the new designs, competition is then invited from the different dockyards. There can be no reason why designs should not occasionally be obtained from independent members of the profession of naval architecture. This was done in 1867, by moans of a circular letter, issued by Lord Henry Lennox. In the recent purchases by the Admiralty, we have remarkable illustrations of the ability of the private constructors of this country. The Superb is a much-improved Hercules; and the Belleisle, with 600 tons less displacement, is far superior to the Hotspur and Rupert. It would be unjust to the Controller's Department to forget that they have been equally progressive in their new designs; but I again, and for the last time, complain that too little attention has been given of late years to the smaller types. The truth is that the Naval Estimates at the present time are not sufficient. It is the policy of this country to keep up a larger personnel for the Navy than that maintained by any other of the Continental Powers. Hence it is that while in Germany 66, in Russia 62, and in Austria 48 per cent of the naval expenditure is devoted to construction, the corresponding figure in England is only 36 per cent. Further, we maintain an extensive unarmoured Fleet for the protection of trade. We have 313 unarmoured to 54 armoured ships; France has only 109 to 48; Germany 58 to 20; and Italy 49 unarmoured to 17 armoured ships. The maintenance of our large unarmoured Fleet for the protection of a trade—the profits, but not the burdens, of which are shared with other countries—goes far to explain the necessity for a temporary increase in our appropriations for ship-building. In considering our shipbuilding policy, the Committee proposed by my hon. Friend would necessarily be called upon to inquire as to the sufficiency of the present Naval Estimates. Deducting the non-effective Vote, the sum available is £8,900,000, of which £3,500,000 sterling are expended in the Dockyards. The corresponding figures for the French Navy are £2,800,000. The German Estimates include £520,000 for the maintenance of the Fleet, and £1,720,000 for building the ships ordered in the programme of 1872. If, therefore, we compare the naval expenditure of the three countries with the 6,000,000 of tonnage belonging to the United Kingdom, the 8,000,000 tons belonging to the British Empire, and the 100,000 tons sailing under the French and German flags respectively, we shall find that the expenditure of the French Naval Department far exceeds our own. The truth is that the Naval Estimates at the present time are not sufficient. If France had not been temporarily crippled by the German War, we should have been in a very decided state of inferiority to the French Navy in armoured vessels; and this, notwithstanding the vastly greater interests we have at stake. We have as yet done nothing for the defence of our Colonial possessions by the creation of those centres of naval power to which the Committee on Designs directed attention as the most effective means of affording naval protection to our Colonial trade. The resources of the Dockyards having been wisely devoted during the past two years to putting the Fleet in repair, ship-building has in consequence made but slow progress. The better plan would be to consider the whole question of the defences of our foreign trade and Colonial harbours, and to vote a lump sum for carrying out their recommendations. In point of fact, we ought to make the same provision for bringing up our arrears of shipbuilding which was granted on a former occasion for the defence of our Dockyards at home. The programmes of Naval Construction adopted in France in 1872, and in Germany in 1873, have been carried out in each case by means of a special Credit voted annually in addition to the ordinary provisions for the maintenance of the Navy. With reference to the proposed Committee, I do not know what course the Government may take. We do not intend to imply a want of confidence in the First Lord of the Admiralty, whose advancement to his high office was received with such hearty approval on all sides. It cannot, however, be disputed that his onerous administrative duties leave to him and his Naval Advisers little time to mature designs for new ships. Royal Commissions and Departmental and Parliamentary Committees have from time to time been appointed on naval business. Their labours have not been unfruitful. There has been no unworthy jealousy of external advice. In foreign countries there are abundant precedents of a similar character. In France many Committees of Inquiry into the Navy have from time to time been appointed. The Annual Commission on the Naval Estimates bears a close analogy to the Committee now proposed. The French Commission of the present year included MM. Gambetta, Waddington, and other well-known statesmen; and the Report by M. Bethmont, embracing the whole subject of Naval Administration, and throwing a flood of light on many of the most difficult problems of the time, is just such a Report as I should hope might be presented by a Committee of this House. I conclude, as I began, by expressing my intimate conviction that, while our administration still leaves something to be desired, the Navy is in a sound and wholesome state, and was never relatively so powerful as it is at the present time.

LORD CHARLES BERESFORD

wished to make a few observations on the subject of the stability of the Inflexible, as it presented itself to the mind of a seaman and a seaman gunner. The question of the stability of the Inflexible was first brought forward by the hon. Mem- ber for Pembroke and The Times in such a manner as to cause great apprehension both in the country and in the Service; because naval officers thought they might be sent to sea in the same class of vessel. Accordingly, a great number of naval officers took the matter up, and examined it very minutely. The Admiralty, very properly, stopped the building of the ship until the Committee which was appointed had inquired into the facts of the case. The Report of that Committee had been published some time; and he thought most people who had studied the question would be of opinion that the views of the hon. Member for Pembroke had been more or less capsized by the Report. [Mr. GOSOHEN: Hear, hear!] The Committee had said that the whole question was one of opinion, and in that statement he entirely concurred. The hon. Member's position assumed three facts— first, that it was possible for a shot or a shell to strike the ship; then that the shot or shell should knock the 23 forward and the 17 aft compartments into one; and, lastly, that that the cork should be entirely blown out. As a seaman gunner, he denied the possibility of either of these events happening. The ends of the Inflexible were only one foot above the water-line at her fighting draught; and from the position the shot assumed in travelling through the air, it was almost impossible that it could strike an object of a foot in height on a plane; because it must either touch the water with its rear end, or it must glance over the top of the vessel. But, assuming that it did strike the ends of the ship, it would neither knock all the compartments into one, nor blow out the cork. There was no such thing as a plunging fire; it was a theory. In his opinion, the Inflexible was one of the most indestructible fighting machines ever placed in the water, and if she were anchored at Spithead, our most powerful iron-clads might steam round her, using their best guns, until the whole of their ammunition was expended, without being able to reduce her to the condition feared by hon. Members; and how much more difficult would it be in action. The difference between theory and practice in seaman gunnery had been well exemplified in the recent action between the Shah and the Huasear, either of which theoretically ought to have been able to sink the other. Every shot that struck the Huasear would have gone through the target at Shooburyness, yet she had not been penetrated at all. If one of the Huascar's shot had hit the Shah, the latter would have gone to the bottom; but not one had hit her. Of course, if the Inflexible were to be rammed, she would be in as critical a position as any other ship would be in similar circumstances, but in no worse a one. It was a question for naval men. Naval men all thought the hon. Member for Pembroke deserved the greatest credit for bringing the matter forward; but they did not think the vessel unsafe. He had to congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings on having hit the right nail on the head in regard to one or two points. It was true that these heavy-armoured ships had too little fire. They could only fire once about every five minutes, and this would produce a bad effect on the men, who were in the dark, or, at least, in places lit up by candles. All ships of this kind ought, in his judgment, to be provided with three or four light guns or Gatlings, which would keep up a continuous and rapid fire. Again, he thought all first-class ships ought to be fitted with four torpedo boats, and with not fewer than four. The other day, at Chatham, he saw the Belleisle. She was one of the finest ships he had ever seen. She had speed, helm, very light draught, four heavy guns; she was short, being only 242 feet long, and she could go 12 knots an hour, which was a great point with us seamen. He hoped the First Lord would not think this was criticism of the Admiralty. He only made these remarks in order to strengthen the right hon. Gentleman's hands.

MR. SAMUDA,

referring to the very large question brought forward by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Seely) said, there were two questions before the House, each of which was of great interest both to the country and to the House; but he had not heard how they were, in future, to correct the faults that had been pointed out. He did not think that the French plan was likely to secure the country good ships; on the contrary, the result would be quite the reverse. Considerable advantage might be gained, however, by modifying the course we now pursued; but in a totally different direction from that which the hon. Gentleman had suggested. He adhered to the opinion he had often expressed, that, however excellent the Constructor's Department of the Admiralty might be, yet the country did not get that full amount of benefit it was capable of deriving by placing itself in other hands. Therefore, it ought not to trust itself to that department alone; but should also obtain the services of men who had passed their whole lives, and had exercised their minds, in carrying on works of the description that had to be carried out in the dockyards; whereas, the fact was those services were entirely disregarded and ignored. Turning to the next subject, he would regard it from a point of view altogether different from that of the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox). The noble Lord who had just spoken held the opinion that the Inflexible was an improvement on the vessels which had preceded it. Now, he (Mr. Samuda) did not hesitate to say he would much rather go to sea and have to undergo an engagement in the vessel commanded by the noble and gallant Lord the Member for Waterford (Lord Charles Beresford) than he would in the Inflexible. Indeed, he thought the noble and gallant Lord himself would have the same preference for his own ship. The Inflexible had arrived at a state of progress when an attempt ought to be made to render her valuable to the country, instead of seeking to destroy her altogether. We ought to ascertain how her errors might be palliated so as to make her useful, and endeavour to prevent them being repeated in future vessels. Up to the time when the Inflexible was built, the accepted experience which everybody acted upon was that it was absolutely indispensable that we should protect the entire water-line of a ship with armour, so as to prevent the possibility of explosive shells passing through unprotected parts. The Inflexible, however, was started on the principle that, as the power of guns had increased so much more rapidly than the power of armour, it was necessary to make the central citadel of this ship of a certain thickness of armour, without regard to the state of the ends of the vessel. The central battery was held to require 24 inches of armour, but this was put in the ship by means of two 12-inch slabs. He, however, contended it was a mistake to multiply "slabs" of armour in- stead of concentrating them into one; for experience had shown that the resistance of armour was as the square of the thickness of the armour. Consequently, two 12-inch separate pieces of armour would not offer much greater resistance than one 16-inch solid block. That being so, he contended that had the central battery of the Inflexible been made of solid armour instead of layers of armour, the ends of the vessel which were now unprotected might have carried some 10 inches of armour, and thus been proof against assault. If this had been done, and some other changes had been effected, which would only have increased the weight of armour now carried by 90 tons, the displacement would not have been disturbed to any appreciable extent, while all the vital parts of the vessel would have been protected from shell fire. That was a point they had long been seeking to attain. He believed it was impossible to send explosive shell through thick armour, though to send it through thin plate of five-eighths of an inch was not at all difficult. Although the noble Lord thought rightly that there was great difficulty in hitting particular cells, the vessel would be in no way protected from shells passing above the water-line to the main deck, where the mischief would be exactly the same as if they had landed in the interior of the ship below. That danger would be prevented by the plan he had pointed out, and it ought, therefore, to be guarded against, especially as it could be done with so little trouble. He objected to the Admiralty leaving a better system to adopt a worse one—a system by which the ship might be destroyed without the armour being penetrated. He did not desire that all the changes he had suggested should be made in the Inflexible; because, with the small addition on the main deck of a three-inch armour instead of the half-inch deck, we might have a ship which would fulfil many good conditions, and the country could afford any loss that might accrue from the vessel not being the first-rate ship of battle it was intended she should be. Then in ramming, actual destruction must follow, unless the bows were protected by armour; while, if that were done, the vessel would be perfectly safe. Now, these changes might easily be made; and, for his own part, he would not feel jealous if improvements from with- out were suggested to him, and he did not think that the Admiralty ought to refuse to do what would make the Inflexible a useful ship, or decline to accept the smallest change in deference to suggestions from outside. He had already mentioned the radical changes which ought to be made in the other ships of similar type of which he had spoken; and it would, he considered, be a most serious mistake if the Government allowed the Inflexible to be the starting point for a new class of ships, for it would be a step of retrogression, and would show that we were not benefiting by the experience which we had dearly bought. He had seen nothing to justify the change of view which had lately come over some persons with regard to armour-plating, as if subdivision in the size of the plate did not affect its strength. He recollected that the Americans put six 1-inch plates on their vessels instead of one 6-ineh plate, and the consequence was that a 68-pounder, the largest shot at the time, went through them like so many pieces of paper. But when we tried the experiment with a 6-inch solid plate, the only effect produced was an indentation 2½ inches deep. Since the resistance of the armour-plate was as the square of the depth, a plate of 2 inches would have a resisting power of 4; a plate of 4 inches, a resisting power of 16; and a plate of 16 inches, a resisting power of 256. The course with regard to the Ajax and Agamemnon was very simple; and he hoped that, so far as these vessels were concerned, the Board of Admiralty would listen to the suggestions which had been made to them, and not perpetuate in those vessels the defects of the Inflexible. Of one of these vessels, only 1,100 tons had been built; of the other, only 700. There was, therefore, no difficulty in carrying out in these vessels the changes he had indicated, or such other changes of the like kind as might be suggested by others. Even now the Inflexible might have its prow covered with armour, and would thus be rendered infinitely stronger and more efficient in its powers of defence.

MR. A. F. EGERTON

objected to the proposal of the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Seely), as he could not help thinking, and those who knew the public Service would agree with him, that it had a tendency, to a considerable extent, to disorganize a Department of that Service, when it knew that it was about to be subjected to a searching examination by a Committee of that House. The hon. Member wished this Committee to be appointed with the view, he (Mr. Egerton) supposed, of adopting his own opinion—that there should be placed by the side of the Constructor's Department another Constructor's Department, which was to sit upon all designs of ships, and ask for designs from sources outside the Admiralty.

MR. SEELY

explained that he had put forward no such view. What he urged was, that he thought the area of selection was too exclusive, and that designs should be sought for beyond, as well as within, the office at Whitehall, and that there ought to be some other body to come to a decision upon them.

MR. A. F. EGERTON

was sorry if he had mistaken the hon. Gentleman; but, at all events, what he proposed was, that the government of the Construction Department should be of a dual form, and that they should seek designs from outside. Well, he had a strong objection to that view, and he did not think it would work. They might strengthen the Constructor's Department, if they thought it too weak; but if the hon. Member's Motion was carried, the inevitable result would be that the First Lord would have to sit in judgment on the disputes that would constantly arise between the two departments; and hence the responsibility would be very much diminished. The hon. Member had commenced his criticisms by referring to the past history of shipbuilding under successive Boards of Admiralty, and he specially referred to the case of armoured ships. He (Mr. Egerton) did not deny, as the hon. Member had said, that the department had been somewhat slow to adopt certain inventions and improvements; but in the event they had. certainly produced good results. When, in 1854, the Admiralty sent a Fleet to sea during the Crimean War, that Fleet, both in the Mediterranean and the Baltic, was stronger than that of France and Russia; in fact, Russia could not dare to send out her Fleet to oppose it, and it was one which was worthy of the British nation. It was said the Warrior was somewhat late in the field; but the Admiralty, in his opinion, were perfectly justifiable in not at once coming to a decision on the subject, seeing that the armouring of ships was then in its infancy. With regard to coating wooden ships with armour, it was found impossible to build a sufficient number of iron ships to make a good show of a fleet in the face of an enemy, and therefore the Admiralty took the best course they could under the circumstances—they cut down old line-of-battle ships and coated them with iron. They were all good vessels for a long time, and one of them was even now afloat, and a good ship yet, and very useful—the Lord Warden; and when the hon. Member compared the operations of the English with those of the French Admiralty, he must remind him that the latter adopted precisely the same course in this respect, and their wooden ships must now be very much in the same state as the Ocean and Caledonia. With regard to any supposed blame attaching to the Admiralty at present, it should be remembered that great difficulty had been felt in this country in getting armour plates, because there were only two makers of them— the Messrs. Cammell, and Messrs. John Brown & Co.—and on those two firms the Admiralty were entirely dependent. It was therefore to be regretted that other firms had not entered into the manufacture of them. The hon. Member took a very gloomy view of the state of our armour-clad Fleet, and said that out of those which were built before 1876, we had only 12 fighting ships. He (Mr. Egerton) was not going into a long comparison of our ships. When people compared the merits of different ships of our Fleet, they appeared to form an ideal standard, and compared them with the best ships of our own Fleet; but they ought rather to compare them with the ships of foreign Powers. If they did that, they would find that this country came out of the comparison very favourably, and the ships in question would then appear very useful portions of the Navy of Great Britain. As regarded the ships built since 1876, the hon. Member took a more favourable view. He (Mr. Egerton) would not discuss the merits of the Alexandra, the Nelson, and the Northampton; but he must refer to what had been said with regard to the Inflexible. The noble Lord (Lord Henry Lennox), who spoke so ably, had made a powerful attack upon that vessel, and it fell to his (Mr. Egerton's) lot last year to enter into some defence of her. He might have spoken rather more warmly than he should have done; but he thought the Members of the Board of Admiralty might well feel, when that ship, which had been before the world for many years, was at last arriving at completion, that suddenly a very severe and violent attack was made on what they were always led to believe, when finished, would be the most powerful ship in the world. The attack was conducted with great ability, and the House of Commons was much interested in it. The Government had, therefore, been obliged, in a manner, to have a Committee appointed to sit upon the designs from which she had been built. Something had been said of the Order of Reference to that Committee. The Order of Reference was drawn up by the late lamented First Lord, and he (Mr. Egerton) himself had something to do with it. That Order of Reference had been much criticized by the noble Lord and the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed); but he (Mr. Egerton) could not admit the justice of the attack. He did not quite understand what it was in the terms of Reference that hon. Members did not like, nor what they would have wished them to have been. The facts were, that the Inflexible had been attacked on certain points, and on those alone, and the Reference was framed so as to embrace those points, in order that the Committee might have a distinct duty to perform; but it was not thought right to confine them to this duty, and therefore there was inserted the 3rd clause, which gave them almost unlimited power to discuss the nature and capacity of the ship as a man-of-war. The Reference was framed with the most perfect good faith, and with the most earnest desire that the Committee should have the utmost latitude to go into every point which it was desirable to investigate. The Committee followed their instructions with the greatest possible care, and, as there were two sides to a shield, so perhaps, the Admiralty saw one side of this Report, and their opponents the other. He regarded the Report as satisfactory so far as it confirmed the view of the Admiralty. Indeed, the summary of the Report was supposed to be so satisfactory to the Admiralty that there were some who imagined it had been drawn up by the Admiralty; but, like the body of the Report, it was drawn up by the Committee; and, perhaps, the reason why it appeared to be so favourable to the Admiralty was, that it omitted the details that were to be found in the Report. The questions that were put to the Committee were answered, and answered in a manner satisfactory to the Admiralty; and the view of the Committee with regard to shell-fire had been confirmed by the experience of the noble and gallant Lord sitting behind him. His own conclusion was, that the contingency of the destruction of the unarmoured ends and the water-logging of the ship was, though not absolutely impossible, next to impossible. With that conclusion they were satisfied, for it bore out the contention of the Admiralty, which wa3 not that the Inflexible was an unsinkable ship, but that she was the most powerful vessel afloat. In that view he remained unshaken. He did not say that the vessel could not be sunk or destroyed by torpedoes or heavy artillery; but she would require more means of destruction to make her sink than would any other vessel in the world at this time. As to the stability of the ship, the claim of Mr. Barnaby was confirmed, for the language of the Report, freely translated, meant that in the worst circumstances to which she could be reduced, there would still be a slight residuum of stability; but that was not all. They said, also, that that stability was very valuable, because, under certain circumstances, the Inflexible would be more likely to float than any other ship that could be reduced to anything like the same circumstances, and that with water flowing freely through both her ends, she would be likely to keep more upright than any other ship. That was how he read the Report, and that, at least, was in favour of the ship. Supposing, therefore, the ship was reduced to the worst state contemplated by those he was obliged to speak of respectfully as her opponents, she would still have some chance of being succoured by consorts, or taken to some port before she would be likely to sink. Therefore, the Report was favourable with regard to the stability of the ship. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Samuda) had asked whether the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty would consider the proposals made by the Committee for the further improvement of the Inflexible. The First Lord would, no doubt, take the greatest care that all the proposals made both by the Committee and by hon. Members that evening should receive the careful consideration of the Council of Construction and his Colleagues at the Admiralty. Nothing of the kind had been at present passed by. He hoped the result of the discussion would be that the House would be of opinion that we had a ship which, if not unsinkable, was the most powerful ship yet added to any Navy in the world. He could hardly compare her with other ships; for while scarcely any amount of artillery would sink her, three or four shots from her 80-ton gun might sink the Alexandra, the Sultan, or the Monarch. With regard to the management of the Dockyards, he (Mr. Egerton) did not agree that there ought to be a change from the present system of entrusting the management to naval superintendents; for he believed that naval officers who knew their business made as good and efficient managers as civilians were likely to be. A contrast had been made as to the cost of English and foreign Navies. The English, it was said, cost £11,000,000 a-year, and the French but £8,000,000. The comparison was hardly fair, considering the vast difference in the work to be performed, and the Colonies we had to protect. The iron-clads in the Mediterranean and the Channel constituted the chief expenditure of France, which, having few colonies, required only 118 unarmoured vessels, while we had 300. That accounted for the great difference between the expenditure of the two countries. He had made the best defence of the Inflexible that he could in present circumstances, and he hoped the House would give some weight to what he had said.

MR. E. J. REED

said, he hoped that in the few remarks he had to make he should do nothing to disturb the moderation that had prevailed in the discussion on this occasion; but he must say that in the short speech which had just been delivered justice had scarcely been done to the Inflexible, as it was now before the House. There were several points connected with it which really deserved the attention of Parliament, and which seriously raised the question whether criticism in that House of the proceed- ings of the Admiralty was to have any value or importance. There were some respects in which the House had not been fairly dealt with; and as regarded one of them, the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Egerton) spoke of a sudden attack made upon the Inflexible last year, when she had made very considerable progress, and he spoke with an apparent desire to reflect on those who drew attention to the ship. He (Mr. Reed) had a very simple answer to give to that statement. His answer was that he was assured over and over again within the Admiralty, by the Constructors, that she had abundant stability in the citadel to keep her afloat, no matter what injury might occur to her ends, and he believed what they told him, until he had an opportunity of making inquiry and ascertaining the facts. He hoped the First Lord of the Admiralty, for the sake of Parliamentary candour and honour, would pay attention to what he was about to bring before the House. It was a statement of great seriousness, and it contained a fact which he hoped no one would rise in his place to defend. Would the House believe that up to this moment they had never had a description of the state of the Inflexible's stability as it was on the date when The Times article first appeared last year, and when the debate arose in that House upon it? What had happened was this—The debate arose on the 18th of the month, and in the Parliamentary Papers which were produced subsequently, a Memorandum stood away at the bottom of a page in small type—a foot-note—giving the effect of the calculations then made in connection with the ship, and by virtue of which some little element of stability was found to remain in the citadel when the unarmoured ends were destroyed, and that infinitesimal element was obtained by alterations both in the arrangements and calculations in the ship made by the Admiralty between the time the question was brought before the House, and the time the Memorandum was written. He would now ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether he would tell them what the stability of the Inflexible was when the debate arose in that House? Why had they not been favoured with this information before now, as they ought to have been? Why was it that they had the question of the water-ballast always dragged in? There was a very good, or, rather, a very bad, reason, why the information had been kept back, and that reason was this—that at the time when the debate arose—when the statement in The Times was made—the ship was entirely without stability. It had none. He asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he would do something to clear up the question put to him by the noble Lord opposite (Lord Henry Lennox). He hoped the House would allow him to draw its attention to the actual position in which they stood with regard to the matter, as it was important they should understand it. What was the state of the case? The question had been what the Inflexible was to be, and when she was designed there was no difference of opinion between Mr. Barnaby and himself. Upon that question, the speech of the noble and gallant Lord the Member for Waterford (Lord Charles Beresford) threw no light. It was a most remarkable fact that from the moment he (Mr. Reed) spoke on this question last year, every official and responsible person had put out of sight, as a matter of no consequence, the very basis of the design which was put forward from the Constructor's Department. Was Parliament, he would seriously ask, to be treated with so little consideration that, after a design for the most important ship in the Navy had been put forward on a certain basis, and after Parliament had discovered that that basis had been wholly departed from, every officer responsible to the House, from the First Lord of the Admiralty down to the Constructor, might ignore the undertakings with which the ship was commenced, the agreements which had existed between the Constructors, and turn their attention to what the ship was, ignoring altogether the consideration what she was to be? His view was that if the Government did not do something to recognize their obligation to the House in this matter, their Parliamentary criticism, and even Parliament itself, was vain; and they might as well vote the Estimates enbloe without attempting to examine details. He said further that unless Government took some steps, at least to the extent of recognizing the position which he was representing, he, for one, should not come into that House at any future time to make any criticisms. He confessed his memory was busy when he heard the remarks of the noble and gallant Lord. He could remember the censures which had been passed upon himself (Mr. Reed) in connection with what he had said about the Captain; and he could recollect how in many cases the very naval officers who had censured him for criticizing the Captain before she was lost, then turned round after she was lost, and endeavoured to cast obloquy on him for not having sufficiently warned the Admiralty. When he heard the statement made by the noble and gallant Lord cheered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen), who was the person by whom the ship was proposed to the House, he began to rub his eyes and ask himself whether he was dreaming. The noble and gallant Lord spoke of this marvellous and invulnerable belt which could not be hit, but which occupied the position in which armour plating could be hit, and with fatal consequences; but the noble and gallant Lord told them, with a smiling air of superior information—with that almost rollicking confidence which characterized gentlemen of his class, and especially at a youthful period of their career—that, in effect, the Inflexible could not be hit where every other ship was in extreme danger of being hit. But that was not all. He (Mr. Reed) had had the honour and privilege of being associated with naval officers when connected with the Admiralty, more especially with reference to the probability of ships being struck at sea; and that which had been impressed upon him over and over again was that not only was a ship likely to be hit in the position in which the belt was placed, but even below it, and continual pressure had been put upon him to carry the armour plating down lower. Well, that being the case, what was his astonishment to hear the noble and gallant Lord announcing that the 200 feet of which he had spoken could not be hit. But the noble and gallant Lord unfortunately for himself sent a shell into the centre of his own theory, for he said that while the Inflexible could not be hit between wind and water, one shell or shot striking the Shah, an un-armoured ship, would send her to the bottom. [Lord CHARLES BERESFORD; I said if a shell struck her in a vital part.] He had no doubt the noble and gallant Lord meant to say if the shell had struck the vitals of the Shah; but he (Mr. Reed) was criticizing what he did say actually, and the noble and gallant Lord had said nothing of a vital part. All he could say was, that if they could construct ships like the Inflexible, which could not be hit, nothing could be easier than to build good sound, safe ships for Her Majesty's Government. If they could secure 200 feet from being struck, why should they have 100 feet of armour plating at all? Well, then as to the question of cork and canvas cells. In past times, the Admiralty had not scrupled to make experiments on devices for the resistance of shot. Why, he asked, had they not instituted experiments to ascertain the value of the cork and canvas of which they had heard so much? The Committee of 1871 represented the great desirability of experiments being made, and strenuous efforts had been made to secure that they should be. Why, therefore, had they not been made? The right hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for Stamford (Sir John Hay) had sat on a Committee to inquire into the subject of armour plates, and after a long and patient investigation, they had come to the conclusion that a single plate was the best. He challenged the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty to put a section of the Inflexible between wind and water, as she was to be constructed, down at Shoeburyness, and to let the artillery do their best or their worst with it. By the result of such an experiment, if made without Admiralty control, he was prepared to abide; but he was not prepared, without a protest, to see the Navy committed to this new defence, which had not only not. been tried, but which for some reason of their own the Admiralty went on refusing to test. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Admiralty complained that reference had been made to the Instructions given to the Committee by the Admiralty. What happened was this—Last year in his place in the House he pressed for the Instructions, but experienced considerable difficulty in the matter; ultimately, however, he received them before the end of the Session. On perusing them he found they were very deceptive, for there were two para- graphs which were evidently not written by the same pen which drew the last. The two he spoke of were so drawn that they might have been answered entirely in favour of the Admiralty, although the facts were entirely against the ship. He had another serious objection to make, not, of course, as an individual, but as a Member Parliament, in which character he was not prepared to submit to any obloquy or to offensive remarks which permanent officials or servants of the House might make against him. He was told at the Admiralty, when he asked about the Ajax and the Agamemnon, that what might be true of the Inflexible in the way of instability under certain conditions would be found to be at least equally true of the Ajax and Agamemnon. That was a serious thing to hear, and he called the attention of the Admiralty to the fact that no reference whatever was made to the Committee, in these Instructions, with respect to those ships. Indeed, up to this moment, they had not heard a syllable from any responsible lips as to the Ajax or the Agamemnon. The Admiralty replied that they had referred his letter to the Inflexible Committee, and he concluded that they would have the views of the Committee on the Ajax and the Agamemnon; but— and this was what he complained of— when he got the Report he found that the Committee were ordered not to inquire as to the two ships in question, and that, in fact, the receipt of his letter had not caused the Government to extend the scope of the inquiry in any respect. The consequence was, that the House had neither opinion nor information as to either the Ajax or the Agamemnon. He wished, therefore, to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether he intended to give such a form to Ministerial responsibility in that House as to refuse information on a subject which caused great anxiety and concern? If this was so, it had altogether altered his view of Ministerial responsibility; for he had thought that a Minister was the selected embodiment of all that was just and natural in the House, and was the protector of all that was dear to the House. In this instance, however, the heads of the Admiralty had become the instruments of their subordinates, and had kept back information from the House to which it was entitled. The Secretary to the Admiralty had made a strong point of the fact that the Inflexible was not intended to be an unsinkable ship, and seemed to think that was a complete answer to his (Mr. Reed's) objection. But that was not the question. The question was whether or not the Government had caused to be constructed, for the first time in the history of iron-clads, a cap-sizable ship, and this under the guise of having built a vessel which should be exceptionally protected against danger from shot and shell hurled against her. There was not a shadow of an answer to what he had said in the reply which the hon. Gentleman had just addressed to the House. If the hon. Gentleman thought to the contrary, it was clear that the whole point of last year's debate had gone past him like an idle dream. No doubt, if the Inflexible were kept in an upright position, she would take as long a time to sink as any other vessel; but what filled him (Mr. Reed) with horror and alarm was that, under the guise of giving the ship exceptional protection and a superiority to all other ships, they had narrowed down the armour to such an extent, and made the unarmoured parts so large, that for the first time our officers and seamen would be subjected to the danger of their vessel capsizing. The Board of Admiralty were living in a Fool's Paradise, if they supposed that the Report of the Committee on the ship was in her favour in comparison with what she was intended to be. What he complained of was that the Inflexible was put forward as being the finest iron-clad ship in the world, although she had in her the element of danger to which he had alluded —namely, the risk of capsizing. With regard to much in the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Seely) he agreed; but he just as distinctly disagreed with some other parts in it. One criticism he would make with regard to the speech, was that it was an unfortunate one to make just prior to a discussion as to the merits of the construction ofthe Inflexible. Something had been said about the weak bottom of the Invincible. Now, the whole story of that was that certain ships of that class—the Defence and the Resistance —had single bottoms; but that, in the case of the Invincible, it was thought advisable to try an additional bottom two or three feet from the other rather than stick to the original bottom of one thickness, and he had no doubt the alteration was conducive to safety. He was not, on light grounds, disposed to say anything that would produce a general distrust of the Admiralty, or cause its work to be criticized adversely. They were now building several vessels of which he did not approve; but he had never criticized them, because he did not think they embodied any great or dangerous novelties. It was easy to criticize designs and to suggest alterations here and there. If the Angel Gabriel came down from Heaven and turned Naval Constructor, and his designs were submitted to a Committee of 16, he believed the Committee would undertake to improve them. He believed that no abler men could be found than those in the Constructive Department of the Navy at the present time. In his knowledge of naval construction Mr. Barnaby was not to be surpassed, nor were his colleagues. But it must be remembered that that was no reason why hon. Members of the House of Commons should be deprived of their right to criticize the acts of that department on great occasions. We happened to live in times of rapid change, when a ship was a series of compromises, and when, consequently, criticism was not only legitimate but desirable; and able as those men were, he considered that in building the Inflexible they had produced a ship which was wanting in stability. When he and others complained of the course which had been taken in this matter, the Secretary of the Admiralty, instead of endeavouring to trample out criticism, and to put him (Mr. Reed) to obloquy, ought to have welcomed that criticism in the full assurance that, instead of having any desire to humiliate or to weaken the Admiralty, his object was to assist and to strengthen it. He must, however, warn the First Lord and his subordinates that if they completed the Inflexible, the Ajax, and the Agamemnon as they were, and without substantial improvements, particularly the two latter ships, they would have added to the Navy vessels which, whatever young and gallant Lords might say in their favour—and it was very genial and nice of them to come down to that House and use the language they did—would haunt those responsible for them all the rest of their lives, which would be a source of weakness rather than of strength, and would be viewed, when it was too late, with regret. In conclusion, he had just one word to say about the Committee, whom, by the way, he would uncommonly like to cross-examine about their Report. It was not the Committee they had been promised. The Duke of Richmond and Gordon, when questioned on the subject by the Duke of Somerset in the House of Lords, stated that the Committee would be composed of gentlemen in no way connected with the Admiralty'; but whom did they find on the Committee— an Admiral, an Admiralty pensioner, an Admiralty contractor, and an Admiralty employé.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, that seeing the responsibility which attached to him with reference to the construction of the ship which had formed the main topic of the debate—the Inflexible —he thought it only just to the hon. Member behind him (Mr. Reed), to the Government, and to the House, that he should offer some few remarks. The hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Seely), in his speech, said that he wished so to change the present arrangements as to know on whom the responsibility for the construction of a ship rested; but he (Mr. Goschen) would point out that, however desirable it might be to secure that end, looking at the different portions in the construction of a ship, it was almost impossible to fix the whole responsibility on any one man. A certain number of persons were bound to have a voice in the matter. The Director of Naval Ordnance must be responsible for the guns, and naval and other officers must state whether certain requirements were fulfilled. As regarded the main features of the Inflexible, however, he certainly thought that the Board of Admiralty of the day, and himself in particular, were responsible. They were responsible for the abandonment of side** armour and the adoption of a central citadel. With the First Lord, of course, rested the responsibility attaching to the adoption of a particular principle in a ship; but if he had laid it down that the ship was to be safe, though her unarmoured ends were shot away, and if, when the ship was completed, that condition had not been fulfilled, it was evident that the responsibility for the defect fell upon the Constructors. He did not understand whether his hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke claimed to be the designer of the general features of the Inflexible or not; but he wished to call the attention of the House to one point that had not been much touched upon— the fact that it was impossible to secure any advantage in iron-clads or ships in general without some corresponding disadvantage.

MR. E. J. REED

said, the Committee of Designs had distinctly refused to adopt the system until it had been subjected to experiment, and his position was that it never had been.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, his hon. Friend the Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Samuda) had declared that he preferred the Devastation to the Inflexible, because the former had her sides covered throughout. But the case stood thus— The Devastation on her unarmoured ends had got 9 or 10 inches of armour in thickness, and the Inflexible none; while, upon the other hand, the Inflexible had 24 inches over the vital parts, and the Devastation only 14. If, consequently, a shot were fired from the 80-ton gun at the 14-inch armour of the Devastation, she would go to the bottom at once, being penetrated in a vital part.

MR. SAMUDA

A shell exploding might send a ship to the bottom; but not a shot, and a shell could not penetrate and explode after doing so.

MR. GOSCHEN

I think a shot going through the boilers would send the ship down.

MR. SAMUDA

I have no objection to the right hon. Gentleman thinking so; but it is a fallacy notwithstanding.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, it stood to reason that what were termed the vital parts of the ship were called so because one or two shots would probably destroy, if they penetrated those parts. It was, therefore, the principle of the Inflexible to have the armour concentrated on the vital parts of the ship, and not on those parts which were less likely to be damaged by shot or shell. His hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke, who attached such great importance to the thickening of the armour in the vital parts would, he felt sure, concur with him in saying that that position was entirely correct. His hon. Friend, he might add, rather ridiculed the noble and gallant Lord opposite (Lord Charles Beresford) for stating that there would be great difficulty in hitting that portion of the Inflexible which was not protected by armour; but the question was not of one or two blows, because the whole point in the case of these ships was, that it required a very considerable number of shots and shells, they being divided into compartments, before any impression could be made upon them. This was the point of his argument—that 300 shots would be required to produce the disabled and water-logged state, and that was a calculation made on authority equal to that of the hon. Member for Pembroke. The statement, however, went further than that. Not only 300 shots, but 300 hitting shots, would be necessary before the unarmoured ends could be so completely gutted as to give no stability, and artillery officers would be able to calculate the total number of shots required to produce that result. Scientific men had assured him that it was, in effect, the Report of the Committee— that the risk of casualties to the unarmoured ends great enough to destroy the stability of the ship was so remote that it need not be taken into consideration. It was, in the opinion of the Committee, of less importance than other dangers, and it was more desirable to increase the weight of the guns and the speed and general capacity of the ship. He gave that for what it was worth, as the opinion of those who were in favour of the new system, which, he might remark, the Italians had carried into effect. He wished to know in what position they would be if they used armour in covering the ends of the ship, and were obliged in consequence to reduce the weight of the guns, or the thickness of the turrets? The result would be that, instead of the possibility of being disabled at the end of the action, the armour would be penetrated at the beginning. The ship, by-the-by, was not built as it had been originally designed, and his hon. Friend (Mr. Heed) had shown him the means of avoiding all responsibility in regard to it; but he should not in any way avail himself of them. His hon. Friend had threatened the present Admiralty and the Constructors with the prospect of being haunted by the Ajax and the Agamemnon for ever after- wards. He (Mr. Goschen) himself remembered the case of another ship, the anxiety with respect to which might well have taken a year from a man's life—he meant the Devastation. The House would recollect what had been said about that ship, how often she had been denounced, and how it had been said that he would be guilty of manslaughter if he sent her to sea; while others complained that if she were not commissioned, he would be responsible for weakening the power of the English Navy, and for not keeping pace with the progress of other nations. The Devastation might have been attacked much more fiercely than the Inflexible, yet she did her work so well that no one ever inquired about her. She was a very fast vessel, and, as he believed, quite one of the most powerful in their possession; but if the Admiralty had yielded to some noble Lords, right hon. and gallant Baronets, and hon. Members, as critics and advisers, they would have stopped the Devastation, and she would never have been in the Mediterranean at this time. And yet hon. Members opposite were to be haunted by the Inflexible! His hon. Friend would allow him not to retreat from his responsibility; for, for his own part, he did not wish the present Government to have the whole credit of that ship, which was a considerable advance on all her predecessors. It was a most important step to decide on increasing her armour and the weight of her guns, and what the House and the public ought to ask itself was whether, with her 80-ton guns and her 34-inches of armour, she was not a most powerful ship in spite of all possible contingencies? Now, with regard to the stability of the ship, what in particular laid it open to criticism now more than at the time when she was originally designed? One of the circumstances that had made the change was, he believed, the increase in the weight of her four guns from 60 to 80 tons. As at first designed, according to the original calculations, she was intended to carry 60-ton guns; but ultimately 80-ton guns were substituted for that armament—a change which made a total difference in weight of 200 tons, and altered the whole proportion of the ship. That change was not made during his tenure of office, and he could not, consequently, speak with certainty; but he understood that the Admiralty and the Constructors, having to provide for the extra 200 tons, had two courses before them, and had to choose between a reduction of the armour and a diminishing of the stability. They appeared to have determined to keep the ship in other respects as she was, and to increase the weight of the gun, and nevertheless they thought that she would have sufficient stability afterwards. What had subsequently occurred could be stated by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty. The noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox) said he (Mr. Goschen) had stated that the ship was to have the same stability when the unarmoured ends were shot away as she had before. That was not correct. He did not say that it was ever proposed that she would be able to fight as well with the two ends shot away as she was before, but that she ought to be able to float in safety. The hour was too late for him to go through the Report of the Committee in order to show how far that requisite was satisfied—namely, that she should have sufficient floating power in the event of her being reduced to that state; but he thought that neither the hon. Member for Pembroke nor any other hon. Member who had addressed the House, had sufficiently dwelt on the offensive power of that great and enormous ship. They had always spoken of her as if she was to be treated as a target, and remain in one position, to be fired into, without bringing her tremendous power into play. Now, it was that tremendous power by which they had set such store. And what adversaries was she intended to meet? If she met antagonists who had more protection for the sides, and less protection for the turrets and the boilers, she was certain to reach the turrets and the boilers of other ships before they had fired sufficient guns to destroy her unarmoured ends. His hon. Friend behind him drew a distinction between capsizing and sinking; but he presumed that in both cases she would go to the bottom. His hon. Friend said it would take a longer time in the one case than in the other. If the Shah or the Inconstant were shot through in a very vital part below the water-line, they would sink. But, although the hon. Member might hold that the Inflexible would capsize suddenly after her ends had been destroyed, he seemed entirely to overlook the fact that that was a very long process, because one or two shots would not effect it. One or two shots could not destroy the whole of the work, because it was admitted in evidence that as long as the cork remained in she would not be in that dangerous position. The contention was that all the iron inside remained, and the cork was shot out; but it was distinctly held by the naval men and the artillery officers that the Inflexible could not be reduced to that state in so short a space of time as could be regarded as a surprise. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Samuda) said that if the Admiralty had put one plate of 16 inches on the citadel instead of two plates 12 inches each, they would have got from their 16 inches the same amount of resisting power. That seemed to him a most extraordinary statement, and one which the First Lord of the Admiralty would probably notice; because, if it were correct, it would appear to be a gross blunder to put 24 inches of iron where 16 would suffice. If they had had 16 inches there, they might have had a great deal of iron to spare, and they might have used it in protecting the unarmoured ends, or in some other way, but not in putting it all in one spot. He believed that our naval Constructors had followed a different system from the Americans. They had 12 inches of armour, then 10 inches or 12 inches of teak backing, then another 12 inches of iron, and the rest of teak; the whole being infinitely stronger than 16 inches of plating. That was not a matter of theory, but actual experiments had been made at Shoeburyness specially to see what plan should be adopted; and if the officers of the Department could be convicted of putting 24 inches of iron where 16 would suffice, that would be a very grave charge indeed against them. It was a very great question of naval policy whether you ought to protect unarmoured ends, or to concentrate protection. Those who thought a great deal of the defensive armour of a ship said—"Let us sacrifice her offensive power, let us sacrifice her speed, or make some sacrifice in her guns, but let us protect these ends." Others said—"If we must make some sacrifice, we had better make a sacrifice in that which is improbable to occur at the end of the ship in order that we may have a more powerful ship afloat at the commencement of the action; at all events, we ought to go into action as powerful as any other country, with armour as thick as that of any other country." These were the views that had guided those who originally designed the ship, and he trusted that in the result they would prove to be correct.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Gorst.)

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he was sorry that his right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty had not had an opportunity of making his Statement, and especially that he had not had an opportunity of taking part in the preliminary discussion which had occupied so large a part of the evening, and on which he naturally wished to make some observations; but Her Majesty's Government were informed that a great many hon. Gentlemen desired to take part in the discussion, and it would be impossible to finish it to-night. Under those circumstances, Her Majesty's Government could not resist the Motion for Adjournment, and they proposed that the debate should be adjourned till Thursday.

Question put, and agreed to.

Debate adjourned till Wednesday.