HC Deb 11 July 1859 vol 154 cc992-6
SIR CHARLES NAPIER

said, he entered the Service in 1800, and served afloat till 1818, and during all that period the bounty was in existence—£5 to able seamen, £3 or £2 10s. to others. The bounty, therefore, was no new thing in Her Majesty's service; and having been one of the first to recommend the late First Lord of the Admiralty to offer a bounty of £10 for able seamen entering the navy, expressed his approval of the course pursued by the late Government in that respect, and reminded the House that during the great war a bounty was always offered to pressed men who were willing to enter the navy. He thought it just, generous, and politic, that some bounty should also be given to men who were actually in the ships, but regretted that the Secretary of the Admiralty had not informed the House of the terms upon which it was to be granted. Sailors disliked uncertainty, and it was therefore desirable that such a statement should be made as soon as possible. Even with this bounty they had only got 5,000 men in three months, which proved that the bounty was not even now high enough. He was himself astonished that the men had not entered the navy in greater numbers. Since he moved for the Commission to inquire into the state of the navy something had been done, and when the recommendations of the Commissioners were thoroughly carried out and known in the service the navy would become a great deal more popular. The Secretary for the Admiralty said that we had twenty-six sail of the line ready for sea, fourteen of which, with several frigates, were in the Mediterranean. He hoped the ships in the Mediterranean were fully manned with good seamen, which had not been the case for some time past. The ships of the line at home were not manned, only four of them, with two frigates, being sent out to exercise and acquire a knowledge of discipline. The Government knew that France had thirty sail of the line in commission; and a gentleman who had been at Cronstadt a short time ago on commercial business had informed him, that while there he was in the habit of rowing past eleven Russian screw line-of-battle ships every morning, and that six or seven of them had their sails bent and their top-gallant-yards crossed, while the rest were getting on as expeditiously as possible. He was for having our fleet manned as expeditiously as possible: no one could say what might happen. He had derived great satisfaction from the speeches delivered in "another place" by Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Ellenborough, with every word of which he perfectly agreed, and he only wished that they could hear such speeches made in the House of Commons. They knew the marvellous celerity with which the French army had been brought, chiefly by way of Marseilles, into the field in Italy, where the Emperor had gained some of the greatest victories ever achieved, chiefly by the rapidity with which he had forestalled Austria; and if peace were now to be signed between the two Emperors, it was doubtful whether such a result would be advantageous to this country. It would release the French army from the contest in which they had so lately been employed. They well knew the feelings of the French people in this country and their fondness for war; they all suspected the ambition of the Emperor, and no one could tell what might happen in a short period. He should be sorry to say anything to create bad feeling between the two nations, but as a naval officer, knowing what ships and men could do, knowing that the French force used to be much inferior to ours, and hearing that it was now equal, and in some respects even considerably superior to ours, he could not look at such a state of things with a calm heart. He was sure our ships, if well manned and properly disciplined, would be what they were in former days; hut he saw with grief that our men did not come forward with the spirit they ought to evince, and put us in a position in which we might defy the whole world. The Secretary to the Admiralty had told them what was the strength of our fleet; but why did he not distinctly let them know what was the strength of the French fleet at present in commission and manned and ready for service, and what likewise was the strength of the Russian fleet in the same condition? There was no use in concealing from this country what the force of those countries was. If there was danger we ought to face it. Great Britain ought to be equal, as regarded her navy, to all other maritime nations together. France in former days was hardly reckoned as a maritime nation at all. Now she was about equal to ourselves. To fall in with a French ship and capture her used to be as certain as the day. When, however, we were able to do that the French navy was not in order. The Revolution drove out of the service all the officers of note and experience, their places being supplied by men unaccustomed to ships of war, and whose knowledge had been gained entirely in the merchant service. That was one of the causes why we then won all our actions so easily. But in the later years of the war, when the French Emperor sent single ships to sea to acquire discipline and efficiency, all the frigate actions were well fought, and we even had three or four drawn battles, which were quite new to us and caused us some surprise. Again, when we went to war with America, we found that our fleet was not in the state in which it ought to have been, and that we had rivals to contend with whose knowledge of seamanship had taught us a lesson which he had hoped would not have been forgotten. He had seen the navy of this country in great danger. During the war in Syria the French had a Mediterranean fleet of twenty ships of the line, while ours never consisted of more than seventeen, and even those insufficiently manned. Again, in the case of Tahiti, this country was in the greatest danger, because at that time we could produce only two sail of the line. During the Russian war we had a splendid fleet, but as soon as hostilities ceased it was paid off, which disgusted the men and rendered them averse to the service. We were now in a quandary again. The late Government were entitled to great credit for their exertions to man the fleet, and he trusted that the House of Commons would never again insist upon reducing the navy, whether in peace or in war. With respect to flogging, he was astonished at the list of punishments which the hon. Member for Lambeth had read that evening, and hoped that it was founded upon some mistake. There was no such thing as severity in the squadrons which he commanded in the Atlantic and the Baltic, and he never saw any necessity for it. He did not mean to say that corporal punishment could be entirely done away with in the navy, but he thought a great change ought to take place in the method of inflicting them, and saw no reason why courts-martial should not be introduced into the fleet. Such an alteration, he was convinced, would not injure discipline, while it would relieve captains of ships from a heavy responsibility. In conclusion the hon. and gallant Admiral repeated what he had formerly stated, that England ought not to be contented with fewer than fifty sail of the line afloat and perfectly manned —a force which, though small enough for her security, would enable her to defy the world.

MR. LINDSAY

thought the speech of the hon. and gallant Admiral was calculated to excite unnecessary alarm, which the Report of the Commission appointed by the late Government to inquire into the relative strength of the English and French navies afforded no ground for. He had a copy of their Report which bore date December, 1858, according to which England had 50 sail of the line afloat and building, and France 43 of the same class of vessels built and building; while England had 34 frigates built and building, and France 46. With subsequent additions England would have nearly 65 sail of the line; as 6 ships were now being converted in this country, 10 were building, and besides these we had 9 blockships, all screw, making a total of 65. As regarded ships of the line therefore we were superior to France, though inferior as to frigates. The total number of our steam vessels, comprising all kinds of fighting ships, was 464, whilst France had only 264. The number of our sailing ships of a fighting character was 296, against 136 possessed by France, or more than double. He could not understand what could induce France to engage in war with us, inasmuch as she could gain nothing by it. It would be a ruinous policy on her part for her own interest to attempt anything of the kind. Though it might be somewhat difficult to man our vessels in ordinary times, or to settle some paltry question at the antipodes, in the case of invasion did the hon. and gallant Admiral suppose that the 160,000 or 170,000 seamen in our merchant ships would not rise at once to man our ships? Why, there could be no difficulty whatever in procuring seamen for the purpose. Whilst there was no occasion whatsoever of alarm on the head of war, at the same time he should not wish to see the defences of the country in the state in which they were a few years ago. Even commercially speaking the country suffered seriously by those idle rumours of war. It was, therefore, a false economy not to maintain the navy in an efficient state. He thought that the £10 bounty given in a time of peace was a gross error; and though the bounty now promised might be considered a natural consequence, he considered it as grave a mistake as the original bounty that created it. This half bounty would never satisfy the men, and they would be forced to go a step further, and saddle upon the country an additional burden of £250,000. In his opinion it would be so much money thrown away.

Motion agreed to.