§ SIR CHARLES NAPIERsaid, the House would recollect that there was a rather sharp debate the other evening on the subject of our gunboats. The Government must feel that the House was extremely indulgent on that occasion. The moment the Secretary to the Admiralty stated that the contractors had honestly intimated beforehand that they had not timber sufficiently seasoned to build the gunboats with, the House saw that no blame attached to the contractors as far as the employment of green timber was concerned. It also acquitted the Admiralty of any blame in the matter; for, as he himself stated at the time, if the gunboats had been built a year sooner, even with green timber, the Baltic campaign might have terminated differently. But the question of bad and fraudulent workmanship was a totally different thing. Ships built of unseasoned wood would not endanger the lives of their crews, at least for a certain number of years, but a terrible catastrophe might happen at any moment from bad construction. The Secretary to the Admiralty had declined to give the names of the builders of the defective gunboats. Why should those men be screened from public censure? He did not say that the contractors had any particular pecuniary interest in building the gunboats with short bolts or no bolts at all. They were probably sitting in their offices when the fraud was being carried on; but it might have been avoided by a moderate amount of care and supervision. The contractors might not have been personally cognizant of the fraud, but they were responsible for the work done in their establishments, and if their vessels were built badly that fact ought to be published to the world. Would any naval officer contend that any builder belonging to the Royal dockyards who should fasten his vessels with short bolts ought not to be immediately dismissed from the service? Moreover, by giving the names of the contractors the Government would show that they were doing everything they could to punish the guilty, and prevent them ever again having it in their power to endanger the lives of our seamen. The publication of names might appear a hard measure, but what would the drowning of hundreds of men have been? Each of our gunboats was manned by something like 150 men, whose lives, what with short 1309 bolts and bad workmanship, would have been at the mercy of the first gale of wind. It was wicked to conceal the names of the contractors, and why the Secretary to the Admiralty should have changed his mind on the subject he could not understand. The Admiralty could have no interest in withholding information from the public. He might be told that they were going to prosecute the guilty parties, provided the Law Officers thought a verdict could be got against them. He was too old to be deceived by that trick. The contractors would probably go to the Admiralty and express their sorrow for what had happened. Then the noble Secretary would throw the blame on the shipwrights; other business would intervene, and eventually the whole matter would be thrown aside. Now there was nothing like hitting the nail at the proper time, and he hoped the House would insist upon having the names of the contractors at once. He wished to know how many of our gunboats were fit for service. It had been stated in "another place" that we had 164 altogether. Two had been broken up; other two were undergoing the same process; and sixteen had been examined and repaired. Of the rest a hope was expressed that they might not be so bad. The House might depend upon it that all, whether in or out of the water, were equally defective. They ought to have been examined long ago. We had plenty of inspectors and surveyors for the purpose. At all events there could be no harm in giving the names of the contractors. He knew some of them, and would not conceal their names. The builder of the Caroline, in which 100 short bolts had been found, he believed was Mr. Green. If he was wrong, let the Secretary to the Admiralty set him right. But why should the name of Mr. Green alone be published to the world. He should like to know some of the others. This was an important matter, because the same thing might happen to ships which were now being repaired or converted. It was therefore high time that the country should know, without any concealment, the condition and state of repair of all the ships in the navy. Only on the preceding evening he was introduced to an American gentleman who owned more ships than there were in the United States Navy, and who, with another American and a Prussian gentleman, had recently visited Toulon. These gentlemen said that there were at work in the dockyards of that place no less 1310 than 14,000 men, besides 3,000 convicts, and that the French could in 14 days fit out and send to sea 20 sail of the line. By employing their large steam transports, which were from 260 to 300 feet long and were capable of carrying a large number of troops, and the vessels of the Messagerie Impériale they could in 14 days send to sea 30,000 men; and if they sent men from Cherbourg and Brest by railway they could, as these gentlemen asserted, do it in even a considerably shorter time. Well, that was the position in which we stood as regarded France. The right hon. Gentleman told them the other day that the country was not in a very safe state, and they had since heard that Russia was collecting an army on the banks of the Pruth, with what object it was not difficult to guess. The late Emperor of Russia was looking out for the death of "the sick man." But the sick man, by the aid of France and England, recovered for that time; but was there no reason to apprehend that the sick man might not be again ready to receive medicine, and that a severe dose might not be preparing for him? What security had we that Russia might not propose the same game to France that she wished us to join in? It might be France had declared she would enter into no arrangement for the dismemberment of Turkey; but they could all recollect that last year France, in spite of a declaration that she would not attack Austria, had deprived her of one of her fairest provinces. Again, they had been assured that the Emperor Napoleon had no designs upon Savoy and Nice, and yet shortly afterwards they saw those territories actually in his possession. In the same way he might now tell us that he was not going to do anything in the East, but had we any reason to trust him? Suppose there were a secret design on the part of Russia and Franco against any part of the dominions of the Porte—Egypt for instance—the first news that we should hear of it would be that an expedition had sailed for Alexandria, and perhaps had landed. We had a respectable naval power in the Mediterranean—12 sail of the line —but that would nut be sufficient to cope with the 30 sail which France could in a few days equip and send out from Toulon fully manned. It was well known that the first news we had here in England of the first Napoleon's expedition against Egypt was the intimation that he had landed there with an army of 40,000 men; and at that time, be it remembered, there was 1311 nothing but sailing ships, and very bad sailing ships too; and now, when the motive power was steam, the army might be transported there in less than a quarter the time. He thought the Government ought, at least, to be able to satisfy the House and the country as to what was the exact state of our navy—how many ships were efficient and sound, and how many they could man in a case of sudden emergency. In his opinion, they could not man many more than they had now in commission. The Government had not carried out the recommendations of the Manning Committee—indeed, they had done little or nothing towards it. He found that he was in error the other evening when he stated that we had 7,300 Coastguard men. What we really had was only 3,200 regular Coastguard men, 1,900 of the district ships' companies, 1,500 Revenue men-civilians who were not fit to go on board a man-of-war—and 600 men in the Revenue cutters. Thus, instead of the 12,000 men recommended by the Manning Commission, we had only about 6,000. The reason of this was that the qualification for entering the Coastguard was 10 years' service. If it was reduced to seven years we could, he was informed, speedily raise the whole 12,000 men. The noble Lord had accused him of insulting sailors by saying that the Coast Volunteers were not to be relied upon, but he was not to be humbugged by calling the Coast Volunteers sailors. He would proceed to notice some other points in which the recommendations of the Commission upon the Manning of the Navy had not been carried out.
§ MR. SPEAKERsaid, he must remind the hon. and gallant Admiral that the question before the House was, Whether a Return should be ordered of names of the gun and mortar vessels which had been constructed with short bolts, and not as to the Manning of the Navy generally.
§ SIR CHARLES NAPIERsaid, he had thought it was as well to take that opportunity of making a few observations on the general subject; but as Mr. Speaker ruled he was out of order he would content himself with submitting the Motion in the terms stated. He contended that there could be no valid reason for refusing to give the names, and if they were withheld by the Admiralty on the ground that the contractors were about to be prosecuted, he warned the noble Lord that he was about to enter on a long ob. The law officers must be consulted, inquiries would have to 1312 be made into the specifications according to which the contracts were undertaken, and time would be lost in every possible way. The builders, meanwhile, would represent that the fault lay altogether with the men who drove the bolts; that on their parts no disposition whatever existed to jeopardize the lives of brave men, but that it was impossible for them to exercise a never-failing supervision. In the end the whole affair would be shown to have originated in a misapprehension, the inquiry or prosecution would result in nothing, and the country and the House would not be a bit the wiser. In conclusion, he wished to obtain from the Admiralty, without any prevarication or subterfuge whatever, the names of the gun and mortar boats with the short bolts, and the names of the builders, together with a statement of the vessels in that class which were actually fit for service, and he, therefore, would move for Returns conveying that information.
§ MR. BENTINCKseconded the Motion.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That there he laid before this House, Returns of the names of the Gun and Mortar Boats with the short bolts, and the names of the Builders:
And, of those now fit for service.
§ LORD CLARENCE PAGETI hope the gallant Officer will not accuse the Admiralty of wishing, intentionally or otherwise, to screen any persons who may have not performed their contracts or have fallen short of their duty to the Government. It would not be fair to the Admiralty to do so; because, so far from entertaining any such desire, I beg to inform the gallant Admiral that before the circumstances were made known in this House, or received publicity in the public prints, the Admiralty had already taken measures to ascertain how far their powers extended of prosecuting such contractors as might appear to be deserving of punishment. The gallant Admiral asks mo to mention the names of the gunboats in which the short bolts were found, and the names of their builders. The Admiralty could have no objection whatever to make their names known to the House, if it were not that to do so while the matter is what may be called sub judice would be manifestly unfair to all parties. We are taking the opinions of the law officers as to the propriety of prosecuting certain individuals, and if I were now officially to give their names I should he unfairly prejudicing the public mind, and possibly that of the jury before whom their 1313 case may hereafter be tried; and I believe the House would feel this to be an act of great impropriety on my part. I am not prepared to say that we shall be able to prosecute any person; but, if the materials for establishing a case should exist, it is our full intention to bring whoever may be the offending parties to justice. I quite agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman a that considerable time must elapse before a complete legal case can be prepared; but this unavoidable delay ought not to make us forget the principle that every man is innocent until he is found guilty; whereas to couple the names of men with fraud is to condemn without granting them a fair hearing. As regards the gunboats, there can be no objection to granting, as far as our information extends, the Return which the gallant Admiral has asked for; but, knowing that many of these vessels have before now unexpectedly turned out to be defective, we must not be surprised if that Return should not be strictly correct. The gallant Admiral knows that a vessel may appear to be perfectly sound, and that defects, if they exist, cannot be discovered till we open her timbers and try. The condition of the gunboats is no new discovery. The late Board of Admiralty were aware that there was a great deal of decay among them, and they had no less than one hundred men engaged in their examination and repair. The present Board have increased that number of men to one hundred and fifty, and we are getting these vessels in hand one after the other as fast as we can. Those which are not sound will be repaired, and if—as was the case with some of the mortar boats— they are not worth repairing, the next best thing is to break them up. It is very easy to say—"State the number of efficient gunboats;" but are we to haul them up together, and to employ the whole of our men in the dockyards in examining them to the neglect of other duties? The Board of Admiralty is fully alive to the importance of this matter, and likewise to the necessity that justice should be done. If on examination we find we have no legal case, we shall offer no opposition to a Committee, or to any other inquiry which the House may desire; but, under present circumstances, and bearing in mind that we are acting under legal advice, I trust the gallant Admiral will not press his Motion.
§ LORD LOVAINEsaid, he did not attach much importance to the Returns them- 1314 selves, but he did not think the question had been put on a right footing by the noble Lord who had just sat down. The House did not ask the Government to say whether the contractors were guilty or not; what they wanted were the plain simple facts—in what gunboats had these defects of construction been found, and what were the names of the contractors who had sent out from their dockyards vessels defective in such important particulars? The House had not interfered, and he was not aware of any intention to interfere, with any decision which the Board of Admiralty might arrive at relative to the prosecution of the contractors; and the actual state of the gunboats could not be told until they had been thoroughly overhauled. But, unless the noble Lord declared that the production of these names would be pre judicial to the interest of justice, he should advise the gallant Admiral to persist in his Motion.
§ MR. BENTINCKsaid, nobody who was conversant with the proceedings of a dockyard could for a moment suppose that the contractors had been guilty of wilful fraud in substituting short bolts for those of a proper length, because no one would put himself in such a false position for the comparatively trifling amount which might thus be saved. Every shipwright in the yard would have to be an accomplice in such an act of spoliation, and would expect to share the spoil. But the charge which was preferred against the contractors was, that owing to their neglect and to the want of proper superintendence on their part, the lives of hundreds of men had been jeopardised; and the sooner an exposure of their negligence took place the better. The affair might be sub judice, and it might be a difficult task to decide who ought to be prosecuted and who not; but that was surely no reason why the House should not be enlightened upon a simple matter of fact—namely, what were the names of the gunboats in which the bolts were found to be short, and who were the contractors in whose yards they were built. That was all the information now sought, and its production could not interfere with any pending legal proceedings. The case might not be one of fraud against the contractors, but that there had been gross negligence nobody could deny, and they had, therefore, a perfect right to ask where the responsibility for that negligence and its consequent risk rested. The noble Lord (Lord C. Paget) was not sure that 1315 the Admiralty would be able to prosecute at all. That was an additional reason for granting this information, for if it was found that legal proceedings could not he taken the whole matter would fall to the ground, and nobody would be any the wiser. The required information could he obtained, indeed, in a roundabout way, but he hoped the noble Lord would re-consider his decision and consent to furnish it in a direct and official shape. He believed chat when the rest of the gunboats were examined the whole of them would be found to be thoroughly rotten, owing to the hasty manner in which they were built and the badness of the materials. But a larger and much more important question was involved in this matter. The noble Lord said the late Government were perfectly aware of the state of the gunboats. No doubt of that. Everybody was aware of it. Discussions took place on the subject in that House last Session, and the condition of the gunboats was a standing joke. But that being so, why had the survey of them been deferred till the present time, instead of taking place immediately, for the double object of ascertaining on what gunboats we might rely for purposes of defence, and of adopting prompt measures to arrest the progress of their decay? If a gunboat, found to be rotten in October, was not examined, and the bad material removed, till the following spring, her condition must have become tenfold worse in the interval. She would be touchwood from stem to stern, and not even worth burning. Why, then, were not immediate steps taken to repair the mischief as soon as it was discovered? Moreover, with the knowledge that they had hardly a gunboat that was worth a pinch of snuff, the Admiralty had been lately discharging thousands of shipwrights and other workmen. The noble Lord said it was impossible to employ the whole of the dockyard force in repairing gunboats; but it appeared, with all their admirable professions of anxiety to maintain the efficiency of the navy, the Board had been dismissing large numbers of artisans. In their wretched parsimony the Admiralty had put off the work required to place these gunboats in proper order until they were now found thoroughly rotten.
§ MR. WHITBREADsaid, the hon. Gentleman assumed, without evidence, that the whole of these gunboats were in a state of decay; but such was not the fact. Within the last three years seventeen or eighteen of them had been upon the China station, 1316 knocking about in all sorts of weather and tried in every conceivable way, and yet not one word of bad report had been sent home of them. There were also a vast number afloat in the harbours at home of which no bad report had been made. There were sixteen gunboats upon Haslar slip which had still to be examined. These things must, to a considerable extent, be a question of degree. The gallant Admiral thought that the moment one gunboat was found rotten all other work ought to have been suspended to see whether the rest were not in the same condition. [Sir C. NAPIER: No.] The Estimates were pretty large in amount, and perhaps the House might think the Government had gone on fast enough with this expenditure. With regard to the Returns asked for, it would be unfair to make public the names of the contractors who had built these particular boats, while the names of others were withheld who, for aught they knew, were equally guilty; moreover, the facts were not all collected. As he had said, some of the boats had not yet been examined. Besides, the House was perfectly satisfied the other night with the explanation that was given on the subject by the Government. If the Government found that they could not proceed with the prosecutions they would not object to a Committee. The gallant Officer and the hon. Gentleman said they only wanted facts, but the Admiralty could not give the facts without raising a storm of indignation throughout the country, which, whilst the matter was still under consideration, would be contrary to that spirit of fair play which characterized their proceedings. If the gallant Officer waited for ten days or a fort night he would have that information which if given now would have an appearance of vindictive hostility.
§ MR. H. TAYLORsaid, he thought the House could not, on mere hearsay, adopt a course amounting almost to the impeachment of a respectable body of men. The noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty had fairly answered the Motion before the House. No doubt, if the contractors had not faithfully executed their engagements proceedings would be taken against them; but in the meantime opportunity ought to be allowed for a proper inquiry into the state of the gunboats.
§ SIR MICHAEL SEYMOURsaid, he had had some twenty of these vesssels under his command, and must say that no boats could have done their work better as 1317 far as concerned their general character and structure. Many of them received hard knocks, and saw a good deal of rough service, and yet, although the whole of them came in sooner or later for casual repairs, he knew of no instance in which the timber used in making them had been found to be faulty. Indeed, in the main, they might be said to have been extremely well constructed. Many of them had been wholly stripped of their copper, and their only defect was a leakage from a Utile slack caulk—a circumstance not uncommon in contract-built ships. Caulking was nowhere done as well as in Her Majesty's dockyards. He could not well support the Motion of the gallant Admiral near him; and he hoped that, for the reasons stated by the Secretary to the Admiralty, it would not be pressed. The original sin of these vessels appeared to be the character of the timber of which some of them were built. It was well known that not only in Her Majesty's dockyards but in the private building yards of the country there was a lack of that properly seasoned timber which the undertaking of a large number of such boats would require. Now, in France it was not an unusual thing — in fact he believed it was the system—to give a salt water seasoning in the dockyards to a large quantity of timber, sufficient for the consumption of six or seven years. This was admirably arranged; and he never heard in France of such decay in ship timber as sometimes attacked our vessels. This plan was well worth the attention of the authorities.
§ MR. W. EWARTsaid, that what he was most anxious for was to have security for the future, and be hoped some system of rigid and thorough inspection of gunboats and vessels generally might be adopted, periodically reporting the results to that House. On the other side of the water experiments were constantly being made, not only in the building of ships, but in testing the strength of their sides; and he did not see why we should not in these matters emulate the activity of the Emperor of the French.
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONI think my hon. and gallant Friend will feel that this is merely a question of time—and that a very short time—not a question of granting or refusing information to the House. My noble Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty stated that in the opinion of the law officers of the Board the case of those whom it was now intended to prosecute would be 1318 prejudiced if a Return were laid before Parliament indicating that they were persons guilty of fraud, and permitted negligence in the construction of these vessels. Whether they have been guilty or not will he the subject of investigation by the prosecution it is intended to institute; and if my hon. and gallant Friend will only wait for a short period, be will find, in ten days or a fortnight, whether prosecutions can be instituted. If prosecutions can be instituted, the result of them will give much more ample and complete information than the Returns now called for. If it be found that there are no legal grounds on which a prosecution can be founded, then undoubtedly any primâ facie evidence which a Return can give might be properly laid before the House. But my hon. and gallant Friend will see that the Return at present would really not give the full information which is required, because it would state that in regard to a certain number of gunboats the deficiencies had been found, but until sixteen others, now about to be examined had been so, the Return would be incomplete; and therefore not only would it prejudice the case of those mentioned, but exempt and acquit others in the sixteen additional cases which might appear to be equally guilty when actually examined.
SIR FREDERIC SMITHsaid, that he thought it very desirable that they should have accounts kept of the repairs necessarily incurred by bad workmanship, distinct from those consequent on the time the boats had been in use. This was the only way of knowing how much blame was attributable to the contractors.
§ SIR CHARLES NAPIERsaid, the noble Lord the Secretary of the Admiralty and the hon. Gentleman one of the Lords of the Treasury (Mr. Whitbread) appeared to give a very lame excuse, and therefore the noble Lord came to the rescue. He had guarded himself particularly and most distinctly against accusing the contractors of fraud. All he wanted was the names of those contractors in whose yards the short bolts were used; and be could not sec why the names should not be given. He did not ask the names of all the builders, but only those who came before the public as having driven short bolts and bad fastenings into the gunboats. What this had to do with prosecutions he did not understand. As for a storm being raised against them, why, all he could say on the subject was, "the sooner the better;" because that 1319 storm would force the Admiralty to go on and bring them to punishment—the punishment which they would well deserve, of never being employed again. The noble Lord said it was very difficult to know, on looking at a ship, whether there was any defect in it. That was all the excuse the noble Lord could offer on behalf of the inspectors for permitting vessels to enter into the service which would sink when they had been twenty-four hours at sea. His hon. and gallant Friend (Sir M. Seymour) had spoken about the gunboats sent to China. It was not about them that he wanted to know anything, but about the gunboats now at home. The gunboats might have been examined more easily than any other class of vessels. If precautions had been taken at the proper time, the progress of the rot might have been stopped. After the observations of the noble Lord at the head of the Government, however, he would not divide the House, but he was not satisfied with the explanations that had been given; he thought the names of the builders of the faulty vessels ought to be known, in order that they might receive the reprehension which they deserved. Motion, by leave, withdrawn.