§ ADMIRAL WALCOTTI am desirous to call the attention of the Secretary of the Admiralty to a subject before which all others in my opinion sink into comparative insignificance. I mean the instruction of our officers in command of fleets or squadrons when engaging under steam. It occurs to me that a code of instructions and signals are absolutely necessary to secure that due preparation and uniformity of system so indispensably requisite in Her Majesty's fleets under the total change of circumstances in which we are now placed. The noble Lord is doubtless aware that a manual of this description has long since been drawn up by the French Minister of Marine, and that every officer is required to make himself conversant with it. What can we look forward to but disaster if we send fleets and squadrons into action without any clear or definite ideas of the duties of either admirals or captains? What should we think of an army in which the regiments were merely taught battalion exercise, but never brigaded or instructed in any manœuvres with large bodies of troops? And yet is not this exactly our own case at present? In my opinion we have everything to fear from the crude and discordant ideas of the generality of our own officers on this vital question, and the confusion which must inevitably prevail if some uniform system is not laid down for their guidance, Let me, therefore, most urgently entreat that the Admiralty will consider this as the point which most presses for immediate attention, and without which all our present efforts may become worse than useless. The Coast Guard now numbers from 4,000 to 6,000 men; and yet for some years past the ships on the books of which those men are serving or borne have not been at sea, and are consequently unaccustomed to the use of their "sea legs" aloft. All these Coast Guard ships might he sent to sea joined with the Channel fleet, and the service admitting of it, with a portion of the Mediterranean fleet, and go through the 1263 evolutions of which I have spoken, either off Cape Finisterre, or otherwise, as might he selected—evolutions which are necessary and highly important for the welfare and honour of the profession to which I have the honour to belong.