§ SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONEsaid, he rose to ask the Secretary to the Admi- 1768 ralty, The circumstances under which Her Majesty's Ship Prince Consort was ordered to Liverpool in November last, the state of the Ship when the orders reached Devonport, the period which elapsed before she was reported ready for sea, the state of the weather when she put to sea, whether she was officered and manned by her regular establishment or by a crew assembled for the occasion, the circumstances that occurred in the Irish Channel which caused her to put into Kingstown, whether since she returned she has not been found to have been in an unseaworthy condition on that occasion, and the nature of the repairs and alterations she received subsequent to her return, and before she was finally fitted for the pennant? It was necessary that he should explain his Question. Two cases had lately occurred, in the first of which one of Her Majesty's ships was lost, and in the second another was placed in the most serious jeopardy by being sent to render services for which there could have been no ostensible occasion, and services which, in one instance, it was perfectly impracticable and impossible for the vessel which was sent to perform. It might be recollected, that towards the end of November there were very heavy gales in the North Sea. At that time a considerable number of vessels, some of them fishing smacks, and other coasters, were blown off the coast and deemed either to be lost or in great danger, and their whereabouts unknown. The Admiralty were applied to to take measures for rescuing these vessels, and orders were sent to Berwick requiring a gunboat called the Lively to proceed to sea for the purpose of finding a number of these vessels whose locality was unknown, in a state of the weather when it was utterly impracticable for her to render any assistance to vessels which were themselves in a far more seaworthy condition than the one which was sent after them. The result was very much what might have been expected. The gunboat was lost under circumstances that were well known to the public; but by whose orders she was moved, or for what reason a vessel of such a character could have been sent on such a wildgoose chase, had never transpired. Indeed, while the Admiralty continued to be administered in an irresponsible manner, it was impossible to discover how and by what means Her Majesty's ships came to be put in danger. The second case was that of the Prince 1769 Consort. His information as to this case was derived from the public papers. It was stated that two steam rams, alleged to be constructed for the Confederate Government, were ordered to be detained at Liverpool, and that it was thought necessary to strengthen the force available for maintaining the capture, as it was believed that forcible possession would be taken of those steam rams in the harbour of Liverpool. That was the statement which was generally circulated. At that time the Prince Consort, which was then understood to be fitting for the second-class steam reserve, but was certainly not out of the hands of the shipwrights, was all of a sudden ordered to proceed towards the Mersey. The circumstances under which she started were, he believed, these:— The orders came down from London by telegraph, and a crew was instantly turned over from the Royal Albert and placed on board the ship. They were very good men and officers, he had no doubt; but the Prince Consort was in an incomplete state, and in the month of November, with the appearance of threatening weather, having just time to swing for her compasses, she was forced into the Irish Channel. It was also reported that her behaviour in the Irish Channel when a gale sprung up was bad, that she was so uneasy, that she shipped so much water, that she rolled the whole arc in six or eight seconds, that her scuppers were choked, and that the number of cocks and pipes with which she was fitted was such, that it would take the men three months to understand their use, whereas the ship's company had been turned over suddenly into a vessel with that novel and complicated machinery; that the result was, that in an ordinary gale of wind, in which a ship with close-reefed topsails might have been as safe as a duck, she was reduced to such a distressed state that, with her after furnaces extinguished, she was obliged to seek shelter in the anchorage off Kingstown harbour. He wished, therefore, to have from the Secretary of the Admiralty a categorical answer on these points; and if the noble Lord desired to give such an answer, he (Sir James Elphinstone) would move for the Reports of the officer who was in command of the ship; for he was convinced that there was no sailor in the House who would not agree with him, that to place, at a few hours' notice, a ship of that kind, in a rude and unfinished state, with a crew perfectly new to her, with officers who had 1770 not been together—to place her in a position of such jeopardy, was one of the most extraordinary exercises of power of which an Admiralty had ever been known to be guilty. But the House must, sooner or later, get at the source in the Admiralty from whom these orders emanated. It was all very well to go into a Committee-room,' and for one First Lord after another to come forward and tell them that they were responsible. Was there any sailor who would have ordered ships in such a condition to sea? Why, was it not monstrous to send a cripple to sea after seaworthy vessels? But that was not the only case. In 1857 a number of Dundee vessels were adrift, and then it was of importance for the Government to secure the votes of certain Liberal Members. In the middle of winter the Admiralty sent two sloops of war, the Salamander and the Bulldog, to cruise in the North Sea for the five missing Dundee vessels—totally forgetting that as soon as they reached latitude 60 they got into utter night. When they could not see the length of their own ships how could they possibly render assistance to others? Yet the safety of these ships and the lives of their crews had been imperilled by what he could not designate otherwise than as a most profligate proceeding, which no sailor ever could justify. These were cases which it was the duty of the House of Commons to investigate. Two of Her Majesty's ships were endangered, and, he had no hesitation in saying, for political purposes in both cases—in the one instance to oblige some Member of Parliament who wanted to favour his constituents by getting a man-of-war sent after missing merchant ships, and in the other for the purpose of "Bunkum," to show the American Government that we were determined to keep the rams in safe custody, although one had no rudder and the other was incapable of moving, by sending the Prince Consort to reinforce Her Majesty's ship Majestic, an 80-gun ship, under whose guns they were placed, backed by a sloop of war and a gunboat.