§ MR. HANBURY-TRACYsaid, that the noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty in his speech last March had made 870 certain statements with regard to Mr. Henwood's plans which had given pain to that gentleman, and he therefore wished to give the noble Lord the opportunity of explaining or qualifying those statements in any particulars which might seem to him desirable. The hon. Member read some extracts from the speech referred to of Lord Henry Lennox, and in conclusion asked:—1, Whether, in making his statement on moving the Naval Estimates in March last, the noble Lord was not led into error when he alluded to Mr. Henwood's scheme for converting screw line-of-battle ships into sea-going Monitors; 2, Whether, in the case of the Victoria, the armour plates would not be less than 500 tons, and not, as he then stated, 1,055 tons; 3, Whether it was not true that it had never been proposed by Mr. Henwood to fit small ships, such as the London and Conqueror, with three turrets, but with two only; 4, Whether the deck referred to in his statement was not the gun or monitor deck, over which the guns of the turret are fired, and which would, in all cases, be not less than 3 feet 6 inches above the load water line, the upper deck being 16 feet above the sea; 5, Whether he was not misinformed when he said that Mr. Henwood had no experience in designing or in building ships of war; and 6, Whether it was the intention of the Admiralty to give Mr. Henwood an opportunity of testing his scheme of conversion?
LORD HENRY LENNOXsaid, that by the courtesy of his hon. and gallant Friend he had been placed that day in possession of the various Questions which he had now addressed to him. He was happy to give his hon. and gallant Friend a very decided answer as to the first point. Shortly after his speech was delivered the Engineer drew a very vivacious, but not very complimentary picture of the statements he had made; and this induced him to refer for corroboration or otherwise to the professional officers who had supplied him with his data. These officers at once declared in writing their willingness to adhere to the figures which they had previously furnished. And, in support of this view, he might mention that Mr. Henwood had thought it right to modify the plans which were the subject of his official criticism, by sending in amended calculations professing to take some considerable amount of weight off the hulls of the ships he proposed to convert. His hon. and gallant Friend was probably not in the House when he made the statement with 871 regard to the Victoria; but what he then said was in exact accordance with the fact—namely, that the heavy armour plates for the sides of the ship amounted to 501 tons, and the light plates to 554, making a total of 1,055 tons. As to the question of whether the smaller ships should be fitted with three turrets, or only with two, the terms of Mr. Henwood's proposal to the Admiralty were to convert a three-decker into a ship with four turrets, and a two-decker into a ship with two turrets. He sent in drawings or designs for the larger ship, but none for the smaller. It was an error to describe the London and the Conqueror as belonging to a small class of line-of-battle ships, for the Conqueror's tonnage was 3,270, and the tonnage of the small class of line-of-battle ships was only 2,650. With respect to the fourth question, he begged to state that he had referred to the gun deck, and he dissented from the hon. Gentleman's statement that the gun deck would in all cases be not less than 3 feet 6 inches above the load water line, for the calculation was that under the most favourable circumstances it would only be 2 feet 8 inches, and the height of the hurricane deck above the sea must depend on the height of the gun deck. With regard to the fifth question, he had to observe that he was still ignorant that Mr. Henwood, though an eminent shipbuilder, had ever designed or built large men-of-war. There was a war vessel for which Mr. Henwood took credit, and the disaster which happened to the Affondatore Mr. Henwood attributed to his plans being altered by the Italian authorities. As to the sixth question, whether the Admirality intended to give Mr. Henwood an opportunity of testing his scheme of conversion, he could only say that the Admiralty were most anxious to see Mr. Henwood mature his plans; but they were not prepared, so long as the drawings and calculations as to weight and displacement were erroneous in the opinion of the professional officers of the Admiralty, to hand over to Mr. Henwood a ship of a considerable number of tons to be dealt with as he pleased. Mr. Henwood's last design was under consideration.