HC Deb 24 February 1879 vol 243 cc1651-2
LORD HENRY LENNOX

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether he could give the House any information as to the decision of the Committee who inquired into the explosion on board the "Thunderer"?

MR. W. H. SMITH

Sir, the Report of the Committee and full Minutes of the proceedings of the Committee appointed to inquire into the explosion on board the Thunderer arrived at the Admiralty this morning. The documents are exceedingly voluminous, containing several hundred manuscript pages. I have not yet had time to read them through, but I have ordered them to be printed immediately. I trust in a few days to be able to lay the whole, or a great portion, of them upon the Table. The Committee report the cause of the accident to be as follows:— The Committee have now to report the cause which they are unanimously convinced burst the gun was that the gun, having missed fire at the time of the electrical broadside, and this misfire not having been noticed, the gun was presented to receive the full charge and empty common shell for the independent firing, and did receive this charge and shell while the battering charge and the palliser shell wore still in the gun. I am not yet able to inform the House as to the nature of the evidence which was sufficient to convince the Committee that this was the cause of the accident; but I may state that their conviction was arrived at in the most satisfactory manner, each member of the Committee separately writing down his opinion and handing it to the secretary without communicating its nature to the others. Singular enough, their opinion was unanimous. Experiments have been made with the view of preventing a recurrence of the accident; but the Committee have recommended that further experiments should be made. The whole matter will receive the very careful consideration of the Admiralty. As to breech and muzzle-loading guns, the Secretary of State for War stated a few days ago that the War Department were considering the question of breech-loading ordnance, and the Admiralty are in communication with the War Department to see whether it will be desirable to extend the system to guns on board iron-clads now building.