its dimensions, and the consequence must be that the timber will either be torn in pieces by the fastenings, or the fastenings will be loosened, or twisted, or broken by the shrinking of the timber. ⚫ Then, we are told, 'the resident overseer may reject any of the materials which appear to be defective.' We shall see presently the extent of the authority, and the use of this resident overseer; in the mean time we quote a passage from the Portsmouth officers on the defects of the Ajax.

It is evident that the defective state of the knees and riders proceeded from the unfitness of the materials themselves, the knees in particular being much forced, and grain cut, and appear many of them, as well as the riders, to have been originally converted from shakey timber., When the surveying officer was called upon for an explanation he stated in justification of his conduct,

That the unfitness and bad quality of the timber used on the above ship, neither were, nor could be, discovered by the surveying officers of the yard, as the defects (if any) are always hid by putty, and the surfaces of the beams, knees, riders, &c. covered over with three coats of paint.'

The evidence of Mr. Thomas Noakes, draftsman and surveyor to Messrs. Wigram and Green, and ship-joiner on his own bottom, will afford us considerable aid in estimating the value of the materials made use of in merchants' yards. He says that the scantlings used for 74-gun ships are smaller than formerly; that they prefer using timber that is nearly of the size wanted-'it is more durable because it is younger, and a young piece of timber is more durable than an old piece*-very logically concluded on the part of Mr. Thomas Noakes. Besides, it is best for the ship and best for the builder.' If this be so, what foolish people must our ancestors, whose 'wisdom' is so extravagantly bepraised by the ship-builders, have been! Better for the builder! no doubt it is; and nothing but sheer stupidity could have prevented our forefathers from discovering the obvious advantage of using young small timber, so soft, so sappy, so much easier to be procured, so much cheaper, so much more lightly to be worked:they, good souls, did not know the value of a plentiful crop of mushrooms, the infallible precursors of the modern fashionable disorder called the dry-rot-they, it would seem, foolishly imagined that it was 'better for the ship,' to hack and hew away all the sappy part of the timber, and in the simplicity of their bearts consoled themselves for this unnecessary drudgery by making the burden of their song,

'Heart of oak are our ships,' &c.

Minutes of Evidence, p. 338.

Thomas Noakes, however, when asked by the committee if he would give more for young timber than for old, if he were buying it, very emphatically and laconically answered, No. Mr. William Johnson, draftsman, purveyor, and converter for Mr. Pitcher's yard, entirely concurs with Mr. Thomas Noakes. I never buy,' says he, very large timber if they will let me refuse it.' 'What is your reason for that?' asks the committee-'It comes heavier to convert it is more expensive to convert than smaller timber.* The history of the 'dry rot' has received considerable lights from the young timber of Mr. William Johnson and Mr. Thomas Noakes and the three months' seasoning of Mr. Isaac Sparrow.

A few words will be sufficient to shew the superiority of king'sbuilt ships with regard to materials. It is the duty of the Commissioners of his Majesty's Navy to provide a stock of timber in the several dock-yards sufficient to allow a proper seasoning before it is converted into the several sizes and shapes for the different parts of the fabric. The active competition of the private builders in late years has made it necessary for them to contract with certain persons to deliver certain quantities within a given time; but not a stick of this timber is sent off to the yards until it has been examined by a purveyor of the navy, who has the pow er of rejecting whatever he may think proper. After this the tim ber master, under the master ship-wright, is made responsible for every piece that is received into the yard, and for its being properly arranged and stowed in the best manner for seasoning. The foreman of the works is directed to refuse any piece of timber from the timber-master that is unfit either from defects or dimen sions. When the frame timbers of a ship are prepared, they are then set up in their proper places, slightly attached together, but not fastened; and in this state they are allowed to stand for many months, sometimes for years, to undergo such farther seasoning as may be thought sufficient to prevent them from contracting or shrinking. They are then, in this dry and seasoned state, fastened together; a roof is thrown over the ship to keep out the rain; she is planked downwards to prevent any wet from lodging within; and she is not caulked till ready to be launched into the water. This is the practice now followed in the king's yards; whereas it is well known that a private builder never has, nor can he be expected to have, a stock of timber on hand fit for ships of the line, which he may never be called on to build, and consequently when called upon,he resorts to the practice pointed out by Messrs. Johnson, Noakes, and Sparrow.

Let us now inquire how the question stands with regard to workmanship. It is stated by the writer of the Remarks, and of

Minutes of Evidence, p. 423.

course by the learned counsel in his speech, that, in addition to the resident overseer, there are the carpenter, who is to sail in the ship, and the assistant surveyor of the navy who inspects twice a week, very minutely, every part of the work in its progress; that the principal surveyor visits the yard occasionally; that the intercourse and interchange of workmen between the king's and private yards are so frequent that the works in each may be said to be performed by one set of artificers: and that the ship is resurveyed after launching by the dock-yard officers-all which is proved by Mr. John Hillman and Mr. James Hughes, one of whom oversaw the building of the Albion, and the other that of the Dublin.

The resident overseer is a quarterman, one degree above a common carpenter; his salary is from £160 to £180 a year. This person is appointed to overlook, and to check, the work of a body of men who, from the evidence of John Pascal Larkins, Esq. shipowner and underwriter, are not very easily checked or controlled. They work, as this gentleman tells us, by task and job, or rather by the lump; they work so much earlier and so much later that they can earn three days work in one.-'I believe,' says he, 'a shipwright may earn a guinea a day in job work ;'* yet these are the men who are to be checked by the overseer with his £160 a year. The fact is, the resident overseer has little or no controul over them; he is afraid to interfere with their work; and although Mr. John Hillman and Mr. James Hughes, 'good easy men,' may have had the fortune to escape a broken head from a mallet, or a broken shin from a treenail, we dare say they have heard of others who in their zeal for the public service have been less lucky. We do not mean to cast any blame on the private builders on account of the imperfect inspection of the ship; the fault is in the system, and the only remedy that we know of is to relinquish altogether the building of ships of the line in these yards. We state not this from malice,' which is the only motive that Mr. Counsellor Adolphus can comprehend, but from a firm and decided conviction that large ships of war never can be built in the merchants' yards with that care and sufficiency which can alone fit them for their destined purpose.

6

But allowing every degree of authority and controul to the overseer, and of docility to the shipwrights, we maintain the utter impossibility of one man overlooking the work of the great number of men employed at the same time on the different parts of so large a machine as a seventy-four gun-ship. While superintending the work of one gang on one side of the ship, another gang on the

Minutes of Evidence, p. 122.

opposite side may be 'clenching devils,' as they did in the Albion,* under the inspection of Mr. John Hillman; or driving short bolts,

The reports of the surveying officers of Chatham-yard, on the defects of this ahip, will best illustrate the importance and value of the resident overseer's services, of the subsequent survey, and throw considerable light on the question of building ships of war in private yards.

Extract of a Copy of a Letter to the Navy board, Chatham-yard, 1st April, 1811. The Albion, under repair in this yard, from her extraordinary defects, calls for a minute inspection, and a particular description of the causes that may be discovered, that have led to such uncommon complaints, in order to prevent similar occur

rences.

'We have taken a strake out of her bottom, at the run of the first and second futtock heads, where we discovered that the usual mode of fastening the plank by single and double boring the timbers alternately has not been attended to, a large portion of the timbers being only single bored; of course the ship has been deprived of a considerable quantity of fastenings, and the treenails that are driven appear much crippled, from the strain that has been upon them; the plank at the run of the second futtock heads in particular, is not generally in contact with the timbers, nor was it in the first instance, for we discover that it is not in places the proper thickness.

The butts of the wales and the materials above are drawn apart in many places by the hogging of the ship, so that recourse has been had to the letting in of pieces at the butts, to make the caulking stand.

In the hold, the foot-waling was from the orlop clamps down, a mass of defective matter; we in consequence unbolted the riders, and took it out, when we discovered the timbers of the frame, and the opening sodden with filth; had the ship been sunk in mud, her state could not have been worse; in places she appears to have been a prey to insects of different descriptions, for some of the openings were absolutely full of their remains.

In unbolting the riders, hooks and crutches, we found many bolts broken, some short, and a few termed devils, or in other words false clenches in the crutches we also found several bolts ragged, which we imagined was done in consequence of their being bored for with an augur of a larger diameter than the bolt required, as rope yarns were wrapped round the bolts so served. A piece of gan-deck spirketting and also a shift of foot waling was discovered to be chopped in, termed a Spa

nish burn.

The stern frame of the ship is fallen aft many inches, which may be seen by the carling under the gun-deck beam which rises to the throat of the deck transoms.

The thwartship's arms of the knees of the various decks are twisted from the sides of the beams, many of them sprung so, as to be of little use to the ship; and a considerable quantity of the fore and aft bolts broken, many of the beams defective, and departed considerably from their original round, particularly the orlop; in fact, this ship presents a fabric of complete debility, arising principally from the insuffi ciency of the workmanship.

With respect to the devil bolts, as they are termed, or false clenches, we conceive the act so truly criminal that we are humbly of opinion that the legislature should provide a punishment proportionate to the offence.

"If it is judged proper to enact a penalty to prevent accidents in cases where the common stages are loaded with passengers beyond a limited number, of how much more consequence is it to prevent acts which may be the destruction of hundreds (Signed) R.SEPPINGS, E. P. HELLYER, W. HUNT. Queen,

enters

{

THOMAS PARROTT, Carpenters of the Ramillies,

JOSEPH SPECK,

RICHARD PRICE,

Albion.'

The warrant for the Navy Board ordering the repairs of this ship did not, it seems, embrace all that was necessary to be done; upon which the surveying offieers again addressed the Board as follows:

We can with great truth assure your Honourable Board that our reason for making the representation was grounded on no other motive than that of doing our duty in

as was the case in the Ardent; or filling up bolt holes and the rifts in shakey timber, with 'paint and putty. We anticipate the reply there is the carpenter also to superintend the building of the ship-the carpenter who is to sail in her'-' aye,' exclaims Mr. Adolphus with seeming exultation, 'to risk his own life upon the workmanship which he superintends.' This great hit, however, unfortunately for bis argument, is not founded in fact; it so happens that nine times out of ten the carpenter appointed to a ship when building does not sail in her, but is one on whom, for long service, hurts, age, or infirmity, the appointment is conferred as a mere matter of favour; and when the ship is ready for launching a more active carpenter supersedes him.

The assistant surveyor neither does, nor can he, inspect minutely; he does not go twice a week, nor always twice a month; the principal surveyor may go twice, or not at all, during the time the ship is on the stocks; nor would his visit be of much use. Equally unsatisfactory is the resurvey of the ship, when she is received into the king's yards. We shall quote the reply of the builder and his assistants, when called on to explain their conduct with regard to the Rodney.

4

The Rodney was carefully inspected by us in the usual manner, and reported that, as far as practicable for us to form an opinion, the works appeared to be executed in a workmanlike manner, and agreeably to the terms of the contract; but it is not possible for us to form any opinion of the internal parts of the work, which can be known only to those who inspect the whole of the work, in the progress of her building."

case where great neglect had taken place, from which the government has sustained a considerable loss and a ship's company narrowly escaped shipwreck.

"We had flattered ourselves that our survey would have met with your Honourable Board's approbation, and so we humbly conceive it would, but we suspect representations have been made to counteract what we have stated; if that be the case, we should be happy to meet those on the spot that have advanced a contrary doctrine. Our suspicions that a different report has been given, arise from the mode of repair you have been pleased to direct; and which mode we consider has been adopted ia consequence of representations made by the assistant surveyor of the navy, who has, with the merchant ship-builders, visited this yard since our statement.

We have opened her abaft since our survey, by which we have discovered great additional deficiency of workmanship, and should contrary opinions have been given to that we have advanced, we are of opinion, those that have offered them should come and view the ship.

(Signed)

R. SEPPINGS, E. P. HELLYER, W. HUNT.' These horrible devils are not confined to the Albion. In the surveying officers' reports on the Ardent is the following passage: several of the fore and aft bolts of the gun, upper and quarter-decks, also the forecastle, worked wholly out, and others partly so, in consequence of many of the bolts being short-some that worked out were only five inches and others nine inches long.

(Signed) JOSEPH TUCKER, J. ANCELL, EDWARD CHURCHILL, JAMESJAGOE."

How very imperfect an estimate is to be formed from the survey of a ship may be collected from the following fact: four seventy-four gun-ships, the Resolution, the