Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

In the king's yards, however, there is so complete a system of inspection and responsibility, as to make it quite impossible to slur over the workmanship in the same slovenly manner which is practised in the private yards. The master shipwright is charged with the general and unremitting superintendence of all the works in each yard; his assistants superintend and controul the foreman of the work, the foreman the quarterman, and the quartermen are responsible for their respective gangs, to whom they allot the work they have to do, which is generally done by task and job, and not by the lump, as in the private yards. The quartermen, being salary officers, have no participation in the earnings of the gang, no interest in the work being slovenly or rapidly performed. They are, on the contrary, deeply interested in seeing that the work be well done, as, on their attention in this respect, their character and promotion wholly depend. But the effectual superintendence of the workmanship, by responsible quartermen, is not all-the work when done is actually measured by another set of salary officers, called sub-measurers, who take a minute account of every piece of timber and plank that enters into the ship, every hole that is bored, every bolt that is clenched, every treenail that is driven, each of which has its appropriate price, according to its dimensions, adjusted with the greatest nicety from long experience, and printed in a set of tables, so that every man or gang of men may know precisely what he or they ought to receive for every description of work, whether new or old. The hours of labour are precisely regulated, and the utmost that a shipwright can earn is from six to eight shillings a day. He must be punctual in his attendance and decent and orderly in his behaviour; and it is this restraint on his conduct and his earnings that makes the shipwright prefer the free and irregular life he is permitted to lead in the private yards, although in the latter no provision is made, as in the king's yards, after a certain number of years service, for old age or infirmity.

If,after this comparison,and the practical experience of a twenty years war, there are still to be found those who favour the building of king's ships in private yards, such persons must shut their ears against all argument and fact, or be, what the writer of the Remarks' hardily asserts those to be who oppose his clients, swayed by prejudice or interest.'

6

But, then, it is said, those merchants' yards are necessary to the existence of the king's yards, as being an asylum for shipwrights

Thunderer, the Monarch and the Culloden were examined by the dock-yard officers, and reported as fit to be cut down and converted into razées, to be employed against the large American frigates. They were taken in succession into a dock for that purpose, but every one of them, on being opened, was found unfit for further service, and ordered to be broken up.

It is equally im

discharged from the latter in time of peace. portant to the existence of the navy,' says Mr. Harrison, as a fabFication, that the ship-building in this country should be maintained to the full extent, as a nursery to the naval yards, and as a receptacle of persons out of employment in the time of peace, as that the nursery of seamen should be encouraged to man the navy for service:' and he tells us that, if you lose sight of this policy, you will destroy the means of being able to make any sudden exertion; you will transfer the shipwrights to other countries, where they would be gladly received.* And the writer of the 'Remarks' says, that the emigration in 1802 must be in the recollection of every one acquainted with maritime affairs.' He adds, in a note, "See the letter addressed to the Admiralty in this year (1802) on that subject.' Now we shall take leave to instruct the learned counsel, and the agent, who is utterly unacquainted with maritime affairs,' that their nursery and their asylum, and their receptacle are purely ideal; that instead of men dischar ged from the king's yards finding an asylum in merchant's yards, the king's yards, as we shall shew, are the asylum for the reception of those who are turned adrift from the private yards when their employers have no longer occasion for their services. We can inform them that neither at the close of the American war, nor at the peace of Amiens, were any shipwrights discharged from the king's yards: and we defy them to mention the name of a single shipwright of any character that emigrated in 1802. We find too, on inquiry, that no such letter was written to or received by the Admiralty as that which we are desired 'to see,' on any such subject; and that, instead of discharging shipwrights, new regulations were made at that time for the better encouragement of entering apprentices to the shipwrights in the king's yards. We believe it neither is nor was intended to discharge shipwrights at the conclusion of a war which has raised the navy to its present state of unparalleled magnitude; at least we may safely say that to preserve that magnificent fleet, and keep it fit for service on any emergency, will afford ample employment; and this, in our minds, is a wiser policy than that of putting trust on the merchants' yards for any sudden exertion.' The king's dock-yards ought to be, and we trust they hereafter will be, their own nursery for shipwrights. To prepare and place in high order one hundred sail of the line of well-built and well-seasoned ships; to break up those which are no longer fit for service or deserving of repair; and to complete the works which we understand have been planned out in the several dock-yards; to render those establishments complete for all the purposes of his Majesty's naval service, and in

Speech of Mr. Harrison, p. 21.

dependent of the merchant builders, except in the building of sloops and smaller vessels, on which alone they ought to be employed;-these are the surest means of obtaining a durable navy which may bid defiance to all the navies in the universe.

But, says the learned counsel, these discharged men will be told 'that in France and Holland they will be received with open arms.' We can easily believe that there are never wanting those who are ready to mislead by evil suggestions. We ask, however, what should they do in France? In France they have had shipwrights to construct a navy since the battle of Trafalgar, which had nearly annihilated their former one, amounting to more than 100 sail ofthe line and 70 frigates; of these it appears their peace esta blishment is to consist only of 13 sail of the line and 21 frigates, In France, therefore, we presume there must be a greater want of work than of shipwrights; and as to the Dutch, we are greatly mistaken if we do not very shortly see their ships of war conver ted into carriers of coffee, tea, and spices; at any rate, they have no money to lay out on their navy, or to give employment to their own discharged' shipwrights. We said that America has more shipwrights than can find employment, and we say so still; the writer of the 'Remarks,' with his usual talent for misrepresentation makes us say, 'America is indifferent about seducing English subjects into the snare of citizenship.' We presume to know as much as, perhaps a little more than, this agent of the ship-builders, of American affairs; and when we spoke of shipwrights not being wanted there, we meant no reference to those deluded men whe have thrown themselves in the way of being transported into the back settlements to hew down trees, and scalp Indians at so many dollars a head, provided they are killed, in conformity to the American Game Laws, ' before the 15th of June.**

6

6

3. The pretended superiority of Thames-built merchant ships over teak-built ships is a point which they now seem to have almost abandoned. It formed no part of the learned counsel's opening speech, and Mr. Adolphus, oddly enough, makes the superior goodness of teak-built ships a reason why they should not be employed. The committee, however, put to Mr. John Hillman this question. After a given number of voyages, what have you found the state of a teak ship, as compared with the state of British ships?' Answer. A teak ship, after she has performed six voyages, is equal to one of ours after she has performed three.' Mr. Larkins, ship-owner, considers a teak ship to last double the time, with less repairs, of a Thames-built ship; and Mr. Walker, another ship-owner, states his having contracted for a 1200 ton ship in

* See our last Number, p. 582,

Calcutta, to be built of saul, sissoo, and teak, which he concludes' from every information that he has procured, will last far longer than a British-built ship, the workmanship being of a very superior kind yet this officious agent of the ship-builders, with characteristic impertinence, thinks it to animadvert on our having observed that Calcutta-built ships, though not to be compared with those built at Bombay, are excellent. In the true spirit of misrepresentation he likewise accuses us of such malevolence as none but a demon is supposed to possess,' for having stated a well-known fact, that, in the course of ten years, twelve Thames-built Indiamen had foundered at sea, in which upwards of two thousand persons perished. We gave their names, their ages, their tonnage, and the dates of their loss, without inference or surmise, but merely as an historical event, militating against the pretended established good character of Thames-built ships; the fact admitted not of refutation; it could not be denied; and yet it is set down as one of our calumnies'-nay 'a coarse and venemous calumny,' nade, as he says, to introduce and grace the assertion,that, with one solitary exception, there is no instance on record of a Bombay-built teak merchant ship having foundered at sea.' We repeat the assertion; but deny that it was made for any such purpose. We are not so silly as to imagine that there is any charm in teak to prevent ships built of that wood from foundering, but we do say that the quality it possesses of not shrinking under any circumstances, and the very superior workmanship of India-built ships, enable them to resist the violence of a tempes.uous sea which would overwhelm an unseasoned and consequently weak oak-built ship. If the English builders are not satisfied with the comparison we have already made, we will furnish them with a very remarkable case in point, which they may again instruct their agent to designate as 'calumny,' or 'malevolence,' or any other abusive name they think fit. The Dover and the Chichester, one Indian, the other European-built, were driven on shore at Madras in 1811. The Chichester was speedily dashed to atoms, but the Dover resisted for months the most violent surf that is probably known in the whole world. Carpenters endeavoured in vain. to take her in pieces, which at length was only effected by blowing her up with gunpowder. This ship was twenty years old. We know not for what purpose the Reports of the Committee of Shipping' are printed in the Minutes of Evidence--not with a view surely of exculpating the builders of the ships that foundered; for they do no such thing; they are in fact mere matters of official form, written out by a clerk and signed by the committee: take for instance the substance of that respecting the loss of the Prince of Wales.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

The committee report that they have reason to believe that all the persons who were on board the Prince of Wales, at the time of her loss, have perished; and that, as the occasion and circumstances relating to her loss are wholly unknown, there is an impossibility of inquiring satisfactorily into the loss of the said ship. The committee further report that they are fully satisfied that the ship was stored in a sufficient manner at her outfit for her voyage, and that, consequently, no blame can attach to the owners; and that, from the experience and ability of the commander and officers, it is reasonably to be inferred that no blame attaches to them.'*

Here we find no acquittal of the builders; and if blame can be supposed to attach any where, when a ship is well stored and well officered, the inference is obvious where we ought to fix it.

[ocr errors]

While on this point we cannot refrain from observing that Mr. Adolphus is just as much addicted to misrepresentation as the agent himself. He says the loss of these ships is made a foundation of a complaint that they have been so weak and imperfectly built (for that is the phrase used), &c.' The assertion which this gentleman here hazards is totally destitute of truththe fact was mentioned, not as the foundation of a complaint, (though God knows the foundation was solid enough for that purpose,) but to shew that whatever truth there might once be in the boast of the Thames builders that none of their ships were ever known to founder at sea, that boast was no longer applicable, for that no less than twelve had gone down within the present century.' It is not true that the phrase used' was weak and imperfectly built-that calumny,' if it be one, belongs to Mr. Adolphus and not to us; we never used it on the occasion.

Foiled in the attempt to prove the Thames-built ships at all equal to teak ships, or even to those built in the Hoogley of saul, sissoo and teak, the next step was to assert a superiority over those built in the outports of the kingdom; but here too we think they have failed, notwithstanding the skill of Mr. Thomas Barnes, underwriter of Lloyds, in the virtue of the five vowels, by which the character of ships are represented. Abel Chapman, Esq. Elder Brother of the Trinity House, and owner of shipping to a considerable extent, informs the committee that his father built a ship of 400 tons measurement, in the year 1745, which lasted till ten years ago; that he has now a ship thirty-seven years old which, last year, brought a cargo from Bengal, made two voyages to India and one to China, was never pumped the whole of the China voyage, and which he believes is now between the Cape and Mau

* Minutes of Evidence, p. 199.
+ Speech of Mr. Adolphas, p. 25.

« AnteriorContinuar »