VICTORIA.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 825, 26 September 1870, Page 2

VICTORIA.

The banks in Melbourne have increased the rate of exchange on London to 2£ per cant, immediately it was known that war had broken out in Europe. The Argus, of the 3rd instant, eives the following as the armament possessed by the Victorian Government : —Latest pattern of Imperial ordinance authorities, six 300pounders, twenty-four 80-pounders; Armstrong pattern, six 40-pounders, six ] 2-pound* ers, and six 6-pounders; Whitworth pattern, six 3-pounders ; Palliser's pattern, twenty 64pounders and two 7-pounders; smooth-bore patterns, thirty 68-pounders, fifty eight 32pounders, and two 6-pounders. Small arms (rifles), 1,835 Enfields, 896 Hay's, 3,831 Laucasters, 529 sea-service, aud 573 breechloaders. Accompanying all these are the stores required by the Queen's Regulations. There are eight batteries in existence, all in great need of repair; but their position comes in with the most recently adopted plan of defence, and they could be quickly put in order to protect the guns they carry. There are at Sandridge, the Lagoon, Emerald Hill Central, Emerald Hill Advanced, and StKilda Eight batteries; at Williamstown, the Light* house, Central, and Right batteries ; aud a balbtery at Queensoliff. Our naval armaments will comprise the four 18-ton turret guns, 11 inch bore, to be brought hither in the Ceroerus, and the eight 32-pounders and one 80-pounder pivot gun, with which H M.C.S. Victoria can be speedily furnished. At present they consist of the guns of H.M.V.S. Nelson, which is without exception, the heaviest armed wooden vessel now afloat. Protected by cable chains, like the Eearsage, she would stand a close encounter with modern artillery long enough to make her metal tell upon any but the thickest armour-plates, while she could blow a ship of the Shenandoah class almost out of the water. She is thus provided :—She has now an upper deck, a main deck, a lower deck, and an orlop deck. Her armament consists of six 12-pounder howitzers for boat and field practice, and two old 68-pounders, converted by the Palliser process into rifled 150 pounders, These are on the upper deck, the two heavy guns being fixed on pivot slides on the forecastle. On her main deck are twenty 32pounders of the 42 cwt. pattern, and on hee lower deck are the most dangerous weapons, viz., twenty converted 64-poundcrs j i.e., the old cast-iron smooth bore 64-pounders rebored and fitted with double tubing of wrought iron and rifled, all according to Major Palliser's latest invention. Further, there is in the possession of the Local Military Department full magazine and laboratory stores, a large supply of entrenching tools and miscellaneous stores, and a complete collection of the necessary stores for the creation of a, service, for the erection and management of a war-telegraph, and the construction, laying, and management of torpedoes of the latest pattern.