THE NAVAL ESTIMATES.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 227, 2 October 1847, Page 4

THE NAVAL ESTIMATES.

[From the Times, April 15.J The debates on our navy estimates are certainly the most extraordinary of all our senatorial prolusions. Ship building is represented as a deep and unfathomable mystery, which may righteously exercise the research and exhaust the pockets of successive generations, but which is no more likely to be elucidated than the summum bonum or the philosopher's stone. When it is alleged that three-deckers are unserviceable and steamers have iailed, the reply is restricted to a curt recrimination, an apologetic promise, or an indefinite hope. We have no kind of wish to depreciate the exploits of the Surveyor of the Navy, or to raise any shrieking Hosier of the defunct Naval School. We should rather rejoice to conclude that each in their turn had added something to the stock of knowledge, that the theoretical beauties of one system were improved by the practical excellencies of the other, and that we were gradually advancing by these ordinary steps to the perfection of the science. But the mischief and the miracle of our proceedings lie in this — that we seem actually to have made no progress whatever to so desirable a result. We have had the experience of a twenty-five years' war, and the opportunities of a thirty years' peace ; we have been unboundedly liberal in our expenditure, undeniably enterprising in our experiments, and singularly unfettered by prejudice or prepossession. We have set up systems, and knocked them down ; employed servants and dismissed them ; encouraged speculations and swamped them. Yet from all this there has been literally no result whatever. We have abundance of observation, but not one atom of induction. Neither the School of Naval Architecture nor the Surveyor of the ; Navy, nor any other surveyors, scholars, or speculators, appear to have contributed one single rule to an acknowledged, unquestioned, unchangeable, code. As regards ship-build-ing, mechanics and hydrostatics can no longer be ranked in the exact sciences. Our course has simply been to construct, cobble, or condemn one class of ships after another, to avoid 'an inconvenience which has proved too glaring

at the cost only of another to be got rid of in its turn, but in no case to deduce from a generalization of facts any approximation whatever to abstract truth. We have said that we make no attack on any particular school, and we now add that we do not wish to insinuate anything against the comparative conveniences of our lately built ships. Every person at all acquainted with the subject is well aware that our sailors afloat are now infinitely better accommodated, better found and better clad, than at any time during the war ; our timber, spars, and stores are as much improved as our gunnery or our signals, and that there is no doubt that we are far better prepared to run a course against all comers than we were after the Treaty of Tilsit, But this is not the point at issue. Had we made no pretensions to naval architecture, and invested no capital in the prosecution of science — had we still been content with clumsy contracts or captured models, then we might of course have taken credit for our present plight. But we have been paying profusely for a better system, and have really made no approaches to if. We should be ready to make all allowances for the reasonable failures of an infant science. Troy was not taken in a day, no doubt ; but Sir William Symonds has already exhausted the ten years of that famous siege without any acknowledged approximation to success. This is not the case in any other branches of expe- • rimental mechanics. No one pretends to say that locomotive engines have reached perfection, but everybody knows that they receive improvements every month. They cost more and more money, but they do more and more work. The value of each successive suggestion is ascertained by trial and immediately . fixed. There is no squabble about schools or systems. There is no return to the engines of the. year before last. The Rocket ot 1830 is an interesting curiosity, stared at as the rude invention of a primaeval period ; but the" Canopus of 1790 is a model ship, contemplated with mingled sentiments of admiration and despair. Mr. Ward gives a striking view of our present condition. He " believes that on the subject of ship-building there will be found as great differences of opinion as on religious questions." Very probaMy. But surely the " differences " are of somewhat easier reconciliation. The piinciples of toleration are hardly applicable to ships that won't swim, and steamers that can't move. The doctrine of floatage cannot quite be out on* level for obscurity with the doctrines of materialism. It is perfectly understood what a good ship should do, and the only question is how to make her do it. A single experiment will decide every successive controversy, and all that we complain of is that the issue of these experiments should be absolutely nothing. If their bare results had been registered, we might have made some steps even by the process of exhaustion. So many examples of what was wrong might eventually have reduced us to what was right. Without desiring to select any particular school or administration for attack, we appeal to the desultory debjite of Monday evening for a confirmation of these remarks. It is clear that there is no definite opinion on either side as to the real respective merits of the Surveyor or his scholastic predecessors. The Committee of Construction are reported to have " only modified" Sir William's views ; and the Government are only expecting that certain arrangements will " enable them to dispense with " a school of naval architecure. When it is asserted that five three-deckers are at this moment being built on condemned lines, the fact is not denied. When it is alleged that a twodecker is undergoing some uncertain alterations, the reply is, that the cost will be but £5000. All inquiries fail in eliciting the existence of a responsible or competent authority to direct the construction of our ships. Such a duty is said to be not the duty of the Surveyor, who has abundance of more legitimate occupation. In fact it is clear that there is now no system at all, and we can hardly yet join very confidently in Mr. Ward's expectation, that there " may in future be a better one."