SHODDY NAVAL ARCHITECTURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4603, 21 December 1875, Page 3

SHODDY NAVAL ARCHITECTURE.

(From the Sacramento Union). And now comes the statement that the Pacific Mail Company’s new steamship City of Peking, the completion and launch of which were attended with so much eclat, and to commemorate which the company caused a costly steel engraving of the vessel to be prepared, is actually falling to pieces through rnal-cou-struction, and will have to be repaired at an outlay of nearly half a million before she will be fit to go to sea again. The orignal cost of this ship was very great. It was stated that no pains had been spared to make her staunch and perfect in all respects. Yet she has only made one voyage to China, and having encountered no serious bad weather, (is said to have been in so ricketty a condition on her arrival that no insurance could be effected on her for the return trip, and she was not allowed to bring passengers. Here is another gross case of shoddy to swell the already interminable list, and whatever the true explanation may, he, it is equally discouraging, for whether the fraud lies with the contractor, or the contractor’s men, or the company, it is indifferently a proof of commercial dishonesty and immorality. The dishonesty, moreover, which is evinced in putting scampwork iuto a passenger steamer destined for ocean travel, is more than commonly abominable and infamous. The contractor who substitutes iron bolts for copper ; half bolts for whole ones ; flawed plates for sound ones ; who employs putty, and white lead and paint to hide defects ; who inserts wooden pegs where long treenails are demanded ; and who cheats and plays false at every turn, is always a constructive murderer as well as a swindler. He knows perfectly well thatthewantof oneiron bolt in the vessel’s side may lead to her foundering at sea with all hands ; yet though ho saves perhaps only a few cents by the fraud he will nevertheless abstract that bolt. It appears to us that this land of swindling is infinitely worse than that with which the stock market has familiarised us, and that a tall gallows and a short shrift would be none too severe a sentence upon conviction.