In any way that such tables be constructed from the materials furnished by these Parliamentary returns, the enormous disparity in the horse power paid for, and the efficiency derived from it, will be apparent ; as well as the extraordinary preference shewn to makers of the least efficient engines. And were proper returns furnished from all the steamers in Her Majesty's service, similar incongruities would stagger your Lordships.

How is this? and why is this? A look into the manner of making the contracts, and into the blanks in the statistical department of Her Majesty's Steam Marine, will supply the answers.

On neither of these matters am I fully informed. Had I access to the log-books, reports, and documents, this Letter should not be so feeble.

From the largest number of steamers in the world, under your control, with your Lordships' power, and the nation's pocket, perfect statistical tables might be submitted before another order be given for engines.

On the 5th May, 1837, I had the honour to urge on the attention of the Admiralty the expediency and necessity of having most minute returns from each steamer. I

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could not then recommend these with the urgency I am now called on to do. But I do assert, confidently, that such returns, collected into succinct and distinct tables,would benefit the service. Those able engineers, Mr. Lloyd, Mr. Murray, Mr. Dinnen, and Mr. Kingston,would each and all of them find the advantages of such statistical information, and your Lordships would be able to form your own opinions on the worth or worthlessness of what you have submitted to your decision.

My Lords, I could lead you over a variety of fancies with which the service has been troubled. To mention only a few.

Formerly a great house near Birmingham were the favourite makers of marine engines; and because they recommended no larger engines than a pair of 240 for any ship, the service ran some risk of having none more powerful : but that a party, trying to throw the contracts more open, discovered that that house had recommended just such engines as could be passed in pieces through the small canal locks of their line of transport. A pair of engines so ordered of the thus recommended size are, I believe, now in a smaller ship, the Hydra; and, perhaps, it is to that cause that the Cyclops, which was to have had them, cannot carry guns on her main deck, - a defect, by the bye, observable in her sister-ship, the Gorgon.

In days of yore the Admiralty had at least a wholesome fear of suffering from new inventions: an honest care that the public money should not be squandered in untried schemes. It is true their fears were often unfounded, but their care of the public money was at all times praiseworthy. The Admiralty being the highest mark for a mechanical schemer, has always been, and always will be, aimed at. Hence the necessity for adopting the old rule of caution, and a practice of allowing private owners or public companies to be the first introducers of novelties.

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Now, however, see the change which has come over our Admiralty. Novelty is sought for, and how has efficiency been sacrificed to obtain it? The value of a pair of engines which your Lordships pay for, consists in their efficiency, readiness for service, and current economy. The puff of novelty, and all the dust the puffers may throw in the eyes of the executive officers, such as a small engine-room, light engines, pretended small consumption of fuel, and all the fallacies about short-stroke engines and short connecting rods, though bolstered up by the name of a distinguished astronomer! must soon come to nothing, though ignorance or private and hidden interest may still for a short time prevail.

Where are there to be found any steamers doing their work with the regularity, or in any other attribute to compare with the line of steam packets from Liverpool to Boston viá Halifax? Which of Her Majesty's steamers will surpass in the essential attributes above referred to, Her Majesty's steamer Vesuvius?

Your Lordships have the means of proving the last ship ; and I have annexed Appendixes B and C to prove the others just referred to. As their work and slight consumption of fuel have not been equalled, the documents require no further note or comment from me.

All of these have engines made on well-known and long-tried principles of construction, and it is a remarkable fact, that few, if any, private owners or public companies have yet ventured to follow the lead of the Admiralty in the adoptions of questionable novelties.*

Some months ago a move was made to puff the expansive action of steam just as if it had not been known

* Her Majesty's ship Thunderbolt has been, by order of the Admiralty, furnished with direct action engines, by the maker of Vesuvius' and Stromboli's beam engines. The result in this case of equal workmanship will try the value of the principle.

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and practised years before, and as if steam ships in commission had not been fitted with the gear necessary for using it. The Vesuvius and Stromboli were perfectly fitted with the same ; and when I was told at the Admiralty, about two years ago, that the latter had been short of coals on one of her passages, I was not informed that her expansion gear was never used.* Lieut. Hoseason, R.N. has, however, opened the eyes of the public, by a pamphlet, in which he founds all his computations on the Berenice's voyage to India; and there can be no doubt that had the expansion gear been used in those of Her Majesty's ships properly fitted with the same, when not in haste, they might have saved many thousands per annum of the public money by only dropping their speed about 1/8th or 1/9th. I shall revert to this below.

The thirst for novelty which sprung up at the Admiralty appears to have induced a distinguished London house to attempt its gratification. Hence the service is now in possession of four cylinders in some of their engine-rooms, whilst with less space, less weight, less expense, less chance of breakage, and less fancy, all the advantages of the expansive action of steam and equal power, could have been had by two cylinders.

The manner in which Tenders are called for, opened, and treated, is worthy of some notice.

The contracts for marine engines are made in a manner quite peculiar, unlike all other contracts for the public service. They are made at that office in the Admiralty where no other contracts are made for any of the many supplies and stores for the navy.

* Robert Napier made the Honourable Company's steamer Berenice with expansive gear in 1836.

� Strange to say many of the largest steam-ship owners do not know the difference between mere throttling of the steam and working expansively. Mr. Watt's views of the latter may be seen in Sir David Brewster's edition of Robinson's Mechanical Philosophy, vol. iii. p. 129, published 1822.

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The tenders are, or have often been, opened not in one day and hour, but without regard to the strict rules of tender and contract known and practised in other departments of Government.

The clause sometimes thought necessary for protecting the public, viz. that the Board does not bind itself to take the lowest tender, has not been inserted in the application, and the lowest tenderers have been disappointed. After tenders have been given in, and after some of the contracts have been made, favoured ones of these very contractors have been allowed to tender for more engines, as in the year 1840, when a London house, having obtained an order for two or three pairs of engines, obtained a further order for two more pairs of engines in the following October by reducing their tender, making orders for five pairs of engines, &c. at one time ; no other engineers having had any chance of amending their tenders, or of offering for these other engines.

Contracts have been made in the latter half of the year 1842 for nearly �120,000l worth (I question the last word) of engines without the chance of competition being given to other engineers, not even to those to whom the Government are solely indebted for a great reduction in the price of marine engines ; and to the agent of one of whom your secretary officially wrote, "2 July, 1842, that in the event of engines being required, invitations for tenders will be sent to him."

It appears from the Returns that the favoured house of the year 1840 received orders for 1400 horse power : 700 horse power being all the engine power ordered from (two) other houses that year. More houses were certainly called upon for tenders ; but a reference to documents under your Lordships' control will make apparent whether partiality was or was not shewn to that house. They will shew that Robert Napier tendered for engines with 67-inch cylinders, fitted either in the Clyde, or at

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Woolwich, or other suitable yard, at the price of �13,500. He got no orders, though the favoured house got orders for two pairs with 65-inch cylinders at the price of about �13,983 each pair, or 27,966 for the two pairs - smaller engines at a higher price! This was in June 1840. It will also be seen whether shortly thereafter, time having elapsed during which they may have known the prices tendered by other houses, they were or were not allowed to amend their tender for a third pair and strike off 2� per cent, making the price for such third pair �13,700 ; and whether it is true that Robert Napier had no opportunity of offering at a reduced price, and that the third pair were ordered from them. If so it will be seen that Robert Napier was asked and tendered for 67-inch cylinders, but that the favoured house of 1840 (power being taken into consideration) got �4000 more of the public money on this transaction alone, contrary to the known principles of fair tender and contract. Why? Was it because they made better engines? The Parliamentary Returns shew that the engines of the more favoured house have been 1/5th and 1/4th, nay, one pair referred to were fully 1/3rd of their time incapable of per forming their work in consequence of repairs ; whilst of the two pair of engines made previously by the more neglected house, one pair have only been incapable in consequence of repairs 1/18th and the other pair 1/24th part of their time !

It may reasonably be presumed that orders for the other engines that year were given, either because of secret amendment of tender, or relying on the alleged value of the principle of construction, or for some other such cause.

It must be borne in mind that both Stromboli and Vesuvius had at this time been tried ; and I may say, that although I did not see Stromboli's speed ascertained, I did see that of Vesuvius observed by the late chief

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engineer, Mr. Ewart, when she was loaded with the weight of her guns, six months� shot, shells, stores, &c. She was the fastest steamer then in the navy: 10-999 miles per hour, or within a mere thousandth part of 11 miles per hour, deeply loaded.

Let it not be said, my Lords, that Robert Napier's work was at that time little known at the Admiralty. Abundance of statistical facts were obtainable from the commercial marine had they been looked for.

Let it not be said that the more favoured house of that year had invented, and were the only makers of, an improvement in the principles or construction of ship's engines. Engines of an uncommon construction were certainly under the title of the "Gorgon" principle reintroduced by the favoured London makers (but this principle was long before known and practised, and long before abandoned, in Scotland) ; * and, besides all this, Robert Napier was ready, and offered to construct engines on this or on any other plan the Admiralty preferred.

Was it that "Gorgon" engines, or even London made engines were alleged to consume less coal? No ; for the Admiralty appear to have had no statistical returns from which either to refute or verify the allegation. I have seen an official return of fifty-eight steamers of the aggregate power of 10,295 horses afloat, wherein the engineer officers, 24th August, 1842, intimated as to fuel, that "this depends materially upon the kind and quality of "the coals used," and stated, "as far as they were able, "the quantity of fuel expended by each per horse power." Every steamer in that return, whether old or new, in good or bad condition, large or small, fast or slow (and the speed is as essential a function in the calculation as

* See the credit given to the late Mr. Gutzmor, of Leith, by the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, at the first annual meeting of that Institution, in January 1843.

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the coals), is said to consume eight pounds per horse "power per hour." It could not, therefore, reasonably be on the score of fuel.

Certain reports prejudicial to Scotch engines have been industriously, and with desperate dishonesty, circulated as to their consumption of fuel, by London makers whom I could name ; and, if both theory and facts have been overlooked, such reports may possibly have influenced the Admiralty in withholding orders from Scotland, especially as your Lordships do not appear to have either the theory or such important statistical information collected and submitted to you. I therefore take leave to point to Appendix B, and state that by that document the consumption of Welsh coals, outward across the Atlantic, by Robert Napier's engines, has been, when going at full speed, not availing of expansive gear, 5 38/100% lbs. per horse power per hour ; and the consumption, returning home, with inferior (principally Nova Scotia) coals, 7 9/10lb. ; and had it not been that all the steamers of that line "carry on" at their utmost speed, to make quick passages, the expansive gear could have been used, and the consumption reduced below 4 lbs., merely dropping the ship's velocity by perhaps 1/8th or 1/9th. Let me repeat,

Robert Napier's tenders for engines could not reasonably have been rejected on the score of consumption of fuel.

Objection was certainly more than once made to the sending of Her Majesty's ships round to the Clyde to be fitted with their engines.

It was verbally and industriously reported, that the ships were injured in the Clyde. Your Lordships will find no official report of defects occasioned, or of repairs necessary, to either Vesuvius, Stromboli, or Thunderbolt, when docked in Her Majesty's yards, before being commissioned : and it does appear more than strange that such things should be talked of to the prejudice of the

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makers of superior engines, without a document whereon to found.

It has been alleged that the expense of sending Her Majesty's ships to the Clyde has been too great. If your Lordships will call for a full statement of the expenses which you have actually paid for ship-keeping in the Thames, and of the favours conferred on London makers, � such, for instance, as sending them an old ship-of-war as a hulk and the like, and for the cost and gain of sending Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Thunderbolt to the Clyde ; and, then, permit me to suggest an audit on the statement, I entertain no doubt of being able to shew how unfounded the allegation is, � and that the now reported proposal to deduct �l per horse power from the price of engines fitted in future on the Clyde would be worse than unwise.

But this allegation of extra expense, even if it had been just, could not (may I say ought not ?) to have prevented the acceptance of the Scotch tenders referred to, to fit the engines on board in the Clyde, or at Woolwich, or any other suitable place the Admiralty might prefer.

Some stress has been laid on the alleged lightness of engines constructed on these new principles without sway beams. The fact is, that what the favoured engineers of 1840 saved in the weight of their engines, and, it is said, even more weight�was added in ballast or kentledge, [Weights (often scrap or pig iron) used as permanent ballast on ships. Ed.] to keep the ship up, when out of coals and under canvas. Were Appendix A filled up, this would appear.

To rest on such a quality in engines, when the ship must still have ballast, seems worse than foolish and unmeaning.

It does appear, my Lords, that those who have (nominally) invented most, and puffed their inventions industriously, have been most successful of late years in obtaining orders from the Admiralty.

In the year 1842, there were two houses more highly

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favoured than others. One of them received orders for 1035 horses' power, and the other 2230 horses' power. The maker of the best engines on the "Return" got no orders that year, although he tendered to put the engines in the limited engine-room appointed for them by the Surveyor of the Navy.

The size of engine-room is here noticed because the opinion is entertained by the surveyor that short engine rooms and short ships are the only ones for the naval service.

My disputing the accuracy of opinion entertained by so distinguished a ship-builder, would be of no use in this Letter. Robert Napier complied with his limits, and that is enough for my present purpose. I will only say, that, so long as there is such a disparity between the locomotive duty and efficiency of such of Her Majesty's steamers and that of the commercial marine, the limitation is questionable ; and, in my humble opinion, the public cannot expect to have the short passages for troops, the short chases, and the short wars, which they might otherwise reasonably look for.

How far the inefficiency of certain ships in the Returns is due to the principle of construction of the engines, thus necessarily accommodated to such reduced limits of space, may be ascertained when the repairs are stated more in detail than they are in the Returns, as generally "to engines, boilers, and paddle wheels," but not until then.

Care should be taken in every steamer to have always the most efficient arrangement of engines, and space left to get well round, and to all parts ; leaving also a comfortable engine-room for the important duty to be done there.

The price paid, or to be paid, for the engines ordered in 1842 (and which ought from their arrangement to be cheaper than sway-beam engines) is as follows:-

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The 5445 horses' power (all I believe of some new construction for saving space) must amount together to the sum of about �272,000 ; and if the repairs of engines of merely the two favoured houses is allowed, as in page 8 hereof, to form part of the price, as it ought, the 3265 horses' power ordered from them will cost much more than �165,000 ; and, above all, there is no certainty that repairs may not keep them unfit for service from one-third to one-fifth or one-sixth of their time.

What I have said of the facts regarding Vesuvius and Stromboli within the knowledge of the Admiralty, in 1840, applies equally to the year 1842. They had many more favourable facts within their reach when, on the 24th August of that year, tenders were called for. The monthly returns from all of Her Majesty's steamers were there. The contractor for the making of the steamers between Liverpool, Halifax, and Boston, which have done their work so well, was known to be the contractor who made the Vesuvius and Stromboli's engines ; * and the Nautical Magazine for August 1842 contains a statement of the duty of these ships from July 1, 1840, to June 4, 1842. The table of passages referred to in that article I have copied, added thereto the duty of these ships down to the 14th December last, and printed in Appendix C.

Of the engines ordered this year, 1842, it will be found that about �120,000 worth (I question the last word) was ordered from two houses, without even the chance of competition being afforded to other approved contractors.

The principles of construction, the practical action and mutual relation of the engines ordered in 1840 and 1842, are well worthy investigation. One favoured house published largely, and quoted confidently, the opinion before referred to, of an eminent astronomer! with about as much judgment as if a master had quoted Sir Isaac

* As well as Her Majesty's Thunderbolt's engines, on the direct action called the "Gorgon principle."

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Newton upon stowing the hold, or a seaman had adduced the opinion of Commissioner Linn upon the proper time to take in sail.

The alarming inefficiency of so many new steamers as appears on the Parliamentary returns is due to one of six causes:

• 1st. The novel principle of construction of engines thought necessary for accommodating them to the limited engine-room.
• 2d. The attempt to have light engines in ships which must afterwards have ballast to keep them upright.
• 3d. Defects in the material and workmanship.
• 4th. Incompetency of ships' engineers appointed by the Admiralty.
• 5th. "Quarter-deck" interference.
• 6th. Some unavoidable disaster.

I believe that all of these may be causes of mischief, but the sixth cause suggested does not seem to have effected the evils so glaringly apparent on the Parliamentary returns.

The first two suggested causes are discussed above. The third appears also to have some application. But for any one to attempt to account for such heavy repairs and loss of service by the fourth and fifth, and to lay the blame on engineers afloat and officers in command, would only shew a bad selection of the one, and an inexcusable interference of the other.

Permit me here to make a few remarks upon the engineers afloat, an indispensable class of men, upon whose judgment, foresight, coolness, and skill the ship and all on board so often and so entirely depend for safety. A knowledge of the duty required, and acquaintance with the mainspring of valuable men's actions and exertions, would suggest a different treatment of the engineers in war steamers, even to those who know little of these work men. And the intimate acquaintance I have with the

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habits, studies, associations, feelings, motives, principles, attainments, industry, and ultimate prospects of many men I have known in the workshop and met at table, even with commissioned officers of the navy, enables me to assert that if the chief engineer's rank were raised, so as to place him in the position of a gentleman (not rated below an inferior mechanic, the carpenter), and his assistants encouraged with hope of such a step in course of faithful and useful service, without any additional pay, the Admiralty would soon have a change in the present men, and obtain in future a better and more respectable class of engineers.

It must be little known at the Admiralty how many respectable gentlemen's sons, having found professions overstocked, or commercial enterprise doubtful ; and how many of nature's gentlemen, with master minds, are within the moleskin jackets, which are seen in the best of our engine factories.

Too often is it supposed that naval officers may attain, by six months' observation in a factory, the same information which a workman, by years of apprenticeship and subsequent servitude, has grown up with. The supposition is about as erroneous as would be a landsman's fancy that mere observation would qualify him to pass an examination for seamanship, and to prove on board that he could "hand, reef, and steer."

The commander of a steamer can, in truth, no more reasonably be expected to supersede or direct the engineer, than he could be expected to supersede or direct the surgeon in his operations.

Many of the engineers, even now in the navy, with talents and attainments at least equal to, if not surpassing, those of their commanding officers, feel their low rating, and suffer from the treatment it necessarily subjects them to. With duties unquestionably more difficult and onerous than most of the commissioned officers on the quarter

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deck, their influence is small and their encouragement still smaller. Would not the light of a Watt, a Woolf, a Maudsley, in such circumstances under a pennant, have been liable to extinction by some quarter-deck "lack beard?"

All that has been done in the navy for this indispensable class of men is to pay them, stamp an engine on their uniform buttons, and allow them to mess together.

Many engineers afloat in the commercial marine are, or may soon be, capable of all the duties of their commanding officers in navigation, astronomy, marine and land surveying. Such men would gladly enter the service if they saw a prospect of rising, by ever so slow degrees, to rank with a lieutenant, master, or purser. That hope is denied them, and numbers are working in factories at lower wages, rather than lose caste among their connexions, by taking a rating so humble, and a position so obnoxious to irresponsible treatment, as engineer on board a war steamer. Neither would they risk the mind and soul-saving principle of HOPE.

The Parliamentary returns so much founded on are defective in many particulars. Among the wants, there is no statement as to consumption of coals. That such statistical information should be had more fully and more accurately than is afforded by the general statement of "8 lbs. per horse power per hour" (24th August, 1842) will appear evident to your Lordships, when I say that supposing only the 10,295 horses' power there specified be under steam one fourth its time, one pound more or one pound less consumption of fuel per horse power will vary the annual cost to the country �10,000 in coal money alone. Your Lordships can easily have that matter worked out.

The consumption of coals in the steam marine (exclusive altogether of coals sent to China and the East

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Indies) must have exceeded 50,000 tons last year, and cost above �50,000 in money.

Now, except perhaps those of Her Majesty's steamers doing Post Office packet service, almost the whole of the steamers in commission might be fitted to avail of the expansive action of steam. Then they would be able to accomplish long voyages when required, not only with reduced expenditure of fuel, but with the certainty of not having to turn back for coals, as they have been in the Mediterranean when they actually have had the means on board to prevent such a calamity. They might also, when not in haste, economise their fuel by the same provision, and yet always have full steam power at command for any sudden or lengthened emergency of service.

They, moreover, would be kept in more efficient trim, the water-line would be less varied, and the engines not subjected to the same consequent irregularity of speed.

It must be remembered that the demands for steam power will probably increase annually ; and that any question relative to a reduction in consumption and cost of fuel is of the utmost consequence both as regards economy and efficiency. The question of fuel at full speed, and when working expansively, involves not only the saving of many thousands of pounds during peace, but the greater saving and greater efficiency in times to come.

But, my Lords, the question of fuel, important as it is, is of less consequence as regards steamers in the Royal Navy, than a searching inquiry into their efficiency or non-efficiency, and the causes and probable consequences of the same.

In the foregoing lines I have suggested six causes for the alarming inefficiency of so many NEW steamers, and I

* Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,000 tons.
Home Stations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,000 �
Other Stations not in India. . . . . . . . . . . . 10,000 �
China and India, not known to me.

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respectfully urge the matter on your Lordships' serious attention.

Let me not be blamed, my Lords, for writing the present Letter, and for the share I individually have taken in furthering the purpose of the Honourable Captain Gore when he proposed calling for the Returns now founded upon. But for these, your Lordships might never have known the inefficiency, irregularity, and extravagance which have thus been brought to light. You might never have known how unnecessarily coals are wasted, or been induced to inquire into the whole subject of original cost, annual maintenance, and current economy as regards coals and speed. You might never have known that of two new steamers, one, the Polyphemus, has been, out of only 1 year and 293 days, so much as 162 days, or about 4th of her time, incapable of performing her work, in consequence of repairs ; and the other, the Alecto, out of only 3 years and 78 days, so much as l year and 28 days, or more than 1/3d of her time incapable of per forming her work from the same cause. Nor would you have been sensible of the expense of such repairs, and how they enhance the actual cost of the engines ; and of the fact that the Admiralty has been paying the dearest price for the most inefficient machinery. Such, indeed, as was scarcely able to go to, or keep at, sea under steam. The national exchequer has paid for a course of procedure, which, by its condensed extravagance and inefficiency, must have brought any private owners or company to bankruptcy.

But lest I be charged with making an invidious distinction, in pointing particularly to these two vessels, do, my Lords, but cast your eyes again over the Parliamentary Returns, and there, � whether from defects of principle, or workmanship, or favouritism, or ignorance,

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