Mr. White, the Director of Naval Construction to the Admiralty,
read a paper on Wednesday evening before the Institution of Naval Architects, on "The Designs for the New First-Class Battle-Ships." The paper was intended principally as a reply to the attacks of Sir E. .1. Reed, M.P., upon those battle-ships, and seems to have been a complete success in the opinion of the naval architects best qualified to judge. Mr. White said that Sir E. J. Reed had in his criticisms made various mistaken assumptions, as, for instance, that the new battle-ships might easily have been built to attain a much higher speed than seventeen and a half knots consistently with all the other requirements for them, and that, too, at very small additional cost. To this Mr. White replied that you have to double the horse-power of the engines in order to increase the speed from fourteen knots to seventeen knots, and that even if that increased horse-power were again doubled, that would only add another two knots an hour ; so that by quadrupling the power of the engines, you can only raise the speed from fourteen knots to nineteen knots. Clearly that is not increasing the speed at a very small additional cost. Sir E. J. Reed replied, but not with much effect, and the view of the experts present evidently was that Mr. White had very much the best of the discussion.
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