Mr. E. J. Reed, M.P. for Pembroke District, and Ex-Con-
structor of the Navy, in another long letter, addressed to Wed- nesday's Times, presses further his charge that the"scientific or engineering staff in the Navy are kept down, and not placed at all in their proper relations with the staff of sailors and navi- gators. He maintains that one great blot is this,—that the engineering department of the dockyards is not kept in proper relations with the ship-building department, and that the Naval Superintendent, who ought to bring these departments into proper mutual understanding, fails to do so, and in fact, keeps them separate. To this the blunder about the ventilating-holes oat in the cells of the ' Vanguard ' was due, and the consequent increase of the difficulty in keeping the leakage in one compart- ment from extending to the others. The Admiral-Superintendent (whose salary is 11,888 per annum), and whose duty it is to con- trol both departments, and to keep them in constant mutual un-
derstanding with each other, is, says Mr. Reed, allowed to lead off the chorus of complaint against the Engineering Department for not having done its duty, though the Chief Constructor at Devonport, who has only 1725 per annum for managing his department, and the chief engineer there, who has only /700 for managing his department, were not in proper communication with each other solely owing to the fault of this more highly-paid official. Mr. Reed's dictum is entirely good, but he certainly does not study to make it at all less unpalatable to those whom it will naturally offend,—the high naval authorities to whose relative rank he so strongly objects,—by his mode of presenting it.
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