MR. RUSSELL ON IRON WAR SHIPS.
Two months ago we said the iron interest would not wil- lingly give up its demand that the British navy should be reconstructed of iron. The fact that the Admiralty had partially followed the lead of the French Emperor stilled the controversy for a time, but with the Naval Estimates it has revived, and Mr. Scott Russell is the new champion of iron. It chanced that in a recent pamphlet Sir Howard Douglas incidentally wrote of the Great Eastern in terms of dis- paragement. Mr. Russell, one of the fathers of the big ship, has replied by defending his pet monster, and demonstrating, as he believes, the superiority of iron over wood as a material for the construction of ships. But he proves too much, for he proves that the Great Eastern could not be harmed by 68-pounders nor by shells, by hot or cold shot ; in fact, he almost proves that the Great Eastern is the model of a ship of war, which we have so long been seeking. But, admirable as may be the sea-going qualities of the most magnificent ship and most costly failure on the seas, we fear that the power of moving unharmed under the broadside of a man- of-war is not among them, and that Mr. Russell has a little injured the cause lie pleads by overdoing his descrip- tion of the defensive capabilities of the Great Eastern. Nor is this the only injury lie has done to the cause he advocates. Mr. Russell says "our wooden walls have proved utterly; incapable of resisting for more than a few minutes the powers of modern artillery and ammunition." Where and when ? The only real service experiment we know of was the naval attack upon Sebastopol. Here the fleet, under great disadvantages, withstood the fire of the Russian batteries upwards of four hours—a few minutes, certainly, compared to the whole siege of Sebastopol, but in no other sense. It is quite possible that two line-of-battle ships would destroy each other in five minutes, but it has not been proved. The statement is a sheer assumption by the advocate of iron. Mr. Russell says the allied fleet before Sebastopol could not reduce the Russian forts "even with an overwhelming force of artillery." A critic would say that if the artillery was "overwhelming" it ought to have overwhelmed the foe ; and precisely because it did not, com- petent judges fairly complain that the armament of our ships in 1854 was utterly inadequate. The iron batteries at Kin- burn fought at long range with their heavy guns' against much lighter pieces, mounted, en barbette, on works almost fleur d'eau, and heavy guns silenced less heavy guns. Wooden ships have won equal successes ere now. it is the fashion to sneer at the attack on Acre, but wooden ships, nevertheless, compelled the garrison to surrender. Only the other day wooden ships engaged land batteries at Ancona and Gaeta, with great effect. We are not contending that ships can take land batteries but that wooden" ships have performed feats quite as striking as those performed by the floating batteries at Sinburn •' feats vastly overrated, be- cause they were performed by foreign machines, the inven- tion of an emperor. ' These statements of Mr. Russell are moderate compared with one we are about to cite. In narrating the history of iron ship-building, he deliberately imputes to former Admi- ralty Boards the offence of making on iron experiments intended from the outset to fail. He says of one Admiralty Board that they made "an experiment in such a way that the conclusion they desired to arrive at might be secured -" of another, that they were turned out because they favoured iron ; of a third, that they acted "so that iron should, if possible, never have a chance in the navy of Great Britain." Again, he deliberately puts these words in the mouth of the Admiralty of this day, "Let us contrive experiments in which the iron shall have the worst of it ;" and he adds that "the intentions of the wooden party had been that the Trusty should not have fair play." And, be it observed, Mr. Russell, in writing of experiments on the Trusty, never mentions at all the famous attack upon that ship by Mr. Whitworth from the Carnation gunboat, in which experi- ment four out of five shots went through the iron mail ! Now these misrepresentations and omissions may impose upon the vulgar who have not followed the facts, and they will impose upon no one else ; but we ask whether a witness who makes accusations of this kind and in this spirit should be permitted, unrebuked, to try and influence the con- troversy? In spite of these grave defects, Mr. Russell's pamphlet may be read with profit, if only as a "fearful example" of what to avoid. We admit that he writes much that is effec- tive in furtherance of his ambitious project of reconstructing the navy wholly of iron, and that he shows what he no doubt deems a proper contempt for that "distinguished general officer of great knowledge and high rank, Sir Howard Douglas." But while we admit this, we do not admit that Mr. Russell has answered the objections of that distinguished and knowing officer—that metallic protection and speed are incompatible ; that speed being of the last importance, this is a serious charge against iron ships' and further, Mr. Rus- sell has not proved that iron ships of war would be as useful in all climates, seas, and seasons, as wooden ships of war. We are not so bigotedly opposed to iron as Mr. Russell is to wood : iron may be the material for ships ; but before enter- ing upon an expenditure of 20,000,000/., let us have some actual specimen of a successful iron ship, or iron-mailed ship, floating, not only in the Thames, the Tyne, or the Clyde, but in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian seas. It is as absolute nonsense to say that our wooden fleet is "about to become valueless" because Louis Napoleon has built a float- ing battery which can steam a little in the Mediterranean, as it is to say that, because Mr. Scott Russell built her, and because she has crossed the Atlantic, the Great Eastern may laugh 68-pounder shot and shell to scorn.
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