Sir E. J. Reed, who went out in the Czar's
new ship, the Livadia,' to Ferrol, sends to last Saturday's Times,—dating his letter October 256,—a very interesting report of that extra- ordinary ship's performances during the voyage. The' Livadia' is 235 feet long and 153 feet broad, so that she has really a breadth very greatly exceeding half her length,—in fact, her length is little more than a breadth and a half. In spite of this enormous proportional breadth, she can steam sixteen knots in the hour ; and as she floats very high, drawing only seven feet of water, and consequently is an exceedingly light ship, the experts were prepared to find that she would suffer excep- tionally from collision with high seas. This, however, was not the case. In the Bay of Biscay, the Livadia' encountered a full Biscayan gale, but the angle of her roll was never above 4°, nor the angle of her pitch above 5°, and Sir E. Reed says that her behaviour was far superior in every way to that of vessels of ordinary construction. The dinner-table was served just as if the ship were at anchor in port, at the full height of the gale ; the broad, covered gallery, which extends all round the open deck, was never reached by the sea, and hardly by the spray, except at the height of the storm. One of the small compartments in front was stove in and filled with water ; but Sir E. Reed believes, from examination, that this was due to some collision with a piece of wreck, and not to any sea at all. The severe blows of the sea on the flat bottom appeared to have had no effect whatever.
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