On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    Happily * indeed , our soldiers hare seldom been engaged in fratricidal warfare , and long may such an event be impossible ; but the fact that they h ave been liable to be called to resist the people in . the name of a Government , and that the army as not national but exclusive in its organization , has contributed to estrange the citizen from the soldier . We are glad to believe that this estrangement tends to disappear . But no such cloud , we repeat , has ever interposed between the nation and the national navy . Perhaps the love of

    the sea and of sailors is , like seamanship , organic in . the Englishman ; certain it is , that the national feeling towards the navy is nothing less than affection . The recent -Review , then , if it have no other result , will have emphatically consecrated this close identification of the British navy with the British nation . Our Queen , who , we may say ifc without the risk of flattery , has achieved the rare good fortune of making her office as sympathetic as her person is beloved , wedding a masculine activity with womanly grace , never more finely impersonates the majesty of the State of which she is the Chief , than when

    she goes forth to lead her fleet with the Itoyal Standard at the main . Talk about abolishing the Salic law ! Why , if Royalty could be ever feminine , Royalty would be immortal , and revolutionists would bend the knee . But we are digressing . The assemblage of the fleet at Spithead has been , we are prepared to assert , of eminently practical advantage . It has realized , in a substantial and statistical shape , the actual progress of naval science , according to the latest improvements . We are fortunately

    enabled to appeal to the attestation of a foreign , pen to corroborate our assertion . Monsieur Xavier Raymond , a distinguished writer in the Journal desDebuts , and , we believe , himself a sailor , though he ^ disclaims the right to speak professionally , has lately paid a visit to the squadron at Spithead , and he records his experiences in an article which it does an Englishman ' s heart good to read . He says he was especially struck by the extraordinary progress made in the equipment of the ships , generally and in detail , since 1839 , when he visited

    Admiral Stop ford ' s fleet at Malta . He compares such ships as the . Princess Charlotte and the Pembroke with the Priece Regent , the London , and the Neptune . The Princess Charlotte , it may be remarked , was the flag-ship on the coast of Syria , and mounted 104 guns : the Pembroke was a small 78 : both ships of the old construction . The French writer says truly , that in 1839 we were still using up the accumulated materiel of the great war ; and that , embarrassed with the profusion in our dockyards , we scarcely

    ventured to launch new ships . The equipment of our ships , too , was at that time strictly oldfashioned , and obstinately closed to any improvements unknown to Nelson ' s captains . In 1839 , even the French navy was superior to ours in many of these conditions : especially in gunnery . Add to this , the gun room-oflicors were sacrificed to tho easy and luxurious conveniences which a long peace had introduced . In fact , says M . Raymond , tho British navy , in 1839 , seemed to bid fair to rosomblo tho army of Darius .

    But tho ' brush , " on tho coast of Syria , in 18 < 1 ( ) , and tho chancos of European war , completely revolutionized tho discipline and tho equipment of our ships . Tho dockyards were "hvo again . Ship after ship ( of questionable qualities too often ) was launched . Reforms , often , perhaps , unpercoived , in tho construction and in , tho arming of tho ships , were eagerly adopted in tho teeth of respected prejudices and venornblo traditions . Tho liodncy m \ & tho Van-

    «• BurpriBing advance , as compared with tho old « ccoml-rntc 8 , or oven with tho old jirst-ratcs Jj rom 1839 to 1853 , naval reform has never Blackened .: In somo directions , perhaps , it lias mistaken wastefulness for activity . But if we I'hinlc of tho progress in war stammers , from tho ¦*«

    } vo bo ablo to form somo estimate of what iiUH been acluovod . Tho size of our ships hns increased in amazing proportions . jMolson ' s HiiffBliip could almost , bo shipped as a boat <>» i board tho present Imptrumsc , a iiftiy-gvm Jritfato . Ifc was only the other day that ; our "oavujst ships began to curry 8-inch (> 8-pounder ; i : wo have now wholo tiers ' of mxty-oighks , and

    whole batteriesof 10-inch eighty-fours . Not long ago it was a wonder to hear of a steamer firing a shell : now every steamer can fire a shell from every gun . Nelson ' s captains won their glorious victories before double-shotted guns were' dreamt of , and his " seamen gunners never took an aim : our 10-inch eighty-foxirs are "fired with all the deadly precision oitirailleurs de Vincennes . But we need not go so far back to understand what an extraordinary impetus has been given to the perfection of our navy within the last few months . The Peace Society will not have been utterly fruitless , if only that the reaction from its follies has lent the full support of the national will to the efforts of the most able naval

    administration we have known since the war . Indeed , the late Board of Admiralty , with all its political sins , meant well , and made good beginnings ; to ascribe less than this to the Duke of Northumberland would be an injustice . Only a few months since , when the cry of national defences and of French invasion was up , we found , with indignant surprise , that the French Government had launched and armed the most powerful war-steamer ( LeNapoldon ) in the world ! We had nothing fit to look at such a prodigy of science and power . We have now eight screw ships of the line completely armed ; two of them absolutely unapproachable for speed andpower combined . We have / the counterpart of Le Nayolion in the St .

    Jean d'Acre , or , as the sailors say , the Jane Take her , fitting out at Sheerness ; when we say a counterpart , however , we ought to add that the St . Jean d Acre will be a vastly superior ship . The Duke of Wellington ( why was not the ship called simpl y Wellington , or The Duke ?) is , as we have said , without compare on the seas , and she will soon have a sister ship by her side , the Royal Albert , which was ready for launching as a sailing first-rate at the beginning of this year . The Duke is the largest ship ever built , 3759 tons , 290 feet long , 60 broad , 78 deep ; and propelled by engines equivalent by tubular expansive power to 1600 horse power . What would Nelson have said could he have risen from his monumental

    sleep last Thursday week ? He would have recognised by the side of her Majesty that gallant captain of his , now . Admiral of the Fleet , who alone of all survivors could ( if the invincible modesty " of true courage would allow him to speak ) tell the Queen how , in the Gulf of Finland once , he had made a Russian line-of-battlo ship strike her colours in the teeth of the wholo Russian squadron , with the British fleet five miles dead to leeward ! Nelson would have told

    her Majesty that the Russians are no contemptible antagonists at sea—those dogged Northmen ! His own dictum was , " Go alongside a Frenchman ; outmanoeuvre a Russian . " Nelson would , no doubt , have felt ( as we all felt ) a pang when lie saw those glorious towers of canvass riddled by " smokers " : he would have seen atonco that there could bo no more squadrons at sea for twenty-two months at a stretch , blockading tho enemy ' s coasts ; and that the next Avar Avould be a sharp and decisive conversation of eighty-fours

    and sixty-oighta , that might possibly last half an hour ! Let us hope that his groat soul would have boon consoled by tho conviction that our ships , if insufficiently manned , aro well manned : inspired by tho glorious traditions of a flag untarnishod , and by tho memories of a naino immortal . He would have found our Government alive to tho necessity of making English seamen lovo tho service , and cling to it . We cite tho concluding words of tho French writer whom wo have already quoted as an impartial witness .

    " Tho English are proutl of their steam ( lent , and they have a right to l » o so . Ah for myself , although unqualified to speak professionally , 1 am quif ; o disposed to accept tho opinion of tho profusion that so formidable an armament has never , been seen , and that it would curry into any action every condition of success . " 1 will udd , however , by way of conclusion , that thin brilliant display of mechanical forces in pot what I moat admired in my brief visit ; to Portsmouth , nor ih it that which gives mo the highest idea of tho

    grandeur and the resource ' s of tho British navy . Noblo : is they are , these ( ships aro but the result of HOinctliiug greater and far more noble than themselves , of nomotbing which ban given them lifo , and which will give thorn successor ** when tho perishable inatorials of which they aro composed shall have disappeared . Thin noinetbing—it is Knglnud herself , it i » the moral lilb that animates her , it Is tho npirit at onco conservative mid progressive , which permits her to renew constantly without destroying , and which applied to hor navy

    permits her to modify , to correct , to perfection rite without risk , save a little money expended . It is the administrative and political institutions which have made England the freest and best governed people in the world—the people which' has better than all other nations -the sentuneht of her material arid moral prosperity . If I were English I should have confidence in English ships , but 1 should have more confidence still in those hearts of oak than in those wooden walls—in the men and in the principles than in the materials . "

    We heartily accept this generous testimony from France . May it be a pledge , among others , of a sincere and perpetual alliance between the two nations ! May our ships fight side by sido in future battles against the common enemy ! War between France and England is henceforth fratricidal . The camp at Chobham has been more familiarized to our readers than the fleet—to many of them visually on the spot ; to all in repeated descriptions . For many even of the soldiers combined movements in mass were a novelty ; but there , on the peaceful grounds of Chobham ,

    both soldiery and public learned the effect of combined movements on broken ground- ; , learned the character of camp life in its desagremensof sudden surprises , scanty furniture , and wet tents , if not in its severer hardships , or sterner perils . And the men came out nobly—the picturesque movements of disciplined lines unbroken by the broken ground—the sweeping charges of cavalry —the thunder of artillery , telling not more to the eye than , the ready obedience , the steady drill , the quick movement , and cheerfully sustained exertion told to the experienced mind , how

    well the British soldier comes up to the standard in mettle and temper . The two pageants have already had successes much more substantial than mere display , and we rejoice to observe their moral effect upon the public mind . They have served as " practice" in no small degree ; since it was remarked that the regiments engaged there performed evolutions decidedly better after the first . Their drill and capacity had already been developed under proper training . In other respects tho campaign at Chobham has been very effectual in testing the discipline , tho temper , and the good will of tho

    men ; and of the officers , too , we might say . The fleet showed that it was already able to perform evolutions of a magnitude , with a minute exactness , truly surprising , amidst elements so uncertain . But it is the advantago of tho navy that a large part of tho difficulty and risk which an armed forco has to encounter is constantly putting the courage and capacity of tho sailor to the test , even in the time of tho profoundest peace . Wo have an army , then , which can promptly adapt itself to any exigency ; we have a fleet ready for emergencies which scarcely another nation on tho earth would venture to

    confront . The nation is once more conscious oi its strength by land , and still more by water , and tho fact of that consciousness is in itself a wholesome and invigorating one . When a nation thus confronts its own disciplined strength , if thorobo any greatness remaining in it , better ideas aro derived than those of vaunting over other nations , or thoso of servility to domestic powers . Tho existence of that fleet does not make tho Englishman tremble before constituted authority a whit more than he did before ; but on the contrary it makes him feel more thoroughly- part of a great nation , and ,

    therefore , more independent ; . It does not niako him feel stronger in courage to faco other nations ; but it does remind him that there are other arbitraments than those of diplomacy or reason ; and while England holds herself able to sunlniu dincussion with tho world , she also known that she is strong to meet a disputant in another species of controversy , if lie has the hardihood to choose that ruder contest . England , therefore , feels herself competent to sustain tho course that ; her judgment ; selects , well furnished with all thai ; is necessary to moot , her foes , in any part of the world , conio how , and when they may .

    Hut , great and good as that moral is , tlioro is a 'h ealthy moral beyond even that . For how , under the blessing of God , iuiH this little island of ours attained l ; o her . supremacy P Surel y by tho resolute practical direction of energies , at oneo concentrated and manifold ; by the vigour of her industrial pertinacity , by her ardent ; and obstinate following out of tho results of scionee , abstract and applied ; by her unchecked and uncor-

    Untitled Article

    AvgvstZO , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 805

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 20, 1853, page 805, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2000/page/13/