would necessarily be a slackness of work in the building yards? When 500,000 tons of prize ships were employed in the general commerce of the country; when 250,000 tons of shipping, employed as transports, were on the eve of being restored to the usual channels of commerce; when every Indiaman is now taken up to perform double the usual number of voyages; and consequently: one half the usual number of ships only employed; in a word, when, for the last twelve months, there has been every prospect of a general peace, was it not, we ask, to be expected that there would be a cessation of building for some time to come? and, if so, is the problem to be solved only by the introduction of a few teak ships from India?

If there be any truth in these observations, it must be admitted that the pretensions of the Thames builders are as injudicious and ill-advised as they are unreasonable.

It surely was beneath a wealthy and respectable body of men to employ the daily and weekly journals, and even the wrappers and covers of magazines and reviews as the vehicles of communicating to the world the desolate state of their yards, their empty slips, and vacant docks, as if to excite public commiseration; though it was but three days before this beggarly account' appeared that the last two frigates, of the twenty-four they had built for government in about fifteen months, were sent off the stocks. This lamentable tale was told too at a moment when the repairing of ships is always slack, but more particularly so in the present year, when a long continued and unusually severe winter had just broken up, and all the large fleets for the East and West Indies, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Newfoundland, the Greenland and South Sea fisheries, having completed their usual refitment, were ready to leave the docks,

Trahuntque siccas machinæ carinas.

And for what purpose was this appeal ad misericordiam made? To impress the public with the false notion that all the misery and distress felt by the artificers and workmen, in consequence of the stagnation of building and repairing, were occasioned by the registry of a few teak ships built in India; and to ground an application to the legislature for an injurious, invidious, and unjust monopolynay, worse to create a tendency in the workmen to be clamorous and dissatisfied, in which, however, much to the credit of this meritorious class of artificers, they have luckily failed.

To whom, and to what causes, the present want of employment for shipwrights and other artificers is to be ascribed, appears clearly enough from a 'Return of the Average Number of Shipwrights employed in the Thames yards,' &c. In this return it will be seen that

Q 3

Wigram

Wigram and Co. who head the list, employed, in 1812, 190 shipwrights; in 1813 they had 400, and in March, 1814, they had no ›more than eighteen !*—that is to say, having procured, by the prospect of high earnings, above 200 shipwrights to finish off ten large frigates in the unprecedented time of twelve months, they send adrift, the moment that the last frigate is off the stocks, uo less than 382 of these artificers:-so much for this yard being an asylum for shipwrights discharged from the king's yards!' The king's yards have been, in fact, the asylum for these discharged men; they have received, within the last eight or ten months, upwards of 800 shipwrights, and most of them from the merchants' yards, which, by the Return' above alluded to, appear to be about the number discharged from the latter; the average number being 1,474 in 1813, and 657 in March, 1814; the difference 817 men. It is to be remarked that when the measure was first adopted of increasing the establishment of shipwrights in the king's yards, and while the twenty-four frigates were building, not a man could be obtained from the merchants yards: since then we understand that an increase to the establishment of carpenters' mates and carpenters has been made in his Majesty's ships of war, with increased pay and encouragement to this class of artificers; yet, as far as we can learn, very few of these artificers have offered themselves for the service, notwithstanding the many thousands, if any credit be due to the writer of the Remarks,' that are as exiles and beggars.'

" cast off

affords us no clue to guess exiles and beggars' thrown out

6

The Return' abovementioned even what is become of the 4000 of employ, or of the 3000 which Mr. Harrison promises to prove to the committee were in so destitute a situation for want of work, as to be actually in no condition to present themselves to the committee;' while it completely falsifies his statement that there are now only about 250 employed;' for the number employed in 1813 is stated in this return at 2,797, and in 1814 at 1,385, (instead of 250,) leaving unemployed, or employed on some other trade or situation, 1415, so very little is to be depended on the evidence which, Mr. Adolphus admits, had, on this part of the question, 'some degree of variety.'

It is perfectly absurd for the Thames builders to attempt to disprove the fact of their having entered shipwrights from the outports, and others that were not shipwrights, to build the twentyfour frigates abovementioned; it is ridiculous to talk of shipwrights requiring different tools from the house-carpenter, &c. and using them with a different turn of the hand-that no one can square a

Minutes of Evidence, p. 399.

beam,

6

beam, or saw a plank, or bore a hole, or in short be of any use in building a ship, unless he has served seven years apprenticeship to that particular branch-they may just as well assert that a Norfolk farmer can neither plough, nor mow, nor reap, and that as a husbandman, he is utterly helpless, without a Norfolk plough, or scythe or sickle. Now it does so happen, in the king's dock-yards, that an apprentice who is not able to perform man's work, and obtain man's earnings, in the fourth year of his apprenticeship, is considered as a very stupid fellow: but the Thames builders themselves, or their imprudent advocates, find no difficulty in supposing the native Indians to spring up into shipwrights with the rapidity of mushrooms; nay, the writer of the Remarks' assures us, whether truly or falsely we stop not to inquire, that the fleets of the French (100 sail of the line at least) were built by men who could not handle the tools they were commanded to work with'it is the stupid Englishman only who requires seven years to perform the work of a shipwright. We could tell him, however, that the superior class of apprentices in,the dock-yard at Portsmouth, who study mathematics and the principles of naval architecture one half of the day, and work with their tools the other half, laid down a sloop of war in March, 1815, and with the assistance of a very few shipwrights, had her ready for launching in June, 1814, being the fourth year from the first entry of those apprentices.

To sum up the deplorable case,' as the builder's agent terms it, of the shipwright, we are told that his only resource is going to sea, and thereby subjecting himself all the rest of his life to be impressed as a seafaring man:'-this is not only false, but mischievous. The shipwright betaking himself to sea, is not impressible for two years, and if appointed carpenter of a merchant vessel of 150 tons, or upwards, is not impressible at all. If he serves in a king's ship, he is not only eligible to, but by good conduct almost sure of obtaining, the situation of a warranted carpenter.

The case of the shipwrights and others, employed in the building and repairing of shipping, is in fact summed up in a very few words. The war, which threw out of employ so many thousands of families in Birmingham, Manchester, and other great manufacturing towns, created an increased demand for every species of labour connected with the dock-yards, whether public or private; the return of peace has reversed this state of things, and the shipwright is now the temporary sufferer; and on this event, we cannot help thinking that the private builders of the Thames would have been entitled to the meed of higher praise than that bestowed on them by their incompetent agent, if, following the meritorious example of the Birmingham manufacturers, they had been in less haste to discharge their workmen, and had kept them employed on a reduced

scale of work till the return of the repairing season, or till they should gradually fall back into their usual occupations. Could not the wealthy house of Wigram, for instance, afford to keep in employ more than eighteen of their numerous gangs of shipwrights for two little months, when nearly four hundred sail of West-India ships were expected home, many of which would necessarily require large repairs? Is the character of Thames-built ships so depreciated in the eye of the mercantile world, that they could not venture, out of the profits of the ten large frigates that fell to their share to build in the year 1813, to lay down the keel of one ship on speculation, to keep some hundred of their shipwrights from starving, instead of contenting themselves with bestowing empty commiseration on paper, or in lawyers' speeches before a Committee of the House of Commons?

When Mr. Adolphus affects to doubt the fact of many of the discharged shipwrights having gone into the king's yards, because "it is not in evidence,' he is professionally right, though his doubts are groundless; but when he talks of its being open to inquiry, whether it is not changing the poor-box for another sort of charity, and making the men dependent on the overseers of the dock-yard instead of the overseers of their parishes,' and that this is all the change in their situation,' his jargon would be excusable, were its tendency not dangerous, though we fully acquit him of any such intention.

To talk of the meritorious exertions of the Thames shipbuilders in laying out large sums of money on their establishments is almost as ridiculous as the agent's ascription of Admiral Byng's disaster 'when sent against the French at Toulon,' (for Toulon read Minorca,) the blockade of Lord Cornwallis in the Chesapeake, and of the mutiny at the Nore,' to the want of those exertions. For what they have done for the public they have been well paid; and this, as we conceive, is all they have a right to expect. It is preposterous to suppose that the public should go on building ships, which they do not want, merely to accommodate them, especially at a time when the establishments of the king's dock-yards are, as we are informed they are, fully adequate to the building and keeping in repair of one hundred sail of the line, and twice the number of frigates. The measure of confining the building of ships of the line to the king's yards will produce an effective fleet, reduce its expense, and economize oak timber. There will still be left sufficient employment for the merchant builders, provided they build as well and as cheaply as at the outports. Their alarm, if they really feel alarmed, at the introduction of India-built ships, is unnecessary. We do not suppose that the united exertions of all India will produce three large ships, exclusive of a line-of-battle ship and a frigate,

to

to be launched annually at Bombay. Mr. James Walker's correspondent holds out no great encouragement for building ships at Calcutta.

'There are so many difficulties and troubles to encounter here, that I am really indifferent about building at all, but on very handsome terms, which I fancy would not be given. Large ships would, I suppose, be the principal object; and as the whole of the materials must be expressly laid in for the purpose, the trouble, vexation, and responsibility in getting them, is beyond comprehension, and sets at defiance all calculation as to time or cost.'*

per

That part of the question which relates to ships' stores procurable in India, as the produce of India, would be unworthy a moment's consideration, did it not form a part of that illiberal and selfish system which would confine all mercantile transactions to the banks of the Thames. To prove how much the several artificers, manufacturers, and tradespeople of the lower parts of the metropolis are affected by the supplies of India in this respect, several persons immediately and directly concerned with what is. called the shipping interest,' were called before the committee; and all of them without exception, without ever having been in India, without any knowledge of India or its produce, without sonal knowledge of any one fact they asserted, gave the most positive and confident evidence of the existence of things that never did exist. Instead of India supplying every thing it appeared, on cross-examination, that full two-thirds of every article of ships' stores, furniture, and even provisions, were sent out from this country to enable the ships built there to put to sea. Coppersheets, copper bolts, anchors, cables, tar, nay even blocks, masts and sails, are sent out from England; and purchased at two and three hundred per cent. dearer than the same articles of Indian · production. The repairs too which these ships require on their arrival in the Thames, are by no means inconsiderable, if we may credit the evidence of Mr. Larkins, who speaks from his own experience. He states that the General Hewit, of 1000 tons, would have cost in repairs and refit for a China voyage 20,000l.; that the Larkins, of 637 tons, built in Bengal and purchased for 23,700/. cost in repairing and refitting for sea in the Thames 19,8501.—and he states generally that there is scarce an Indiabuilt ship that comes home to this country, that does not want a great deal of iron fastenings and a great deal of other repairs before the East India Company's surveyors will receive them into their service.'*

But the question has a far more extensive bearing than the nar

*Minutes of Evidence, p. 106.
Minutes of Evidence, p. 122.

row,