proposed to construct a sheer-hulk for Chatham yard, with strait fir timber, preventing thereby the consumption of much valuable compass oak timber, and causing a considerable saving of expence. – The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, hy their order dated 1st May, 1812, approved of this proposition being adopted, and the hulk has been found fully to answer the purposes for which it was constructed.
“That from the great accumulation of small or frigates’ timber in the several dock-yards, remarked by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, on their visitation in the year 1813, your Royal Highness’s memorialist, on the 5th November of that year, proposed a plan for building ships of the line with timber hitherto considered applicable only to frigates, and applying that which was fit only for inferior uses to principal purposes; it also obviates the necessity of using compass timber for floors, transoms, &c. The expence of the frame of the Thunderer (now named Talavera) built on this principle by direction of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, dated 2Sth February, 1814, and lately launched at Woolwich, is 900l. less than that of the Black Prince, a ship of similar dimensions, built on the old principle. This method of connecting the timbers was the ground work of the present mode of framing the British navy, by introducing the same union of materials in the ships built with large, that had been applied to small timber; and decreasing thereby, very considerably, the consumption of timber, and rendering the ships much stronger, as was ascertained by a trial of the frames of the before mentioned ships.
“That your Royal Highness’s memorialist, on the 25th April, 1815, proposed a plan for making top-masts by scarphing or lengthening the sticks below the cap, and substituting those of less dimensions, consequently of much less value. These have, on trial, been found fully to answer the intended purpose, as appears by a letter from Sir Benjamin Hallowell to the Navy Board, dated 28th July, 1818, enclosing a report from the captain and carpenter of the Ramillies, dated the 24th of the same month, in which ship they have been in use upwards of three years, and Are still in a good state. The saving produced by the adoption of this proposition, although considerable, is of little moment, in comparison with the inconvenience and delay before experienced for the want of the article, which, in many instances, could not be procured but with the greatest difficulty. The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty directed the introduction of this plan on the 3d February, 1819.
“That your Royal Highness’s memorialist, on the 7th June, 1816, proposed a plan for the introduction of circular sterns to ships, which causes a great increase of strength, forms a more extensive and efficient battery in the stern for attack or defence, affords protection when raked, prevents injury from explosion in firing the gnus, gives a facility of working those in the stern equal to those in the sides, – in fact renders that part of a ship capable of making resistance which was heretofore defenceless. In the event of the ship being pooped, no evil can arise; and, if required, the ship