NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.
(Not without a Precedent.)
Yesterday Her Majesty's First Class Battle-ship Blunderer, her extensive repairs having been nearly completed, received her full complement of men and stores, and proceeded up Channel, to try her two strengthened but bent old muzzle-loading 79-ton guns, ringed and bound on a new principle. Some apprehension was expressed that the discharge might, owing to her high free-board, possibly do some serious damage to her hull—a fear which happened to be only too well founded; for though fired at an elevation of 97, the first shot carried away the davits, forecastle, bridge, life-boats, gunwale companion and larboard marling-spike, the water pouring in, literally in volumes, through the shrouds, and rapidly extinguishing the fires. Further progress being difficult under the circumstances, the Captain, acting under the advice of the Civil Experimental Director of the Admiralty, thought it unwise to continue the test without a farther thorough overhauling of the ship, and she was in the course of the afternoon towed back once again to the repairing-yard. No astonishment was expressed at the result of the experiment. It is satisfactory to know that it is estimated roughly that the cost of the damage effected by the one tentative shot will not exceed £14,900.
The Sluggard, Coast Defence Seventh Class Armoured Cruiser, having had the boilers from the old Phlegethon fitted to her new triple revolving expansion engines, made her experimental trip over the measured mile yesterday afternoon, under forced draught. Somehow, the speed realised under the circumstances, appeared to disappoint the experts who had come to take note of the proceedings, for though the captain gave the order "to pipe all hands to sit on the safety valve," and himself by putting his own cabin furniture into the furnaces, managed to set both the smoke-stacks on fire, only 5.08 knots could be got out of the ship. This, under the existing conditions, was considered "bad going," and it is probable that if the Sluggard has to be attached, as it is stated she is to be, in time of war, to a flying squadron in the Pacific, she will have to be supplied with another set of boilers, a more powerful engine, and possibly a new hull. The authorities at the Dockyard, it is stated, are taking the matter under consideration, with a view to the application of one or more of these remedial alternatives.
Her Majesty's First Class Battle-ship, Hamilton, has received the second of the four 75-ton guns that are to complete her armament. It is confidently hoped that if the same satisfactory rate of production can be maintained, she will be nearly ready for active service at the end of the year after next.
