Naval Architecture During the Last Half Century.
The annual lecture under the auspices of the Greenock Philosophical Society, to commemorate the birth of James Watt, was delivered in the Watt Lecture Hall, Greenock, on January 14, by Mr. Robert Duncan, shipbuilder, Port Glasgow. The title of Mr. Duncan's paper was "Evolution in Naval Architecture during the Reign of Queen Victoria." After referring to the early history of marine engineering, and to the intimate connection of Greenock and the Clyde with its initial stages, Mr. Duncan went on to say that up to the date of her Majesty's accession in 1837, no systematic attempt at ocean navigation by steam had been made. In 1812 steamship building began, but it was not till 1838 that the first Atlantic steam communication began. The Sirius and the Great Western made the voyage to and from New York at the same time, in the middle of that year, in fourteen and seventeen days respectively, under steam all the way. Mr. Duncan then traced rapidly the evolution of the iron ship, through the various modifications of design and proportion, and the simultaneous and consequent evolution of crafts to adapt themselves to the rapidly changing conditions. Mr. Duncan also described the influence upon the forms of ships of maritime law and of Lloyd's rules—evolution in size from the short square boxes of the early periods to the long narrow vessels of to-day; the Enterprise, for example, the first steamer to make the voyage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, being only 122 feet long, while now the cargo carrying steamer is over 400 feet long, and the express passenger ocean steamer over 500 feet. Mr. Duncan considers it possible that, ere her Majesty's reign closes, the Flying Scotchman of the sea will reach a length of 800 feet, and a speed of twenty-five to thirty miles an hour. The evolution of the man-of-war was next described, an interesting sketch given of the science of naval architecture, and a bibliography of the subject.