Through the latter part of 1843 and the whole of 1844, Lord Dundonald was chiefly occupied with the construction of the Janus, the steam-frigate which was being built and fitted upon his plans. She was shaped in accordance with his "lines," and in her were introduced both his revolving engines and his improved boilers. "I have just returned from Chatham," he wrote to a friend on the 6th of April, 1844, "where everything regarding the Janus is going on very well indeed. And I have further good news to tell you. The Admiralty are so pleased with my parabolic lines for ship-building that they have ordered a drawing to be made immediately of a frigate of the first class, in order to have one constructed." Hopeful that at last his long-cherished ideas would bring benefit both to himself and to the nation, he had in these months much to encourage him. "All is going on as well as I could wish, or even as I could accomplish, were destiny at my command," he wrote on the 31st of May. "The Portsmouth engines now meet the approbation of all the authorities of the yard, and the Admiralty are so satisfied that they have given me the building of a steamship to put them in, in lieu of placing them in the old Firefly." "Nothing," he said in a letter written a week or two later, "can exceed the perfection of the work which the Bramahs have put into the Janus's engines." "The experimental engine at Portsmouth," he wrote on the 3rd of July, "continues to perform admirably, beating all others in the yard in point of vacuum, which, you know, is the test of power." "The engines will commence being put together in ten or fourteen days," we read in another letter dated the 10th of July; "after that we shall make rapid progress. The Janus is now completing—that is, being coppered—and having the part of her deck laid down which was left off for the purpose of getting the boilers on board. My patent boilers will be tried by authority of the Admiralty about the 20th, and I hope for a favourable result." The trial, postponed till the 1st of August, was satisfactory. "We have tried the boilers of the Janus," he wrote on that day, "and the result is most triumphant, having, with slack firing, ten and a half pounds of water evaporated by each pound of coal." "I have just returned from Portsmouth," he had written five days before, "where I had the pleasure to find my engine exceeding even all that it had done before—the vacuum, with all the work on, being 28½, two inches above that of any other engine in the dockyard. Mr. Taplin, the chief engineer, is quite delighted with it." "Sir George Cockburn and Sir John Barrow, permanent Secretary of the Admiralty, saw my engine yesterday," he wrote on the 24th of October, concerning the machine being built by the Bramahs for the Janus; "and so did Lord Brougham; all of whom were well pleased with my explanation of its principles and the appearance of the workmanship. It is now being pulled to pieces, in order to its being sent to Chatham and set up on board the Janus, whose boilers, by my request, are again to be officially tested as to their evaporative power, and that, too, by the Woolwich authorities, whose boilers have been beaten one-third by the evaporation of mine. This request must show the Admiralty my confidence in the correctness of the former trial; for there is no doubt the Woolwich people would condemn it if they could." This second and crucial trial took place on the 9th of November, and the result exceeded alike Lord Dundonald's expectations and those of the official judges, to whom failure would have been most pleasant. "All matters as regards my engines," he wrote on the 20th of November, "are going on well. I hope soon to hear something satisfactory from the Admiralty on the subject of the boilers, respecting which they have until now pursued the most profound silence, notwithstanding the triumphant result, which has surpassed the product of the far-famed Cornish boilers in evaporative power."

Those extracts from Lord Dundonald's letters to the friend with whom he corresponded most freely will suffice to show in what temper he watched the progress of his inventions during 1844. At the close of the year he hoped that his labours to bring them into general use were now nearly at an end; but in this he was disappointed. The Woolwich authorities, who had at the time expressed their approval of the boilers, sent in an adverse report to the Admiralty, and Lord Dundonald had to wait several months before he could disprove the statements made against them; and opposition of the same sort—the common experience of nearly every inventor—encountered him at every turn, and had again and again to be overcome. His Portsmouth engine continued to work well; but in September, 1845, he learnt that a malicious trick had been resorted to, to prevent its working better. "On a recent examination of the pumps in the well," wrote Mr. Taplin, the engineer, "to our utter astonishment we found, in the middle suction pipe, an elm plug, driven in so tight that we were obliged to bore and cut it out. The plug stopped that suction pipe effectually, and from its appearance must have been there from the time the pumps were first put in motion. As proof of this, we never had such a supply of water as at present." And that is only an illustration of the obstacles, accidental or designed, that occurred to him.

By them, the Janus was delayed for a whole year. She was to have been completed in 1844; but this was not done till the end of 1845. "I have just returned," Lord Dundonald was able to write on the 24th of December, "from a nine days' trip in the Janus, the result of which has been successful, both in regard to the properties of the engines and those of the 'lines' on which she has been constructed. Nothing can exceed the beauty of her passage through the water, without even a ripple, far less the wave which ordinary steamboats occasion." That success, however, was to be followed by a long series of disasters. The weight of the Janus had been miscalculated, and though she could proceed admirably in smooth water, she was found to lie so low that there was constant danger of her being wrecked in rough seas and bad weather. Other faults, incident to the bringing together for the first time of so much new workmanship, were also discovered. She had to be returned to dock, and fresh hindrances of every sort occurred during the two following years; each hindrance being attended by tedious correspondence or controversies with petty functionaries jealous of a stranger's interference, and only eager to bring discredit upon his work. Much discredit did result. Loud complaints were made concerning the waste of public money resulting from Lord Dundonald's experiments, and on him, of course, nearly all the blame was thrown. All this, added to his previous difficulties in securing for his boiler and engine any notice at all, was very grievous to him. Every complaint and every entreaty from him was met by a new excuse and a new reason for delay. "Ten days are always added," he said, in one letter, "and ten days yet are said to be required."

The days became weeks and the weeks months, and still the Janus was incomplete. She was unfinished when Lord Dundonald left England for more than two years in order to fulfil the duties assigned to him as commander-in-chief of the North American and West Indian squadron, and his absence caused a final abandonment of the works.

The tedious process of her construction, however, to which only sufficient reference has here been made to serve as illustration of one phase of Lord Dundonald's life, was attended by many good results. To himself she brought only trouble and expense; but the obstacles thrown in her way and in his did not deter private adventurers from acting upon some of the principles developed in abortive attempts at her completion by public functionaries. Lord Dundonald's inventions—his revolving engine, his screw-propeller, his boiler, and his "lines of ship-building,"—have all proved useful in themselves, and have been of yet greater use in their influence upon the improved mechanism of our own generation.

To him must be attributed no slight share in the revolution that has been effected in the materials for naval warfare. Of the superiority of steamers to war-ships, he was one of the first advocates. His own rotatory engine was never extensively adopted, and was superseded by other engines which, lacking the great merit of direct action upon the paddles, that it was his object to attain, had other and greater merits of their own; but in their adoption his great object was realized, seeing that that object was not his own aggrandisement, but the development of the naval strength of England.

CHAPTER XXV.

LORD DUNDONALD'S SECRET WAR-PLANS.—HIS CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THEM WITH LORD LANSDOWNE, LORD MINTO, LORD HADDINGTON, AND LORD AUCKLAND.—HIS LETTER TO THE "TIMES."—THE REPORT OF A COMMITTEE CONSISTING OF SIR THOMAS HASTINGS, SIR JOHN BURGOYNE, AND LIEUT.-COL. COLQUHOUN UPON THE SECRET WAR-PLANS.—A FRENCH PROJECT FOR NAVAL WARFARE WITH ENGLAND.—LORD DUNDONALD'S OPINION THEREUPON.—HIS VIEWS ON THE DEFENCE OF ENGLAND.

[1833-1848.]

Zealously as the Earl of Dundonald strove through nearly twenty years to perfect and to make generally useful his inventions in connection with steam shipping, he attached yet greater importance to another and an older invention or discovery, which, though its efficacy has been admitted by all to whom it has been explained, has never yet been adopted. This was the device known as his "secret war-plans," for capturing the fleets and forts of an enemy by an altogether novel process, attended by little cost or risk to the assailant, but of terrible effect upon the objects attacked.