THE ROYAL CADETS AT SEAMANSHIP.
Photo: W. & D. Downey, Ebury St., S.W.
This gentleman maintained that the substitution of a test examination for competition was an unmixed evil; that a far better class of boys was obtained under the latter system: and quoted Lord Macaulay, who held that competition automatically preserves a high standard.
Mr. Childers, supporting Mr. Shaw Lefevre, said that when he became First Lord of the Admiralty (in 1869) his predecessor, Mr. Corry, urged him to reform the Britannia, which he thought was in a bad state; and Mr. Childers further states that, although competition was abolished on the recommendation of the committee of 1874, ten of the witnesses were in favour of competition, and only three against it; which is certainly not borne out by the report.
PRINCE ALBERT VICTOR.
Photo: Smale & Son, Dartmouth.
Mr. Ward Hunt, the First Lord, in replying, admitted that the test, as first laid down, was too easy, but it had since been made rather more stringent. He does not, however, give any reason for doing away with competition, other than on the score of injurious brain work; but probably Admiral Sir A. Cooper Key’s remark when before the Commission sums up the matter pretty correctly; he says that he disapproves of competition for boys so young, but, as the number of applications exceeds so greatly the number of vacancies, he thinks it is inevitable.
Mr. Shaw Lefevre’s amendment was negatived on a division, but only by 41 in a house of 301; showing thereby that competition had a goodly number of supporters.
In January, 1877, the Prince of Wales’s two sons, Prince Edward—then known as Prince Albert Victor—and Prince George, joined the Britannia. They had special quarters allotted to them, but in other respects they were “in the same boat” with the remainder of the cadets, to whom they were a source of much interest. The “divinity that doth hedge a king,” or its equivalent in the case of a prince, is considerably discounted among a lot of boys, and the two Royal cadets often found themselves the target of endless interrogations, resulting from the curiosity of their shipmates.