"A ship," says Admiral Bowles, "is required to relieve another for foreign service. She is selected, reported ready for commission, the captain and officers are appointed, and then volunteers are advertised for. They come in slowly and uncertainly. If the ship is a large one, the men will not enter until the heaviest part of the work of fitting is completed: the equipment proceeds slowly and carelessly, because energy and rapidity are impracticable; but even then, those who enter first feel they are unfairly worked, and the seeds of discontent and desertion are sown at the very commencement of their service.
"Three, or sometimes four, months thus pass away, before the ship's complement is complete; and, in the meanwhile, little progress is made in discipline or instruction. She at last sails for her destination, and relieves a ship which, having been three or four years on active service is, or ought to be, in a high state of efficiency; but on its arrival in England it is dismantled, the officers and crew are paid off and discharged, and we thus proceed, on the plan of perpetually creating and as perpetually destroying, what we have with so much labour and expense endeavoured to obtain—an effective ship of war."[8]
Captain Plunkett adds his valuable testimony to the same effect:—
"Voluntary enlistment may be considered entirely inapplicable to cases of emergency. There are no means of calculating how long ships would be manning, if, as would necessarily happen in cases of emergency, their crews were not increased by men recently paid off from other ships. In peace, there are usually as many ships paid off as commissioned in a year; and thus the men who leave one ship join another. But, even with this aid, the average time occupied by general line-of-battle ships in completing their crews, we find to have been above five months. In 1835-6, when we commissioned several ships of line at once, they were six months waiting for seamen, and were then very ill manned. We may safely suppose that, were ten sail of the line commissioned at this moment, and did circumstances not admit of paying others off, we should not see them manned in less than eight months. We may therefore say that, for any case of emergency, simple volunteering will fail, as it always has failed. We may expedite the material fitting of a fleet; we may move ships about our harbours, put their masts in, and call them 'demonstration' or 'advance ships!' we may even fit them for sea—for the dockyard men can do all that—but, when fitted, there they must remain for months waiting for seamen. Foreign powers are quite aware of this, for it is the duty of their consuls at our ports to inform their governments, and they must laugh at the demonstration by which John Bull plays a trick upon—Himself!
"It is a matter of official avowal, and, we may add, of personal and painful recollection, that, in 1840, we were unable to collect a few hundred seamen to make a show of preparation.... When England was vainly trying to scrape together a few hundred seamen, France had (in compagnies permanentes) upwards of 3000 ready in the Atlantic ports, and probably not less at Toulon.
"It is a fact as surprising as it is discreditable to England, that Russia could send thirty sail of the line to sea before England could send three.
"It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, we might build a ship in the time required to man one."
We add not a word of comment on these admirable passages. Further illustration were worse than useless, after such words coming from such quarters.
It is often said that all fears of invasion are ridiculous, after the failure of Napoleon, who had 130,000 of the finest troops in the world to effect it. The Times, with its usual ability, makes the most of this argument. We accept the challenge: and, if we are not much mistaken, that able journal will have no reason to congratulate itself on having referred to that period for support of its argument:—
1. The regular land forces of France at that period were 450,000 men: about the same as they are now. But now that Power has, in addition, 2,000,000 well-trained National Guards in arms, which, by rendering her territory wellnigh unassailable, leaves her whole regular force available for foreign expedition.