to be remarkably fine vessels of their class—fast, weatherly, and roomy.
On the abolition of the navy board in 1832 Symonds was appointed on 9 June surveyor of the navy, and held that office till 1847; during this time he built over two hundred ships, among them the Pique frigate, the Queen of 110 guns, the Albion of 90 guns, and the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, afterwards Osborne. On 15 June 1836 he was specially knighted by the king, whose private secretary wrote to the first lord of the admiralty that, ‘considering the situation which Captain Symonds holds, the able manner in which he fills it, and the necessity of upholding him in it,’ his majesty considered such a distinction called for. During a holiday trip to the Baltic in 1839 Symonds formed a careful estimate of the Russian fleet, on which, and on the Swedish navy, he reported to the admiralty. In 1841 he made a similar journey to the Black Sea, again reporting to the admiralty on the Russian and Turkish navies. In 1840, 1842, and 1843 he visited the Forest of Dean, the New Forest, and the Apennines, in order to regulate the supply and understand the quality of timber for shipbuilding.
The most important changes introduced by Symonds, as surveyor of the navy, lay in giving his ships greater beam and a more wedge-shaped bottom, thus obtaining greater speed and stability, and, by requiring less ballast, increasing the stowage and permitting heavier armaments. He also introduced the elliptical sterns, on the merits or alleged demerits of which a furious controversy raged for some years. That by bodily heaving the system of naval construction out of the rut which it had worn for itself he rendered an important service to the country must be admitted; but he was guided mainly by experience and observation, and was in no sense a scientific constructor. While possessing great stability, his ships were apt to roll excessively; their heavy lee lurch was almost proverbial; and on the general introduction of steam his special designs quickly went out of favour.
The innovations of Symonds evoked much opposition, and in 1846 the admiralty decided on the appointment of a committee of reference to sit in judgment on the surveyor's work and alter or modify it at discretion. Symonds found such a system impracticable, and in October 1847 he retired with a pension of 500l. a year in addition to his half-pay as captain. On 1 May 1848 he was nominated a civil C.B. He was appointed naval aide-de-camp to the queen on 22 July 1853, and became a rear-admiral on the retired list in 1854. After his retirement he spent the winters abroad, chiefly in Italy or at Malta, for the benefit of his health. He died on 30 March 1856 on board the French steamer Nil, while on his way from Malta to Marseilles, where he was buried.
He was thrice married: in 1808 to Elizabeth Saunders, daughter of Matthew Luscombe of Plymouth; in 1818 to Elizabeth Mary, daughter of Rear-admiral Philip Carteret [q. v.], and sister of Sir Philip Carteret Silvester [q. v.]; in 1851 to Susan Mary, daughter of the Rev. John Briggs. By his first wife he had one daughter and four sons, of whom the eldest, William Cornwallis, an officer in the army, founder of Auckland, New Zealand, and surveyor-general of the island, was drowned on 23 Nov. 1842. The second son, Sir Thomas Matthew Charles Symonds [q. v.], is separately noticed. In 1840 Symonds published privately a book of sketches of men-of-war and yachts, which he entitled ‘Naval Costume.’ He was also the author of ‘Holiday Trips’ (London, 1847, 12mo), a little book not incorrectly described on the title-page as ‘extempore doggerel,’ and some professional pamphlets.
[O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Sharp's Memoirs of the Life and Services of Rear-admiral Sir William Symonds (8vo, 1858), published in accordance with the terms of Symonds's will; Facts versus Fiction, or Sir William Symonds's Principles of Naval Architecture Vindicated.]
SYMONDS, WILLIAM SAMUEL (1818–1887), geologist and author, was born at Hereford on 13 Dec. 1818, being the eldest child of William Symonds of Elsdon, Herefordshire, a member of an old west-country family, and Mary Anne Beale. He went to school at Cheltenham, and then, after reading with a private tutor, to Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating as B.A. in 1842. He was ordained to the curacy of Offenham, near Evesham, in 1843, and became rector of Pendock, Worcestershire, in 1845, inheriting the Pendock Court estate a few years afterwards on the death of his mother. From boyhood he had taken an interest in natural history, and his attention was directed to geology while he was resident at Offenham, largely by the influence of Hugh Edwin Strickland [q. v.] Pendock is a small parish, so that its rector had considerable time at his own disposal, which he devoted to the archæology and geology of the neighbourhood, extending his researches into Wales, and occasionally journeying further afield in the prosecution of his studies, as
