“They ain’t contented wi’ cannon balls, as they was in my day,” remarked the boatman, dolefully; and dolefully we rowed on beneath the shadow of the 131-gun ship, almost doubting if Britannia did indeed rule the waves, and if the broadside threatening above us was only a delusion and a snare. As we passed on, the long, low raking hull of the Warrior lay alongside the dockyard wall, looking vixenish and cruel: her gun-ports contracted to the smallest possible size, her guns of the deadly Armstrong make; no ornament, no open stern galleries, no projecting angles to be knocked about; but a smooth hard nut, very hard, we doubt not, to crack, but to be cracked, as sure as fate, by that dreadful Whitworth, who grimly sits at home making his punches and steel bolts to smash our gallant navy to smithereens.
It is positively a relief to turn away from this headaching game of attack and defence, to watch those two little brigs of war making out to sea, as though we were in the good old days when George the Third was King. They are the Sealark and the Racehorse—old 10-gun brigs, bowling along with all sails set. These are the training ships, in which the boys and naval cadets learn seamanship. They start down Channel every Monday morning, and return at the end of the week, and train the young English tar in the way he should go. Let guns beat ships, or ships guns, we may be sure that it is the true British stuff that fights them,—that will give us the lead as heretofore; and as we see the young scamps crowd the rigging and run like cats along the yards, we feel that here at least we are doing the right thing, beyond cavil or dispute.
Not to loiter longer among the melancholy ships laid up in ordinary, dressed in their Quakerish suits of drab, let us pass by the steam ferry over to the Gosport side, in order to inspect the gun-boat slip. If anything in England can be like China, we should say that the country in the neighbourhood of the government establishments very much resembles it. There are salt-water swamps in any number, with creeks running through oozy mud banks, and across a small inlet of the sea a bridge, which rises at a pitch that reminds us of the bridge on the “willow-pattern” plate. Gloomy and solemn looks the Great, Naval Hospital of Haslar on our right hand; but the inmates have a charming view over Spithead, and the lovely Isle of Wight beyond, and there is a liberty accorded to the convalescents, which may well be copied in other hospitals. If the visitor looks seaward, over the terrace, some fine day, he may probably see an eight-oared cutter moving about. This is the mad-boat of the establishment: the insane are permitted to row, and fish, and sail on their old element, and no harm comes of it.
But the Gun Boat Slip? says the reader. Well, the Gun Boat Slip is perhaps the oddest place in the whole naval establishment. At first the visitor thinks he is in a railway station, as on either side, long rows of sheds are placed, and between them lines of rails—one line running down into the salt water, with others crossing it at right angles, just in front, and parallel with the long row of sheds, which open end-ways upon the open shore. Peering out from the sheds, on the opposite side, seem to be a goodly company of white owls of Brobdignagian proportions. On inquiry, however, they are found to be only mortar-boats laid up in ordinary. Their hawse-holes, however, look just like eyes, and their cut-waters like beaks, and the whole expression of their bows is wonderfully like that of the night-loving bird.
That longer row of sheds, facing the water and the landing-slip, is divided off into numberless pigeon-holes, out of which peer as ill-tempered a set of gun-boats, as well could be got together, if we may judge from the names conspicuously painted on their bows. Snappers, Growlers, Biters, Vixens, Termagants, Bruisers, Snarlers, &c., all looking at you out of their houses, just like so many bull-dogs in a sporting dog-dealer’s yard.
But how do these 200 feet gun-boats perform the feat of getting so comfortably on dry land? There is a huge locomotive, and before you are the rails. The Griper steams up to the landing slip already fixed in a cradle which runs upon the rails. This cradle is attached to long iron rods, which are hauled inland by means of a powerful screw, and up comes the long black hull, and in a few minutes it is landed like a great whale. Once fairly on shore, she has to be shunted to her appointed shed; this is done by means of the cross-rail, the locomotive, butting at the ship’s side, pushes her broadside along, just as elephants are pictured as shoving before them great guns in India. This is certainly a most novel contrivance. The steam bakery is close at hand: the flour put in at the top of the mill comes out finished biscuit at the bottom, and Jack, who is not supposed to be over-fastidious, has long been the only person in Her Majesty’s dominions who has tasted this article of food made by the aid of machinery alone. He is now, we hear, to have bread whilst ashore: better late than never; if the reader has ever eaten a captain’s biscuit against time for a wager, he will be able to appreciate the boon this will be to poor Jack.
But we fear we are drawing out this article to an inexcusable length, and yet we have not said our say about the fortifications that girdle round this naval treasure. These, like everything else at Portsmouth, are rendered useless by the long ranges of our modern artillery. Of old the only means by which our arsenal could be reached was by way of the deep channel inside the spit and close alongshore; this passage was sufficiently guarded by the outer forts; but now that a hostile fleet can anchor three miles off and plump down shell out of their reach, the whole existing line of fortifications is rendered useless. Hence an outer range of forts is rising out to seaward: we see the piles driven for ocean forts in the various spits of sand, and along the crest of Portsdown Hill the deep chalk cuttings show the progress made in covering the dockyard in the rear. The question may naturally be asked, why go to such an expense to defend stores that could much more securely be moved to an arsenal in the interior? but this, we know, is dangerous ground to tread upon, and we have no wish to risk a collision with our reader, or with “the powers that are.”
