to their wounds, length of service, etc.; and all were much pleased with the condescension and kindness exhibited towards them. Her Majesty afterwards inspected the invalids at Brompton Barracks and the casemates, and went over the Marine Hospital. Altogether nearly one thousand sick and wounded men were on this occasion inspected by the Queen, who desired that photographic portraits and groups of those who had distinguished themselves, or who were of particular noteworthiness for their wounds, should be taken. The great interest taken by her Majesty in her wounded soldiers, and her repeated visits to Chatham to see them, could not fail to excite the most enthusiastic loyalty in the Army, and to strengthen the admiration and attachment of all classes of her Majesty's subjects for so gracious a Sovereign.

My esteemed and distinguished friend, Mr. James Silk Buckingham, died on the 30th June, leaving his "Autobiography" -the two first volumes of which were this year publishedincomplete. The preface to that work is very noteworthy. "This book," it runs, "will surprise many, and entertain, it is hoped, not a few; but, above all, it will help to instruct the humblest of its readers in one of the most important lessons adapted to their condition; namely, that there is no obscurity of birth, no privation of property, and no opposition either of powerful individuals or still more powerful public bodies and governments, that may not be overcome by industry, integrity, zeal, and perseverance; no depth of misfortune from which the victim may not hope to emerge by labour, economy, temperance, and that single-mindedness which regards the faithful discharge of duty as the great object to which all others must be made subordinate." No words could be more just and wise, or a more suitable introduction to his own remarkable life.

The war went on. The Allied Baltic Fleet had bombarded Sveaborg, and engaged in other operations; but it was in the Crimea that the great task was to be completed, and the Allied Black Sea Fleet had forced the Straits of

* See Illustrated London News, 21st July, 1855.

"The manuscript volumes of his various travels occupy twenty-eight folio volumes, closely written."—Allibone.

It

Yenikale, levelled Kertch to the ground, and spread desolation and terror along the coasts of the Sea of Azof. was in the Sea of Azof that Captain Cowper Coles introduced a plan of mounting a gun upon a raft, which, after various improvements, including the protection of the gun by an iron shield, through an opening in which it pointed, gave birth (as it would seem) to the TURRET ship, a type subsequently characteristic of our Navy, and afterwards claimed to be invented by Ericsson, under the name of "Monitor" (to which we shall have occasion by-and-by to refer).

At Sebastopol where the Naval Brigade of two thousand officers and men and sixty guns rendered important service -the capture of the Mamelon and the Rifle Pits on the 7th June followed, but was succeeded by the disastrous repulse of the 18th of that month, and the death of Lord Raglan. Yet the siege went on; and on the 8th September, after a furious bombardment of three days, and the capture of the Malakhoff by the French and that of the Redan by the British, Sebastopol fell to the Allied Forces. Thus, "in less than one year from the landing in the Crimea, every object of the war had been attained with a fulness which the most sanguine would have hesitated to predict; the preponderance of Russia in the East, which only a few months earlier the Allies would have been content only to reduce, was now annihilated; and with the fall of the stronghold of Southern Russia, its arsenals, armaments, and dockyards, and its multiplied sources of aggression, the traditionary policy of Peter and Catherine, so patiently and perseveringly pursued through ages of intrigue and spoliation, was, on the very eve of its fulfilment, scattered to the winds." The Russian fleet, both in the Baltic and the Black Sea, was utterly destroyed. The capture of Kinburn on the 17th October completed (as we afterwards found) the work of the Allies.

Let us return for a moment to Franklin and his companions.

In 1855 an expedition down the Fish River, organized at the request of the Board of Admiralty by the Hudson's Bay Company, corroborated the Esquimaux story of the pre

ceding year, discovered traces of the missing crews, and brought home some additional relics, but nothing more. The year, however, was marked by the extraordinary episode of the Resolute, one of the ships abandoned last year (as we have seen) in the ice, from which she in a marvellous manner made her escape, as we shall see hereafter.

The prize of £10,000 was in 1855 awarded by the House of Commons to Captain McClure and his companions, who had really made the North-West Passage over water (in the form of ice); £5,000 being given to Captain McClure himself, and £5,000 to his officers and crew.*

My love of books continued as strong as ever. At the end of this year I found that I had accumulated a library of more than six hundred volumes, besides magazines, pamphlets, newspapers of special interest, maps, almanacs, engravings, autographs, and "odds and ends." Still, as opportunity served, I went on accumulating.

I also had begun to form a Book of Selections from my reading (a practice so usual with the scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, highly commended by Lord Bacon, and adopted by many eminent men of modern times); copying out such passages, instructive, humorous, pathetic, sublime, as I thought specially worthy of remembrance. I was particularly led to do this, as, notwithstanding the large amount of mechanical talent which might be supposed to exist in the Dockyard, there appeared to be a great want of literary taste in the towns, the library in the Mechanics' Institution-then the principal library at Chatham-being very poor.

The close of the year 1855 left us "still keeping keen wintry watch on the Crimea; not hopeless of peace, but preparing for war; executing the stern decree of Providence on the great stronghold of a mighty empire, levelling its docks and seaward forts, exchanging angry menaces with the foe on the north side, and bringing home the trophies. of the capture." We had conquered our difficulties. "It was our boast that England had never seen so fine an army,

* With the £5,000 previously given to Captain Parry, and 5,000 to Captain Ross, in recognition of what they had done towards it, this made the £20,000 offered more than a century before for the discovery of the North-West Passage.

or one in all respects so well found, and in such discipline, as that which formed the vanguard of European freedom on the heights of Sebastopol.'

A sum of £160,000 was inserted in the Naval Estimates for 1856-57, as the probable expense of certain works for the Extension and Improvement of Chatham Dockyard, chiefly by convict labour. It was proposed to build a new basin with two graving-docks leading out of it, at a cost of about £100,000;† and to add a new mast-house and mastslip, at an estimated cost of £60,000.

The Chesapeake frigate, of 50 guns, was launched in 1855 at Chatham. The energies of the Government, however, appeared to be chiefly directed to the conversion of our sailing three-deckers into steam two-deckers, which were lengthened amidships and fitted with machinery.

A new dock-"No. 2 "—was commenced in the Yard in October. We looked forward to a great future.

*Times.

Nothing, however, was done between this and 1861, beyond the extension of the Dockyard river wall in the direction of St. Mary's Creek, and the embankment of a portion of St. Mary's Island.

CHAPTER XIV.

CIVIL SERVICE PROGRESS.-CHATHAM DOCKYARD EXTENSION.

ΤΗ

HE year 1856 restored peace to the nation. On the 25th February conferences were opened in Paris, and an armistice till the 31st March agreed on; on the 29th February hostilities were suspended; on the 30th March a Treaty of Peace was concluded; and on the 19th April Peace was proclaimed.*

Cross" FOR

And now was instituted the Victoria Cross VALOUR," grand in its simplicity, being of bronze (in form so significant of vicarious suffering); dear, in being associated with the name of the Queen most tenderly loved by her people for her sympathy alike with their joys and sorrows, and their loyalty to whose throne is expressed in the emblem it bears of the Crown guarded by the lion; and glorious, as being given only to those who have performed in presence of the enemy some signal act of courage and devotion to their country.

On the 20th March Captain George Goldsmith, C.B., succeeded Captain Christopher Wyvill as Superintendent of the Yard. The estimates for 1856-57 for wages to the established men (1,778) of Chatham Yard amounted to £137,161; for teams to £1,467; for police to £3,755; and for men employed on new (architectural) works, improve

* Of the political results of the war it is not our province to speak; but we may be permitted to refer to a paper in Knowledge for May, 1894, by Dr. Longstaff, late Medical Inspector of the Local Government Board, on "The Great Sanitary Lesson of the Crimean War," and it is interesting to learn that in the opinion of that officer the Crimean War was one of the most important agencies concerned in the development of sound sanitary method and practice in this country; and that its sanitary lessons constitute, probably, the most important legacy left to the nation by that war.