Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/258

Rh 246 ENGLAND [NAVY. in com- mission. Armour- clad ships. Number 1877-78, voted by parliament, the total expenditure was of ships fixed at 10,979,829, and in them the strength of the navy s O f tQe u n it e d Kingdom, regarding ships in commission, was reported as follows for December 1, 1876 : Ships in Commission. Sea-going steamers : Iron-clad line-of-battle ships 4 Iron-clad frigates and corvettes 13 Other ,, ,, 30 Sloops and small vessels 65 Total sea -going steamers 112 Reserve steamers and sailing vessels : First reserve steamers 9 Receiving and depot steamers 6 ,, ,, ,, sailing vessels 13 Surveying steamers 3 Troop ships, steamers 5 Store ships, steamers, 3 Tenders, steamers 38 ,, sailing vessels 6 Coast-guard cruisers, steamers 4 ,, ,, sailing vessels 20 Gunnery training vessels, and sloops, sailing. 9 Drill ships for the Naval Reserve 8 Total reserve steamers and sailing vessels. 136 Total navy 248 The number of ships in commission here given form but a small portion of the naval forces of the United Kingdom, especially of its by far most important division, the armour-clad fleet. Together with the navy estimates for the financial year 1877-78, there was issued a parlia mentary return, issued from the Admiralty, dated April 5, 1877, containing a list &quot; of all iron-clads, and date of their first completion for sea.&quot; The return gives the names of 48 armour-clad vessels, 31 of them classified as &quot;broadside ships,&quot; 1 as a &quot; ram,&quot; 14 as &quot; turret ships,&quot; and 2 as &quot; iron clads building.&quot; The whole of the armour-clad ships of the broadside class completed previous to 1870 have no thicker armour than from 4 to 5| inches ; while those completed from 1S~0 to 1873 received armour of from 6 to 8 inches thickness. This was increased in the broadside iron-clad of 1877, the &quot; Alexandra, &quot; to from 8 to 12 inches thickness; and in three not quite completed, to armour of from 8 to 10 and 11 inches. In the turret ships, a greater thickness of armour was resorted to at an earlier date. The &quot; Glatton,&quot; completed in 1872, was the first ship to receive armour of from 12 to 14 inches in thickness, subsequently also given to the &quot;Devastation &quot; and the &quot; Thunderer; &quot; while the &quot;Dreadnought&quot; had 14 inches throughout. Surpassing all other ships in armour-thickness is the &quot; Inflexible,&quot; under construction at the end of 1877, the central part of which has from 16 to 24 inches, protecting 4 guns of 81 ton weight, the heaviest ever made for the British navy, and exceeded only by a few made in England for two Italian men-of-war. The construction of unarmoured ships, while not yet quite abandoned, is confined entirely to screw streamers, built of iron or steel, designed for great speed, and with very powerful engines. There were 9 ships of this class at the end of 1877, 3 of them frigates and 6 corvettes. The two largest frigates, the &quot; Inconstant &quot; and the &quot; Shah,&quot; of 5700 tons, with engines of 7500 horse-power, were reported at the date to be the swiftest ships of the British navy. The number of men provided for the naval service of the kingdom was 54,400 in the navy estimates 1 877-78. They officerain were divi(le(l into 3&amp;lt; MOO seamen and 6300 boys, 3000 of the naval the l ft tter being under training, giving a total of 40,400 service, directly classified as &quot;sailors.&quot; Besides them, for the ser vice of the fleet, were 14,000 marines 7000 afloat and Increase of ar- ii) our- thicknesa in iron clads. Unar moured ships, Number of men and of 7000 on shore. Included in the number of 34,100 seamen of the fleet, provided for in the estimates of 1877-78, were 160 flag officers, 30 officers superintending dockyards and naval establishments, and 2889 other commissioned officers on active service, being a total of 3079 officers for the British navy. XI. Religion and Education. There is a singular want of authentic religious statistics in England. While in nearly all other European countries the number of the population adhering to various creeds is carefully ascertained at the periodical census takings, or at other times, this has never been done in England, except in a cursory manner. At the census of March 31, 1851, an enumeration took place of the number of places of worship in England and Wales, and the attendance of persons therein on the preceding day, a Sunday; but the information thus obtained, though valuable in some re spects, was not of the kind to allow accurate conclusions concerning the strength of the various religious bodies, it being well known that the attendance in churches and chapels comprises many persons outside the creed to which they adhere. The returns of the census of March 1851 were as follows : Want of reli gious st tistics in England. Creeds. Total Attendance in Places of Worship. Percentage of Attendance. Church of England 2,971,258 47 4 Church of Rome 249,389 3 9 All other religious bodies .. 3,135,575 487 Total 6 356,222 lOO O The total population of England and Wales at the census of March 31, 1851, was 17,927,609, so that the church attendance registered comprised little more than one-third of the population. In the absence of other official reports, the best existing means of ascertaining the numbers of the various creeds are in the returns of the registrar-general of births, deaths, and marriages. Since the year 1836, when, during Lord Melbourne s administration, an Act was passed granting all dissenters from the state church the right to go through the ceremony of marriage in their own churches and chapels a right of which they had been deprived from 1754, for a period of 82 years strict accounts were kept of the creeds of all persons marrying, and from these tolerably accurate conclusions may be drawn regarding the respective numbers, if not of all the sects and denominations, at least of the two great divisions of the population, churchmen and noncon formists. A careful analysis of the marriage returns for the forty years from 1837 to the end of 1876 makes it apparent that the number of nonconformists is steadily increasing, and that, although the great majority of the population still adhere to the Church of England, the pro bability seems that it will be otherwise in the course of one or two generations. Dissenters. From an enumeration made in the year 1699, and believed to be quite trustworthy, it appears that at that time the total number of Protestant dissenters from the Church of England was not more than 214,000, being 4 18 per cent, of the population. There are no returns for about a century and a half after this date from which an estimate can be drawn respecting the number of dissenters, the first new basis for them not offering itself till the pass ing of the Marriage Act of 1830. In 1845, when the Act had been well carried out, the number of Protestant dis senters in England and Wales was calculated at 1,351,000, being 8 -08 per cent, of the population. This was no great increase from 1699, when the percentage was 4 18, but the rise of dissent became more marked henceforth. In 1 851 the Marri ages as test of creed. Dissent ers from the Church of Eng land.