Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/89

XI.] addition of £5 per cent, to the contractor to compensate him for the loss of the bark. The state of the materials when the ship was taken to pieces confirmed the conjecture which had been then formed, as the iron fastenings, above the water-line, were in general good, proving the absence of acrid juices in the timber.

"In the year 1755, Mr. Barnard, of Deptford, contracted to build a sixty-gun ship, named the 'Achilles' for His Majesty's service. She was completed in 1757, and taken to pieces in 1784. It was not known that any peculiar circumstances attended the construction of this ship, until Mr. Barnard was summoned to attend a Committee appointed by the House of Commons, in March, 1771, to consider how His Majesty's navy might be better supplied with timber. He then gave it as his opinion that the method to be observed in felling timber should be by barking in the spring, and not to fell it until the succeeding winter, and added that he built the 'Achilles' man-of-war, in 1757, of timber felled in that manner.

"The 'Montague,' launched in 1779, was built of winter-felled timber, and its superiority is forcibly attested by the fact that she had only one frame-timber shifted, from the time she was built up to 1803, when she was repaired. Mention is also made of this ship being in active service and in good condition in 1815; that is, thirty-six years after she was launched. It was thought there was a striking coincidence between the durability of this ship and that of the 'Royal William,'