ARCTIC EXPEDITION."

WE may add the following extract from the Morning Herald, containing an account of the departure of the Prince Albert again in search of Sir John Franklin.

Our journal of yesterday announced the final departure of the Prince Albert fitted out the second time at the expense of Lady Franklin, and, it may be said, under her own personal superintendance. She saw the vessel sail from Aberdeen; she saw it sail from Stromness, whither she had proceeded in the steamer, and arrived before her. What energies she has put forth, what anxieties she has endured, and how noble has been her conduct throughout! All the civilised nations of the world are acquainted with it, and deep sympathy is not only expressed by them, but they give other proofs of it. One gentleman alone, over the wide waters of the Atlantic, sacrifices the hard-earned fortune of a laborious life, and fits out at his own expense two vessels to go in search of our missing ships, the noble and generous Mr. Grinnell. Lieut. De Haven and Mr. Griffin, officers of the United States navy, gallantly take the command of his ships.

Russia holds out her helping hand on her ice bound territories on the Asiatic coast; and France sends her representative in the person of M. Bellot, a young officer highly distinguished in her service, who regardless of all other considerations, embarks at a moment's notice on a voyage of great enterprise, and which, under the most propitious circumstances, cannot but prove a voyage of much personal discomfort. We need scarcely repeat that he has sailed, a volunteer, in Lady Franklin's vessel, the Prince Albert.

Stromness, June 3rd.-We have been watching the Prince Albert getting under weigh. She showed her remarkable sailing qualities to infinite advantage, gliding out of sight in wonderfully short time. I wish you could have witnessed her departure from this interesting place, the French national flag waving over her deck in honour of M. Bellott, as well as in gratitude to him, a strong north-easterly wind displaying its folds to great advantage. May Heaven prosper the voyage, and grant those brave fellows the success they deserve.

he

With reference to a statement which is going the round of the press, alleged to have been made by William Millar, a seaman of the Prince of Wales, whaler, in 1848, and now gone out in the Prince Albert, we are enabled to state that Mr. Lee, who commanded the Prince of Wales, says that he was not at the time in question in Jones's Sound. He supposes ran up into Lancaster Sound. He remembers guiding a boat in shore for a short time; but neither on its return to the ship, nor during the homeward voyage, did he hear of any cairn of stones having been seen. Mr. Lee entered a strait through Admiralty Inlet, steering N.N.W. (magnetic) or true about S.W., and running 150 miles in that direction, sees open water over Cape Kater in Prince Regent Inlet.

April, 2nd.-Captain Collinson, C.B., in the Enterprise, sailed from HongKong to renew his search for Sir John Franklin in Behring Straits.

NAVAL SERVICE OBITUARY,

Vice Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, died at Brighton on Saturday. With ourselves, the whole service will lament the death of this good man-a true NO. 7.-VOL. XX. 3 D

British Officer in every sense of the word—one whose characteristics were liberality, generosity, philanthropy, and gallantry; and whilst possessing all these superior qualities, which make a man estimable in every relation of life, he added to his other endearing acquisitions a warm appreciation of all that was good, noble, and admirable in those who had the honour of his acquaintance. Sir Charles Malcolm saw 26 years of active career in the Navy. It was as brilliant as it was useful, and he was no less distinguished by his gallantry against the enemy than for the improvements he has been the instrument of carrying out in his profession, and for the unceasing support he has rendered to scientific undertakings. Sir Charles Malcolm's name and rank constantly remind us of the late Sir Pulteney Malcolm, G.C.B., his elder brother, the celebrated Commander of the Donegal. He was also brother of the late General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B., and of the late Colonel of Marines, Sir James Malcolm, K.C B, who was with Lord Howe, at the relief of Gibraltar, &c. A fourth brother died, a Lieutenant in the Navy; three sons and a daughter survive, and two of the former we believe are in the Navy. His last public act was presiding at a meeting for a charitable institution.

BOTTLE PAPERS.

H.M.S.V. Alban (tender to H.M.S. Imaum,)
Greytown, May 17th, 1851.

SIR.-I have the honour to enclose a copy of a paper found in a bottle on the Coast of Mosquitia, in about lat. 12° 10′ N., and long 83° 40′ W.

It was found by some Indians on the 21st of April, who delivered it to Mr. Coates, H.B.M., vice-consul at Blewfields, from whom I received it on the 7th inst.

The original I have forwarded to the directions on the paper in compliance with the request.

I am &c.,

FRED. A. W. CRAWFORD, Lieut-Commanding. To Admiral Sir F. Beaufort, F.R.S.

"Remarks.-Friday July 5th 1850. At noon, in lat. 17° 10′ N., long. 25° 28′ W.

"Just passing the Isle of St Antonio off the Cape'de Verds, in perfect good condition and favourable prospect of doing well; all crew in good health, ship perfectly tight, on board of iron barque English, Loharee, for Ceylon in the East Indies.

"JOSEPH RAW,

"Commander, South Shields.
"JOHN CLAY Esq., Owner.

"Any person picking this up we shall feel much obliged to forward to the above address, or

"CAPT. JOSEPH RAW, 19, Albion Street,

"South Shields, Northumberlandshire."

[This bottle has taken the usual course of the current and has reached the Mosquito shore.—Ed. N.M.]

INDIAN STEAM NAVIGATION.

THE report of the Committee on Indian Steam Navigation, sets forth their reasons for recommending the Cape route for the mail service to Australia. The present course of post by sailing vessels is 257 days, without allowing any interval; and it will be seen that by the Indian Overland route this might be reduced to 109 days, with an allowance of three days. The Committee, however, do not regard rapidity of postal communication as an element to supersede everything else, but have endeavoured to ascertain the balance of advantages. Against the Indian route the inconvenience of three transhipments; the charge to passengers, which would be such as to render it unavailable in all ordinary cases; its inapplicability for goods; and the fact of its traversing the heart of Europe and Egypt, and thus being greatly dependent upon our relations with foreign powers, were considered to present insuperable objections. With regard to the line by Panama, a tranquil and secure passage is admitted to be rendered certain; but the inconvenience of crossing the Isthmus (although to be lessened by the projected railway), and the fact of that transit being through a foreign state, seem to have deterred the Committee from recommending it. The Cape route, therefore, has been decided upon as the only one presenting a direct communication without any change of vessel, and as being entirely independent of other countries, while at the same time it is the cheapest for passengers, and peculiarly adapted also for merchandize. The Committee consider it possible, that in this line there may be an uncertainty at first of six or seven days in the homeward mails, but feel satisfied, from the evidence of navigators, that when the experiment of well found screw steamers shall have been sufficiently tried, there will be little doubt of their maintaining their engagements.

The Fox encountered a hurricane in the Bay of Bengal. She sailed from Trincomalee on the 1st of May. The weather became rough, with a falling barometer, and wind N.N.W. to N.W.; the next day it heightened to a furious gale, the wind veering to the westward. In the evening the top gallant-masts were got on deck, and during the middle watch it blew a hurricane, the ship lurching violently-the muzzles of her lee upper-deck guns in the water more than once. On the morning of the 3rd an attempt was made to get the close-reefed maintop-sail in. The jib-boom and foretack bumkins were carried away, bowsprit working very much, and it was evidently impossible for the frigate to keep the wind without throwing her (too heavy) guns overboard. Accordingly the men were ordered down from aloft, the sail left to its fate, and the ship bore up in such weather as the Officers (several of whom have served years in India before) never witnessed here. She was going upwards of 12 knots for some time, while scudding under no canvass but the rags of the main top-sail, rolling so as to bring seas repeatedly over the upper-deck. The wind seems to have abated on the next day, and the Fox, hauled to the wind again, arrived at Madras on the 7th. Her guns are said to be too heavy for so small a frigate. She will go to Penang to caulk and get to rights again.

Insult to the British Flag, and Kidnapping a TAILOR.-On Saturday, at the Whitechapel County Court, was heard the case of "Jamieson v Ramsay," in action of tort. The damages were laid at £50. The plaintiff is a retired tailor, possessing a villa called "Labour's Retreat," on the banks of the Thames. The defendant is an old man of-war's man, who some time ago became possessed of considerable property in Whitechapel, but preferring to live afloat, he equipped a yacht of six guns, the Tom Bowling, in which he lives. In the evidence it appeared that on Easter Mondays, the plaintiff (Jamieson) holds a festive anniversary in remembrance of the day on which his wife died, and cannon are let off to announce the joyful timings. It happened that on the last anniversary,

the Tom Bowling was cruizing off" Labour's Retreat," and when her crew smelt the powder, all hands were piped for action, and they returned fire. The firing on both sides continued some time, until the landsmen put stones in their guns, and riddled Tom's duck and streaming bunting. The aggression was resented, and the boatswain, shotting his guns, seriously damaged the tailor's stack of chimneys. Capt. Ramsay then landed his crew, to demand satisfaction for the insult offered to his fiag, and having thrashed the tailor's friends, the captain challenged the tailor himself, politely offering him the choice of swords or pistols. The tailor, thinking it safer to faint than to fight, swooned away, upon which the defendant ordered him to be taken prisoner; and on coming to his senses, the tailor found himself under the hatches of the yacht, where he was kept the whole night, bewailing the misfortune of being kidnapped by pirates, as he termed his captors. In the morning he was brought before the defendant and tried by court-martial, for insulting the British flag, and being found guilty was sentenced to the yard-arm. He begged for mercy however, and, as a last resource, offered up prayers. The sentence was then commuted to the infliction of an operation performed on sailors when first crossing the line. In that state he was transported to Herne Bay, forty miles from home, without a farthing in his pocket. Mr. G. E. Williams, for the defendant, contended that the plaintiff deserved the treatment which he had brought on himself. The judge said that, although the plaintiff bad acted most improperly in loading his guns, the defendant had retaliated too severely; but under the circumstances, he should award only £5 damages, without costs.

From the numerous reefs among the Habai Group, the navigation is quite impossible without a native pilot; banks have also been thrown up by volcanic action lately. The Feejee Islands, principally known from the account of the United States Exploring Expedition under Capt. Wilkes, is rarely visited by British ships of war, though double the extent of the Samoan Group, and containing probably seven or eight times their population. The Feejeans are reputed treacherous, cruel, and cowardly, and are certainly addicted to cannibalism to a degree not generally known or believed. Although the murder of shipwrecked persons is supposed to be a religious duty, there can be little doubt that the desire to eat the bodies is the principal cause of its continuance, human flesh being esteemed above all other kinds of food. The New Hebrides, &c., though rarely visited by British ships of war, are nevertheless in a commercial point of view, of the greatest importance to our Australian colonies. The inhabitants are a mixture of various races, and are generally cannibals. Little however, is known respecting the population, who on the coast show themselves in great numbers. The French surveys of these islands, by the Astrolabe and Zeelee, being very faulty, great caution must be practised by ships visiting them. With the exception of the negroes of the Pacific Islands, a language essentially the same appears to be spoken from the Feejee to Easter Island, and from the Sandwich to New Zealand. In this language is found, in all, about 100 words of Malay or Javanese. How comes it that one language and one people should have thus been spread? The tribe may have spread itself originally from one central point with intermediate steps. From the Friendly or Society Islands, all the way to Easter Island, there exists something like stepping stones. But the difficulty is with New Zealand. With respect to the extraordinary mortality produced in some of these Islands from the hooping cough, Sir Woodbine Parish mentioned that the same occurred in South Ame rica, and that its intensity had been materially modified by vaccination, which in Buenos Ayres was for some time believed to be a specific against hooping cough as well as small pox. Mr. Catlin affirmed the same from his experience of the Indian tribes of the far-west of North America.-Geographical Society.

THE "NEPTUNE," LONDON AND ST. PETERSBURGHI steamer lately wrecked at Elsineur, was insured in London to the extent of £150,000.

NEW BOOKS.

A HISTORY OF NAVAL ARCHITECTURE: to which is prefixed an Introductory Dis sertation on the Application of Mathematical Science to the Art of Naval Construction, &c. By John Fincham, Esq., Master Shipwright of Her Majesty's Dockyard, Portsmouth, &c.-London, Whittaker, 1851.

IF England owes much to Naval Architecture, as no one can doubt, she owes little until of late years to her encouragement of it; and it is very remarkable that surrounded as she is on all sides by the ocean, obliging her people to become nautical, fewer works have been produced in this country, on the subject of building ships, than in almost any other. This state of things along with the fact that a good popular view of the rise and progress of naval architecture from the earliest times down to the present, was greatly wanted, has had the effect of producing the work before us. We congratulate the author of it on the success of his undertaking, in having put forth a practical work, and at the same time one which is replete not only with scientific detail, but also those interesting features which mark the progress of the art, step by step to its present state of perfection: these are the attractive ornaments, helping along the rigid mathematical details, while history blends both with the events of periods in the progress of nations, and forms an interesting volume rich in every valuable and useful fact relating to the subject. Such is Mr. Fincham's work, commencing with an introduction to the history of ship building, showing briefly the application of mathematical science to this art. "If we turn back to centuries that have passed, (observes our author) we perceive that ships have been built much in accordance with the tastes of the ages respectively, determined ultimately, as mechanical skill was able to give a good or only an indifferent effect to the designs of construction. But these were tastes proper to countries as well as to periods, marking a state of rudeness or of comparative refinement, long before anything like a scientific basis was laid for so important an art. The development of art never waited for this basis; necessity impelled it onwards; and along with many errors, it always associated some important truths; and gathering on the side of truth, and rejecting on that of error, a long course of experience produced ships of a high order of excellence, and capable of fulfilling the objects of their respective periods, before any theory of naval construction existed, perhaps fully as much to the satisfaction of those who built and those who commanded them, as ships of the present age fulfil their destinations."

It was not until about the middle of the seventeenth century that the dawn of science appeared in ship-building, but not in England; for a century later this country from its neglect of the art incurred the severe censure of leaving it to "mere carpenters," a charge which Mr. Fincham refutes by shewing that Mr. Pett, although Master of the Shipwright's Company, was a graduate of Cambridge. We then find an able view taken of the persons who have succ ssively distinguished themselves in developing the science of naval construction and giving character and expression to the complicated motions of a ship, and the forms best adapted for securing certain qualities down to the establishment of the School of Naval Architecture at Portsmouth, from which under the liberal views of the present administration, Mr. Fincham anticipates some benefit to the science as some atonement for its utter neglect under former governments. After paying a just tribute to the memory of Colonel Beaufoy's costly experiments, and his valuable work on the law of resi-tance of fluids, Mr. Fincham com mences his history with the mere raft. We don't know a better illustration of this, than one given by Captain King in the account of his Survey of Australia, on which the native is seated helping himself along without even a paddle. Capt. King considered these people without exception the lowest in the scale of creation. Such a picture given only thirty years ago, is a curiosity and affords proof of the slow progress, which even art without science makes in the world. Our limited space obliges us to reserve some extracts from this valuable work for our next number, and as it is likely to become our text book, we shall find frequent opportunity of referring to it.