246 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
driven into them. In 1693 she "was the terror of the French
"at La Hogue." Brought to the Medway to be repaired she
was burnt by "accident or negligence" in 1696. The Achilles,
built of such timber in 1757, was sound after twenty years.
She was found to be in need of considerable repair in 1784,
but as there was general peace she was broken up. In 1775,
as there was sufficient accumulation in Chatham dockyard of
timber which had been felled in its bark in winter, a test
was made by building the Montague. She was launched in
1775 and then laid up in ordinary. She had small repairs in
1782 and 1790, and did not go into service until 1793: she had
another small repair in 1795 and was laid up requiring a large
repair in 1801. She was taken to pieces in 1818. This is not
a bad record, but it proved nothing, particularly as the wood
was well seasoned.
The Hawke sloop was a much more interesting experiment.
She was launched in 1793, having been constructed half of oak
barked in the spring of 1787 and felled in the autumn of 1790,
the other half felled in the early spring, all the timber coming
from the same estate. Ten years later she was in such a state
of decay that she was taken to pieces and examination showed
that both halves were equally rotten.
Burridge in 1824 "traced the origin of Dry Rot to the existing
necessity to supply Tanners with oak bark" and put forward a
substitute for this.
Much indeed was written about the subject; the notion
that timber cut during the waning of the moon was less liable
to decay was also widespread.
But some few saw that the most sensible policy was to build
a few ships each year and thus be able always to use properly
seasoned wood. Further, the older ships could be kept in
reasonable repair and ready for refitting for emergency service.
The policy invariably followed, however, seems to have
been to regard every period of peace as likely to be permanent,
and this at a time when such a prospect could have been visualised
only by the politically mad. War ended, ship-building slackened
or was suspended, trained shipwrights were discharged, stores
neglected, and ships removed from active service ("sea pay")
and placed in reserve ("in ordinary") at the dockyards, where
they remained unventilated and rotting in what came to be