The merchant service was in even worse plight. The tonnage rules had had a deplorable effect upon merchant shipping. The ancient method of assessing a ship’s burthen was by measuring the product of its length and breadth and depth, and dividing this by a constant number, which varied, at different periods, from 100 to 94. Early in the eighteenth century, however, a simplification was innocently made: the depth of the average ship being half the beam, a new formula was approved--length multiplied by half the square of the beam, divided by 94.[34] The result might have been anticipated. Dues being paid only on the length and breadth, vessels were given great depth of hold, full lines, and narrow beam. Absolved by the convoy system from trusting to their own speed for self-protection, English merchantmen became slugs: flat-bottomed, wall-sided boxes, monstrosities of marine architecture of which it was said that they were ‘built by the mile and served out by the yard.’ To raise the skill and status of our builders, the Committee of Naval Revision of 1806 presided over by Lord Barham advised the establishment of an official school, in which the more highly gifted apprentices might study the science involved in naval architecture. In 1811 the school was opened at Portsmouth, with Dr. Inman, a senior wrangler, as president. Ships were designed by Dr. Inman and his pupils excellent in many respects, and generally on an equality with those of the Surveyor and the master shipwrights. Yet still they were very imperfect. The official designs were hampered, not only by the hereditary prejudices and dogmas and by the cautious timidity of the builders themselves, but by the restrictions still imposed by the Navy Board, who insisted on a certain specified armament in combination with a totally inadequate specified tonnage: who laid down incompatible conditions, in short, under which genius itself must fail of producing a satisfactory result. The chains were broken in 1832. In that year, when the whole administration of the navy was in process of reorganization, the office of Surveyor was offered to and accepted by a naval officer, Captain W. Symonds, R.N.: accepted by him on the condition that he should be given a free hand in design and allowed to decide himself of what tonnage and dimensions every ship should be. Sir Robert Seppings was superannuated. The school of naval architecture was abolished. The sensation produced was powerful. “Except on matters of religion,” said Sir James Graham, when the appointment was being debated in the House of Commons some years afterwards, “I do not know any difference of opinion which has been attended with so much bitterness--so much anger--so much resentment, as the merits of Sir W. Symonds and the virtues of his ships.”