The battle, resulting as it did in ultimate victory, was a long one, nevertheless. For many years, all his efforts to induce the British Government to adopt a system of efficient lightning conductors for the Royal Navy remained entirely fruitless; and it was only after he had gained the sympathy of the press, and, through it, of the public, by publishing long lists of the disasters that had befallen the cherished ‘wooden walls of England,’ that at last the closed doors of the Admiralty were opened to him. The lists he furnished were appalling indeed, and enough to impress any minds and open any doors. It was shown by Mr. Snow Harris, from carefully compiled records, based upon official documents, that in the course of forty years--from 1793 to 1832--over 250 ships had suffered from lightning. In 150 cases, the majority of which occurred between the years 1799 and 1815, about 100 main-masts of line-of-battle ships and frigates, with a still larger number of topmasts and smaller spars, together with an immense quantity of stores, were destroyed by lightning. One ship in eight was set on fire in some part of the rigging or sails, and over 200 seamen were either killed or severely disabled. But, formidable as was this account of damage done by lightning, it by no means completed the list of casualties. Mr. Snow Harris gave it as his opinion, on the authority of a great many naval officers with whom he came into contact at Plymouth, that many ships reported officially as ‘missing’ had been struck by lightning and gone to the bottom, with nobody left behind to tell the tale. Thus, from a reference to the log of the line-of-battle ship the ‘Lacedæmonian,’ under the command of Admiral Jackson, it appeared that this man-of-war sailed alongside a frigate, the ‘Peacock,’ on the coast of Georgia, in the summer of 1814, and that the latter suddenly disappeared in a storm of lightning, leaving no trace behind. Again, the ‘Loup Cervier,’ another man-of-war, was last seen off Charlestown, in America, on the evening of a severe thunderstorm, and never heard of again. A famous ship, the ‘Resistance,’ of forty-four guns, was struck by lightning in the Straits of Malacca, and the powder-magazine blowing up, it went to the bottom, only three of the crew reaching the shore, picked up by a passing Malay boat. But for these few survivors, Mr. Snow Harris justly remarked, nothing would have been known of the fate of the vessel, which would have been simply reported as ‘missing’ in the Admiralty lists. It was scarcely to be wondered at that the recital of all these tales of disasters, which might have been prevented by the most ordinary foresight in applying known means of protection against lightning, considerably excited the public mind, so that at last the Government was compelled to act in the direction into which it was impelled by the energetic Plymouth doctor. It was thus that at last, in 1839, the naval commission already referred to was appointed to give counsel as to ‘applying lightning conductors to Her Majesty’s ships.’