The Prince of Wales rose, and in an excellent impromptu speech "assured the members of the Council and the boys (addressing the latter in kindly way as 'you, my young friends'), of the pleasure it gave the Princess, his two sons, and himself to be present. Congratulating the schools on their excellent marching, and on the favourable report just read, His Royal Highness added that he hoped the boys had been up to the mark in their studies as well as their drill."
Two boys of each prize school came in succession to the daïs, and received the prize banners from the Prince's hand. The Prince and his sons then joined the Princess in her box, and it was a striking scene when, after some bars of prelude, the words of 'God Bless the Prince of Wales' were taken up by a thousand young and clear voices, the Prince and Princess and the two lads standing in the front of the box while it was sung. The last of the programme was then fulfilled by the bands playing a selection of music.
The sight altogether was most gratifying. Here were 4000 boys, most of them paupers, many of them orphans, receiving an excellent education, a training in physical aptitudes and habits of obedience as well as in mental studies. The Greenwich School is composed of the children of seamen being educated for the sea, but the three thousand and more boys of the other schools must in large part be looked upon as so much material reclaimed to humanity. In fact, these three thousand and more boys may, in the words of a paper put forth by the Society of Arts, "be beheld with confident satisfaction as victims rescued from 'the bad,' and preserved for the good as honest, self-supporting producers, and worthy members of the community."
On the 11th of August, 1872, the Prince of Wales went from Osborne in the Royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_, to inaugurate the completed Breakwater and Harbour of Refuge at Portland, and to pay a visit to Weymouth, the favourite resort of the Prince's great-grandfather, George III. A magnificent fleet of ironclads, headed by the _Minotaur_, bearing the flag of Admiral Hornby, and many other vessels, were in attendance for the ceremony, of which fifteen were first-rate ironclad ships of war.