MEXICAN NAVY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10169, 28 July 1924, Page 5

MEXICAN NAVY

VERGING ON THE GiLBERTIAN*, The Mexicans are proposing ta purchase from the Spanish Navy three destroyers that were built in Spain shortly before the war from designs supplied bv a well-known British firm of shipbuilders, states the London correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian. They are named Bustamente, Vinamil,, and Cadarso, were laid down in 1908,. and took six years to build. They werefine ships when they came out, and have been doing useful work on theMoroccan coast, but the day when they could manage tliein 28 knots is long; i past. - The Mexicans have been attempting' to buy a flotilla of destroyers in the - United States,. but the negotiations; ended in failure, owing to the clause in the Washington Agreement, which prohibited the cingatories selling any naval material. Spain is not bound By this agreement, and can therefore dispose of surplus material as she chcosesi | Crews will bo the difficulty, for neither (party in Mexico has any trained sea--1 men, and although a rebel gunboat i took part in the recent blockade and j bombardment of Tampico she was quite, ineffective, and was unable to do any damage. j Although the Mexican Navy .possei.%I ed some of the earliest iron built men-of-war, it has long been nothing but a foke, and the fighting tbet took place in the Civil War of 1914 «as happily Gilbertian.