PADDLES FOR OARS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 32, 17 November 1943, Page 3

PADDLES FOR OARS.

USE IN CANADIAN NAVY. LONDON. The Navy’s standard sea-boat for small men-of-war is the five-oared whaler, but the Royal Canadian Navy lias developed a new technique for handling them. All naval ships’ boats, other than those with engines, are propelled by oars, but paddles, of the pattern familiar in Canadian canoes, are supplied for use in life-rafts; and the Canadian seamen, perhaps impelled by a national tradition, have taken to using them in their whalers, when occasion has arisen to lower a seaboat. In a heavy sea they have some advantages over oars for those who are skilled in their use, and for a short distance a paddled boat may well be handier and faster than which is rowed.

H.M.C.S. Restigouche, destroyer, recently had occasion to send her medical officer to a merchant ship in a high sea, and to bring back an injured officer to be landed quickly foi hispital treatment. Those tasks were performed rapidly and efficiently by her whaler under paddles—an unusual sight anywhere except on the inland waters of Canada —but the officer in charge expressed himself doubtful if it could have been done under oars.