HOME FLEET SCHEME.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 53, 2 March 1907, Page 5

HOME FLEET SCHEME.

EFFICIENCY AND SKELETONS. THE MOSQUITO PROGRAMME. (Received 8.23 a.m.) LONDON, March 1. Six battleships and six armoured cruisers will comprise the Home fleet, •which will be fully manned, with 48 destroyers having also full crews. A number of other cruisers and auxiliaries will all be regularly concentrated at the Kore, while nucleus crews for the Home fleet will be maintained at other ports at about three-fifths of their full strength. The Admiralty will be able to bring them to full strength in a few hours. Xaval works loans will be stopped and the expense henceforth included in the annual estimates. The First Lord of tie Admiralty (Lord Tweedmouth), in a memorandum on the reduction of seamen, explains that this will be effected by reducing the number of boys entering training vessels. There would be, he said, an increase of 1227 stokers. , The new ship-building programme would include a fast unarmoured cruiser, five ocean going torpedo-boat destroyers, and twelve first-class torpedo-boats, formerly designated coastal destroyers, and twelve submarines. [Comparing the construction programme with that for 1906-7, it will be found that last year there were no unprotected cruisers building, but that there were 18 torpedo-boat destroyers (against the 17, including the "coastal destroyers" of the new programme), and 15 submarines, or three more than for the forthcoming year.]