A BATTLE-CRUISER.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 82, 7 April 1913, Page 6

A BATTLE-CRUISER.

DREADNOUGHT SEW ZEALAND. IMPRESSIONS OK A MODERN WARSHIP. (By DONALD MACDONALD, in the Melbourne "Argue.") After admiring .the fine speed lines of our v miner Mciuuurnc, you turn to the New Zealand, wie hist of the JJrcadnuught xype that had come into Austr-a-iiau \va<i.eie, and ks now lying ©If the (Jellibrund l J oint, Williametown, to realise power and solidity. This battle-L-ruioer, with her battery ot i-ight lliin. guns, and a secondary equipment of sixteen -iin. quick-tfirers, u> deal with dcdtroycra ana desperate craft of that sort, :e cue of the factors by which Uie nations to-day measure their lighting strength at cca —a ship that can give and take hard knocks in a duel with one of her own size. To grasp, to appreciate, the solidity of the New Zealand, you need to stand, fire't, far away up in her foretop, and take a guH's-eye view of the mass of steel below you. Ev-en then there is ■suggestion of solidity only in the power ■to hit; everything 'that counts for capacity to take punishment is hidden. You must take the designers and shipbuilders' assurance that between her vital parts and the outer world lies some 12in. of steel armour. And when y i have, from this lofty look-out, grasped her solidity, it comes" as s.om£'thing of a revelation "to learn that in an emergency this big ship, which rune to thickness and to depth, rather than length, could outeteain i-ho 'Melbourne. 'She steamed 27 knots on her trial, without developing her engines to the limit. In an emergency, and with justification, she ca.n, it is said, .do 29 knots. It seems incredible when you look at her bulk, and go down into her engines, with what line economy of space 'the turbines are packed away. But coal in sufficiency will do almost anything, and these Dreadnoughts are coal-eaters. At full speed 30 tons of coal per hour passes through her furnaces. On the run across from Durban she used 8,000 tone of coal. When she dropped anchor in Melbourne she had just eight tone of coal left. It eecmeil to be a nice calculation —a matter of cutting it dangerously fine —but her reserve of oil fuel, 6.30 tens - , is yet intact. It will be seen at once that a million and a-'half of money is not the only expenditure that a nation puls into its modern battleship. The real cost begins only when you keep them moving, or when they have to shoot, aa well as steam.

.At present the New Zsa.land looks a fine target, standing high out of the water. That is wholly due to the fact •that her coal-bunkers are empty. By the time she learns Melbourne she will be seen in her natural state, lying much lower in the water. Prob.ibiy on the run across to Wellington she will be pu£ ito"her-top for a speed trial. At preeent they are pouring Westport coal into her— the f:mvous Westport coal, which New Zealanders even yet remind you was in the bunkers of 'the Calliope when she through that Ramosu , . hurricane long agn. nn event celebrated by Kipling in the lines— "First of the scattered galleons ■Under a slirlekinc sky. Dipping, between the rollers Tue English l!ag goes by." The New Zealand, apart altogether from her power, her significance in the tension of nations., must be interesting to Victorians because they see in her a 1 sister-ship to their own Dreadnought, Australia. In build, in armament, in all the things that count for the balance in sea-power, they were identical, so in looking at the New Zealand they realise the Australia. Just as in minor and modern contrivances the New Zealand is an improvement upon the Indefatigable, so in turn, and because of that ceaseless evolution in sea-mechanism which makes naval dominance so costly, the Australia may in some respects be better than bhc New Zealand. None the less, our visitor 13 wholly a modern ship. On her bridge, I notice, among other things, the Gyro compass, the most reliable steering guide yet invented, because it has no elements of deviation at all. While she is founded on the Indomitables and Indefatigables,. her big guns have a much larger arc of fire thau those earlier battle cruisers. The two pairs of turret guns amidships are practically able to box the compass. The whole of her big guns may be trained for either a port or a starboard broadside. In a chase she can practically bring six guns to bear ahead —to be explicit, four out of the six can bear on the hunted enemy; the pair of guiis in tho after turret may be trained 140 degrees past the ordinary broadside position. It will be seen that one object in arming the Dreadnoughts is to have as little top hamper as possible interfering with the sweep of the guns. A word as to the guns and then - capacity may be interesting. They are disposed in pairs in four turrets, and, as in the case of the Melbourne, the first impression one has is that the joint is altogether too large for the dish. We have in the Ceberus an illustration of the old type of circular turret, in which the concussion of a successful shot by the enemy was apt to kill a glin's crew, and in damaging the work of the turret to put a gun out of action. Captain SemenofF, in his account of th« battle of Esu Shima, gives a vivid and impressive description of the Russian battleship turrets when the Japanese gunners were hitting them. In one men sat dazed and incapable through the horrid nerve-shattering clamour — later he looked into the turret again, and they were dead. These turrets of yesterday were too big a mark; even our American visitors of a fen- years ago were old and obsolete as compared with the Xew Zealand. The turrets, with some n inches of armour-plating for their protection, seem to be only enlarged tail-pieces for the guns. The>-e are no side-openings. You enter through a man-hole at the top, climb in through a trap door in the steel floorway, and, once inside — with , singularly little room to snare you I have, excepting for the aperture through which the 46ft. of gun protrudes, a steel wall all about you. One reason why little room is required nowadays in a I turret is that mechanism has quite dis- | placed man handling. Everything that j once demanded power is done by presI sure—electrical or hydraulic;

In the after or "A" turret of the NW Zealand you have a pair of Armstrong rifles 46ft in length, each weighing, to be exact, 57 tons 13cwt. They fire at their best about five shells per minute, each weighing SoOlb, driven by 2601b of cordite, and travelling, vfh'en it leaves the muzzle, at about 27,000 ft per second. Yet the recoil of the shot, a tremendous force, is all 'provided for in a space of about 3ft behind each gun. There is singularly little man power exercised ill the turret, unless it is the power of ■brain—presence of mind in 'big emergea-

cies. -To .begin with, a lift on the very Hoorway of the ship grips this 8501b shell, •which may have either a special nose for armour-piercing, or "be filled with a bursting charge of lyddite—one sort to explode on. comparatively slight shock, another only.after it has passed through a. fair thickness of. steel armour. Aβ the hoist rises it catches a second one on the next deck and carries the charge of cordite up as well ac the shell. On the next deck they are arranged and so hoisted to the breach of the gun. This all counts for-qnick service, tecanse with the mechanism the gun can be loaded at any angle of elevation, and it is at its highest for effective purposes when throwing- its shell over a distance of 11 miles when -?et as in the New Zealand, about 4fift above the water-line. The laying of these turret guns really goes on without regard to .ammunition service, that is almost, if not quite, automatic. The safety contrivances, too, are interesting. It may be imagined that, with this big gun liring straight into the -wind, the rush of air to the vacuum after the shot might easily carry some of the 'burning debris through the breach as soon as it is opened, and possibly bring it in contact with the next charge of cordite. But the very act of opening the breach of one of these turret guns. opens automatically a valve, through which a fierce blast of compressed air is blown down the tiVbe carrying all dangerous refuse out at the' muzzle. Each of the quickfirers in the secondary battery of the Ne\v Zealand can fire about- 15 rounds per minute; their 'breech-blocks are the acme of ease combined with

safety. The New Zealand has been a lucky ship-thus far. Fair weather has come ■with her all the way. She rolls, as

most of the Dreadnoughts do, in a beam sea, but is on the whole a. satisfactory ship. Her officers and crew speak with; enthusiasm of their South African reception. It was wonderful. Even New Zealand must do something exceptional to beat it. About 74,000 people visited the "battle-cruiser at Cape Town, about 60,000 in Durban. Upon one day over 15,000 people were passed in succession through the manholes of the after-turret. On leaving England a New Zealand resident presented the ship with a splendid bulldog, and South African towns presented the dog in turn with two silver collars. Durban gave them a monkey, which, while they coaled yesterday, and grit was abundant, had soie control of the fore-turret. The New Zealand gets her pace from four propellers driven by two sets of turbine engines, and the compactness of this powerful instalment is amazing. On their hottest day in the tropics the temperature of the engine-room was about 112deg. Gangways and ladders are minimised to some extent in the NewZealand in her service of electric lifts, and, like most other things in tne cruiser, the safety contrivances in connection with it aTC ingenious and admirable. The Dreadnought carries a crew of about 700, a proportion of whom and a few of the officers are New Zealanders.