WARSHIPS' UPKEEP.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 5, 7 January 1922, Page 17

WARSHIPS' UPKEEP.

HOOD TYPE COSTS £500,000 ANNUALLY. We have been reading and bearing a great deal lately about the cost of building capital ships, writes a naval expert in the "London Daily Times." The record in this respect is held by our own magnificent super-cruiser, the Hood, for which the bill was six million and twenty-five thousand pounds. What is not so often before the public eye and ear is the tremendous drain upon the resources caused by keeping these marine monsters in commission. The complement of a ship like the Hood is 1400 men, whose pay ranges from an admiral at £7 a day down to a second-class boy at one shilling. The full pay, wages and allowances of the crew of-the Hood, as a flagship, amount to no less than £186,400 a year, and to this must he added another £17,----300 for allowances to married men. • The Hood burns oil and even cooks by oil. The only coal used is in the bakery. When in commission her yearly bill for fuel and lubricants is £123,500. Food is of course provided by government. For provisions, clothing, mess traps and the like the yearly account comes to £88,600. Next in point of amount is the cost of docking and repairs, which runs away with a trifle of £60,000 each twelve months. Then there is gun practice. What are called "armament stores" for the Hood cost the nation £38,050 yearly. We come next to sea stores, which comprise a multiplicity of material, paint, ropes, blacksmiths' and electricians' stores, and the like, the bill for which is £30,000 yearly. "Miscellaneous effective services" amount to £7,300 a year, and to this can be added a trifling matter of £300 for medical stores. The gross amount required to keep this great ship in commission is more than ten thousand pounds a week. It comes to £551,500 a year. The Hood is by far our largest ship, her tonnage being 41,200. But a battleship such as the Royal Sovereign, of only 25,750 tons, costs nearly four-fifths as much as the Hood. The total annual direct charges are £403,660. A light cruiser of the "D" class is only one-fifth the tonnage of a battleship, but her annual upkeep is very much more than a fifth. It amounts to just over one hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year. Come to a destroyer of the "W" class, of which we possess sixty-four, and the cost is proportionately even higher, for to keep one in commission means an outlay of £49,075 yearly. Pay comes to £18,000, provisions to £7600, fuel to £9500, and repairs to £7000. He would be a very rich man indeed who could even afford to keep a submarine in commission, for this would cost him £26,215 a year. These, .remember, are direct charges. But in the estimates each ship is saddled also with non-effective liability in respect of retired pay officers and pensions of men. This, in the case of a ship like the ! Hood, adds £52,350 to her yearly cost, I and may be said to average, in the case of all ships, an addition of 10 per cent. to the annual cost of maintenance.