LOWER RATINGS REQUIRED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 110, 10 May 1923, Page 9

LOWER RATINGS REQUIRED.

FHXX.OMEX, AND CHATHAM. ADMIRALTY ANNOUNCEMENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 27. The Admiralty is making it known that men are required for the lower deck in the New Zealand cruisers—24o in all for the Philomel and the Chatham Tin* follows a call for fifteen officers already published. The ratings are wanted in two batches, the first, 162 in number, to leave Kngland about the middle of May. and the second, numbering seventy-eight, about July 1. They include representatives of nearly every branch, e.\cepi. the Royal Marinus. Volunteers w\l be called upon to to servj for three years, if so long required, under ;he conditions laid down in the regulations for the government and payment of the New Zealand J>i-,',,;.'0n of the Rovnl Navy and the modifications thereto. An important proviso respecting the stokers, of whom fifty-nine are to go in the first and sixteen in the second batch, apart from leading and petty officer rates, is that some of them may not be required for the whole period in the event of the Chatham being replaced by an oil-burning cruiser in 1924. In order to avoid delay and expense, the selection of ratings will be restricted to those serving in Home waters, with the exception of certain volunteers who are now serving in the sloops Veronica and Laburnum on the New Zealand station.