NAVY TO CHURCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 185, 4 August 1923, Page 14

NAVY TO CHURCH.

AFTER EIGHTEEN TEARS. HAD TO STICK IT OUT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 27. Eighteen years in the Royal Kavy, and now an Anglican clergyman, James H. Makgill Crichton decided that he would come to Australia to etart in his new sphere ot life. , Mr. Crichton, who arrived in Sydney from England thig week, said that from childhood he felt a desire to enter the Church. "I was put into the Navy ac a youngster," he said, "before I wae old enough to know what I wanted; before I realised what my vocation really was. Once I was in the clutches of the Royal Navy I had to stick it out. I rose from a middy to the rank of lieutenant-commander, and during the eighteen years T was in the navy I saw most of the world. I served in the Mediterranean station, in Mexico, in Porn, and once went 2000 miles up the Amazon. During the war I commanded a- monitor in the Mediterranean and strafed the Bulgars. The one and only battle I wa< in wae Jutland. i "Mv chance cs-me with the cessation of hostilities, and I resigned from tie Navy. Then I went to King's College, University of London, and commenced the. couree of study to qualify mc for the Church. It felt very strange going to school again, but I was studying foi the work I knew that I wag beet fitted for and went into it enthusiastically. ''When my etud:es were over, I booked my passage for Australia. I have left my wife and two kiddies in England. They will join mc later when I see how <,hp' land iies. I can't reaay explain what a relief it is to be out of the Navy."'