FIFTY PER MINUTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 214, 10 September 1934, Page 3

FIFTY PER MINUTE.

CROWDS VISIT CRUISERS. TARGET PRACTICE THIS WEEK. During the three and a lialf hours the Diomede and Duuedin, the two cruisers of the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, were open to inspection by the public yesterday at the Queen's wharf, the visitors, it is estimated, numbered between SOOO. At one stage people were boarding the Dunedin nt the rate of nearly 50 a minute, but the police and Harbour Board officials had no difficulty in controlling the stream of visitors. Both cruisers were also open to the public on Saturday afternoon, but it was yesterday that the crowd of visitors was so large that inspection could not be made in comfort, although everything possible was done by the officers and marines to assist. Small boys, as usual, were here, there and everywhere, on both cruisers, trying out every possible piece of mechanism that was movable. The public evinced keen interest in the guns, and the marines on duty thoroughly explained the working. Alongside the guns were stacks of "dummy" shells. This afternoon the Diomede, flagship of Rear-Admiral F. Burges Watson, and the Dunedin, commanded by Captain Cosmo Graham, went out into the gulf for gunnery practice. I-I.M.S. Laburnum, under Commander A. H. Maxwell Hyslop, leaves this evening at C.30 with the practice target, and the minesweeper Wakakura leaves at G. 45 with the smaller target. On Friday the ships will return to port, and the Dunedin and Diomede will then make - preparations in readiness to leave for Sydney, Hobart and Melbourne, on September 17. The two cruisers will represent .New Zealand at the Melbourne Centenary celebrations, and will form part of the escort to the Duke of Gloucester.