A Communicative Admiral.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14919, 18 March 1914, Page 8

A Communicative Admiral.

Sir lan Hamilton has talked to Australian interviewers with a freedom that must be strange to people in England, where officers do not give interviews. Sir George Patey, the Admiral of the Australian Fleet, has followed suit with a long statement to a representative of the "'Sydney Morning Herald" on the training of his new command. In the old days of the Ad-miralty-controlled Australian Squadron, the Admiral was never interviewed. Ho lived in Olympian aloofness. But Admiral Patey has evidently realised that the Australian public expects a different policy from the head of its own Navy as regards giving out information. He expressed himself as delighted to afford information with regard to the work of the Fleet, and proceeded to give tbe Pressman much interesting information about the four months' hard work that the ship has put in along tho Australian coast out of the public o-e. As soon as the festivities attendant on the arrival of the Fleet in Australian waters were over, hard training began, and after four months of it, the Admiral pronounces his commands quite fit to take their place with vessels of the Imperial Fleet. Admiral Patey had some interesting remarks to make with regard to the Australian seamen under his command. Ho is fully satisfied with their work so far. "Australians are quick to learn." he said, "and thoroughly keen on anything like firing. They are shaping very well indeed, and it is only a matter of time when 1 am quite satisfied they will do as well as any other men serving on British ships. You cannot expect that they will become perfect all at once, but they undoubtedly promise well, and that is all I ask at this stage." The Admiral went so far as to express the hope that with the results accruing from compulsory military service, and with a greater appreciation on the part of the general public of the needs and traditions of the service, there would be even less cause for complaint with

regard to the Australian seamen in discipline and other matters than there was in the case of their British comrades. The Dangerous Dredge. The danger of going to sea in dredges is evidenced once more by the case of the Posidonia, which left Fremantle on January *28th for Port Pirie. and has not since then been heart! of. The "Argus." commenting an the probable fate of the Posidonia. says that this kind of craft is the most unseaworthy afloat. Dredges are extremely top-heavy, by reason of the heavy upper works over which the buckets travel, and their buoyancy is further reduced by the weight of the machinery, which not only provides the power to propel the dredge, hut has to work the endless chain of scoops. Their heaviness is such that only the air pockets with which they are provided serve to keep them afloat. If water once gets into these the vessel is doomed. The dredge cannot rise to the seas like an ordinary ship, but plunges heavily along, wallowing in the troughs of the waves. There is no "life" in it. For these reasons dredges rarely cross the ocean. Generally those which have to come from Europe to Australia try to hug the coast-line as much as possible all the way. A year or so ago a Dutch dredge, the W. T. Appleton, arrived at Melbourne from Holland. It had followed the French coast along to I'shant. and then boldly ventured across tho Bay of Biscay to Cape Finisterre. thence feeling its way cautiously round the Spanish coast into the Mediterranean, and so to Port Said. After passing through the Suez Canal if travelled slowly down the roa.st of Arabia to Perim. whence it struck northwards to tho Indian coast, from there to Colombo and across the Bay of Bengal to the coast of Siam, through the Malay Archipelago and the Dutch East Indies to the Torres Straits and down the Queensland Coast to Brisbane. Between that port and Melbourne the dredge had to shelter several times, and when it finally reached Melbourne it was nearly eight months out from Holland. Such a roundabout voyage as that just described is necessary if great risks are to bo avoided. On the moro venturesome fatality waits. Of three dredges which in October. IDO6, loft Durban for Geelong, only one arrived. Some time ago the Manchester, a bucket dredge, left Lyttelton for Sydney, and disappeared on the way across. A man who recently voyaged in a dredge from Dunedin to Melbourne, declared that nothing would induce him to make another such trip, and his determination is probably -shared by others who have formed part of the crews of such vessels.