How to join the Australian Navy.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVII, Issue 1360, 14 May 1895, Page 3

How to join the Australian Navy.

■— - 1 - (Christchurch Truth.) We have received several letters from correspondents asking for information as to the means to be adopted to get boys into the Australian Naval Squadron. The method is neither very difficult nor tedious. An applicant must be within fifteen aud sixteen years of age. He can apply personally to the captain of any cruiser calling at Lyttelton, and must be brought on board by a parent or guardian, who is required to produce the lad’s birth certificate and to name some one to whom the officers cau apply for a reference as to character. If ihese preliminaries are satisfactory the hoy is then examined by the surgeon of the vessel, and it may be mentioned that no boy who is in any way deformed need trouble to apply. If the doctor’s report is a favorable one, the captain sends the applicant’s name, with particulars attached, to the Commander-in Ohief of the Australian , Station for his approval. If this is obtained the papers are returned to tho applicant, and lie is told to present j himself to the Captain of the first j warship calling at Port. He goes then to Sydney, and at the first opportunity j is sent Home, where he goes into a training ship, and after a period of training is drafted on board a vessel, the Admiralty undertaking that he shall bo allowed to servo a certain J amount of his time on the Australian Station. There must be many lads in New Zealand for whom—owing to instincts which have descended to them from seafaring forefathers and partly ‘ due also to their upbringing in seaport towns—the sea is their natural heritage, and though it could be wished that the ° colonial shipping was large enough to . absorb them, it is better that they should join the Imperial navy than

help to swell the ranks of the unemployed. In time it may come about that the ships of the Australian squadron, or at least the auxiliary portion of it, will be manned entirely by colonial bred Jack Tars, and in any case the navy is a school in which the colonial youth may learn many useful lessons, of which at present he often stands in much need.