SUNDAY ON THE FLAGSHIP.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 105, 27 January 1908, Page 6

SUNDAY ON THE FLAGSHIP.

. , ' CKOWDS OP VISITORS. Hundreds of people lvent out to the warships yesterday afternoon. The flagship Powerful, especially, received crowds o£ visitors. They swarmed in all parts where they were permitted to go, and betrayed, each in individual fashion, a keen interest in all that was to be seen. Some studied the guns, and drank in quantities of knowledge about sights and firing from the /lips of communicative gunners. Some were more .interested in '.he sailors. They stood and watched them at the tables stowing away, in quite unceremonious fashion, prodigious 'quantities of bread, butter, and meat, and drinking tea out of basins, Others narrowly perused the various orders and notices posted up for the guidance of "Jack." They wondered, as they rend, why it was wrong to wear blue suits, tor coaling, or wherein lay the lieinousness of keeping one's cap in a cardboard box. There were visitors who moralised and philosophised. Here were two discussing Mr. lieir liardio's prediction that the spread of Socialism would put navies o>it of use. Another was declaring that (lying machines would not only make battleships of no more use than coal hulks, but would bring about nniversal peace, because otherwise every nation would po able so easily to destroy every other. The sailors and gunners did not mind the visitors. They ate,/smoked, or read their Sunday novels in much contentment. Many of them slept. The land folk walked and talked among their prono forms, and might have stepped over thorn. Their fellow tars wero not silent at the mess close by, but they slept as soundly as if there was no sound or movement near them but the gently lapping wavers. Away from the crowds on the clear, clean upper deck, Madame Clara Butt paced with a friend. Shortly before 5 o'clock the order was given to sweep decks, and a' squad of men with brooms caused the quick disappearance of (he dust and miscellaneous small debris left by the crowd of visitors. On the stroke of 5 th'e ship was cleared, the last boat load of visitors departed, and life on board the flagship resumed it normal course.