MAKING A CRUISER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3333, 9 August 1926, Page 8

MAKING A CRUISER.

JIG-SAW PUZZLE IN STEEL.

(By H. V. Morton.)

1 have read somewhere that when women make a garment they take a. paper pattern, place it over the material and cut it out. Battleships are made like this, too. It seems incredible that the Fleet has been cut out on the same principle as. (forgive me) a camisole • 1 went to Bovoii port Dockyard from a strong sense of duty, qu-tc prepared to be bored; for you cannot go to Ply-' mouth and leave out Dcvonport. I had no sooner driven “Maud” within the grey gates than 1 became in Lores tcd. I. had expected a dockyard; J seemed to have entered sin old public school or a cathedral close. His Majesty's dockyard sit Dcvonport can give points to any model factory in the country. It is a beautiful sight The buildings are grey and old, on either side an avenue of trees. 'Hie cobbled paths slope gently to the waters o( the Hamoaze. At the dock gates is an old grey chapel. There is much green grass, the graveyard, it seems, of sloops and frigates, for from this greenness spring old figureheads, tjieir painted faces gazing into the sky; the grass sinning upward ou their chins. “Th s ” remarked my guide, “is our museum.” He took me into a building full of wooden giants, figureheads that dipped in many waters before the days of steam. Here these soldiers and sailors have retired; it is the most exclusive and, may I say experienced service club in the kingdom. The members lean outwards from tho walls wearing old uniforms; dukes, generals, admirals, Eiist Indiamen; a brave, stonyfaced club of old giants . . - What do they talk about when the dock gates are shut at night? “Ah, sir,” sighs the Duke of Marlborough to George 111., “how would you like to feel the Bay of..Bengal warm on your waistcoat again?” “Oh, sir, would it not be good and inv gorating to feel a broadside shake you to the nose” says the Duke ol Wellington. “Or,” whispers Nelson from bis corner, “the trade winds in the main top gallants and the white spume on your cheek.” “If you want to sec the yard we ought to get a. move on!” said ibo guide. He dragged me away. In Dcvonport they are building now H.M.S. Devonshire, one of the eight cruisers in this year’s Nava! Estimates. Any girl who has made a coat and skirt can grasp tho technical principle in a second. First the architects draw the iilan. Then they paint it in sec lions on steel plates Little engines with the Royal arms on them fuss over i ail way lines carrying Hie plates to high, noisy sheds. Men take., the plates, put them on machines that cut steel ns a knife outs bioad and the pattern of the new cruiser emerges. In one shed machines punch rivet holes; in the next they bend inch steel plates as easily as yon bend a sheet of cardboard. Tho engines puff over to the dockside with flic sections. At the moment his Majesty’s ship Devonshire looks like a giant hen coop. She rises above the dock, a insty shell of a ship with men clambering over her and applying compressed air riveters to her flanks. On Ibe dock lie the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, each one carefully numbered in white paint. When the builders require a few more yards of bull they send down for section S3lO. “Coming up !” says Bill on the clock, as the big crane lifts S3lO in the air. The men in the shell fix 531.0 next to S3OD and then stand down for S3ll. High above the shouting and the clang ol steel sections shot to earth sounds the piercing shriek of the compressed air riveters. There is no slacking in the building of (be Devonshire! Now and again the men cast a glance towards a board on the dock which tells them bow many they added during the present working week “She’s not being built against time lor anything,” I asked suspiciously, “for the Great War was the war that ended wars, wasn’t it?” “No, that’s not it.” replied the guide. “We arc racing Portsmouth, where they arc building a similar cruiser. We mean to win the race, too!” Imagine with what emotion I discovered a queer little bit of steel with four boles punched on it lying rcady on l lie, dock-side. An insignificant little angle of the bull, but, as I instinctively felt, my income tax! We were walking away from this marvellous jig-saw puzzle when we came in a dry dock in which, queer sight iu this nursery and hospital of tin* ironclad, lay a battered old war ship of the Trafalgar era. She bad square yawning portholes and a bowwindowed stern. “That vs the old H.M.S. Implacable.” explained the guide, ‘‘which we captured from the French at the Battle of Trafalgar. She has been lying for years at Falmouth, and we arc giving her a wash and brush up before sending her back as a training ship.”Good old Implacable! The painters and decorators were climbing over her, every sweep of their brushes making her look as game sa a lighting cock. When she takes the water again in her new coat of paint, with her windows repaired and her hull patched, H.M.S. Devonshire, if she is then ready, will instinctively salute her; or I hopY so A whistle blows, and the battleship makers stop work! They stream out in thousands from workshop and dock-side. Three policemen stand before (be gates and touch men at random on the shoulder. Such men double oil at once to a little office near tin; gates, where another policeman runs bis hands over them to make quite sure, apparently, that they are not taking a. battleship out to luucli with them. ..... Over Dcvonport (lien falls an hours intense silence, in which a lean grey destroyer steams in to dock. She may have something wrong with her engineroom, with her gnus, with her hull; or sbo may only have sprained an ankle somewhere at sea. She struggles into the dock with the sure knowledge that Dr Dcvonport will feel her pulse and say;— “My dear lady, wayll have yon right in no time !” Dcvonport is doctor, nurse, and mother to the Fleet —-chiefly mother. Devonport’s work, like that of a mother, is never done, because ail the year through her big grey children come limping in from sea to her; every year her new children leave her and go out to the ends of the earth.