THE NAVAL ADVISER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 119, 21 May 1914, Page 7

THE NAVAL ADVISER

CAPTAIN P. H\ HALL THOMPSON, (mom otm own corkkspondent.) ' LONDON, 17th April. From the training point of view, New Zealand could probably ■ not have got a more experienced naval adviser than Captain P. H. Hall Thompson.' In, the Navy List he appears as captain of No. 385, which is H.M.S. President, and which in the - flesh lies in the Thames within a couple of hundred yards of this office. The President was formerly the steam sloop Buzzard, tinder which name she is easily recognised as a sister of what was once the Sparrow and is now the New Zealand training ship Amokura. ' But to be captain of the President means more than appears on the face of it. The President is the head/ quarters and training ship of the London division of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and Captain Thompson is a naval member of the Admiralty Volunteer Committee. Though so small a vessel, the President takes up three pages of the Navy List, whereas the average first-class battleship only takes half a page. This is because she is the nominal headquarters of all sorts of services. She bears as additional for various services hydrographic, ordnance, patrols, R.N. College, coastguards, engineei*- overseers, and numbers more. This does not mean that all these^ Officers are quartered on board. It is just the same as at Portsmouth, where' H.M.S. Victory lies -empty ' in the stream, but 4000 men with H.M.S. Victory on their hats are housed ashore in tho naval barracks.