ROYAL TOUR OF INDIA. A BATTLESHIP YACHT.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume L, Issue 8918, 6 November 1905, Page 2

ROYAL TOUR OF INDIA. A BATTLESHIP YACHT.

A cable on Monday stated that the battleship Renown had left Portsmouth for Genoa, where the Prince and Princess of Wales and party will embark en route for India.

The arrangements for the voyage of the Prince and Princess to India have not passed without criticism. There were complaints when the Ophir was chartered on the last Royal tour that the taxpayer would rather pay such another bill than see a battleship turned into a mere pleasure yacht. That is what has been done to .the first-class battleship Renown, a 12,350-ton vessel, launched in 1895, mounting fourteen big guns, and possessing a speed of over 18 knots.

This ship has been chosen to convey the Prince and Princess to India, and to fit her for the carriage of their Royal Highnesses and their extensive suites the Renown has been rendered valueless as a fighting unit. All her guns, save a few 12-pounders for saluting purposes, have been taken out of her, her casemates have been turned into cabins, and her steel grey war paint has given place to a coating of satiny white. Sho is,indeed, no longer a fighting ship either in looks or in fact.

The Renown was always a comfortable boat, and was Sir John Fisher's flagship on both the North American and Mediterranean stations. The Admiral's apartments on the main deck will be the Prince and Princess's drawing and dining-rooms, the latter giving access to a pleasantlysituated stern gallery, which makes an admirable lounge in tropical climates. The decorative scheme throughout is white and gold.

Every facility for extensive entertaining has been made, the quarter-deck being cleared for dancing and receptions, while the boat-deck forms the promenado. An electric bakery and a huge laundry have been fitted, and the Renown, in arrangements, more resembles a palatial yacht than a warship.

In defence of this spoliation of the battleship it is said that the Renown, which has no sister ship in the British Navy, "spoils the homogenity of any battle fleet," and that the extensive alterations carried out on her are but the prelude to another change. In future she will be commissioned as a sea-going battleship for training purposes. But she will have to be transformed again to serve as a training ship, so that it is questionable whether the economics effected by using her instead of chartering a liner will be visible to the naked eye.

In the meantime the Navy is the poorer by one powerful ship, which, whatever her faults, carried a fine armament and possessed superior speed to all but the newest of the battleships.