BATTLESHIPS THAT CAME BACK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16842, 28 April 1915, Page 10

BATTLESHIPS THAT CAME BACK.

The Admiralty has told no more about the attack on the Dardanelles, but an examination of the constitution of the fleet engaged in that operation has" filled us with amazement and admiration.. With one exception only the battleships engaged were all voted obsolescent before the war began, and they were each of them discharging duties of secondary importance in different parts of tho world. The Triumph was in Hong Kong, the Vengeance was stationed near the East Indies before she came back to Britain to bombard the German positions on the Belgian the Cornwallis was only considered fit for use as a gunnery instruction vessel and the Agamemnon, though only seven years old, was being reduced to a nucleus crew and practically taken out of the front fighting rank. The French battleships wero in precisely the same state of honourable decadence, yet here were they all gathered from the furthermost parts of the Seven Seas, combined as a homogeneous squadron, and placed under the command of Vice-Admiral Sackvillo Carden, whose flag at the beginning of the war was flying over tho stores shed at Malta, and who was in the Naval List numbered amongst the has-beens. As "The Times" correspondent aays: —"Tho coming together of this Franco-British iorce from the oceans illustrates once more tho übiquity of sea-power and the aphorism of Bacon that ' he who commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much or as little of tho war as he will, whereas those that be strongest by land are nevertheless many times in great straits.' " It is a striking illustration of the sea-power .of the. Allies that thoy should be able to cage the German fleet "in the North Sea, to contain the Austrian fleet in tho Adria. tic, and bo able to detach so many ancient but potent pre-Dreadnoughts to force a way through one of the strongest fortified passages in tho world Australia, as usual, has more than an academic interest in the bom liardment, because Vice-Admiral Cai den was a pupil and protege of Sir Harry Rawson, the ex Governor of Ne.v South Wales, when that burly and cheerful seaman was engaged in one of