PREMIERS SPEND DAY WITH NAVY

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3493, 1 November 1926, Page 10

PREMIERS SPEND DAY WITH NAVY

lulling Mimic Battle Staged REVIEW OP NATION’S NAVAL DEFENCES [By Electric Cable —Copyright.] [Au!3t. and N.Z. Cable Association.] (Received Sunday. 11.5 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 30. All the thrills of . naval warfare, without its horrors, were witnessed by thu Premiers and 250 guests aboard the battleship Revenge, oh Portland Hill to-day. They experienced the sensation of Watching a dummy torpedo from an unseen submarine coming uner singly to hit a vital mark, then destroyers shimmering the foam rushed to strafe the submarine with depth charges, while overhead a fleet of super-marine seaplanes carired out their tale-telling task of blinking out in morse code their messages of guidance to the punitive greyhounds of the Navy. It was all intensely real, and delighted the Premiers of waom only Mr. MacKenzie-King was absent, suffering from a chill. From the moment of leaving' Waterloo till the return, the party experienced the perfect hospitality of the British Government. Not the least delightful feature was the breezy courtesy of the officers and crew of the Revenge. It was a real day with the fleet. The visitors might not have been so admiringly disposed toward the submarine LIS, had they not known that the red nose of the torpedo was filled with water instead ot high explosives. They oven bet on its chances of cutting off the Revenge as they traced its tell-tale wake a hundred yards off, when it was sighted. The torpedo struck with wonderful precision just abaft the engine-room on the port side bulge, with a resounding boom. In the meantime, two others found their mark on the starboard side. To all intense and purposes, the Revenge was a lame duck, out of action, but she was soon reeling off Sixteen knots to watch the LIB, notv well away, getting a make-believe dose of dizziness from the destroyers’ depth charges. These were only a thousand yards away, and the concussion made the Revenge quiver, the detonations reverberating through her as if bandsmen were playing a huge drum. The sky was soon thick with aircraft, which literally belched at the rate of one per minujte from the air-craft-carrier Furiois, while the sweepers cleared the Revenge’s path of mines. But the most stirring incident was the close-up view of targetfiring by the Hood, Repulse and Renown, mere grey splotches on the horizon seven miles away, hurling fif-teen-inch sand-filled shells across the Revenge’s bows to a target two thousand yards beyond. From the flash of the guns till the boom was heard on the Revenge it was twenty seconds, then more till the shells sent np columns of spray a hundred and fifty feet, concealing the target till it was so perfectly straddled as to represent a riddled ship. Coming home, six smoke-screenod destroyers tried to torpedo the Revenge, but the latter’s twisting caused all to miss the mark. The guests, on disembarking, lustilyi cheered Admiral Sir H. F. Oliver, Commander-in-Chlcf of the Atlantic Fleet, and the crews of ships, in tribute to the Navy's stage craft.

Mr. Coates and his wife embarked at Portland on the cruiser Westminster, and went to the Isle of Wight to join Lord and Lady Jellicoe for the week-end.