AN EXCITING TIME

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 1 November 1926, Page 5

AN EXCITING TIME

PREMIERS ON THE REVENGE THRILLING INCIDENTS "LONDON, 30th Oct. All the thrills of naval warfare without its horrors were witnessed by" the premiers ami 250 guests aboard the battleship Revenge off Portland Pill today. They experienced the sensation of watching a dummy torpedo, from an unseen submarine coming unerringly to hit the vital mark. Then destroyers, skimming the foam, sought to strafe the submarine with depth charges, while overhead, a fleet of supermarine seaplanes carried out their tale-telling task, 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 whom only Mr Mackenzie King was absent,.-as he is 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 ot 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 LlB had they not known the red nose of the torpedo was filled with water instead of high explosives. They even 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 in tiie port side bulge, with a resounding boom. In the meantime two others found their mark on the starboard side. To all intents.and purposes the Revenge was a. lame duck" out of action, but she was soon reeling off at sixteen knots to watch the LlB, now well away, getting a make-believe dose of dizziness from the destroyers' depth charges. These were only 1000 yards away and the concussions made the Revenge quiver. Detonations were reverberating through her as if a bandsman was playing a huge drum. The, sky was soon thick with aircraft, which literally belched at the raLc of one per minute from the aircraft carrier Furious, while sweepers cleared the. Revenge's path of miners. Put tho.mnst stirring incident was the close up view of larget firing by the Hood, Repulse and Renown, mere grey splotches on the horizon seven miles away, hurling l?flcien-/inch island billed shells across (he Revenge's bows lo a target yards beyond. From the flash of the guns lid the boorn was heard on the Revenge it was twenty seconds, and then ten more till (lie shells sent up columns of spray 150 feet, concealing the target till it' was so perfectly straddled as to represent a riddled ship.

Coming home six smoke-screened destroyers tried to torpedo the Revenge, but the hitter's twisting caused all to miss the 'mark.

The guests, on disembarking, lustily cheered Admiral Sir If. F. Oliver, Com-mander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Kleet, and the crews of the ships in a tribute to the navy's stagecraft.