BATTLESHIP'S GUEST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13745, 9 May 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

BATTLESHIP'S GUEST.

POLICE SERGEANT CARRIED OUT TO SKA. Ani.it spending four days as a compulsory guest upon a battleship, Police-Sergeant Gale, of the Metropolitan force, who is stationed at East Ham, lias returned to London. (rale arrived at Sheerness, where the Nore Division of the Home Fleet was anchored, in charge of , a deserter from H.M.S. Bulwark. Chartering a boat, the sergeant boarded the battleship, and was formally handing over his prisoner, when an officer hurriedly told him to get hack into his boat. The fleet, lie explained, was under immediate orders to sail. "I /went to the side of the ship," said the police-sergeant. "and looked over. M'y boat was gone! Then I remembered that the boatman had rowed off to another ship. As I stood there in a quandary the engines of the Bulwark started and we steamed away. They told me that it would be impossible now to put me ashore without, delaying the whole fleet. I could not telegraph or do anything; in fact, I was helplees ! . , "You can imagine how worried I felt when I remembered that neither my superior officers nor my wife would know what had become of me. 'Where shall we stop first?' I asked. You can guess my dismay when they told me that the fleet would not anchor until it had,, reached Invergorden, near the Moray Firth. "The officers treated the affair as a great joke; but they were very kind to me all the same. I was put to"' mess' with the petty officers, and hadn't -a stroke of work to do, of course. If it hadn't been for the anxiety of not being able to send a message ashore I might have enjoyed the trip very much. A boat from 'the Bulwark put me ashore, at Invergordou late at night. i The first place I visited was the telegraph office. Then I took train to Inverness, and came on from there to London— 600-mile t journey altogether." " ,