STRONG NAVY NEEDED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17351, 24 December 1919, Page 9

STRONG NAVY NEEDED.

V.C. WINNER'S OPINION. PROTECTING COASTAL TOWNS LESSONS LEARNED IN THE WAR. [BY TELEGRAPH. PRESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON. Tuesday. Lieut.-Commander Bourke, V.C., D.5.0., who was in charge of motor launch 276, and engaged in blocking operations at Ostend in April and May, 1918, was accorded a welcome in the Town Hall this afternoon.

In the course of his reply, Lieutenant Bourke mentioned that he was not in New Zealand in an official capacity, and therefore any opinions expressed by him were simply his personal views. " I think myself," he continued, "that New Zealand was never in greater need than now of an Imperial Navy capable in the event of war of keeping an enemy fleet from putting to sea. I have come to this conclusion after my experience in working with monitors on the Belgian coast. The monitors patrolled up the Belgian coast daily escorted by destroyers, and bombarded whenever they wished to. They went within ten and twenty miles of the coast in broad daylight and under cover of a smoke screen bombarded with" absolute impunity. The motor launches made a dense bank of smoke between the monitors and the enemy shore batteries and I don't know of a single instance of a monitor being hit by an enemy shell throughout the operations. If Ostend had not been a Belgian port the monitors could quite easily have destroyed it. In the largest bombardment there were eight monitors with 12in and 18in guns, and each monitor was firing at the rate of one round every thirty seconds. Each shell was capable of completely wrecking a large building. If this terrific fire had been concentrated on Ostend instead of on enemy batteries and coastal defences, you can imagine what the result would have been. " All the important towns in New Zealand are on or near the coast, and in the event of war and the Imperial Navy being defeated, there is nothing to prevent the enemy from coming within ten or twenty miles of the coast in the daytime, under cover of a smoke screen and destroying town after town with impunity. The enemy had batteries on the Belgian coast mounting 225 guns along a stretch of twelve miles, and 136 of these guns were from 6in to 15in big guns, ranging up to twenty miles. If New Zealand batteries mounted the same number of guns per mile as the enemy did on the Belgian coast, which of course is quite impossible, they would still be absolutely powerless to pre vent an enemy fleet in the daytime, under cover of a smoke screen, from destroying town after town.

"It is on account of this that I have come to the conclusion that the only safety for the towns of New Zealand in the event of war is to have an Imperial Navy capable of holding an enemy navy from proceeding to sea. In order to have a strong navy it is essential that you should have a strong Navy League, and I think there was no time when the work of the Navy League was of greater importance than now."