IMPRESSIONS OF THE HOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18694, 28 April 1924, Page 9

IMPRESSIONS OF THE HOOD.

EXPECTATION NOT REALISED. NO VISITORS TO OTHER SHIPS [from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY. April 17. New Zealanders may, as so many Australians have, find the Hood a little bit disappointing. So much has been written of it since the squadron set out on its cruise that many people expected to see a ship which would hold one breathless by its monstrous proportions. They were told, for instance, that it was so long that it would not only fill up Martin Place, which lies in the centre of Sydney, but would block the tram traffic in the streets at either end of that thoroughfare. The length of it certainly does not suggest these possibilities; but as the Hood is hardly likely to be carried into Martin Place to test the accuracy or otherwise of the assertion, those who. have entered into heated arguments over the matter will have to remain in doubt. The Hood is a massive ship certainly; but she is not quite the monster that many people expected to see in the harbour. One really has to travel in the ship, to gird up his loins and explore it from its dizzy fighting top down into its massive bowels, and see the army of men on board working with the precision and discipline of a regiment on parade, properly to understand the splendour and the fascination of the big battle cruiser. It is as easy to get lost in her labyrinthine ways, as it is for a stranger to lose himself in the streets of Sydney. The fact that the Hood has monopolised so much of the public's attention has not been altogether pleasing to the tars of the other ships. They have not, of course, made a song about it; but remarks that have, been let drop have shown that the feeling is unmistakably there. At Jervis Bay, for instance, the last place of call before reaching Sydney, a sailor on one of the light cruisers was watching the populace herding on the wharf in the driving rain, waiting to go off to the Hood. Then he looked across at the light cruiser which is the light of his eyes. She was open for inspection, but she was passed coldly by. " Struth," he said with disgust, " anyone would think we had the bloomin' plague on board." However, it is the fashion to visit the Hood, to walk aimlessly about her like a lot of sheep, and to gazo with bulging eyes and open-mouth wonderment at things that one does not understand, and cannot properly understand, unless he knows something cf the technicalities of ships and of all those intricate things that keep their hearts beating.