FIRING ON A STEAMER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 12

FIRING ON A STEAMER

"WHO THREW THAT BRICK?” (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, November 25. Admiral Rozhdestvensky is by this time "somewheres east o’ Suez,” but apparently tlm navigation of the North Sea is still attended with dangers other than those which the mariner expcts to encounter in the pursuit of his calling. It has transpired that about noon on Thursday last, whilst the Carron liner Grange was steaming slowly in a thick mist past the island of Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth, she became the target of an invisible enemy, half a dozen shells of fairly large size whizzing through the air in quick succession. Tnree or four of them actually struck the vessel, one knocking a hole in the captain's cabin, near the navigation bridge, and passing close to captain Shaw, another piercing the air-chamber in connection with the machinery, and a third ploughing up the deck forward. Then the firing ceased, leaving the scared passengers to speculate as to whether the ship had been fired on by some errant Russian warship, the Inchkeith forts, or the British gunboat Thrush, whicn was known to be somewhere in the vicinity. Captain Shaw favoured the idea that the Thrush had been guilty of ignoring the strict prohibition that big gun practice nemst not be indulged in when haze or fog obscures the limits of the gun’s range. But Captain Johnson, of the Thrush, on arriving at Dundee, and hearing of the Grangers exciting experience, denied most emphatically that his vessel had fired a single shot on Thursday, and royal naval reserve men landed from the gunboat testified to the truth of his assertion. The forts at Inchkeith likewise deny having been practising on the day in question; moreover, the distance of the Grange from the forts was such as to render it practically impossible for oven their heaviest guns to have thrown shells over her in the fashion alleged. So the identity of the Grange’s assailant is "wrop in mistry,” and we are left speculating as to whether the good ship Grange owes its injuries to British gunners or to those of some vagrant Russian cruiser.