H.M.S. AVENGER

Otago Witness, Issue 3314, 19 September 1917, Page 25

H.M.S. AVENGER

LOST IN NORTH SEA. (From Ouk Own Correspondent ) LONDON, June 26. New Zealanders in this country felt they had suffered intimate loss when it was officially announced that H.M.S. Avenger had been torpedoed in the North Sea on tho night of June 13-14, and had subsequently sunk. Although there had been no opportunity for this armed merchant cruiser to take up the mail service for which she had been built, her temporary war-name did not disguise the fact that she was to have been christened the Aotea-Roa, and had been designed and built for the Union Steam Ship Company to take up her running in the New Zealand-Vancouver mail route. So nearly ready was she that a number of her officers had arrived from New Zealand to take tho vessel out, and they, too, were commissioned by the Admiraly. A the time she was lost the Avenger had on board the following New Zealanders: — Engineer-commander J. Dunlop, R.N.R. (Auckland); Engineer-lieutenants A. Leslie Gatland, R.N.R. (Onehunga), Robertson Cook, R.N.R. (Dunedin), and J. Stanley Wells, R.N.R. (Christ-church); Engineer-sub-lieutenants Henry H. Wilson, R.N.R. (Mosgiel). Walter H. Richardson, R.N.R. (Dunedin), George H. M'Leod, R.N.R. (Auckland), Thomas J. M'Laren, R.N.R. (Dunedin), William J. Urquhart, R.N.R. (Dunedin), Errol T. Tylee, R.N.R. (Napier), and Hugh Kirkland, R.N.R. (Mosgiel). Kirkland was injured by the explosion, but is doing well. For the time being this little service colony is separated.