BATTLESHIP TROPHIES

Otago Witness, Issue 3566, 18 July 1922, Page 8

BATTLESHIP TROPHIES

PASSING OF H.M.S. NEW ZEALAND. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, July 12. When New Zealand gave to the Imperial fleet a battleship bearing her name, the member for Tiinaru (Mr J. Craigie) and others raised a fund by public subscription throughout the country, and presented to the vessel a silver bell, a shield, and an album. In the House <jf Representatives to-day Mr Craigie raised the question of what should be done with these frophies. and with the fund out of which shooting prizes were for years offered to the crew of the New Zealand, now that the battleship was being scrapped. Mr Craigie thought it right that the trophies should he restored to this country and displayed in the vestibule of Parliament Building. The fund for shooting prizes had

grown during the war to £6OO, since target practice had been abandoned. Now, according to Mr Craigie, the trustees recommended that the money should be used to provide prizes for big gun shooting on the Chatham, or on other vessels in New Zealand waters. If ever there was again a battleship bearing the country’s name, the gifts should go to it. The Minister of Defence (Sir Heaton Rhodes) said that the fund which the trustees were handing over would be utilised to the doest advantage, according to the trustees’ suggestions. New Zealand had been informed that it con’d have whatever was worth having of the gift battleship, and that it would be credited also with the proceeds from the sale of the scrap. Among the articles that might he expected io be sent out, in addition to the trophies mentioned by Mr Craigie, were the ship’s bell, silver bugles, bunting, coats of arms. Maori carvings, mess pictures. and the silver plate. He agreed with the member that in the absence of a war museum the vestibule of Parliament Buildings was the most suitable place to display the trophies. A deputation waited on the Hon. C. J. Parr at Auckland with a suggestion that the ship’s bell should be placed in the Purlimentary Buildings, and that the other trophies should he displayed in the Auckland Memorial Museum. Requests for various articles had been made by different towns, said Sir Heaton Rhodes', but his private opinion was that it would he a mistake to divide the collection, which, apart from the three or four trophies, could best be stored in the Dominion Museum. The Minister expressed his appreciation of Mr Craigie’s action in raising the fund by means of which the gifts were provided.