H.M.S NEW NEALAND.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 14053, 25 July 1916, Page 3

H.M.S NEW NEALAND.

VISIT TO THE VESSfcL. PRINCE SITLL ON BOARD. The London correspondent of the Auckland Herald describes a recent visit to H.M.S New Zealand. It was Prince George of Battenburg, he says, who stepped to greet me as I arrived at the boat-pier. As young-looking as before, but rather stouter, and sporting another stripe on his ouff, he seemed surprised that I had hardly expected to see him still m the Dominion ship. He would be there until he. died); and would not listen to the dismal suggestion of a landsman that by then she would be an old ship. lam not romantic, but I did have some sort of a schoolboy conviction that the New Zealand would be found bearing some marks of the blood and fire of battle. Alas! These frank, unaffected sailormen ! One of my hosts almost apologised that the ship had no monourable scars at all. In the wardroom of the New Zealand is a most interesting chart, started by Captain Halsey, showing the course oi the ship since the war began. Her activity has not been entirely m tht North Sea. Every mile she has knotted is faithfully charted, and it is quite exciting to follow the line about suci dates as August 28, 1914, and January 24, 1915. The marks of war on the fabric of the ship are not conspicuous. The silver drums presented by- New Zealand children, and the boars' heads and other trophies are there still, and have been added to from time. to time. Just before the war the New Zealand was m Russia and m Kiel ; and at Kronstadt the Tsar and Tsaritsa presented their portraits to the officers' mess, where they now hang. There is also a model of the Blucher, made by a German prisoner m Edinburgh Castle and presented by the purchaser to our ship. In the wardroom, too, is a silver globe, supported by Neptune, showing the track of the New Zealand m her world-tour. Round the pedestal are the names of th^ officers who subscribed, a mere handful of them still being m the ship. The bull-dog, I am sorry to say, is dead, the result of a fall down a hatchway. But another has taken his place. The great carved coat of arms on the superstructure of the New Zealand has had some vicissitudes, but not at the hands of the enemy. In both her actions the concussion of the guns on the New Zealand dislodged bits of thf woodwork, but repairs were at once effected, and to-day it is intact.