AN EMPIRE CRUISE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16424, 7 May 1924, Page 6

AN EMPIRE CRUISE.

BRITAIN SPECIAL SERVICE SQUADRON. VISIT TO GISBORNE. Gisboniites on Friday will view the ships of the British Special Service Squadron. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon the Fleet which is “showing the Hag throughout the. Empire” will arrive off Poverty Bay—the first landing place in New! Zealand of the Navy's great navigator and explorer, Captain James OF THE, WORLD CRUISE. Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Field, who is in command and flies his flag on H.M.S. Hood, has outlined the object of the world cruise. From the naval viewpoint the tour gives opportunities for'the vessels to be tested for war purposes in all climates, and it also familiarises officer’s and men with harbor conditions in ontlying parts of the Empire and with thev mam trade routes, it also gives the people of the Dominions opportunities of seeing, the latest types of naval vessels, and helps to maintain the spirit of pride felt in the/ Royal Navv. ... , It" is l forty years since a British Squadron cruised round the world. On the last occasion the Squadron, which was under sail, was commanded by the Earl of Olanwilliam, and our present Sovereign, King George, was a midshipman on the corvette Bacchante.. The Special Service Squadron which is now in Australian waters is the first Squadron to cruise round tbo world entirely under steam.

SQUADRONi TRAVELS 31,000 MILES. By the time the Special Service Squadron returns to England on 28th, September it will have travelled approximately 31,000 miles, and will have been absent 307 days. Of that .period 196 days will have been spent at sea and 111 in harbor. The Squadron will have cruised round the world, and the battle-cruiseis Hood and Repulse will have crossed the Equator four times. The light cruisers, which will leave the battle cruisers at Panama, and proceed homewards by way of Cape Horn, wfll have crossed the Equator six times. It is a wonderful cruise on which the Special Service Squadron is engaged. The ships sailed from Devonport on November 27 and went first to South Africa, thence to Ceylon, Straits Settlements and Australia. The Fleet next proceeds to Western Canada and so to the Panama Canal, where, the battleships will pass through the Canal, and visit Jamaica,, the eastern ports of Canada and Newfoundland, and then go to England. From the Panama the lightcruisers will sail along the west coast of South America and pass through the Straits of Magellan. They will then visit the Falkland: Islands, .Rio de Janiero, and so cross the Atlantic, homeward bound, visiting the Cape Verde Islands on the way.

FACTS ABOUT THE WARSHIPS. Following are some particulars of the squadron:— Hood. —Original cost £6,025,000; maintenance cost, £551,550; length, 860 feet; displacement (fnily loaded), 47,500 tons. Armaments, eight 15 inch guns, 12 5.5 inch, four 4 inch anti-aircraft, four threepounders, and five machine-guns, with six torpedo/ tubes; complement, 1433 officers and men; speed, 32 knots. Repulse.—Original cost, £2,627,401; length, 750 feet; loaded tons, 37,CC0. Armament, six 15 inch guns, 17 4 inch, two 3 inch, four three-pounders, and four machine-guns', with ten torpedo tubes; complement, 950; speed, 32 knots. . Delhi, Danae, Dragon, Dunedin* and Dauntless.—Original cost, about £BOO,CO each; tonnage, 4700; length 445 feet. Armament, six 6 men giuiis, twfo 3 inch anti-aircraft, 16 machine-guns, and 12 torpedo tubes; complement, 340; speed, 29 knots. THE! MIGHTY HOOD. The Hood is the largest warship afloat. And will remain so until 1933 . And afterwards if the Washington Treaty is ratified for a further term. She was completed in 1920. She cost nearly £6,500,000. She costs about £550,000 yearly. She is nearly 300 yards long. Her weight is about 45,000 tons, or about, double the weight of the largest ship visiting Australia (the Mooltan). Slle can steam thirty-six land nnles per hour, or about the same as the average speed of some express trains. The horse-power of her main engines is 157,000. * , ’She carries about 1440 officers and men. , Her big guns are nearly twenty, yards long, or two yards short of the distance between cricket wickets.

Each weighs a,bout 100 tons. Each fires a projectile weighing 17cwt for about twenty miles. The projectile leaves the gun at a speed of lia'lf a mile per second. Each turret weighs 600 tons. The armour qlonei weighs 13,800 tons, which is nearly 2000 tons heavier than the Orsova,. Her side armour consists of twelve inches of steel backed by one and a half inches of high tensile steel. The turrets have fifteen inches oi steel l in front and' eleven inches at the side. She cantes 4000 tons of oil fuel and fifty tons of coal. _ . The weight of the machinery is SCOO tons, which is more than twice the weight of the Loongana—the whole ship! „ She has four propellers) each of 17ft 6in diameter. Her main shafts are about ICO yards long, and weigh nearly ICO tons each. Her boilers can convert 1000 tons (268,000 gallons) of water into steam each hour. ' . The links of the cables are made in 3^ini bar iron. The weight of her anchor is nine and a half tons. . The painted surface of the ship is about? eleven, acres. BATTLE CRUISER REPULSE. The H.M.S. Repulse, a sister ship to the Renown, the vessel on which the Prince of Wales made his world tour, i was, with the Renown, redesigned in conformity" with lessons taught by the Falkland battle. The Repulse cost £2,627,401 to build and £860,684 was expended in refitting her. Travelling at full speed she consumes atyout 1400 tons of oil fuel per day. Though spacious, she

There is no known remedy which is so successful as Nazol in counteracting the influence of the germs which produce sore throats, hoarseness, sneezing, and running at the nose.—2. The huge map, measuring ten feet by eight, which has been made from aerial photographs, giving a survey of the city of New V'ork, includes an area of oyer 40 square miles. It is the biggest- airmap yet made, and represents the combination of over 2000 photographs taken from aeroplanes, which covered 1 a distance of over 3000 miles. It required 140 small maps, each obtained from a. large number of photographs, which were taken with a new type of camera that has been invented for surveying purposes. LEVER BROS. AND Q-TOL. Preliminary negotiations were for the use. of the name ‘Q-tol’ for edible oils; but it has since been decided by tbo big firm to purchase the manufacturing 1 and marketing rights of Q-tol for all purposes throughout the world outside of New Zealand and Australia.—2.

is lightly built, and: it is said that her guns shake her up considerably. She is a splendid example of what the modern capital ship is like. LIGHT CRUISERS DESCRIBED. Five light cruisers accompany the squadron. These ships are all of the “D” class, and none of them has seen war service, each having been built after the conclusion of the war. They are of 4760 tons displacement, 472 feet long and of 46ft beam. Each carries two sixinch guns, two anti-aircraft guns, 16 smaller guns and 12 torpedo-tubes in series of threes. Geared turbines develop up to 40,000 horse-power capable of sending the vessels through the water at 29 knots or nearly 35 miles an hour. The armour belt is three inches thick at the most vital parts of the hull and the deck is also armour plated. Provision is made for carrying airplanes. In the case of Dragon and Dauntless these are kept under the navigating bridge and on the others there is a revolving platform amidships from which planes leave for .reconnaissance purposes. Each ship carries 1050 tons of oil fuel. When in Home waters these fast cruisers form part of the First Light Cruiser Squadron, a part of the Atlanticfleet. They were designed in 1916 and eight were set down for construction. Danae, Dauntless and Dragon were ordered in September of that year and were completed shortly before the cessation of hostilities. They saw service in the Baltic Sea in 1919 off Cronstadt, where Dragon was damaged by a mine. HOOD’S BIG GUNS. It costs about £2OO to fire one of the Hood’s big guns, and as the effective life of the gun is only about 200 rounds, big gun practice is an event. In practice the lull charge is not usually fired, nor is an attempt made to hit the target. The last practice, after leaving Trincomalee, was with the Repulse as a target. Tile Repulse steamed away to the horizon, and then the Hood fired with flattened sights. Then the mathematicians went to work and calculated where the hit’would have been with a full charge and: regular sights. Big gun work is more like higher mathematics than any other shooting—except in its effects. WHY H.M.S. HOOD IS POSSIBLE. How many know that the world’s greatest warship, H.M.S. Hood, would not have been possible but for the genius of a native of Victoria (Australia). What distinguishes H.M.S. Hood from all others is the. great power of her engines and the speed which they develop. Her 140,000 h.p. engines give her a speed of from thirty-one to thirty-five knots. This is due to’ the thrust bearing, invented by Mr A. G. M. Mitchell, of Melbourne, which makes possible the use of geared, turbines, generating the enormous horsepower they do. The invention has resulted in making it possible for any required pressure being carried on a single collar, whilst the size and cost of the bearings has been greatly reduced, their efficiency and reliability increased, and friction reduced to a minimum. The use of these bearings by the Admiralty during the war saved it hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of coal.

At the opening of the war the Michell thrust bearing was not used: on propeller shafts in the British Navy. Tc-tfay it is in use in steam turbines to the aggregate of over 10,000,000 h.p. in the British Navy alone. It is not exaggeration to say that the building of a ship of the size and power of the Hood is possible only through the use of Mr Michell’s thrust bearings. NEW ZEALAND'S NEW CRUISER H.M.S. Dunedin is of particular interest in that she is to replace H.M.S. Chatham in New Zealand waters. She is an up-to-date oil-burning cruiser, and will draw her oil supplies from the new depot at Devonport. Built by Mr W. G. Armstrong, of Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., Ltd., at their Elswick yard, the Dunedin was laid down in October, 1917. She was launched in 1918, and completed in October, 1919.

The ship’s armament comprises six 6in guns, two 3in anti-aircraft guns, sixteen machine guns ahd twelve torpedo tube* in four triple mountings. For protection she has a belt of 3in. armour-plate extending along most of the length of the hull, and • the guns have steel shields, with the exception of the forward gun, which is completely housed in. The H.M.S. Dunedin has n “trawler bow,” that is, it is much splayed, and has a big rise or sheer. The two forward guns- are superposed below the bridge. She has the usual tripod! mast, with a director station on top, light wooden spars supporting the wireless aerials, which are carried to a high wooden mast abaft- the searchlight position. She has two funnels, one double the diameter of the other and in this she differs from H.M.S. Chatham, which lias four funnels. A novel feature is the revolving flying-off platform for aeroplanes, just forward of the searchlight position. Just beneath this platform are swung the ship’s guns. The ship in her general appearance differs considerably from H.M.S. Chatham and has in general the appearance of a large destroyer.