The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1901.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 11593, 31 October 1901, Page 2

The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1901.

A cable message from London yesterday stated that recent accidents among torpedodestroyers have rudely shaken public confidence in the Constructive Department of the Admiralty. The details, and even the nature of these accidents have not yet reached this colony, but we are not surprised to hear that at last the public has been awakened to a weakness in the Department referred to. During the past few years- there have been sharp criticisms passed upon some of the warships turned out, and only last year a new Royal yacht was built, of course with all the care and skill that the chief designer to the Admiralty could bring to bear upon the task, and when she was launched the vessel was so top-heavy that she was not allowed to go to sea, and nearly as much as her first cost was spent in cutting down and otherwise altering her. And when so altered, the Royal Family refused to go on board her. As we have said, .we do not : know to what yesterday's cablegram referred, in its mention of more than one torpedo-destroyer; but we have particulars" of the foundering of one of them, the turbine steamer Cobra, on September 18th. The sister boat of the Cobra, the Viper, had been wrecked during the naval manoeuvres a few weeks before, but for this loss no blame can be attached to the Admiralty's Construction Department. The Viper was accidentally run on a reef at a pace that would have wrecked the strongest ship afloat. And no lives were lost. The loss of the Cobra was supposed at first to have been due to her striking a 1 rock or a sunken wreck, but more exact information as to the locality of the disaster proved that there are no rocks there, that it was most improbable that' she struck anything at all. The only alternative is that she spontaneously broke in two, through structural weakness. The Cobra was built at the Elswick works of ArmI strong, Whitworth and Co., Newcastle, and being built to order, we may safely conclude that she was built to designs supplied, or at all events approved, by the Admiralty. The disaster proved l that the vessel was too slim to bear the strain of being driven through what "tra* described by the survivors as " a nasty sea." The disaster itself was a terrible one in its suddenness and its effects; so sudden was it that the discipline and coolness in the face of danger for which the British Navy is so noted, failed the crew at the critical moment, and consequently many lives that might have been saved were lost. The Cobra had Just been taken over by the Admiralty, and was being taken round from Newcastle to Portsmouth by a uaval crew, of fifty-four officers and men, in addition to whom there were three-and-twenty of the "builders on board, including Mr Barnard, manager of the Elswick works. The total number on board was thus seventyseven, of whom only twelve were saved. The Cobra left Newcastle in the evening, and •. between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, when off Grimsby, and between, two and three miles from a lightship, the steamer " buckled and doubled up." There were only two ordinary boats on board, a whaieboat and a dingy, and three collapsible boats. There was not time, to open the collapsible boats; the whaieboat was rushed, overloaded, capsized, and sunk; the dingy got away with nine men in it and three more hanging to its sides, and these had to hang on for two hours before they could be taken in on account of the heavy sea. They drifted about for ten or eleven hours, and were then picked up by a mail steamer and landed at Grimsby. A steam fishing boat had previously arrived at Grimsby with a number of dead bodies picked up by it, some of them having on life-belts which had proved a delusive means of safety. A melancholy coincidence in connection with the loss of the Cobra is the fact that her engine-room complement consisted almost entirely of men who had been just before wrecked in the Viper. .It is not likely that the loss of the two first turbine driven steamers in the Navy will create any prejudice against the new method of propulsion; but it has been pointed out that it will assuredly strengthen an existing superstition in the Navy that ships named after things that sting are doomed to ill-luck. In 1884 a " Wasp " was lost in a typhoon, and with her 54 men, and this was the second "Wasp" that suffered disaster; in 1890 a " Serpent" was wrecked, ,and 169 seamen drowned. A " Rattlesnake," a " Gadfly," and a " Hornet " have also supplied food -or iho sustenance of the superstition.