H.M.S. HOOD.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14128, 28 May 1920, Page 5

H.M.S. HOOD.

• HER GREAT COST. The:great cost of the Hood has (says “The Navy”) surprised the public far more than any detail of her design. An; estimated expenditure, of £5,287,335, without guns and o.rduance stores, came as a thunderclap. Our pre-war expenditure on any one ship for the navy barely •exceeded £2,000,000. It may be, ■well, therefore, to point out that it is not so much that the design of the Hood is expensive, as that the cost of shipbuilding has increased vastly since 1914. A few figures for the cost of building cargo steamers in recent years, and at the present time, may serve to put- the matter, in its t-rue proportions. The figures in this table are from statistics compiled by Messrs C. V?. Kellock and Co., the brokers to the Admiralty Marshal: — Cost of Build’ng a 7500-ton Cargo Steamer. 1900 . 1 ..........; £60,000 ■ 1905 .... £44,000 1910 £40,000 1914 (July) £42,000 1915 . £125,000 1916 £IBB,OOO 1917 ............ £187,000 1918 ’. £180,500 1919 (July) ... £195,000

’The cost, therefore, has advanced nearly five-fold in five years. Had the increase in warship building been at a similar rate, the Hood would have cost about £10,000,000. At the same time we have to- face great increases in the cost of all types of warship. The new light cruiser Hawkins, of 9750 tons, cost about £1,570,000, as compared with the Kent, of similar tonnage, that cost £700,000. The Calcutta, of 4100 tons, cost'about £850,000, as compared with the Bristol, of 4800 tons, which cost £364,953. The more the figures are studied the more evident it is that shipbuilding programmes of the near future will have to be confined to the most necessary ships only. And it is beyond question that the taxpayers faced with a bill for £6,000,000 for one vessel will ve a ve-v potent factor in determining the attitude of the authorities towards the mammoth warship More perhaps even than technical considerations, the deadweight of public opposition may lead to an abandonment of the growth iu design.