IN ARTICULO MORTIS.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17412, 26 May 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

IN ARTICULO MORTIS.

A BATTLESHIP'S END

(By “Taffrail.”) With her masts, funnels, superstructure, and gun-turrets overtopping 'the neighbouring buildings and clearly silhouetted against, the sky, the great ship alongside the .jetty in the. shipbreaker's yard is the most conspicuous object for miles. The whole picture is a monochrome in dingy grey—gray, ship, gray buildings, gray winter landscape and river and sky, inexpressibly sad and mournful, with a chilly breeze and intermittent showers of fine rain to strengthen, the impression of utter dreariness. The ship is not. an old one as ships go, and but for the need for naval retrenchment. her name would still figure in the Navy l,ist. Not. so many months ago, indeed, fully manned, she was still a ship in being, a Thing of Life and of Beauty. But now her turbines are still for ever, her boilers coir], and the once spotless decks grimed with filth. With her rust-streaked hull, her rigging torn awry, amd living spaces stripped and empty, she appears as a dead thing come to her funeral, forlorn and unmourned by those who once lived in her and loved her. Her White Ensign and pennant, have fluttered down for >thc last time. Almost we expect to hear the wail of ghostly bugles sounding the “Last Post.” Already (here are workmen on board, busy with jets of oxy-acety-lene, and hammers and chisels, stripping her of copper and brass and gunmetal, cutting down the steel superstructure section by section to lift, the pieces ashore with cranes for slicing into fragments with shearing machines. Woodwork, the corticene covering of the decks below, and what little 'Canvas there remains on board will all go (lie same way as the work progresses, until at last the once proud vessel will be nothing but a bare bull cut down to the water's edge. What is left will then bo hauled into a dock, to be hewn into pieces at low water and converted into saleable scrap. This ruthless disintegration of a fine vessel is a mournful spectacle, which no right-minded sailor can gaze upon without some feeling of rpgret, and possibly of resentment. The very shipbreaking yard, intersected by ra.il-way-lines, dotted with sheds and warehouses, littered with piles of ctpei and wooden debris from many defunct vessels, is conducive to sadness. for it is so symbolical of destruction and the frailty of man's most mightv handiwork. Nevertheless it is vastly interesting. Most or the ships whose remains we can see on all sides were men-of-war, which contain quantities of valuable non-ferrous metal readily disposed of as scrap. I nr obvious reasons the firm prefers them to the more sparsely-built merchantman. To the seaman, however, it. would seem almost better it these old ships had been sunk in action, rather than that they should have to Suffer the Ignominy of thus being torn to pieces. Net, if they had, their pitiful remains would have served no utilitarian purpose—the steel to be shorn up and carried off for re-manufacture into safety-razor blades, knives and scissors a hundred and one different articles of domestic use; ''opper. brass, and gun-metal io be melted down and re-used; the teak of the decks to be converted into furniture, old canvas into paper, and any saleable fittings disposed of as they stand. Manv fine, vessels have met Iheir dismal ’end on this bleak Northumbrian river. There was the old threedecker Britannia, for so many years the training-ship for naval radets at Dartmouth, the vessel m which all Ihe senior officers who served afloat during the* Great War—Jclliooc?, Beatty, Keyes Tyrwhill, and a host of others were first taught to salute the White Ensign. Her stout old hull, built. lw hand and valuable for its copper -fastenings and sheathing, has been rent to pieces and scattered broadcast. She was built principally of English oak, wood of such iron like consistency that it was not wort.a the trouble of conversion into furmture Piles of the blackened 'timbers’ still lie here and there in the vard and are sawn into blocks for sale as flre-logs. Often have we watched them glowing redly in our sitting-room grate, bursting now ana then into little splutters of green and violet flame, due to the salt with which they are 'impregnated. Some ot them are still perforated by the great oaken spikes, or trenails, with which as planks, they were secured io the ribs The’ teak of her decks, however trodden by generation after generation of naval officers has been fashioned into garden tables and chairs, mantel-pieces, and indoor furniture. They are scattered in many homes’ throughput, the United Kingdom, for to countless families with fathers and sons in the Royal Navy the Britannia is something sacred hallowed, by Happy Memories of Boyhood cpent in the land-locked wafers and wooded, rolling uplands of Ihe peaceful Dart. The same firm broke up Ihe Champion, a corvette built in I htc ’seventies, and remembered as a crack'ship in Ihe old 'Training Squadron: ilm • hattleshop Collingwood. completed forty years ago. and as Ih.e most. powerful vessel • dav; the Barflour. or I*ol, for many years second flagship in Ghina. Many of her crew were landed at- Taku j or the Boxer troubles of IWO. and formed part of Vice-Admiral Air Edward Seymour's abortive expedition for the relief of Peking, besides participating in the capture of the Taku forts and the severe fighting in and around Tientsin. Lord Beatty, then a voung commander fresh from active service in the Soudan, was her second-in-command, and was wounded by a Chinese bullet. The crimson, yellowedged ribbon of Ihe China medal granted for that little war twentyseven years ago is a comparative rarity in the service nowadays Most, famous of all the modern ships was the battle cruiser Lion, | j, 01 .(i Realty’s flag-ship, well known on ! t,he Firth of Forth during the Great War. She flew his flag at the battles of Heligoland, the Dogger Rank, and Jutland, returning to Rosyth after the last two actions, showing Obvious Traces of Her Ordeal, and with officers and men killed and wounded. And the leak of Ihe Lion’s clocks, like the Rritannia's. has mostly been fashioned into furniture. We (Continued in next column.)

were shown table:, and chairs, bookcases and umbrella-stands, made of her woocL and mantel-pieces in process of manufacture, the less elaborate of which may be bought for a few pounds. As ships, all these fine vesfels have ceased to exist, though here* and there in the yard we may come across intimate relics —the Britannia's massive steering-wheel; a huge, carved mahogany sideboard from Lord Beatty's dining-eabin in the Lion; a large, bee-hive-shaped contrivance of teak, now sadly split and weather-worn, carved round the lop with "Renown, 1900." Beautifully worked, the product of many hours' patient labour, and fitted with many little gratings, it was obviously made by the ship's carpenters for use as an ornamental cover for some dcck-flUirig or other upon the sacred quarter-deck of the Renown, once the smartest ship of the British Navy. Wo came away saddened, for, like a naval cemetery, a. shipbreaker's yard teems with memories of an old-time service. And lo all the gallant, old ships that have passed this way we would say 'Ave At que Vale;—'Hailr'afld farewelU' ■ -'•'■.-