PHILOMEL WILL NOT DIE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 4, 12 March 1947, Page 6

PHILOMEL WILL NOT DIE

WILL REMAIN AS GRAND OLD

LADY IN SAILORS’ HEARTS

That grand old lady, H.M.N.Z.S. Philomel, now at Coromandel suffering the abasement of having the shipbreaker’s mean tools tearing apart her vitals, refuses to die. Letters from naval officers and men reveal keen resentment and bitter disappointment that the Government failed to respond to naval sentiments and spared the old ship this ignominy, states the R.S.A. organ Review in an editorial.

It is reported that her present owner has expressed surprise at the great lengths of teak that he has been able to strip from the vessel. To the average landsman without any appreciation of sea lore, the Philomel was only an old hulk, but those teak decks now being so irreverently torn apart at the acquiescence of an unimaginative Government, have been worn down by the bare feet of thousands of men, some of whom have since found a deepsea grave in the defence of their country, and others who now man modern ships-of-war, but who all first leai'ned their craft in the old Philomel. To them, the “old lady” was more than just a hulk, she was the mother of New Zealand’s navy and an inanimate and unforgettable part of their lives.

To men who have no soul beyond such material things as pounds, shillings and pence, the Philomel’s 56 years of service in the British Navy and her quarter of a century as a training establishment to the Royal New Zealand Navy don’t mean a thing. Even the gesture of her former crews to buy her so that she might be spared the ignominy of dissolution at the hands of shipbreakers—a spontaneous offer unparalleled in naval history—failed to arouse one spark of sentiment. It is now learned that after her present owner has taken 'what- he wants out of her, it is intended to hold an auction sale of the balance. That final pantomime surely a traversty of naval tradition that would bring cries of indignant pro r tests in the Valhalla of our Drakes and Nelsons.

But the philomel will not die at Coromandel. She will remain alive in the affection of thousands of naval officers and men who absorbed the imponderables of naval tradition within her now rusted hull. To them, and in the annals of the New Zealand Navy Department, the old Philomel will have an honoured place, and she will still be the grand “old lady” long after the' sacrilege now being committed at Coromandel has been forgotten.