Tough Wooden Walls Resist Naval Broadsides
WELLINGTON, March 23. The 60-yeai'-old hulk Occident proved herself a hardy survivor of sailing ship days in\Palliser Bay today when for almost two hours the target of the N.Z. Naval Squadron she resisted the onslaught of tons of modern armourpiercihg and high explosive shells. Twenty-seven direet hits, 23 of them with high explosive were scored on the old vessel before she sank. Fifty-four salvoes'from the eruiser BellOna 20UU yards to windward heaved vari-eoioured geysers of water r and shell smoke around her. Thirty-two of them were direct straddles which drp.npharl hp.r
i sun-bleached decks and rusty sides with water and riddled her with shell splinters. Modern gunsights and the magic eye of radar probed at her every second, repeating the range bearing and drift of the former barque as she tossed heiplessly southward. She was finally put to rest 100 fathoms down in -«Gook Strait some 15 miles south of Cape Turakirae.
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Chronicle (Levin), 23 March 1949, Page 5
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158Tough Wooden Walls Resist Naval Broadsides Chronicle (Levin), 23 March 1949, Page 5
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