THE NEW ROYAL YACHT.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 16 March 1901, Page 4

THE NEW ROYAL YACHT.

“A Cruiser, and a very poor one, too”

Experts, after a careful survey of the new Royal yacht at Portsmouth, are reported to have made most unfavourable reports as to the possibilities of correcting the defects in construction. It is understood thot about three-quarters of a million have already been expended on the construction of the vessel. So many structural defects are said to have been found that in order to make the yacht perfect it would be necessary to rebuild her from keel upwards. The Victoria and Albert was designed by men accustomed to building warships. Consequently they made her a strange blend of pleasure vessel and cruiser; in fact, when the Prince of Wales saw the vessel he said that her designers had attempted a yacht and produced a cruiser, and a very poor one too.

A Portsmouth correspondent, writing of this costly Admiralty toy, says;—“The latest move is thejcalling in of professional assistance, for the yacht is an amateur job so far. Now, Mr Watson, the celebrated yacht designer, is at work, but his task is not an enviable one. It is to bo hoped that he will evolve something out of the chaos, for at present it is an ugly fact that all other dockyard work on ships that are wanted is more or less marking time The formidable was to have been finally ready by Christmas Eve, but she is not ready yet. The Eoyal yacht, that nobody wants, blocks the way. In the tinkering that has gone on almost enough time and money have been expended to have built a fresh yacht. Meanwhile men labor early and late on her. They put up a staircase with winding steps. They pell them down and put up straight ones. They pull these down and put up new winding ones, and so on ad infin turn. They paint her many colors, and when the last is on and settled they scrape the lot off to reduce weight or to replace the woodwork behind it. Then they repaint, to scrape it off again the next week with a view to staining the wood, Everybody official who has nothing better to do, and everybody else who has better to do, surveys the yacht inside and out. The result of these surveys varies from diy to day.”