BRITAIN PREPARES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 175, 11 August 1937, Page 11

BRITAIN PREPARES

Arming the Merchant Navy training of officers Britain's reserve fleet— the world 's biggest Merchant Navy — is beginning training and arming for any future emergency. An immense reserve of gpns and defensive equipment is being accumulated, gun-mountings are being prepared and the Merchant Navy office^s are to train immediately. Should war break out, the enemy on any sea would be confronted with convoys of merchantmen trained, equipped and officered for gunfire and the special tactics of sea trade protection. Captain Euan Wallace, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in announcing the plans, said: "It is of vital importance that masters and oificers of merchant ships should' understand the best "tactics to pursue if attacked and how to cnake the most effective use of equipment. The shipowners and the Officers' Association have been approached with the scheme for putting the Merchant Navy oificers through a defence course. "It has been decided to open inatructional centres in London, Livcrpool, Glasgow, Tyne, Southampton, Cardiff and Hull. There the oificers will be given a course of instruction in the principles of trade protection, convoy work, sigiialling, anti-submarine meas---ures, protection against mines and gas gun control and firing control. "Among the lessons of the war we learned that there was a necessity for earmarking material for defensive equipment of the Merchant Navy. It may be assumed that as far as both plans and equipment are concerned, we are much better prepared at present than we were in 1914." ^ The naval authorities point out that war knowledge required by merchant oificers falls under two heads. The first is that of the general principles on which the Royal Navy bases its system of trade defence and the part merchant ships must play in this system in order to minimise the probability o'f attack, the important aspect of which is the knowledge required for sailing in convoy. The second is a knowledge of the defensive equipment with which merchantmen are provided in wartime and every thing connected with" the use of that equipment.