AUSTRALIAN NAVY

Hokitika Guardian, 8 April 1921, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN NAVY

A PERIOD OF INACTIVITY. SYDNEY, March 30 Although nothing about it has appeared in the newspapers, it is apparent that the whole scheme of building up an Australian Navy has been held up for revision. The vast changes in naval construction and organisation rendered necessary by the lessons learned in the war; the hurried rearrangement of naval forces taking place in the Pacific; and the possibility that, if present conditions are not altered, Great Britain will, in a very few years, recode to the position of the third naval Power—all those tilings have caused the Australian Naval Board to cease all actual building operations until Britain’s future naval policy is decided. Tile first indication of pending changes came last year, when the Dreadnought battle-cruiser Australia was practically relegated to the scrap heap. Australia was very proud of this fine warship, and, as she lay in her accustomed place in Sydney Harbour, trim and powerful looking, her decks swarming with men, and the great muzzles of her guns swinging dumbly around to the tides, it was hard to believe that site represented anything hut a highly efficient fighting machine. But high authority said that she belonged to an order that was past, and that her maintenance on a fighting scale was waste of money. Thereupon her complement was greatly reduced, and she was sent off to the barren naval base of Westernport, in Victoria, to become a training ship. That was the first jolt to the public. The next came when the cruiser Adelaide, which was being built at Cockatoo Island, was towed out into the stream and, only half-constructed, was left there under guard. The building of this warsliip commenced some years ago, and she was launched in 1917. But, as the war progressed, more and more alterations wore required in (he | building of ships, and the end of the _ war found the plans still being chopped and changed. Finally, the Naval Board decided to cease building altogether, | until the future became clearer and money more plentiful, and so she went Into the stream. The latest development is the handing over of Cockatoo Naval Dockyard Id a new Board, which is to undertake there the building of merchant ships. Naval repairs will still he done there, but naval construction for the time being lias absolutely ceased. The same thing has happened at Westernport and Coekhum Sound naval bases—huge works have been commenced, but, for the time being, building operations have practically ceased. The head of the Australian Navy, Admiral Grant, has gone off to Singapore in the cruiser Brisbane, to meet other British Admirals. Thence they ;;o to London. From these conferences, ; some definite naval policy for the British Empire will probably emerge.