feeding the Fleet at a Moment's Notice.

Manawatu Herald, 23 June 1898, Page 3

feeding the Fleet at a Moment's Notice.

The Clarence Yard, Gosport, is England's largest victualling estabjiabrri^nt. Within its huge; granaries thousands of pounds' wor<h of ehipa* Stores are laid away, but upon so jnethodical a plan that the stores for any paiticular vessel can be drawn $tt practically a moment's notice. In Portsmouth Dockyard, on the other side of the harbour opposite |ho Clarence Yard, lie a number of fjrarphips that are in what is known |8 "A " Division Fleet Beserve. f^his means that skeleton crews have been told off to them, and the ebips gre kept in such a condition that they can be got ready for sea within $8 hours. As soon as a ship passes fnto " A " Division, the victualling yard authorities lay aside the quantity of stores that phe is entitled to draw. These arc marked with the name of the ship, and upon no- account are they touched until wanted for use in the ship. There are barrels of rum, jobacco, sugar, cocoa, limfjuice, salt provision?, boxes of biscuits, messtraps, &c. — in fact everything from fe scrubbing brush to the plate for |be officers' table. Warlike stores, bt courge, are not bandied in victual, jing yard?, but are kept at the mogafjjnes. Each ship's complement is separated from the others by a wide space, and the stores for torpedo craft have a special position to. them* pelves. Yet they are laid aside with jit) great exactitude as are those for the big battleships and cruisers. All mess rtquisities, from the table* jinen upwards, are issued from the victualling yard, are of the finest quality. When a ship commissions fpr three years, the officers have to pay for the mesa requisites, which frre sold by auction when she return?. But should the commission be merely for nobilisation purposes, the requisities are taken back into the store, where a special department is eet aside for thtir custody. The Admiralty demand that all these goods shall be of the beet quality. Bo careful are they on this point that from every consignment of plate and china a piece is taken, broken up, and submitted to analysis. Should it prove in the slightest degree below the standard, the whole consignment is rejected. The plate is Sheffield made, the china comes from Staffordshire, and 'the linen is woven in Belfast. In another part of the victualling-yard is a large bakery capable of turning out five tons of of biscuits per day, but as a general rule only two and ahalf tons are baked. The bakery is quite selfcontained. In the upper storeya are

mills in which the corn is ground and the flour dressed. It then descends into the oven«house, where it is kneaded and stamped, by machinery After the biscuits leave the ovens they are placed for a time in drying lofts then filled into bags, after which they are weighed off into hermeti-cally-sealed cases. By this means a supply of good biscuits for Jack is assured, no matter how long bis ship may be at sea. Then, too, there is ft large slaughter-house, in which many beasts are killed daily, for the victualling yard has to supply with meat not only the ships in harbour, but the marine barracks as well. Fresh water is also sent round to the ships in tank vessels, and a great deal of attention is given to the purity of the water supplied. Indeed, the food served out to our bluejackets is now much better in every respect than it used to be.-- Cassell's Jour, nal.