ANOTHER MYSTERY SHIP

Otaki Mail, Volume 26, 25 April 1919, Page 4

ANOTHER MYSTERY SHIP

Among the Navy’s many mystery ships built during the war there is one yf which hitherto. I believe, there has been no whisper outside naval c ire los, and this de.'pite the fact that censorship ceased two mCfftb.s ago (writes the naval correspondent of a London paper).

I came across her quite by accident. I was not meant to see her, but I was proceeding on my “lawful occasions” into Haslar Creek, in Portsmouth harbour, one day when I saw alongside the wharf at Port Blockhouse the most incredible ship the.t ever happened outside a nightmare. It was Ml.

It looked like a submarine, and my instinct told me that it was a submarine because it was lying alongside the submarine depot. AThat was a submarine doing carrying a 12-inch gun? The long barrel was unmistakable, the massive turret in the centre of the ship was equally convincing. As a matter of fact, Ml and the other ships of the M class were built to carry 12inch guns. AViien it is remembered that the biggest gun carried by any of the German submarines was a 6-inch piece it will bo seen that the M class had the Germans beaten to a frazzle. The weight of a Ajncli gun is five tons; the weight of a 12-inc-h gun is fifty tons. The weight of a 6-iceh shell is 1001 b; the weight of a 12-inch shell is SoOlb.

Ml was the cause of one amusing scare during the war. She- slipped out carefully from Portsmouth dockyard in the early dawn of a summer morning soon after she was completed to carry out gun ns§=. She went a long wav out into the Channel, and opened fire. The terrific reverberations of her big’ gun was something that had not been heard in that neighbourhood for manv months. The rumour promptly rail round that German battle cruisers were bombarding the Isle of Might.' The first captain of MI was Commoitder Max t.. Horton, who scrano- - fame at the beginning of the war when in E 9 he torpedoed the Hela in' the Bight of Heligoland, besides carrying out a series of daring reconnaissances iu those dangerous waters.