THE NAVY ESTIMATES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8754, 2 March 1907, Page 2

THE NAVY ESTIMATES.

Reduction of Personnel. Press Association —Copyright. London, March 1. Tho Navy Estimates provide for a reduction of 1000 men and reduction of expenditure of L 1,427,091. New construction to cost .£8,100,000, will include two or, in the absence of an understanding between naval Powers at the forthcoming Hague Conference, three Dreadnoughts of slightly larger displacement than the one now in commission.

The Homo fleet will consist of six battleships and six armoured cruisers fully manned, with 48 destroyers with full crews. The cruisers and auxiliaries will he regularly concentrated at the Norc, while nucleus crews for tho Home fleet will ho maintained at other ports at about three-fifths strength. The Admiralty will be able to bring them to full strength in a few hours. Naval works and loans will ho stopped and their cost henceforth will ho included in tho annual estimates.

Lord Tweodmouth, First Lord of the Admiralty, in a memorandum on the reduction on the number of seamen, explains that it will he effected by reducing the number of hoys entering the training vessels. There will be an increase of 3 337 stokers.

The now shipbuilding programme includes a fast uuarmoured cruiser, five ocean-going destroyers, 13 firstclass torpedoors, formerly designated coastal destroyers, and 13 destroyers.