H.M.S. NEW ZEALAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 74, 4 April 1913, Page 2

H.M.S. NEW ZEALAND.

INTERESTING DETAILS. The details of the cruiser New Zealand may be summarised as follows: Built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Govan, Glasgow, to the charge of the Government of New Zealand. Laid down June, 1910. Launched July, 1911. Commissioned at Devonpbrt by Captain Lionel Halsey, November 23rd, 1.912. Length, 590 feet. Beam, 80 feet. Draught, 3tH feet. Displacement, 19,000 tons. Main armaments, eight 12in. B.L. Mk. X. 45-calibre guns. Weight of broadside, 6,8001b —three tons. Auxiliary armament, sixteen 4in. B.L. Mk. Vii. 50-calibre guns. Armour protection, belt 12ft. wide, 4 to 6in. thick. Two submerged torpedo tubes. Eight twin search-lights. Complement, 789 officers and men. Turbine engines, four propellers. J 4,000 horse-power, 31 boilers. Speed, 27 knots—3l i miles per hour. Ship carries 3,200 tons of coal and 830 tons of oil fuel. Cost, £2,000,000. As becomes the first of Imperial ships, the New Zealand is manned by members of the British navy, and by New Zealanders. Two of her officers were born in the; dominion, and 40 or 50 of her crew, i Captain Halsey himself will be remembered as FlagCaptain on the Australasian Station—spare, wiry, alert, and altogether competent. Commander Grace, the second in command, and a son of the redoubtable and world-famous “W. G. ; ” is a chip of the old block. Officers, warrant-officers, petty-officers, and men, from the highest to the lowest, all bear that hall-mark which is characteristic of the British navy. DEATH DEALING ARMAMENT. The control of the armaments of the giant craft is marvellous. To such a pitch of perfection has gunnery been brought that these huge guns, which drive a shell weighing 12001 b to a distance of seven miles, are practically fool-proof.

Except the handles and levers, which a child could operate, none of their vital parts has to be touched. The shell down in the bunkers in the magazine is lifted by a little hoist, which carries it along to a lift, which, again, deposits it in the casement in a compartment, 'from which ft rolls into a kind of slot, and from the slot is pushed up by machinery into the breech. Hammed home, the breech is closed, and the gun is fired. At a trial of the ship, the operation took, ,fi‘om the moment the men Were told, tp “stand 1 ready,” until the, trigger'.was 18 seconds.‘So there, is (every reason, why it is Cxpehted thfcfc three round!; a jninute could -be ! fitedi I|f6m these! monsters.'' The Gin. guns, with their lesser charge and their lower penetrating power, carry grim evidence of their death-dealing qualities. The superdreadnought of to-day has her battery of guns so arranged that she can rain practically the whole of them on any., given object at the same®time. The only exception are. the two Gin. guns aft, which, in consideration bf theri u nature, are circumscribed in their arc,and could only be used to fight a rear--: guard action, or to drop a parting shot on to some opponent for another broadside.

AX ELECTRIC NETWORK. There are telephones everywhere. The modern warship has become a kind of electrical laboratory. Everything is done by electricity, to the cooking of the food to the blowing of the fire in the blacksmith’s shop, the firing of the great guns to the lighting of the captain’s stove in hlg sitting room, the working of the lifts to the hoisting out of the boats. There is apparently nothing an electrician cannot do with this strange power. When once the older is given to “cleai decks,” therefore, every part of the ship instantly becomes in closest contact with every other part by this network of electrical lines, and no chances are taken. If the enemy should clout the conning tower, and render it necessary for the gun fire to be directed and controlled from some safer place, there is a room embedded in the armour forward, where this work can be carried out without the slightest break in the continuity of operations, and if by any chance the enemy were to plunge a shell into this den, there is a second secret cabin amidships, an emergency cabin, fitted with every requisite where for a third time the brains of the ship can work coolly and quietly, despite the hail of deatii raining outside*. SXUB-XOSED DISASTER.

Destruction, disaster, desolation, despair, and death kirk in the shell magazine in the centre of the ship, yet they look to the -uninstructed eve harmless lumps of iron. They are great long cylinders,; with iron shell and snub noses. Formerly they were made with pointed tips, but it was discovered that the snub-nose has an even better penetrative power than the point; and within those iron cases lie three kinds of death—death by a solid smash of iron, death by shrapnel (which explodes, shrieks, and screams like furies let loose from hell), and death by lyddite, timed by a fuse to explode at a given distance. and if the distance he light, sufficiently disruptive to hear the greatest battleship that man has made to the bottom of the ocean. SEARCHLIGHTS LIKE SUNS.

The searchlights are an amazing achievement. The heliograph has disappeared in the British navyi for it is no longer required. These electric suns, each of 55,000 c.h.p., throw a beam of light up the sea as if it wore day for a distance of four miles, rendering it almost impossible for the

fastest and smallest craft to approach a battleship without detection, and the searchlights serve a double purpose. They are not only employed to sweep the sea to prevent the enemy creeping up without notice; they are also used for signalling other ships of the fleet. A quaint shutter-like apparatus is worked by hand, and blinks out Morse signals across the water. The men’s quarters do not allow of a person of 6ft. high standing upright, and are constructed so that only the man of comparatively small statue can walk about with any freedom. Off it are the officers’ cabins. Delightful places they are, with bedstead bunks, and writing tables, and reading desks, and reasonable accommodation for clothes and laundry and books. Beyond these, again, are the captain’s cabin and the captain’s sit-ting-room. They are the last word in gentlemanly bachelor luxury at sea, and the captain’s messroom and the officers’ messroom and the middies’ messroom are each of their kind excellent and pleasant to the eye. The men’s sleeping quarters are in the men’s eating quarters. They have their meals and sleep in the same place between decks. The tables are fairly high off the ground, and not very far from the roof, so that there is not a great deal of space for the hammocks, which are fixed when the last meal, supper, has been eaten, and there is no great elbow room between the hammocks, and of fresh air there is not much, because the port-holes are always awash when a battleship is at sea, and therefore the men’s quarters are almost always lighted with electricity.