Dominion’s Hired Navy

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 35, 4 May 1927, Page 8

Dominion’s Hired Navy

New Zealand Jack Tars

If a New Zealand navy is a fleet manned and officered by New Zealanders —and the definition is reasonable —then the Dominion has not a navy to call its own.

Measured by logical standards, the ships which have their base at Devonport are not a New Zealand navy at all. They are simply a hired fleet, and the money expended on their maintenance might just as well be made a direct contribution to the Royal Navy, which loans the ships and men.

Curiously enough the supply of home-made Jack Tars exceeds the demand, and though New Zealauders have not shown a frantic desire to become seafarers, such reluctance as they have exhibited is not responsible for the relatively low percentage of New Zealanders in the New Zealand naval division.

On the Philomel, at Devonport, excellent work is being accomplished in the preparation of boys for the sea, and conditions are so attractive that many applicants have to be rejected. Not all, of course, measure up to the high physica.l standard demanded. Others, who pass the tests and begin their training, find the discipline >too exacting, or the pocket-money insufficient, and their floating home at Devonport knows them no more. They are not pursued, because many more applicants are offering, and in

is pleasant. Exercise, good food, and a reasonable amount of leisure, make the ‘training period easy, and when the finished sailorman is ultimately transferred to a seagoing man-o’-war he gets the benefit of deferred pay which, qn his discharge a dozen years later, amounts to the useful sum of £SOO.

Fifty or sixty boys are put through a year oil the Philomel, which is now a warship in semblance only, as her engines have been removed, and she is innocuous as a fighting unit. But as a training ship the old craft still possesses excellent facilities. It the rate at which boys are absorbed by the seagoing ships could be stimulated, more boys could be trained on the Philomel, which has room for additional accommodation. At the rate of 50 or 60 a year, however, it will be a long time before New Zealanders become a majority in the seagoing ships of the division. As for officers —they are practically all Englishmen, and capable men. as naval officers must be. To reach their rank the boy who starts below decks must possess outstanding qualifications of character, and he must acquire social polish as well. Meanwhile the only New Zealand officers in the Royal Navy will be those whose parents have the means to put them through the Dartmouth or Osborne naval colleges, and none of them will be specifically drafted to the New Zealand division. FOUNDATION OF THE SERVICE When the promised larger cruisers arrive the rate at which boys will be transferred from the training ship may be accelerated, but New Zealanders might rather welcome a scheme which, while less pretentious in the weight of ships and gunnery, would permit a modest New Zealand warship to take New Zealand boys to sea under their own officers. It is going to cost New Zealand over half a million to keep the existing fleet dodging about the coast during the next twelve months, and for that sum the scope of the training system could obviously be handsomely enlarged. On the exploits of Lieut. Sanders, New Zealand’s first naval V.C., the traditions of a magnificent service may be founded. But until its complement assumes a more distinctively national character the service will not justify the right to those traditions, nor the use of the title it at present bears. G. McL.