Shipmates Five

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 269, 3 February 1928, Page 1

Shipmates Five

LONG SERVICE RECORD ATTAINED BY MEN OF H.M.C.S. IRIS

PROTECTING THE CABLES

Included in the crew of His Majesty’s cable ship Iris, for many years an almost integral part of Devonport, are five members who, this month, will complete 25 years’ service aboard the vessel.

Captain H. R. Hughes, chief engineer J. D. S. Fleming, paymaster R. Banister, cable foreman J. Bookham, and chief cable jointer J. R. King, were among the original crew signed on when the Iris was first commissioned on February 14, 1903. Those familiar with ships and seafaring men will recognise this circumstance as unique in world shipping annals. For a quarter of a century these sailors, each a specialist in a highly specialised profession, have been shipmates in the service of the Imperial Government.

Captain Hughes joined the ship as a junior officer and worked his way up until hd was appointed commander in 1923.

Chief engineer Fleming has also risen with the passing of the years. He has been as good a footballer as he is a good engineer. In 1905 he represented New Zealand in a soccer eleven which toured New South Wales. Paymaster Banister has likewise taken an active interest in football. He is a life member of the Auckland Football Association and served on the committee for 15 years. Month after month, year after year, the cable ship has lain at her moorings at the North Shore. Yet every now and then she is missing. Her purpose is not merely to grow barnacles upon her keel or only to look picturesque, as cynics have been known to observe. The work of the /ris is analogous to that of a ship of war—with a difference. She is there for emergency, always ready and ever efficient. Just as a warship watches over the commerce carriers of the world, so this grave grey Iris protects the news carriers of a hundred fathoms deep. Examined superficially the lives of these men might appear drab and uninteresting. Yet if they had nothing better to do than parade the decks, they would certainly not have continued as shipmates for 25 years. Responsibility for the uninterrupted clicking of messages over 15,000 miles of Pacific cable is the duty of the men of the Iris. They know that with so vast a system under their care faults must develop now and then. And it is this expectancy that gives spice to a life that otherwise must be prosaic. But the quarter century has not been devoid of thrilling incident. Mention of the Iris recalls her exploit in the capture of Count Von Luckner, who, in 1917, escaped from Motuihi in the scow Moa. The count was eventually rounded up by the cable ship at the Kermedecs.

The finding of the overdue schooner Strathcona ashore on the Minerva Reef was another achievement of H.M.C.S. Iris.