FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 951, 19 April 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN."

AT THE STADIUM To Mr. Justice Kennedy, who created a desirable precedent by going to see the broadsiding before delivering judgment in a Dunedin case affecting that sport. His Honour doffed his wig and gown (O yea, O yea, O yea!) And sauntered slowly out of town To see the cyclists play. He watched their quite unnatural skill; Dismayed, he witnessed swerve and spill, What time he felt his marrow thrill And much enjoyed the day. His Honour wandered back to Court And donned his full array, Then gave his judgment on the sport As practised down that way, But speaking from my humble pew, I think the explanation’s due; ! Was his the deadhead’s point of view, Or did his Honour pay ! ONE MORE To original names of shops, hairdressing parlours, and other commercial institutions, a contributor suggests adding “The Clobbery,” at the foot of Queen Street. “The Clobbery” is in a good position to engage in waterfront trade; but many a foreign seaman coming ashore with money to spend and a smattering of English must ponder over the eccentricities of the language when he finds there is no such word in his dictionary. GIANT CUNARDER To the glory of the British merchant service, the new Cunarder now on the stocks js to be 1,000 feet long. If placed on end, she would tower above the crest of Rangitoto. Spanning Grafton Gully, she would be 27 feet longer than the bridge. Shipbuilders have been striving for a long time to make a l.OtfO-foot ship practicable. It sounds strange, but 70 years ago a ship almost within 300 feet of this length was on the water. She was the Great Eastern, 693 feet long, a leviathan built before her time. She was used for laying cables, but little else, and ultimately was sold. for breaking up. In the intervening years progress has been spectacular, but the length of great ships halted for a long time at 700 or 800 feet. MIGHTY MAJESTIC The Great Eastern, launched in 1858, was over 100 feet longer than the Aorangi, 150 feet longer than the Matson Line’s Malolo. Today the longest craft afloat is the Majestic (ex Vaterland), 915 feet, followed closely by the Leviathan (ex Imperator), 907 feet. The Bremen is 599 feet long, the Berengaria, 880 feet, the Anilitama, S6B feet, and the Mauretania, a mere 762. The battleship Hood, S6O feet long, is one of the largest ships Afloat, and has the greatest beam, dver 100 feet. Actually the largest ship afloat is the Majestic. The honour is claimed for the American liner Leviathan, but if the Majestic was measured by the same formula as the United States Shipping Board uses, her tonnage would be 61,206, compared with the Leviathan’s 59,957. THE RED FUNNELS '• Samuel Cunard, who started the great organisation wljich is now preparing to build the world’s largest ship, was the son of an American merchant, was .born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and became a British citizen and a baronet of the United Kingdom. He began business as the owner of a fleet of whalers, some of which may have called at New Zealand during their visits to the South Seas. Then he went into the steam packet business, and in 1840 his Britannia was the first steamer to cross the Atlantic. The Cunard Company during the war had 30 ships torpedoed, including the Lusitania. Today it controls hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping, largely through associated interests united in the world’s greatest shipping group. THE GOOD OLD DAYS The Earl of Birkenhead has donned the niantle of the prophet, and regaled the nations with forecasts of the world in 2030. Such prophecy is always a pleasant exercise of fancy. But it is sometimes better to look hack across the centuries in order to measure the advancement of our own period. Exactly a hundred years ago, Sydney Smith, master of wit and wisdom, noted in the “Edinburgh Review” the miseries of life in London as experienced by a contributor tben at the age of three-score years and ten. “In 1760 I could not keep my small clothes in their proper place, for braces were unknown. If I had gout there was no colchicum. If I was bilious there was no calomel. If I was attacked by ague, there was no quinine. There were filthy coffee-houses instead of elegant clubs. The corruption of Parliament, before Reform, was infamous. There were no banks to receive the savings of the poor. Gas was unknown. Steamboats were not invented. There were no railroads. In going on a coach journey I suffered between 10,000 and 12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born. . . . And even in the best society one-third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk.”