SURRENDERED NAVY.

Taihape Daily Times, 27 March 1919, Page 6

SURRENDERED NAVY.

... SHIPS IN HOME WATERS

COMMISSION'S EXPERIENCES The search, of the German ships which surrendered in the Firth ,ct Forth in November gave the officers of the British Navy a hint of the lengths to which indiscipline had extended in the,enemy fleet, so in a way preparing them for what they were to see when the inspection of tne

ships remaining in home waters was undertaken, writes a member of the Allied Naval Commission in German waters. In spite of this, the conditions —the filth, the slothfulness, the apparent utter disregard of the men for such few of their officers as still remained —were a good deal worse than anyone had anaicipated. The representatives of the Workmen and Soldiers appeared quite reconciled to the ruling of the Allied Naval Commission that the latter was to have no direct dealings with them, and there were no evidences of illfeeling when an attempt was made to establish such relations, made on the day of the arrival of the Hercules at Wilhelmshaven, met with a sharp resentatives of the Council (in which, sentaties of the Council (in which, from the outset it was very evident the real power rested) not only macro every effort to facilitate the work of the various subcommissions in every way possible, but appeared to toy to cmfJarrass their former officers as little as possible in the latter's relations •with the former.

THE OFFICER AND THE SOVIET. A slight hitch which occurred in the arrangements of one of the subcommissions one morning, when the officer who was to have accompanied it failed to turn up on the landing ar the appionted hour, showed how slender a thread it was by which the authority of the once domineering German naval officer hung. After cooling their heels in the slush of tlio dockyards for half an hour, the party returned to the Hercules to await an explanation. This came an hour later when the officer in question, very re« in the face, came bumping up to too gangway in a madly-driven motorboat, and clambered up to the quarter deck to make his apologies, "1 am very sorry," he explain"?-.; volubly, 'but it 'was not understood by the Arbeiten and Soldatenrat t:uu it was I who was to go with you today. In consequence the permit to wear my sword and epaulettes ami other markings of an officer was not sent to me, and so I could not be allowed to travel until I had made known the trouble and had the permit sent.

It appears that even the officers going about with the allied naval suncommissions were only allowed to wear their designating marks for trie occasion, and that, unless a special permit was shown, those had to be removed as soon as they went ashore. INSIDE THE SHIPS.

The German ships—even the best of them, such as the Baden—as seen from the inside by an inspection party, were distinctly disappointing. This, I am sure, was the general feeling of all British officers who searched cither the ships sent to Scapa for internment or those which remained in German haibov.rs. After the extremely good fight that practically every one of them—from the Emden and Konigsberg and the ships of von

.-: squadron at Falkland to the ixf.e cruisers of von Hipper at Jut- ' iiUid —had put up when it was once drawn into action, it was only natura: to expect that some radical departures !in conduction, armament, and gun- • nery conirol would be revealed on j closer .. 'iuaintance. This did not i proo u ue the case, though it was only fair to say that, in the matter of gunn..-y control there was no oportunity .0 pass judgment, owing to the fact that, in every instance, the Ger- ' mans—-as they had a perfect right to do —had removed all the instruments : and gear calculated to give an indication of the character of the installation, c WELL-BUILT VESSELS. The German ships wierc found to be extremely well built, especially; in the solidity, of the construction of their hulls, the fact that they were not lived in by u full ship's company all cf the time making it easy to multiply bulkkheads and dispense with doors. Eut there was nothing new in this fact to the officers of Beatty's battlecruisers, who had seen the amount of , -battering the Soidlitz and Derf'linger had survived at Dogger Bank and Jutland. Even so, however, there was nothing to indicate that the very latest of the German ships ould stand any more punishment than any unit of the Grand Fleet aft'.rr the stiffening all British capital ships received as a consequence of what was learned at Jutland. !

la several respects it is evident thatthe Germans had merely become tardy, converts to B'ritish practice. . The tripod i=iast, which dates back something., kke •: decade in British capital ships, and vhich has since the war been built. in light cruisers and even leaders, was only adopted by fhejGrerc mei's with the laying down of ..the Bayo n and Hindcnburg. Similarly, the armament —both main and secondary- - r f the respective cla'ssles of bat* -1 'ship and battle-cruiser to which two ships give the name is a fr.sn'k admission on the part of the Germans that flic British were five years cf them in the matter of guns.