A NAVAL FARCE. Tinkering a Rotten Old Ship for Jubilee Week.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 204, 21 May 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

A NAVAL FARCE. Tinkering a Rotten Old Ship for Jubilee Week.

The Admiralty authorities seem to be in! corrigible. Some time ago it was an' nounced that the Northumberland, which had been lying up for two or three years, and might as well have been condemned at the beginning, was to be brought forward for another commission. The estimate for necessary work was $250,000. Now, however, it is announced that enly $160,000 is to be spent on her. If there is any meaning in this, it means that this_ utterly obsolete ship is not even to be put into a necessary state of efficiency, nor active service, but is to be just tinkered enough to make a show on paper and pass muster for a few months among the phantom shipa of the Channel squadron. For any practical result the $160,000 might as well have been sunk in Plymouth Sound. Great indignation is, expressed in the English press at the ignobleand continuous failures made by the constructing engineers of the British Navy. It is now acknowledged that the Ajax and Agamemnon, two colossal vessels that were built at ft cost of: £1,260,000, are useless forsea-goingpurposes, owing to defective propellers and steering apparatus. Then it is affirmed that the belted cruisers, known as the Admh*al class, of which Benbow is the first representative, cannot carry their full complement and heavy armament without danger of sinking. These vessels each cost on an average some three millions and a half dollars, to the disgust of the suffering taxpayers. An extra vote of ten millions was wasted last year in torpedo boats and torpedoes that are of but poor utility except under the most favour { able circumstances, as recent experiments have shown. Labouchere in "Truth" is very sarcastic aa to how the navy of Old England is kept ready for war, as the following statement will show : " The Admiralty, two months eince, has been stirring up the dockyard authorities in order to have all our available ships ready to go to sea at a moment's notice. After two months' preliminary warning if; was thought that the time had come for testing wnether the dockyard authoritieswere up to the mark. So yesterday they telegraphed down from Whitehall two corvettes sent to sea at twenty-four hours' notice. Back came tlie answer : ' Can 'ft do it. Calliope's screw defective. Can-nob put to Bca for a week.' Pleasant this: but oh, how typical !"