NAVAL ESTIMATES

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10583, 14 March 1912, Page 5

NAVAL ESTIMATES

CABLE NEWS

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph — Copyright.)

REDUCTION IN PROGRAMME

COST OF CONSTRUCTION.

(Received Last Night, 11.50 o'clock.)

LONDON, March 12

The Naval Estimates amount to £44,086,100, showing a decrease of £307,100. The shin-building vote has been decreased by £1,236,000, but other votes have been increased by £925,900, owing to the growing cost, the,number of the personnel, the rise in prices, and the greater quantities, of fuel required, due to the increase in ■ horse power. The new construction scheme will cost £13,971,527, of which ships in the old programmes will cost £12,067,727, and the beginning of ships in the new progra.mineEl,9o3,Boo, which includes four large armoured ships, ; eight light armoured cruisers, and twenty destroyers, together with a mimberof -submarines. The personnel of the Navy will be increased by two thousand.

The total cost of the new programme amounts to £12,474,400, as compared with £13,200,000 in 1911.

In proportion, the new programme for the coming year is larger .than usual, enabling the whole of the torpedo destroyers to be begun immediately. Mr Winston Churchill states that the Estimates have been framed on the assumption that the existing programmes of ether lowers, will not be increased. Otherwise it will be necessary to present supplementary estimates.