The Mikasa

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 38, 21 September 1905, Page 1

The Mikasa

Last week Admiral Togo lost his battleship and Japan the host-known unit in its conquering fleet.

1 It was not in the battle ; No tempest gave the shock ; She sprang no fatal leak ; *j She ran upon no rock.' fi'lia went to the bottom in still waters and in tne piping times ,of peace. Her disappearance leaves Nippon the. poorer by some three hundred trained veterans, and (unless she is raised) by a fighting machine worth about a million 'and a half sterling. This is the third Japanes« battleship that has gone to the floor of the sea since the war began. The sudden calamity that came upon the ■' Mikasa ' recalls tho disaster to the British fleet when the ' Royal George ' sank in the haibor at) Spithead on August 29, 1782. She was the hardest-hitting and the most famous ship at that time in the King's navee. Some simall repairs were neefled near her keel. A number of her 108 guns were accordingly shifted in order to make her ' heel over ' sufficiently for tho purpose. But the work was overdone. The famous old battleship ' heeled ' more than her crew had 'bargained for ; the water poured in cataracts thiough the open port htoles, filled her with shifting ballast, ' And she was overset ; Down went the " Royal George," With all her crew complete.' And with them went into the water some three hundred women and children who were on board as sightseers. Of the cle\ en hirndred that wctc on 'board when the shi)]> heeled over, nearly nine hundred were carried with her to the bottom, including tho great fighting sea-dog of the day, Rear-Admiral Kempemfeldt, in whose veins ran the blood of the old sea-rovers of the North. Cow•per's well known monody has surroinnded the loss of the ' Royal George ' with a setting in naval fame that has been denied to the ' Vanguard" and Admiral Tryon's great flagship, the ' Oamperdown,' which was rammed by the 1 ' Victoria,' sank in ten minutes, and took thieo hundred and twenty men to the bottom of the sea. Tho ' Royal George ' furnishes one of the instances in which the poet engraves in bronze what the historian writes upon sand.