Everard Cotes - Down Under with the Prince

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Warning: This book may contain the names and images of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Signs and Portents in the Far East

H.R.H.
H.R.H. ON DECK: AN INTERRUPTION

This book attempts to be a gangway to the Renown for the reader who would travel by battle-cruiser, by train, on horseback, by motor, and on foot, the forty-five thousand miles of his Australasian tour with H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. It is built by one who travelled, as a correspondent, with him all the way.

The thanks of the writer are due to those who have contributed photographs for the illustrations, and especially to Sir Godfrey Thomas, Bart.

One March morning of last year, an ordinary train moved out of Waterloo Station for Portsmouth, and among the ordinary people it carried were at least two or three who were going further. They sat together and smoked, and exchanged experiences and speculations. As the train slowed down at Portsmouth Harbour they looked from the carriage windows and saw the fighting tops of a big battle-cruiser lifted grey against the sky above the houses of the foreshore, and one said to another "There she is."

There she was, the Renown, in alongside, waiting to sail with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Australasia. It was the day before and already the function was in the quickened air. Scraps of coloured bunting fluttered and flew on the wharf sheds. Dockyard officials gave orders with more responsibility than ever immediately under their caps. The travellers from Waterloo went up the gangway to the quarter-deck, successfully passed the officer of the watch, and found their quarters. They were the journalists of the tour, there on behalf of the people at home, that multitudinous "public" which, for lack of accommodation on the Renown, must see the Prince's tour in the convex mirror of the daily press.

Next day the function flowered. The Royal train rolled in. The red carpet was spread and the Chief Passenger went up the gangway, with every sign and circumstance by which his country could mark the occasion of his going.

Gently the grey turrets slid out from the crowded wharf into the leaden expanse of harbour. "Auld Lang Syne" rang into the chill wind that rocked the rowing-boats lining the fairway. Ant-like figures swarmed into the tall rigging of Nelson's flagship, which lay, bedecked all over, her old oak sides stiff in checkered squares of black and white, while her ancient muzzle-loaders banged off a smoky salvothe senior ship of the British Navy wishing Godspeed to her fighting junior on Royal Service starting. The hundred and twenty thousand horse-power steam turbines of the battle-cruiser quickened their rhythmic throb. The still shouting crowds ashore faded to dark stains on the Southsea beach. The red and gold of the Royal standard fluttered down from the main, and the Renown put out to sea, starting on this pleasant commission with the same certitude and the same cheeriness, the same discipline and the same lightness of heart, the same directness of purpose, and above all things the same absence of fuss, with which she had often gone upon errands perilous. The voyage, so much anticipated and chronicled, had begun, and the convincing thing was that it was going to be, from the Renown's point of view, precisely like other voyages. That impression came with the first turn of the propeller and remained, it may be said at once, until the last. The circumstance and ceremonial of the departure, the pomp of Royalty and the glitter of an Imperial mission had all merged, before the sun set in the cloud-bank of that March afternoon, in the sense of function and routine, detached and disregarding, that controls life in His Majesty's ships at sea.

The Renown is the most recent, the fastest, and the best armed battle-cruiser in the world. She received at her christening the proud traditions, extending over three hundred years, of the battles of the British Navy, having had no less than seven fighting predecessors of the same name, beginning with the gallant little wooden frigate Renomme, captured in 1653 from the French and transferred to the British squadrons where she became the first of the famous Renowns. The present vessel was built as lately as 1916, when British need was great. She remains a record of what those strenuous times could do.

For all her thirty-two thousand tons and gigantic armament of mammoth guns this great battle-cruiser slides through the water with the smoothness of the otter. She moved steadily at eighteen knots an hour from the time she left Portsmouth, a pace which, for this last word in fighting machines, is mere half-speed, though it is as fast as most suburban trains can travel. She is so big that surprisingly little motion is noticeable at sea, though waves wash freely over forecastle and quarter-deck, contracting the space available for the exercise and training of the large fighting crew she carries. This intimacy with the ocean is an impression acquired early and vividly by the civilian on board a fighting ship. A voyage on a big liner is a quite super-marine experience by comparison, with a picturesque and phosphorescent basis some distance below a sleepy deck-chair, and not necessarily observed at all. A battleship penetrates rather than sails the sea, and takes very little interest in keeping any part of herself dry. It is impossible to ignore the ocean on such a vessel. The