Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

CRUISE OF THE CAMBRIAN.
-~ -.? - .?
CAPTURE OF PIRATES.
H.M.S. Cambrian, which left Sydney
in February last for China on account
of the revolution which was then rag-
ing, returned last week, and moored in
Farm Cove.
The cruise was marked by one or two
incidents of exciting nature. On the
outward voyage the vessel called at
Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, and
there found the cruiser Prometheus,
which was bound on the same mission
to China, a helpless mass of scrap iron
so far as her machinery and boilers were
concerned. She was taken in tow a distance
of 3,000 miles, and arrived at
Hongkong, where she has since remained
in dockyard hands, a burden on the
naval resources, rather than the help
for which she was sent. On arrival at
Hongkong, the Prometheus was found
to be in such a hopeless condition that
the Admiral of the China Station ordered
an immediate Court of Inquiry. The
inquiry was held in camera, and the
evidence has been kept strictly secret,
but it is significant that the captain
and engineer commander were shortly
afterwards relieved, and have gone
Home. 7,
While the Prometheus has been laid
up in Kowloon dockyard, she has been,
practically, pulled to pieces, and she
still remains there until such time as
she can drag herself home to the scrap
heap.
Having got rid of her burden, the
Cambrian proceeded to Shanghai, the
sent of the revolutionary trouble.
Landing parties of seamen and marines
were, in the meantime, organised,
but matters quietened down, and they
were not required. She then proceeded
to Wei-hai-wei, on account of rumours
being abroad of the presence of pirates
in the vicinity. It It was learned that
the pirates had attacked a merchant
vessel, murdered the captain, and looked
the cargo. Encouraged by their
success in this venture, they went further,
capturing and holding an English-
man as hostage, putting a heavy ransom
on his head. The Cambrian, by a
clever ruse, placed a strong party of
marines on the spot where it was agreed
to hand over the ransom. A" sharp
encounter followed a raid, and three of
the leading pirates were captured alive.
They were handed over to the Chinese
authorities, who made short shrift of
them by ordering their, immediate execution.
After
a visit to Nagasaki, Japan, the
Cambrian returned to Hongkong, where
she joined the China fleet in several important
evolutions, in which, unfortun
a week, as a representative of the Australian
squadron, she was hopelessly left
behind. She then returned to Sydney,
calling at Thursday Island, after a passage
of 19 days.
For its multitude of motor vehicles
London needs about 300 tons of petrol
for each working day. In London itself
there is only an, average reserve
stock of some 1,030 tons, but in the huge
petroleum reservoirs at Thames Haven
thirty miles down the river there is
sufficient spirit to meet all demands for
many weeks. Under the regulations of
the Port of London Authority no tank
steamer with petrol is permitted to come
higher up the river than Thames Haven.
Negotiations are on foot between the
Port Authority and the petroleum companies,
and if the authorities decide to
allow- small petrol vessels to discharge
in London there will be no danger of
any petrol famine.
One of the chiefs of the French Post
Office administration, says the "Matin, recently
noticed that the clerks of a
certain, Paris district office were very lax
in answering official communications. He
accordingly paid a visit of inspection. On
arrival he ordered the clerks to open
their desks to inspect their papers. They
reluctantly complied, revealing a quantity
of vigorous snails, which immediately
started to crawl in all directions with
surprising speed." An inquiry revealed
the fact that the clerks had collected
the snails in order to train them to
race against one another. The report
of the committee of inquiry ends as fol-
lows: "Steps should be taken to curtail
the lamentable love of racing and of
games of chance which appears to exist
among the Post Office employees."
The progress in the mechanical method
of cream manufacture is causing pain to
conservative people in Devonshire, who
contend that the cream produced by the
new process cannot be compared in appearance
and delicacy of flavour with the
clotted cream which made Devon famous
in the past. The old-fashioned process
was to put all the rich new milk into the
scalding pan. The new method is to put
the milk through a contrivance called a
separator, which separates the cream
from the milk. By this method only the
milk is scalded. In many probaly
most-farms the separator seems to have
won the day, and this is explained by
the fact that it secures the production
of a greater amount of butter. There
is-, however, a heavy demand for the
genuine old-fashioned clotted 'mm, and
it is stated that it is becoming harder
and harder to- get
of
$