Down Under with the Prince

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 theRenown, 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 salvo—the 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.