The report of the Captain of the 'Calliope' on the
hurricane in the harbour of Samoa, to which Mr. Goschen referred last week in his Sheffield speech, was published on Thursday It is a very striking and inspiriting document, and bears remarkable testimony to the admirable order in which the whole complicated machinery of the 'Calliope' was kept, and the perfect discipline with which she was navigated. The Staff Engineer was called upon for every pound of steam he could give, and this power was kept up at the highest point from 9.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Throughout this period, the engines were moving the Calliope ' through a sea which flooded the decks, and even at this extreme power the ship made only a knot or so against the wind and sea. The Captain could not tell in the thick atmosphere whether he was ten miles or ten yards from the reef. "I cannot speak too highly," writes Captain Kane, "of the conduct of every officer and man on board the ship. During the hours we passed, when every moment might have been our last, every order was obeyed with alacrity and without confusion, and the way in which the engineer officers and stokers kept to their work is beyond all praise." And this, we must remember, was a machine of the most elaborate and delicate construction, in which the failure of a single detail might well have involved the total destruction of the whole. The working of the engines, the appliances for steering, the appliances for communicating orders, are all of a highly complex kind, and the calmness and presence of mind required in officers and men during this long tension of excitement were as essential to success as the strength and fine structural fit of the mechanical arrangements themselves. The Samoan hurricane has resulted in a good omen for the exploits of our new scientific Navy.
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