8 AUGUST 1908, Page 3

The cruiser 'Indomitable,' which brought the Prince of Wales home

from Quebec and arrived at Cowes on Monday night, has established a new and remarkable warship record for long-distance steaming. Her average speed from land to land was over twenty-four knots an hour, and for four hours on one day she steamed at the rate of twenty-six knots. But what lends the achievement special significance is the fact that the cruiser had all her war stores and heavy guns on board,—in other words, was fully equipped for action during the entire course of her outward and homeward journey. The voyage of the 'Indomitable,' which remained in regular wireless communication with the Marconi stations at Glace Bay, in Canada, and Clifden, in Ireland, is naturally claimed as a great triumph for her constructor, Sir Philip Watts ; for the Fairfield Yard, where she was built; and, above all, for Mr. Charles Parsons, the inventor of the marine turbine-engines with which she was fitted. But the action of the Admiralty in withholding any official record, yet allowing information to transpire, is a further example of that method of "advertise- ment tempered with secrecy" characteristic of the present regime.