HIT BY A SHELL

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3398, 13 December 1911, Page 8

HIT BY A SHELL

DURING TARGET PRACTICE

Details have just leaked out of a. sensational incident which occurred recentlv while his Majesty’s ship Hindustan, the battleship on which the Prince of Wales is serving as midshipman, was attending to her duties as umpire over the gunnery practice -of his Majesty’s ship Colossus, the newest super-Dread-nought attached to the Homo Fleet. It appears that while the Colossus was firing her six-pounder guns, there was a slight mist over tho water, and the target although at no greater range than 4000 yards, was an indistinct object to the men firing. The Hindustan was but a quarter of a mile from fhe tiwgot at the time, and one of the projectiles from tho Colossus fell plump aboard the Hindustan’s quarterdeck —a Yichochet. The quarter-deck was practically untenanted at the time, the only occupant being the marine on sentry Over the life-belt; only a few minutes before, however, there had been a number of officers standing there to watch the firing. It was found, after an. •examination of the quarter-deck, that the shell had ploughed a groove m the oorticino deck covering and pitted the steel of the armored deck itself. It is fortunate that the shell was plugged and m t a “live” one, as in the latter case no one in a radius of many yards could have escaped injury