From The Times, October 27, 1923
The battle-cruisers Hood and Repulse, together with the five ships of the “D” class composing the First Light Cruiser Squadron, are to sail from Devonport on November 27, and will be back in English waters at the end of September.
During their ten months’ tour of the world these ships of the Royal Navy will see and be seen by many men and many cities. As they sail along the coast of the five continents washed by the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, two out of every three of the ports at which they will touch, between forty and fifty in number, will be British possessions, under the Flag of the Empire.
Till next June, when they anchor off Honolulu, their crews will not once have set foot on foreign soil. They will, with that single exception, have been the guests, wherever they touch land, of men of their own race.
On their way back to England the battle-cruisers and their consorts, when they separate at San Francisco, will take different routes, the Hood and the Repulse sailing through the Panama Canal up to Halifax and Quebec, touching at four ports of the United States on the way, while the First Light Cruiser Squadron will pass round Cape Horn, stopping at the Falkland Islands, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro, and so home.
The thought of such a voyage must stir the pride and fire the imagination — if he has any — of every man with the sailor blood of Britain in his veins. Apart from the valuable training and experience which it will give to officers and men, its mission is to show the flag in far-off parts of the Empire, where, in these days of relentless economy, it is now too rarely seen.
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Two of the five light cruisers — Dauntless and Dragon — formed the escort of the Prince of Wales when he sailed to Canada and Newfoundland in the Renown. Everyone knows how these visits of the Prince to the Dominions and India brought the different nations of the Empire closer to each other and to the Mother Country.
The King’s ships, and the proud flag which they fly, will serve in the same way to recall to the minds of all of British descent who see them the strength and oneness for which the Royal Navy stands today, as it has through all the glorious ages of the Empire’s past.
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