A big battleship or cruiser is a fine sight, the embodiment of power and dangerous energy; but she cannot hold a candle to the Revenge as a picture!
In 1902 great excitement was caused by the news that the Racer was doomed; and in due course her successor put in an appearance—a very different sort of craft.
The Isis is a second-class cruiser of 5,600 tons and 8,000 horse-power, though she is capable of developing a good deal more than this when it is found necessary to press her. She is reckoned as a 19- or 20-knot vessel, and, as will be seen from the illustration, is a very business-like looking craft, presenting quite an imposing appearance in the narrow waters of the Dart.
Her first cruise commenced on October 2nd, 1902, when she took the fourth term cadets to sea for a blue-water cruise; the first since the days of the Ariadne in the early ’seventies. It was during this trip that, while at Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, some idiotic Canary Islanders attacked Captain Mundy, and injured him rather seriously.
The Isis, however, did not provide sufficient accommodation for the cadets who were ripe for sea training, so another vessel was attached to the Britannia—the Aurora, an older vessel, and, though of the same tonnage and lower speed, rated as a first-class cruiser; she has a considerable amount of protective armour.
These two vessels are kept going, and in the summer number of the magazine for 1903 there is quite a long yarn about their doings, with scores of the cricket matches played by the cadets at various ports.
When the cadets joined for their cruise on May 7th, 1903, at Plymouth, it is recorded that all turned up punctually except one boy, whose parents had sent him to Portsmouth by mistake; and, as he came from Wales, he had rather a roundabout journey to Plymouth!
They visited the Scilly Isles, where Mr. Smith-Dorrien, who owns large property there, extended liberal hospitality to them. Here a somewhat awkward mishap attended two of the lieutenants. They went out in a skiff, when the weather became somewhat rough—as everyone knows it can at the Scillies—and their small craft capsized, out of sight of the ship. However, they managed to swim on shore, and were well looked after by a fisherman’s family until a ship’s boat brought them on board, luckily none the worse.
From the Scillies they went to Milford Haven, thence to the Isle of Man, and on to Oban. They were to have gone on to the “Land of the Midnight Sun,” but one of the lads had to be landed for an operation for appendicitis, so their stay at Oban was prolonged, and the Norway trip abandoned.
Two of the ship’s boats took part in a sailing race, and the gig of the Isis, steered by the first lieutenant, succeeded in carrying off the prize, being, indeed, 18 minutes ahead of her time allowance; which must have astonished the members of the local yacht club who admitted them to the competition; for it is, curiously enough, a sort of axiom among yachtsmen, that naval officers cannot sail a boat.