A Romantic Career The panorama of the Huangpu has been much brightened this week by the graceful lines and trim appearance of H. M. S. Alacrity, moored at the P. & O. buoy and flying at her forepeak the flag of Vice-Admiral Sir A. L- Duff, x.c.8., Commander-in-Chief of the China Squadron, who is at present visiting Shanghai.
H. M. 8S. Alacrity, which by the way is the third vessel in the annals of the Royal Navy to bear that name, is a ship that has seen many vicissitudes in the course of her career. As her beautiful shape proclaims, the Alacrity was born on the Clyde, being built by Scotts at Greenock in 1900 to the order of Anthony Drexel, the American millionaire, as a touring yacht. She has a length of 343 ft. over all, draws nearly 29ft. of water and has a displacement of about 3.000 tons. Her engines were designed to dovelop 5,000 H.P. and attain a speed of 17 knots. At the time of her launching she was christened Margarita, but since that day she has changed her name and na tionality upon more than one occasion-
Turoven Many Hanps.
Some years later Mr. Drexel sold this yacht to the Marquis of Anglesea, who effected a number of alterations to the vessel and renamed her Meriamis. She next passed into the possession of Sir John Burt, the wealthy shipowner, and for him she made voyages from Cowes to Japan, the Baltic and the Mediterranean.
In 1913 the yacht was again sold and this time hoisted the Russian flag, being purchased by a Russian Princess, the wife of the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch, Viceroy of the Caspian Provinces. She was refitted by her new owner at Genoa, and left that port under the Russian, or rather Ukrainian, name Mlada, upon a cruise in the Mediterranean and Black Sea.
In August 1914 the Mlada was lying at Spezia, and there she laid up apparently waiting for the war to finish and little thinking that she would be called upon to fulfil a warlike role. In the spring of 1917, however, she was taken over by the Russian Government, several 4in. guns were placed upon her decks and she was prepared for service at Archangel as a despatch vessel.
From Botsnevik To Britain.
On her voyage to the north she put in at Devonport for repairs. and there, in November, 1917, her crew, hearing of the Bolshevik coup d'état in Petrograd, mutinied and generally ran amok. The trouble was so great that the crew had to be removed by the British authorities. A year later orders were received for the commission of the Mlada as an armed boarding steamer, but those orders were cancelled just a day before they were to be put into effect, and it was not until April, 1919, that the yacht
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.