E is always a sad moment when bye to a friend, and it will be the time approaches to say good-with such emotions that present and past officers and men of the British Yangtze Flotilla learn the news that the career of H.M.S, Bee, the "Grand Old Lady öf the Yangtze", has come to an end. Although the vessel is still officially in commission, with the arrival of H.M.S. Scorpion from Hongkong on or about December 21. the Bee will be sold to be broken-up. H.M.S. Scorpion, a new vessel of 585 tons, is at present undergoing trials in the Colony, preparatory to replacing the Bee on the Yangtze.
From Royalty downwards—for the Duke of Kent, as Prince George, served in the Bee on the Yangtze—there will be many who recall both dangerous and pleasant experiences as metnbers of the gunboat's crew as she carried them through the Mediterranean, the River Tigris and Far Eastern waters. During recent years her nomic has become even more widely as a result of adventures on the Yangtze during the hostilities.
some weeks®past the Bee has Occupied a berth at the British naval buoys in the Whangpoo River, following a lengthy sojourn at the Yangtzepoo Dockyards where she was stripped her guns and other machinery prior to being offered for sale. As she leit the dock some weeks ago there must have been many whose minds flew back to that memorable day in 1916 when she Slipped down the stocks of the Ailsa shipyard to commence her career as a small but very important unit of the Royal Navy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.