Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/HMS New Zealand (1911)

HMS New Zealand (1911)

There are a few issues that I'd like get opinions on before I send this up for GAR. Is the lead too short? Where's the best place for the bit of trivia about the captain and the grass skirt? The differences between New Zealand and her half-sister Indefatigable are generally covered in the class article, but I'm wondering if I need to address them more here as well?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Buckshot06

Er, please be careful about your use of terms, Sturmvogel. Neither the Maori nor the Royal New Zealand Navy would be happy about you terming the Captain's wearing of the piu-piu and tiki in battle - and the subsequent lack of any serious damage to the ship - as 'trivia.' The two were ceremonially handed back to the Navy within the last couple of years and are now in the Royal New Zealand Navy Museum. [1]

There is no mention of the fact that a considerable number (~10%?) of the country's population cam aboard on the initial visit, and there is also no mention of the New Zealand officers and ratings that served aboard. Buckshot06 (talk) 05:25, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• • • Both good points, and I have seen some numbers for her 1913 visit; now just to remember where. And where does the mention of the regalia belong? I'm a bit inclined to put it into the pre-war section as that's when it was gifted. What do you think?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 08:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Right. Having looked up my sources, this is what they say:

..when war was declared, there were three NZ officers serving aboard, all from Christchurch: Lieutenants D. Boyle and R.C. Garsia and Mid H. Anderson.

(during Jutland) '..Many on board put their luck down to the fact that throughout the operation Captain GReen wore a Maori piu piu and greenstone tiki given to the ship in 1913 by an old chief in Rotorua. On that occasion, the chief advised that both the piu piu and tiki were to be worn by the captain when the ship was in action. With the gift came the prediction that the New Zealand would be hit three times, but her casualties would not be heavy. Capt Halsey wore the gifts at Heligoland and the Dogger Bank, and Capt Green followed suit at Jutland. ..'

'..The ship's company were firm believers both in the old chief's prophecy and in the ability of the piu piu and tiki to ward off trouble. More than a year after the Battle of Jutland, on the last occasion that New Zealand sighted enemy ships and went to action stations, a seaman was seen to climb a ladder to the bridge and take a quick look around. 'It's all right,' he called to his mates below, 'he's got them on' - a shout that assured them that the captain was wearing the piu piu and tiki.'

Grant Howard, 'The Navy in New Zealand: An Illustrated History,' A H and A W Reed, ISBN 0 589 01355 6, Wellington and Sydney, 1981, p.30-31

Therefore I'd argue that this gift was directly in the tradition of British regimental regalia, customs, traditions etc and was a potentially significant factor in crew morale. Buckshot06 (talk) 05:40, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Nick-D

This is a solid article which provides a good history of the ship, and I really do intend to upgrade the article on Australia ;) My comments are:

• I'm suprised to see that no New Zealand sources have been used; while this was a British ship, there's presumably coverage in NZ sources of the decision to fund her and how she was regarded

I'm more familiar with the technical stuff rather than the politics, so bear with me. If you've got any pointers I'll be glad to follow up, but the situation isn't as easy as it is for HMAS Australia and the RNZN wasn't yet in existence to document her as well as her sister was. Hell, I'm not even sure if the RN made any effort to collect New Zealander sailors in her crew or not. The brief mentions of her on the RNZN museum website don't imply so, but I dunno one way or another.

• Stating that the ship was a "gift to Britain" is a bit inaccurate; while NZ funded the ship, it was an investment in imperial security and was made as part of a deliberate empire-wide strategy, and wasn't a disinterested present. Saying that Australia was merely "funded by the people of Australia" also isn't correct as she was a unit of the Royal Australian Navy manned mostly by Australians.

That's more true for the Australians who did form the RAN, but New Zealand, IIRC, had no conditions placed on her by the New Zealand PM when the money was donated.

• Is the reason NZ switched to funding a BC really not known? This may have formed part of the fleet unit strategy, in which British and dominion battlecruisers were to form the basis of task forces to protect imperial shipping routes in the event of war (the RAN was established to provide a fleet unit, and the concept worked fairly well in 1914).

Yes, she was to form part of a fleet unit, but the accounts in Lambert and the Australian official history are rather vague on the exact reasons.

• The coverage of the ship's career outside of the battles she was involved in is very sketchy, and should be expanded. Topics such as how she was crewed and her training program should be covered.

She didn't have much of a career outside the war, other than the tours of the Dominions that she conducted before and after the war. And details such as you are asking for are very hard to dig up without a book dedicated to the ship.

• The 'In service' section appears to be largely boilerplate text about the battles, and there's no real focus on New Zealand's role in them. This section could be trimmed heavily, as there's no real need to provide detailed coverage of battles in which New Zealand was just one of many British ships involved.

That's true of the raid on Scarborough, but not at all true of the main three battles in which she participated. You need a fair amount of context to properly show New Zealand's actions.

• The geocities link needs to be replaced; geocities wasn't a reliable source when it existed, and it was turned off a few months ago. Nick-D (talk) 07:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point, I'd forgotten about that.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 08:38, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The other thing is the payment issue - we didn't finish off paying the loan for her construction until about 1948. This needs to be included. Buckshot06 (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Financing issues are generally pretty obscure. Got a cite for it?Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:53, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Hchc2009

The in-line citation could be stronger; there's quite a few paragraphs (e.g. the "Battle of Heligoland Bight" section) containing a large number of facts - in fact a whole battle's worth - but only one citation, citing quite a large section of a book. Breaking up the citations so that each new fact was covered by a different citation would probably help.Hchc2009 (talk) 17:44, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

The citation covers 4 pages; I don't feel that every single fact in a paragraph needs to be cited individually if they're all found in the same source, even if they're on different pages. It's just not that hard to find a single fact in those few pages.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:50, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Dana boomer

• The lead should be expanded. WP:LEAD recommends two to three paragraphs for an article of this length.
• ALT text needs to be added for A-class and FAC, but is not generally needed for GAN.
• The Wartime modifications section has a lot of short paragraphs, which make for a very choppy look and read.
• The prose overall looks good, but you may want to take another look over it. For example, In service section, "Walter Cowan was her Captain in 1914–15." Captain should be decapitalized here. Also in the Background section, "For some reason it was built to a modified". "For some reason" sounds rather unencyclopedic. Like I said, overall its good, but could use another comb-over before GAN.

I've made a few tweaks to the references, adding publishes and making the formatting work right. I don't think that more needs to be said about the differences between the New Zealand and the Indefatiguable. I hope the above comments help. Dana boomer (talk) 01:40, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Ian Rose

Good work as usual, I don't think much needs to be done for GA that hasn't been already noted, however:

• For some reason sounds a bit unencyclopedic; if you can't think of an alternate expression I'd just lose those three words entirely.
• If I review for GA I'll be asking for alt text on the images; I'd also recommend increasing their size as most are quite miniscule for what they're trying to display.
• It would be preferable to remove the IWM watermark from the main image.
• I think the Battle of Heligoland Bight image would be better on the right-hand side; it stuffs the subheader (on my PC anyway) as it is, may do for others as well.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC)