Foreign News: Landing Party

Scottish fishermen sailing home along the Highland coast near Nigg last week heard the leashed rumble of heavy turbine engines coming near them off Cromarty Firth. Soon they saw looming out of the barley soup fog the towering grey flank of the world’s biggest fighting ship, the $30,000,000 British battle cruiser Hood. What followed jolted the Highlanders out oftheir wits. The Hood’s davits suddenly swung launches filled with marines over the side. The launches sped into shallow water. Holding their rifles high, the marines jumped into the surf, ran up the beach toward a party of British tars camped in the sandhills. The two parties met in a brawling mass, clubbing and wrestling. The campers, outnumbered, were overpowered, hauled out through the surf and tumbled into the launches. The launches streaked back to the Hood, the turbines churned a little louder and the grey steel wall melted back into the fog.

To the Highlanders it looked as if the Hood had crushed a mutiny.

Soon the shocking word flew through Scotland, through England: a mutiny of enlisted men on the Hood! Everyone remembered that the September mutiny two years ago broke out while the Atlantic fleet was stationed near Invergordon, a few miles from Nigg (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931). Stiffly Sir Bolton Eyres-Mon-sell, First Lord of the Admiralty, arched his right eyebrow a little higher with a denial. He said that certain maneuvers in the North Sea whither the Hood was bound had been postponed because of “heavy gales.” At the Admiralty offices in London, the duty officer in command refused to make a statement of any kind for three whole days. Finally the Admiralty, which never makes explanations when they can be avoided, explained that the tussle on Cromarty beach did indeed take place last week, but “as part of the Fall maneuvers,” a sham fight between “pirate” sailors and the Hood’s marines.