This is intriguing

[Dave Homewood]

I just found this old snippet:

H.M.S. AUDACIOUS.
"One Who Knows'" writes: "Will you allow one, who has recently seen some correspondence of a semi-oflicial nature, and therefore is somewhat behind the scenes, to assure your readers that the above ship, although she undoubtedly struck a mine off the coast of Donegal. 's not lost, but is with the High Sea Fleet. The Audacious was built with an inner plating. invented by a New Zealander (a resident of Cambridge), and to this inventor she probably owes her safety. The Admiralty know quite well what they are about, and it would be sheer madness at the present time to publish to the world information as to her injury."

So, who was this inventor from Cambridge? I am assuming it refers to Cambridge, New Zealand?

[Tony]

The true story:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Audacious_(1912)



Added to Davy Jones's Locker October 27, 1914
Following the sinking:
"Jellicoe immediately proposed that the sinking be kept a secret, to which the Board of Admiralty and the British Cabinet agreed, an act open to ridicule later on. For the rest of the war, Audacious' name remained on all public lists of ship movements and activities. Many Americans on board Olympic were beyond British jurisdiction and discussed the sinking. Many photos, and even one moving film, had been taken. By 19 November, the loss of the ship was accepted in Germany.[10] Jellicoe's opposite number in Germany, Reinhard Scheer, wrote after the war, "In the case of the Audacious we can but approve the English attitude of not revealing a weakness to the enemy, because accurate information about the other side's strength has a decisive effect on the decisions taken." "



The New Zealander may have hailed from Cambridge University