LIFE WITH THE GRAND FLEET

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2687, 5 February 1916, Page 13

LIFE WITH THE GRAND FLEET

HOW A GREAT SHIP FOUGHT THE STORM. An East. Coast sailor (with the Grand Fleet), home on leave for a few days, related. an experience which his vessel underwent during a hurricane which came down from the north recently. One of the mightiest vessels in the Fleet left port. She steamed right, into tho teeth of the north-easter, and the further they WQnt tho worse it got. The heavilyarmed and munitioned ship rolled and wallowed in the awful seas, and was toyed with by vast masses of wator which towered as high as the fighting top, and w;is battered by them as her engines forced her straight into it at something like 17 knots. The struggle became terrible, and at times looked a hopeless one. "It was the biggest 6ea I have ever seen, and X never expected to 6ee land any more. The vessel had gone down by the nose, and was submerged to lier foremost funnel. Every man had to look out for himself. A wireless message was sent out for help,/but the weather moderating we found we could get along slowly under our own steam, and eventually reached" port, "There is not a man but will be glad when we can get the Germans to fight. They may be very good sailors, but when you see our guns and the way they are handled I would not give mucA for their chance.' Besides, the Fleet is always growing stronger the longer they wait. New ships keep arriving apparently from nowhere. We look across the'bay and say, 'Hello,, what ship's that?' but ni one can say .""'as 110 one has been her fore. It's wonderful—just what that American correspondent wrote."