A PERILOUS VOYAGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1687, 17 March 1917, Page 1

A PERILOUS VOYAGE.

BY, NEW ZEALAND TRANSPORT. TWICE DRIVEN TO PORT. ESCORT OF 18 DESTROYERS. BRITISH PORT UNDER BLOCKADE. The Minister of Defence has been advised that the Reinforcements have reached their destination in safety. — Daily Paper.

This customary, curt, official message, periodically dismissing in its 17 words the anxieties of hundreds, sometimes conceals, as you shall learn from Dr. Bedford’s story of the troopship Willochra’s passage Home, a hundred hazards run. It was not a normal troopship passage; indeed, as Dr. Bedford states, they encountered difficulties greater than those met by any previous vessel, taking so long to complete their passage that they reached their destination only a day or two ahead of the next reinforcement.

The earlier part of the voyage was uneventful, the ship’s company had shaken down into their places, and the soothing routine of a deep-water vessel had established its beneficial sway, when the wireless jarred them into consciousness of something wrong. They were ordered to put into port, and into a port that had never been a port of call for troopships, in Ibis port they found a small (led of British war vessels; —-a lirst-class battleship, three armoured cruisers, and several armed merchantmen — and amongst these they lay for 10 days, their company gradually swelling, as ship after ship was driven in by the same warning of danger, which at the lime was a mystery to them. It was evidently a very pressing one, for within the 10 days Jive Australian and three African transports lay at anchor beside them.

This long and anxious wail was ended by an order to put to sea on independent courses, and make for the port where the Willochra was to receive her gun —for up to the time she was unarmed. This port was made without alarm, and her gun mounted, the transport turned her nose towards England. Three days she made without inlerlerence, and tlkmi received a hurry call to turn and proceed at all speed back to the port in which she had already been hung up for .10 days. The ship received over (he wireless a full description of a raider that was out. and of special submarine activity over the coarse the transport was to have pursued. Again this port became the rendezvous of transport after transport, until at the end of this third week of hiding there were 50,000 troops hiding in that port. The composition of the battle-fleet lying there had changed. ’The battleship had sailed, but a fine French cruiser had replaced her, and there were more armed merchantmen. While idling here they heard of the sinking by submarine attack of several ships lying in a certain harbour, and the shelling of the town’s forts.

Finally the Willochra was sent out wilb four olber transports under escort of an armed (‘raiser, which accompanied then) the whole way. They proceeded, Dr. Bedford says, like drunken ships, making a truly astonishing wake, for the bewilderment of any lurking periscope, The first point in the deadly game with the submarine is to obscure your destination. Once be has succeeded in determining this, be sinks, makes for n spot commanding your course, and (here lies in wait for his prey to pass. For several days the Willochra continued to zigzag over the face of the waters, and then dark sp,nidges of smoke on the horizon grew with inconceivable rapidity into the long racing forms of seven destroyers swinging down upon them at an even 45 knots. They were a British unit sent to escort the troopships, although the latter were still three days from their final port, and on the bast day out 11 more destroyers appeared and formed a girdle round them, while a mine-sweeper slowly searched the sea ahead of them. “ ' (the port of destination) had been practically blockaded by submarines for several weeks, and J. think we were the first ship to break the blockade. After we got in we found that the Corinthie had been lying there for three weeks waiting to get out, with several hundreds of passengers aboard. She did not get out, 1 believe, until two weeks later.”