WITH THE GRAND FLEET.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 17, 21 January 1915, Page 6

WITH THE GRAND FLEET.

AT SEA IN WINTER WEATHER. ——-—— ! The following vivid picture of what our sailors are enduring white at pea with their ships is extracted from a letter received by a lady in Duneiiu. The Otago Daily Times states the writer is a doctor, an old Otago medical man, who is now a surgeon in one of the protected cruisers in the Grand Fleet:— H.M.S. , November 2. This letter, by the way, is going by the delayed mail, which is not censored, so I can be a little more discursive than in the last, though, of course, there are many things I am bound not to say—State secrets. It : is now 3 a.m. . Thank the Lord, near the end of my watch. I am sitting in a ilttle deckhouse on the afterbridge. It is hermetically sealed, so that no light shall show, and the wind is whistling round it and the rain beating on it, and I am muffled up to the neck in greatcoat and'woolly tilings; and my breath condenses in the ear; and the water is swishing round the ankles of my seaboots; and that's bow I am doing my little bit in the Grand Fleet of his Majesty King George V— Cod bless him!—in the great war of 1914 and so on, with variations* till one day we see—or, more likely, don't see—that torpedo which is destined to despatch to an honorable grace this good and useful ship,, and good and bad, useful and useless on board her. The 10th cruiser squadron, of which we are the flagship, is engaged in the

Hardest and Most Dangerous weirk—

Though the dullest and least glorious —that is at -present going, and, from the nature of things, will continue to be so engaged till the" end of the chap--ter. The other day one of our squadron, was sunk by a subthe papers cheerfully 'anil nonchalantly announced in a couple of lines, ''Another old' cruiser sunk" —a mere trifle of course; but not a word of 'the 500 good men and true that went down with her, doing their duty quietly and in cold blood,, never having seen their enemy, and with no one to shout "Hooray!" We.didn't see her as we were just coming out from coaling at the time, but next day we pas-sed-'a lot of wreckage. Any•how, even if we had seen her sinking, we should have had to scuttle off at full' speed,' or we would merely'have met the same fate. This is according to the Admiralty orders, and is perfectly sound and necessary, though rather horrible. But I think the complacent satisfaction with which the press published the order after the Hogue-Cressy-Aboukir business was hardly decent. The Theseus, also of our squadron, was fired at at the same time, but missed. They saw tlie. torpedo pass astern. It is only a matter of time before some more of the ships of our squadron, are sunk in the same way. but.the loss will not be great, except in men; but it is some satisfaction that;,.we have already done more damage'to the Germans than our loss will majvo-iup for,, November 7. f ~/.,,, ■''-- •'/ Still raining, still sitting in the little grey home (6 a.m.), and the water dripping through all over my paper. 5We pulled a few more liairs out of the*.Kaiser's moustache. '"" >%; November 11.

FoUr a.m.: Still raining and blowinglike I have* seldom seen before. It started .ithree days ago as a full gale, and has, increased until now it's a hurricane. We have been making about one knot an hour for the hist 10 days, in order to avoid damage by the sea. If you go out on the bridge it is so cold it nearly makes you cry, and every little while there is a blinding, savage squall of hail and sleet. By the light of a pale f>nd sickly moon "hurrying through the clouds" you ' can .see ' gigantic seas thundering pa s.t and towering over the bows as high as the fore-bridge, their surface lashed into fine smoky spray, and this 7000-ton cruiser is plunging like a steam launch. I have just made a cup of coffee over a wretched littlo spirit lamp with the greatest difficulty, as everything is sliding about, and one

can hardly stand up. . . . The seas keep crashing aboard, and sometimes pour down to the mess deck and the lower 'deck. The other day all the cabins were wrecked by a terrific roll,-

There was just one almighty crash as everything movable in the ship went adrift. The ward-room was like a-place wrecked by the Germans, with all the'-'chairsg.nd tables capsized and piled on top of,one another on the lee side, and - the contents of the bookklielvesjßcattered about the floor, mixed glass unfi stufF. TTalf a dozen men were laid out by being thrown -about, but luckily none seriously" Hurt'. Last night, just to add the hecesfsary touch of romance, we were ordered to chase some German cruisers which were laying mines hereabouts. We had just sat down to dinner, with all the crockery scuttling about the table, when the raucous voices of the claxon horns sounded lor fiction. The wardroom rose from the table as one man, and we all went quickly and quietly, without hurry, to our stations. It was all exactly as though '"jit manoeuvres. By the time I got;so:wp to ,mine—the after arnnunition flat—all the men were there, hnistinc up shells just as usual, only ,a little quieter. The other doctor and T overhauled our first-aid liags and waited"'for the first shot: (CVtairi

drops and rises again). Marino comes and opens watertight door and announces all overl So back to our interrupted dinner. And what do you think it was? The commander had been thrown oy a violent lurch against the switch of the alarm! However, everyone, from the admiral and captain down, thought it was a real show, ahd everyone was rather pleased to find how things had worked like clockwork—everyone at his station in about three minutes. Wireless operator has just reported aerial carried away by a gale. This is serious as wo have now lost tou/li with our squadron. I believe this old deckhouse is going- next. G a.m.—l have just boon out on to the bridge. It is like the wild and woolly pictures you see in books.

The sea is a!f white. j The whole visible ocean rises heaven-j wards in front of us to a truly awoinspiritig height. Our bows point to the sky, avalanches pour over the upper deck amidships and sweep the quarter-deck, then down we plunge into a great dark hole, and everything rattles and quivers as the screws spin round in thin air. We are hove to head-on to it for safety, but it has just smashed up a boat. More must go before long. Well, our friends the minelayers will get it in the neck—they are lighter than we arc. If we met now, neither of us could fight our guns. And all their cursed mines will break adrift and float about the ocean. I suppose we might sit on one at any moment.. Well,, it will soon be over if wo do: "Send mo a ninth great peaceful wave to drown and roll me under." Isn't it quaint that one should be sitting here, calmly smoking one's pipe in perfect serenity of mind? But there is something soothing obout things so terrific, so utterly beyond one one become like a child.

November 12. ■ . Well, we got it in the neck properly yesterday—a species of cyclone. The galley tires were put out, so we got a cold breakfast. .Then at 10 o'clock we shipped a sea that smashed up the forebridge, 'washed: away the ladders, stove in the chart-house, smashed the compass and steering gear, washed the flag-locker on top of the fiddley against.the funnel,, tore up the steel breakwater across the forecastle and crumpled it up like paper, smashed a gun, and swept overboard bodily the deck-office.

By the nearest chance the usual officers were not in it. Shortly afterwards I saw another colossal sea break over the port side. It piled up the battery, .stove in the hammock nettings, tore up some ventilator cowls, swept the, whaler away from her davits in the. twinkling of an' eye, and burst the cutter so that she blew asunder in all. directions .as though she had a charge of explosives inside her. The, sea around us was strewn with ladders, broken boats, bits of brassbound rails, buckets, lockers, and wreckage of all* descriptions. It really looked as though we were going to. pieces.- I honestly had doubts sometimes whethjer we could live in such a sea. So ' had everybody else. I never saw such a lot of anxious, worried-looking people. We could do nothing but just keep head on to it. To add to our troubles the after funnel was wobbling dangerously, and the chief engineer had serious doubts about it.

November 15 (6 a.m.) Well, we crept into port, a pretty battered-looking wreck, and the Com-mander-in-Chief took pity on ns and ordered us to go and refit; we are long overdue. The whole of the first Battle Squadron was at anchor there. What a sight it was. We are now getting near home. It is still blowing a hard gale and snowng like nothing on earth. You couldn't see the ship for spray as we are going full speed right with it. These waters have recently been mined-by the Germans. It will be an unkind;.-fate:if. we hit one after all these trials. If you get this letter you will know, that we didn't.