HONORABLE SCARS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 168, 22 December 1914, Page 6

HONORABLE SCARS.

| ABOARD THE SYDNEY. j In was only on close inspection that I could discover the scars that th-3 crew I of the Sydney point to now with such I piide. A casual glance would have detecttected in the side a hole as about- as | a saucer, on the port quarter. This j had been the result of one of the high I trajectory shots. Owing to the great I elevation possible with German guns, it | had made a curious passage for itself, ( having missed the funnels and entered a j galley amidships, tearing a rent in a steam pipe as it went. Then it travers- | a hole as about as big as i of a fitting of an officers' cabin before I it passed between the legs of a desk and out on tho other side without ex- , ploding. Tliis tracing of the course of | the shells was fascinating. I could see where the paint had been scorched off the control stations and where the hammocks that would protect the men from flying splinters were burned brown and were dyed black or crimson with nlood. Looking in at the door of one of the messrooms below, I was told that one of the crew was standing in that position when he heard a shell strike the side and try to pierce the armor plate. He did not wait long enough to see the great blister it raised—almost as large as a football—before it fell back spent into the sea. The men were down below writing home when I went to the bow to see the damage done by the shell which had torn up the decks. iSome of the men were washing. They laughed when they pointed to the places, now filled up with cement, where the shells had burst, and they showed the notice board and draught flues riddled with 1 holes. | As far as the interior of the ship was concerned, I saw nothing else that suggested an action except the officer's cabin through which the shell had passed. The only knowledge the engineers had of the action was the distant rumbling of the guns and a small fragment of a lyddite shell that tumbled somehow down a companion way. I wondered if too great praise can be bestowed on the engineers for their work in this crisis. From 9 a.m.—just before she got into action—until noon, when she left the Emden a wreck on Keeling Island, the Sydney steamed 08 miles at speeds vary, ing between fifteen and twenty-seven knots. As I grew more accustomed to look for the chips of portions of the ship, I marked tho places where shells must just have grazed tho deck and fittings. All the holes had been filled with cement and the stays had been repaired sr.d tho damaged steam pipe was working again. The only break in the water supply for the ship was the cutting off for a few minute 9of the refrigerating plant. As I went round while the officers accounted for the whole of the. fifteen shots, I wondered how many times the Emden must have been hit. It must have been more than 100 times. Our gunners had fired more than 050 rounds, the starboard guns firing more, than the port, while the German cruiser had fired 1500 shots and had practically exhausted all the ammunition they had. It was not possible for them to fire a torpedo, for the chamber had been destroyed from a shot from our guns quite early in. the action. —Correspondent Melbourne (Age.