Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 19
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 19]
I found the ship pretty well stripped of superfluous woodwork, tho' not so bare as we would have expected from the stories of frightfulness we read. All pictures and things were gone from the wardroom, but the pianola remained. All cabin doors were screwed off, and we lived modestly behind a curtain.
My cabin alone retained its door and it afterwards became popular for tea parties; people would borrow it weeks ahead. But that, as Kipling says, is another story.
Some ships scraped their paintwork off and lifted the articles off the decks. The Encounter in a reckless moment when they sighted the tramp Zambesi and thought it was the Scharnhorst through threw all their furniture overboard, and it is still drifting ashore at Thursday Island. The Caesar, a ship we met later, through her threw their bridge overboard; but that was in the nature of a luxury. We were content to take a greater risk and live in civilised fashion. The only accident we prayed deliverance from was a shell in the wine cellar, because the insurance had run out and the company wisely enough declined to continue the risk.
We saw to it however, by encouraging our Padre and other teetotallers to do their duty, that our risk became daily and beautifully less.
We were a mess of 16 in the Wardroom, seven of whom were Australian by birth, and the rest Australian by inclination though officially Englishmen.
It is said that these latter were felt just as much at home in Australian pubs as English ones, due to an acquaintance born of several commissions served in the station.
At any rate the mess was a happy family and there was a complete absence of cleavage between the members of the Royal Australian Navy and its the parent Navy. Of the men about half were Australian, the more skilled ratings such as gunlayers being of course Englishmen. In a new Navy this must is