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[Page 32]
on the Dardanelles. All Troops again practised landing from the Troopships today, (they do so everyday),. We put all their Gear into the barges, including Guns & Mules & some days they land on the Island & on others just get all the gear & themselves into the boats & then straight aboard again. It is splendid & necessary practice however. The first day it started it took our men seven to nine minutes to get down a Jacobs ladder & fill a boat holding 36 men, now they can do it in 2 mins 40 secs, so the practice is valuable, especially as they will have to disembark under rifle fire. There are about 130,000 men on Troopships here in the Bay & on the Island encamped.The French & British on the latter are building weatherboard houses & also making roads & culverts. May be its for practice, but I daresay they will use this Island for some time yet.
We have been in this Bay now for 11 days April 8th to 18th & still no sign
of departure. We get a piece of war news now & again signalled from the Queen Elizabeth at night. One of the Trawlers used in dragging for mines up in the Dardanelles was alongside of us today. She has got several holes in her above the water line where the Turkish batteries on the shore there shelled them. Most of the chaps on this one are volunteers from the Queen Elizabeth. The man who was at the wheel on one occasion up there, showed me where a bullet passed through the woodwork in the wheel he was steering with.