Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 25

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[Page 25]

[Text incorporates handwritten corrections by E.A.B.]
She was so small and so young and so new that no one had even taken the trouble to baptise her so she carried a number in lieu of a name. Her crew of seventy can hardly be said to live on her, there is no room for that they apparently hang on anywhere they can. I do not think it is possible for everyone to be on deck or down below at the same time. They must take it in turns. This little craft had come all the way from England under her own steam. 'Yes we had quite a comfortable passage for the sea was fine but what she do in winter in a gale God only knows why the smallest seas come right over her decks'. This in answer to my enquiry. The Turks must have regarded the new arrival with mingled contempt and amusement after their experiences of the mighty Q E and others, but they sung a different tune when one fine day she went outside to calibrate and they found that this baby of the deep could throw a houndred pounds of high explosive for twelve miles without inconveniening herself.

The next arrival caused something of a sensation not only to the enemy but to our own troops. On afternoon there appeared at the entrance of Kephaos Bay an amazing looking object. She did not steam up, but rather wobbled up like a huge goose primed for Michelmase. It was impossIble to tell at a distance whether she was broadside on or showing her bows or her stern. She seemed to be quite round. Her high sides held aloft an absolutely flat deck on which nothing showed except an enormous turret from which projected two guns of gigantic length. whilst up from her centre was a huge striped tripod carrying a kind of oblong jewel box the exact replica on a large scale of that in which the Deli Llama bears about with him the ashes of his first embodiment. With great difficulty, steering vily, she made her way through the crowded harbour and dropped her anchor with the eyes of thousands rivetted on her. No one had ever seen the like of her before. Sensation followed sensation. Thousnads of soldiers of the New Army recently arrived watched her from the shore. Her crew began to bathe. Apparently all had the power of walking on the water. You saw them come down the ladder and instead of disappearing into the sea

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