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[Page 33]
Cherchez la femme.
In July 1916 the First Division of the Australian T.B.D. flotilla, comprising the "Parramatta" "Yarra" and "Warrego" having completed an extended patrol of the waters adjacent to Singapore were recalled to Sydney the Second Division comprising the new ships "Swan" "Huon" and "Torrens" all of them built and equipped at Cockatoo Island, taking their place.
Now patrol work in European waters has its excitements, there was always the possibility of meeting the enemy any old time, their light craft having a penchant for making flying raids which it was the business of our own light craft to intercept and upset. That they did so with considerable success will only be fully known when the naval history of the War comes to be published. For us in the Australian flotilla patrolling was a very different affair. It is true that we took all precautions against a surprise raider and it is also true that we knew - or at any rate felt - that there wasn't an enemy craft within thousands of miles of us. Thus as month after month crept by and we never fell foul of anything less innocuous than a fat Dutch mail boat or a Chinese junk befouling the ocean with a cargo of stinking sharks fins, we began to look upon our work in much the same light as we looked upon manouvres at home. That is to say when the "Red" fleet fought the "Blue" fleet and each T.B.D. skipper hoped fervently he would soon be "sunk" in order that he might return to port and continue the ever hopeful task of reducing his golf handicap while his first lieutenant stole paint and revelled in "spit and polish".
We were well into the third year of the War and beyond the New Guinea Stunt none of us had seen a shot fired in anger. Were we to be doomed to this unglorious existence until the War had petered out? It looked like it and yet at the last moment the Admiralty found a better use for us in a sphere closer allied with active hostilities. But before proceeding there I would narrate one incident which befell the --- as typical of the many and varied uses which T.B.D's have been put to in this War.
From the naval point of view this war has been rightly termed a "Destroyer war". To commence right here in Australia, it was the