Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 21]
hammers of Hell – rattling & banging against the sides of the bunkers, till it brought up with a crash & a bump that must have been heard in the Supreme Court, Sydney.
They say that coal lumpers have an easy time of it; but really to look at them, you'ld hardly notice it. They worked like demons & performed wonders, the only trouble being that they persisted on performing them all day & all night & on till 2 p.m. the following day.
Some of the officers remained were lucky enough to get ashore but the rest of us perforce remained on board there being nothing else practicable. I sent a telegram & received one thought I don't know whether yours was in reply to mine or not – however that doesn't matter. We left Albany at 3 p.m. on Friday with our nerves shattered.
The weather from here on was sometimes good & sometimes bad, though never very bad. The wind was always from the West, generally, S.W. & sometimes N.W. If it blew from the South, the roll was quite noticeable & in many cases disastrous. With a head wind, we were forced to slacken up for fear of flooding the troop decks forward, & even so very often took quite a deal of water aboard.
It would not be a troop ship without illness, so some of the men went down with measles. Many got a touch of Dengue fever but threw it off almost