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sorted and as the mail steamer brings over 15 to 20 tons of mail per day, this takes some doing and all the while the pinnaces and drifters from the various ships are hovering about waiting for their share. The Captain of this Depot Ship is Capt. Chambers who was loaned to the Australian Navy to act as Commandant of the new Naval College at Jervis Bay. He was just settling down to this job when war broke out and the Admiralty recalled him for services on this side.
The ex-fishing craft as xxxx represented by the trawlers and drifters have done yeoman service to the Nation. Commanded and manned by their fishing crews, they carry the stores, water, ammunition etc. for the ships in addition to their specialty job of sweeping for mines and xxxxxxxxxxxx submarines. There are thousands of these small fry each doing his particular work as part of a great organisation and how well this work is done can be judged by the practical immunity from submarinex attacks which our mercantile marine enjoy. Greater sympathy has also sprung up between these fisher folk and the Navy since they have been working together. Before war the fishing fleet looked upon the Navy as "sea hogs" whose one delight was to steam through their fishing nets and the Navy in turn classed all fishing craft as "sea lice", but they have now come to find that each side has its uses, and they are both the better for it.
I was present at gunnery practice on one of the Dreadnaughts and I admit that I don't know now any more about how it is done than before I joined the ship; and this is not because they try to hide anything from you, on the contrary they are most anxious to explain everything. My position was in the foretop to which you climb hand over fist up the interior of the mast - its not