Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 18
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[Page 18]
20-12-14 This is Sunday. There should have been a general inspection and church parade for the whole ship, but our chiefs have so little knowledge of what is correct, that only disconnected church parades were ordered. The R.Cs were given the lecture room. We assembled there. Out of the Missal given me by Mother M. Joseph I read the Ordinary of the Mass inserting the Epistles, gosple & prayers prescribed for the 4th Sunday in Advent. We could not kneel as the deck was very hard and damp. Tonight we shall have the rosary and a litany, for these another book must be used.
At 10-30 a.m. the Cocos islands came into sight, looked at from the south, the ship was at the closest point about 6 or 7 miles from them, we viewed them with glasses and upon one we could make out a group of houses painted red. Each island has a sandy beach, backed by Cocoanut palms grouped and singly. We had hope to see the Emden piled upon the margin of North Keeling but we were most likely on the wrong side of the land. No wonder the Captain when he saw that his ship was to sink ran her on to the land, the beach invited him to do so.
Tropical showers have been falling around us on occasion during the morning, the air is hot and moist, while the ship still ploughs a road northward.
Have you ever read the account of the building of a coral island, or group of islands such as the Cocos? If not you might do so. It is an interesting example of the marvelous. The tiny termites in their millions take from the waters of the ocean lime, encase each small body with it, and placing grain upon grain construct pinnacle upon pinnacle cross piece this way and that, thus construct building pieces of coral, like that in the drawing room at Maitland
[HMAS Sydney attacked the German raider SMS Emden off the Cocos Islands. The Emden sustained serious damage and its Captain ran it aground on 9 November 1914 to avoid its sinking.]