Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 475
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[Page 475]
years in useful work amidst my own people. But when will this show end? Ask of the winds that far around with rumour fills the air? To bed. Good night. The atmosphere is hot and moist, my eyelids close and my fingers are not inclined to work further. Good night. Good night.
[Lines of Xs and Os.]
Caggie. Joseph. Kitty.
I met Colonel Holmes this morning, he told me that he had seen you just before he left Australia, he looked very well. He told me that Colonel Watson was in Cairo. He is encamped with his force near Heliopolis. I must call to see him, as he lives but short distance from where I sit writing to you.
Good night, again good night.
11.7.15. 11 p.m. To night I had a long chat with a man who was on the Majestic when she was torpoed and sank off the coast of Galipoli. He has seen twelve years of service in the navy, and has thus some experience of the way in which conduct is regulated in every on His Majesty's ships. He is a Scotchman. The Majestic during the war was first patrolling in the English Channel, and then escorted the Canadians across the Atlantic ocean. From the 4th of August the ship was bombarding the coast of Belgium. About this a Nurse Sutcliffe wrote to me, she was stationed at a hospital close by the towns of West end and Dixmude, and had full view of the fights taking place on land and the actions of the ships helping the British forces to prevent the Germans from marching along the coast towards Calais. In Febry. 1915 the Majestic reached the Aegean Sea and was in the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles till the day when she met with disaster, the 27th of May this year. The men upon her saw all the engagements and the stirring episodes, in connection with the sinking of ships that took place in connection with the presence of our ships at the entrance to the historic straights.
The sinking of the English and the French war ships. The running ashore of the E15 submarine, the work of the two picket boats going to blow her to pieces, in order to prevent the Turks from getting her afloat again for use on their side. You may remember that one of these boats was sunk the other got safely back to the ship. They saw the Australian submarine EE II [HMAS AE2] which was afterwards lost in the sea of Marmora, the second and the last of our submarine fleet, each had a short life but not a very merry one. Think you not so? The British fleet put a net across the narrows of the Dardanelles, the object being to catch the floating mines which night be coming down stream from the sea, and which already had caused destruction to many of the fighting ships? The best catch taken by the net was the a German submarine which, unconscious of the presence of the