Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 270
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[Page 270]
refit was taken in hand; and so for three weeks we listened night and day to the incessant hammer and clang of drills and rivetters while her shattered plates were renewed.
Gib impresses the onlooker with its might and inaccessibility; its frowning batteries command the Straits and in truth seem to hold the gateway to the Mediterranean. Whether it is still the stronghold it used to be, in these days of twenty-inch guns, is a problem which has not yet been solved. The harbour was full of ships of war, and some of them bore famous names. The Hampshire, in which Lord Kitchener was afterwards lost, lay just ahead of us, and near by was the Yarmouth, one of the pack that chased the Emden for so many miles. The Vengeance, afterwards sunk in the Dardanelles, lay just astern, while a day or two after we arrived the Carmania came in.
The Carmania, a great Cunarder of 18,000 tons, was the ship which fought and sank the German Cap Trafalgar. This action, though perhaps the least written up, was one of the most stirring episodes in the early part of the war. These two great ships, both lightly armed, stood up two thousand yards apart and literally battered each other to pieces. The Carmania, all on fire and with three hundred shot holes in her sides, was all but sinking when the Cap Trafalgar suddenly went down. I went aboard her and saw the sorry havoc made of her luxurious fittings; those that had not been cast overboard were smashed and gutted out of recognition. The bridge was shot away and the steam steering geer damaged, and when the