Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 295
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 295]
the opening. We were nearly out of coal and could not have moved had an enemy appeared. Whiffs of German wireless still came over the sea, and we trained our guns out and prepared to put up as good a scrap as possible, though we felt like a sitting rabbit on a grass-bare plain. To help us and ease our minds, that first evening within the reef we got a wireless from the Admiral seven hundred miles further south saying that he had reason to believe the German squadron was making north again, and would we please take necessary steps. Our steps consisted of sitting like fools without coal, unable to move, and praying that if the Germans saw us they would run.
Next day there were still no sign of our colliers, and one began to think that the Germans had seized them. They were two funny old buses that could neither fight nor run. We still lay helpless within the reef, and were now in constant communication with the flagship Carnarvon, Rear-Admiral Stoddart, who lay with his sqaudron at Abrolhos Rocks some seven hundred miles to the south, just east of Rio. Every hour almost we got fresh rumours of the Germans, and were beginning to feel unhappy. The Carnarvon could not help us, for she had hit a sunken rock and lay aground with an eighty-foot hole in her bottom. The Abrolhos was a tremendous place, consisting of a collection of small rocky islets surrounded by poorly charted waters, and three of our ships, the Bristol, Glasgow and the flag, had suffered damage. The Glasgow was in Rio doing a complete refit by courtesy of the Brazilian Government.