Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 306
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[Page 306]
all headed south again to the River Plate, intending to turn back there and work north again in the hope that the Kronprinz might be driven into one or other squadron. It was a weary and monotonous business crawling round the ocean at eight knots in pretty vile weather with nothing to do, nothing to read, and just seeing one horizon after another. Everyday we strove to keep fit by playing medicine ball. The sailmaker made a bag which we stuffed with sand stolen from the Engineer Commander - much to his disgust, - and we tossed the ball, which weighed about twelve pounds, back and forth across a rope. The score was as in tennis, and the object was not to drop the ball. It was very strenuous, and in a day or so we were all nursing fingers.
It was now getting late in March, and except for a few odd letters at Gibraltar in December the ship had had no mail since leaving Australia. No-one in authority at any rate seemed to know where we were, and we had wind of mails being sent to us at all manner of outlandish places. The long silence was beginning to bore people, and everyone was hungry for news. It is a strain to write letter after letter and get none in return, and as ship's censor one noticed the falling off in the flow of correspondence. The sailor's remarks about the war in general and our job in particular, which as censor I had to read, were in the best Service manner, and the criticism of the mail department was very searching. They could not quite understand why no letters came; but the truth was that we were never in one