Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 328
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[Page 328]
rest after the hurly burly and rush and panic of the last few months. On the 1st May the great news came that our long wished for mail had been dumped at the Barbadoes [Barbados], a hundred miles away. A collier lying in the harbour was commissioned and sent after it, and she returned a day later with over a hundred bags. What a feast of letters! For hours the wardroom was knee-deep in letters and papers, and each seized upon his pile as soon as possible, and retired to his cabin like a dog with a bone, to read the first news for nearly seven months except for the few letters received at Abrolhos early in April. The soldiers complain about their mails: what about the Navy?
We left St. Lucia on May 3rd for Jamaica which we had not seen since January. On the way we looked in at San Juan, Puerto Rico, just to see what Huns were inside and to let them know that our ships were on the prowl. We reached Kingston Harbour on May 7th and found our Admiral in port. The Sydney had not been with Sir George Patey since leaving Fiji in early October 1914. The flag was now flying in the Leviathan, the Australia still being with her sisters of the battle-cruiser fleet in the North Sea. The Leviathan was a great big warehouse of ancient pattern like the Good Hope, a useless sort of ship in those days when speed and armament count so much, but a comfortable sort of bus to live in. The Leviathan told us that their last effort before leaving England was to scout ahead of battleships and bump the mines out of the way. When the battleships were following up the battle-cruisers at the Dogger