Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 332
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[Page 332]
had a monopoly.
From May 7th to May 18th we loafed in Kingston Harbour waiting for someone to think of something for us to do. The flagship had departed, much to our relief, on a flag-wagging expedition round the group to impress the islanders with the might of the British Navy. She was an enormous old bus, bristling with guns, and to anyone who did not know she even looked as if she could do something. On the 18th we left Kingston and made for Port Antonio, seventy miles from Kingston, on the other side of the island. Off the port we lowered a target for some battle practice and made ourselves uncomfortable with the hellish noise and concussion. This done, we ran torpedoes and spent the next few days looking for them. Two boats are moored three or four hundred yards apart about a mile from the ship, and as she steams past the torpedo is let go. The mechanism is so gauged that the torpedo should come up and blow like a whale between the boats, or rather burn an acetylene light so that it may be readily picked up. Some of our torpedoes behaved decently, but some did not. One leapt out of the tube, came astern cavorting like a porpoise, poked its nose into the wardroom scuttle, then fell back into the sea and finally buried itself in the mud. Another dived straight to the bottom. A third came up about two miles beyond the boats. And so with a little quiet amusement like this we managed to put in time. Torpedo-running of course is carried on with