Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 342
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[Page 342]
[con]clusion that the average middleclass American at that time had no particular love for us, but loved the Hun less.
The old Caesar was in port carrying out gunnery training. She is an ancient old buss with twelve-inch guns, and had started operations early in the war up in the North of Scotland. Every rating who wished to qualify as a gunlayer went through her hands. She was slow and such a fat target that with the coming of the submarines she shifted billet to Gibraltar, where we had seen her in December of 1914. When the submarines began to infest the Mediterranean the Caesar again cleared out, and was now at Bermuda. Since then the submarines have come across the Atlantic, so now she is probably at Abrolhos. At any rate we suggested the Abrolhos to them as a good safe quiet spot. She was still minus her bridge, which in her ecstasy at being commissioned on the outbreak of war she had passed over the side. The Caesar had had an adventure in Morocco since we last saw her. A British ship had gone ashore on the Moroccan coast not far from Gib, and while her crew were attempting to salve her they were captured by brigands. The Caesar went to investigste, and on going inshore swung her guns and looked frightful. But the brigands, not to be bluffed, kept the English prisoners well amongst them so that the ship would have to fire on her own people. An armed party then landed but were ambushed and captured also, and there was the spectacle of a band of cutthroats in possession of a British ship, her crew, and a party of officers and men of the Royal Navy. However the ransom was paid and the prisoners released.