Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 86
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[Page 86]
the sailor men who cheerfully risk their necks in them. As destroyers of unarmed enemy shipping they are excellent but as there was no German shipping on the face of the ocean in those days they were out of their legitimate job.
As [apparent for?] enemy cruisers they are not desirable billets. They are big, and from the Naval point of view slow. They are mostly armed with the scrappings from paid off warships and can neither fight a cruiser nor run away.
They make huge targets with plenty of freeboard and would be easily set on fire. It was for this reason that we were anxious to meet the German armed merchantmen we could have lain off and cleared them at our leisure.
At any rate we in the Sydney praised the prophet that the fates had put us in a respectable ship.
The only use we had for the armed merchantmen was the unlimited grub they carried and when we had use for company. We were always sure of fresh food.
On the 26th Feb orders came to proceed south to Abrolhos rocks to join the flag and the Sydney gathered her colliers about her and with the Edinburgh Castle pushed off for Lavenduria.
The four ships proceeded in line abreast each ship just out of sight of its neighbours the colliers being on either flank and thrown well out as bait.
In this way a wide expanse of ocean was covered, and the colliers had orders to [indecipherable] their wireless and close in if they sighted anything suspicious.
On the trip down we saw many ships and chased many smoke trails. Quite often it happened that we altered course & hurried after something whose masts just showed over the horizon only to find the suspicious ship to be one of our own colliers which in some miraculous fashion were always getting out of position. One night we chased a ship for miles and