WHEN A GREAT SHIP GOES DOWN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3128, 31 July 1922, Page 2

WHEN A GREAT SHIP GOES DOWN.

(By Fencing Lane.) AATien u vessel of such memorable association® as the “good old Egypt” goes where so many other gallant ships have gone, she takes with her a little piece of the heart of every one who lias voyaged in her. There i® a pang of peculiar distress in the thought that tho port side cabin which was my tiny home for a week or two on war-ridden water® will never again be occupied, and that the comfortable old boat which survived all the attacks of enemy submarines during her long and scathless career a® a hospital ship has come to grief through the most treacherous of all sea-devil®, the waim, wet fog-bank that breed® in our western gateway. The Egypt was a famous I nk between India and home, and her fate is now being discussed in thousands of AngloIndian households, but this stout warveteran was something more than an Anglo-1 iidian symbol. For lour years she was “home,” in a special and peculiar sense, to the thousands of sick and wounded men whom she brought safely to England trom Salonika and Malta. Alexandria, and even Constantinople. She was the first bit of “England” that those armies who could not got leave had seen for several years. I can still see the gaunt. malaria-stricken figure ol tlie Irish infantry sergeant "ho watched the V.A.D.s "and sisters fitting up and down their wards, and whispered from his cot: “Doesn’t it do your eye® a power iv good to see so many rale gurls again?” A triin-ankled little nurse—there arc no ankles east of .Malta —brought him a enp of tea. which he drank with the words; “An’ now. if yon please, miss, show me the green of on Id Ireland.” When a great ship of England goes ■down she takes with her far more than is listed on her bills of lading.