A MOTLY CREW.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1706, 22 December 1919, Page 10

A MOTLY CREW.

An amusing description of an alarm call to "action- stations" on Christmas Day is told by one of the crew of the Birmingham in the Cornhill Magazine:—"lt was early in the afternoon, I believe, that one of the submarine lookouts reported sighting the wake of a periscope, and instantly tho alarmbell sent everyone to 'Action Stations.' Not even in tho days when Captain Kidd flew the 'Jolly Roger,' and terrorised tho Spanish Main, can a fighting ship have been manned by so motley a crew as was tho Birmingham that Christmas Day. A halfroused Red Cross Nurse, with a purple stocking on ono leg and a sea-boot on the other, brought me a signal from the flagship, and a 'grizzly bear' (his hide tho remnants of a shaggy collision-mat), rolling along on his 'haunches,' bumped me in a doorway.

"In an after-flat I saw a buxom 'Red Riding Hood' hurdling handily ovor a 'Wolf that had slipped on the deck and was blocking her rush for a ladder, and in tho waibt was a Wild West cowboy, in sombroro and 'chaps,' helping a 'Charlio Chaplin' and a Salvation Army lassie heave i-p shells and cordite. A spider-legged 'Gaby Dcsiys,' with a very imitation ostrich-feather head-dress, cut a grotesque figure swarming up tho mast to her station in the fore-top; but perhaps tho crowning touch of all was lent by ono of tho gunners on the fo'c'sle, who, stripped to tho waint, according to good old British tradition, still retained the blond Manila hemp ringlets and tho pink cotton tights'ho had worn as a ballet dancer."