U-BOAT’S SHOTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 25, 30 December 1936, Page 7

U-BOAT’S SHOTS.

AT T.N.T. CARGO

SIR E. BRITTEN’S PERIL OFF PLYMOUTH. The transportation of 900,000 officers and men, and of 9,514,000 tons of cargo during the Great War, and in this transportation the steaming of a distance equivalent to the circumnavigation of the globe 132 times. That was the war record of the Canard Company, of whose men and ships the late Sir Edgar Britten lias wf* 1 " ten in liis autobiography. “A Million Ocean Miles.” Sir Edgar Britten was a traditional seaman. He ran away to sea and shipped as a ship’s boy in a sailing vessel. Hard work, hard words, hard tack were his lot. Then came opportunity, and by studying in every free moment of liis time the ship’s boy became a mate and later received his command, finally to become Commodore of the line which he had served so long and faithfully, and to command the greatest ship which ever sailed. Of excitement there is plenty in this log of an adventurous life, written for the most part at sea in his cabin in the Berengaria. Sir Edgar has written of hardships in war which bring home the perilous life of the mercantile marine upon which depended the supplies of the British Empire in its hour of need.

GOOD WORK WIT HOLD GUN. For excitement (says the Morning Post) one can hardly better the account of the Ascania, which left New York under the command ol Sir Edgar with 1500 tons of T.N.T. between decks. The rendezvous was 100 miles south-west of Plymouth. On the last day of the voyage came the wireless message “Enemy submarines active 100 miles south-west of Plymouth.” In the absence of orders there was nothing for it but to carry on to the rendezvous, hoping, with that terrible cargo, that it would prove to be a rendezvous with an escort and not wit a a German submarine. At noon the Ascania arrived at the rendezvous ano at that very moment a German submarine came to lhc surface and staited to shell the ship full of explosive. The German shells came unpleasantly close, but fortunately none landed in the cargo. The Ascania was manoeuvred so that her single 6-inch gun in the stern would bear. At this obsolete rrun the few naval ratings laboured with such effect that the submarine eventually took refuge in the depths. Sir Edgar wrote his book in tlie breezy manner of a seaman. His memoirs are rich in anecdotes of the many famous people who made use of the “Atlantic ferry.”