Ship of Remembrance.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

Ship of Remembrance.

By SHEILA QUINN. 3, Tennyson Street, Mt. Eden, Auckland.

On a chill spring morning in 1925, with a certain keen freshness' in the air, and a host of pule sunbeams playing on- the waters, 300 people, men and women of all ages and nations, leant, over the shiprails and silently stared away over the blue Aegean toward Gallipoli. The " Ship of Remembrance " was very nearly at its journey's end. It was a pilgrimage, organised by a little society called St. Barnabas, the main object of which was to send to Gallipoli as many as possible of those who earnestly wished to go and visit some lonely, loved grave. The first visit ashore was made at Salonika, where 10,000 British lay buried. Outside each vast white cemetery was an inscription, proclaiming In Greek and English that the ground was the free gift of the Greek people. There was a fresh country beauty about Gallipoli on that spring morning—with the rugged, green hills, and the vast white cemeteries, and the desperately poor Greek mountaineers with their smiling greetings. And the pilgrims found the solitude and lonely splendour vaguely comforting. A few days later, off Cape IT ell os, a great floating wreath was blessed and launched overboard. It drifted away, a tribute from those people who watched it with grave, tender eyes. At Anzac the little band of pilgrims assembled round the great white memorial, and a solemn service was held. It must have been very wonderful. Lan Ifay, in his little book, " The Ship of Remembrance," in describing it, says: " Below us lay 'V ' Reach and Lancashire Landing: beyond that the Aegean, sparkling in the sun, with Lomnos and Tenedos in the distance; behind, the long, grim peninsula; above our heads, toweling into a cloudloss sky, the great while memorial, with its proud record of ships and men." Can you not imagine it? There followed the Last Post, a full minute's silence, and then " The King." I suppose there has never been an Anzac service quite as beautiful or solemn as that one. And on the last day, when again they stood by the ship-rails, gazing out across the blue waters to the peninsula, T wonder what they thought of—those pilgrims? Probably some, who had seen Gallipoli in other days, who had seen their comrades wounded and dying, probably they were thinking of the pity of it all, how very near they bad been to success. Others, mothers and sons and daughters, were filled with a glad new content. They had not forgotten their soldier men, they had come as pilgrims from distant lands to pay tribute to those dear ones, and they were returning to their homes with something very precious that they could keep and hold.