BOAT DRILL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4232, 17 January 1940, Page 9

BOAT DRILL

ON A LINER IN WAR TIME BLACK-OUT RUMOURS

(By a Tourist)

Of alarums and excursions there have been plenty in this war, but surely nowhere on dry land does Rumour stalk so majestically—and so tirelessly—as on a passenger liner. We encountered her, in her full-war-time virility, first on the train from London to Tilbury, where our ship was waiting. That we were to embark there was the one fact of which one could be certain. Everything else was shrouded importantly in hush-hush.

But everyone had a theory to air, 'private information to pass on. The ship would follow her normal route, or, equally emphatically, she would not, approaching Australia (a) from the south, up through the. Roaring Forties, and (b) from' the East, via the Americas. The voyage Would take at least ten weeks, it would be cut to four, there being no ports. Arid there would be a convoy, of course. The theories that speedily grew from speculation 'into authoritative statement in the day that we “lay up” first at the dock, and then in the river mouth, would have startled the Admiralty—the Whitehall divinity busily shaping our lends. And when at last the engines started throbbing in earnest a stronger, headier emphasis vitalised the rumours. Those specks on the horizon were obviously our convoy. That wreck over there on the Goodwin Sands was a merchantman chased right into the Thames estuary by an impudent U-boat. But the convoy turned out to be ships of a dozen different nationalities; the wreck had been there long before the war started. CORK COLLARS BY ORDER In the open sea the tension among the passengers as both convoy and escort destroyers failed to materialise gathered strength—and the ruraourous tongues with it. At our first boat drill came orders to part company 'never with' life belts. These eork collars went into the bathroom, into the dining saloon (no life belt, no service, was the stewards’ rule). An obliging officer demonstrated how they could be carried—“quite comfortably;” he said - when promenading the deck. Some one had his weighed—a good 5 lb. to be lumped round everywhere, and there were regretful sighs after the gas masks discarded on the wharf. Obedient to the high command, warm clothes were laid out ready to hand in cabins each night, and waterproof gadgets for carrying money and valuables were displayed by those who had thought to so provide themselves.

Engines full out. the ship zigzagged crazily on her way, though just whqre that way lay none could be sure. Some vowed that Gibraltar would be our first stop; others plumped for Capetown, and there were rumours ithat Fremantle would be- our first stop. (Later, having passed 'through the Red Sea, someone Was discovered authoritatively asserting that Auckland would be our next port!) Once safely into

the Mediterranean, there was a sudden outcrop of breath-taking tales of the perils we had missed by a hair breadth in that most hazardous strip of the Atlantic before Gibraltar. That was the obvious place ; for U-boats to be lying in wait; tn that naprow stretch the usual ship- j ping lanes could no longer be I avoided. Tension that night reached I its zenith. And at breakfast next | morning there was a story that ■when the ship was within stone’s throw almost o” the friendly shadow of the Gibraltar lion, a German submarine had “popped up" a mere 200 yards away. And then it had obligingly poppbd down again. The ship’s gun crew had been called up and would vouch for the curious antics of the U-boat. But it turned out that not one of them had seen it . . . The wireless bulletin, announcing that a ship had been sunk in the Bay of Biscay only seven hours after we had passed through, sent a chill down the spines of the most impressionable—-though actually none among the passengers could be sure that we had actually been in the Bay at all. Still, that narrow escape, fined down just a trifle more perhaps, will make a grand story to tell the folks at home. THE REAL THING? Then, in the Mediterranean, gene-1 rally accepted as a haven for seeur- 1 ity compared to the Atlantic, came the first real scare. One night, just before dinner, the “six short blasts” of the siren screamed. Passengers, in their cabins dressing for dinner, rushed into the companionways. I “Sounds like the real thing—better ; get up on deck,” a . steward sa’d I grimly. Someone shouted that the ship was on fire, and Hoses were I dragged out. Officers and stewards ' alike were in the dark as to what i it was all about. Children were i snatched out of their bunks, two I women fainted in the scramble to; get up on deck. In the black-out; —not a star tha’ night to pierce the i darkness—passengers and crew groped bo boat stations—to learn it was “just a practice.” Of the other drills there had been wanning beforehand—which made tit’s, the first night drill, all the more like the real thing. And maybe, one is cynical enough to believe, it will have been translated into the real thing by some lively imaginations ere this In the crowded isolation of a big liner rumour breeds prolifically. Talcs that Would have shamed Munchausen were born. “SomeSne” had it. direct from someone who knew the R.A.F. men in the first class

that to supplement the two guns on the poop there was a mystery antiaircraft gun aboard. It was guarded jealously in the hold, but in ten seconds it could be on deck ready for action. This mystery weapon had the trick of putting up a barrage of shells round the ship, ro that no aircraft could approach. But since the only planes that flew over the ship were French, th4re was no chance to see it in action. Presumably it is still being guarded in the hpld, though by this time it may be transformed into a private fleet of collapsible planes, controlled by the ship’s wireless, ready to fight off enemy aircraft. As prolific as the rumours are thr regulations hedging round life on a ship in war time. Probably it is ths black-out that affects most passengers most acutely. With ptortho’es battened down, the heat in he tropics is no joke. In the lounges dimmed lights, especially the ghoulish blue ones, arc depressing, and the completely blacked out desks, where smoking is taboo, holds a real appeal only for the young and amorous. There are stern rules governing what can be written in letters home, too. The only address permitted is care G.P.0., London; letters must be posited in the ship’s box (no smuggling ashore to trick the censor), and topics verboten include future operations “rumoured, isurmised or known,” details of cargo. armament, casualties—along with disparagement or criticism of H.M.’s forces. Infringements, or a statement, careless or deliberate, that may give the ship's position away can be punished by indefinite! penal servitude.