sport
Department had opportunity to organize their work on less stressful
lines. It was well that there was breathing-space at this juncture.
Enemy interference, that had so far been almost wholly a surface threat
to our communications, grew rapidly to a serious menace from under
water. The engagement and organization of naval protection underwent an
immediate revisal. Heavily armed cruisers and battleships could afford
little protection against the activity of the German submarines, now at
large in waters that we had thought were overdistant for their peculiar
manoeuvres. Destroyers and swift light craft were needed to sail with
the transports.

The landing at Gallipoli, under the guns of the enemy, was a triumph for
the Transport Service. In the organization and disposal of the ships,
the control and undertaking that placed them in sufficient numbers in
condition for their desperate venture, the Department redeemed any
earlier miscalculations. The efficient service of the merchant masters
and seamen was equally notable. Under heavy fire from the batteries on
shore they carried out the instructions given to them in a manner that
was "astonishingly accurate" and impressed even the firebrands of the
naval service. Strange duties fell to the merchant seamen on that day.
Compelled by the heavy draught of their ships to remain passive
spectators of the deeds of heroism on the beach, they saw ". . . whole
groups swept down like corn before a reaper, and to realize that among
these groups were men who only a short time before had bid us good-bye
with a smile on their lips, was a bitter experience.

"Our vessel was used to re-embark the wounded, and we stood close
inshore to make the work of boating them off less hazardous. We had
three doctors on board, but no nurses or orderlies, and the wounded were
being brought on board in hundreds, so it was a relief to us to doff our
coats and lend a hand. We had to bury the dead in batches; officers and
men were consigned to the deep together. On one occasion the number was
exceptional, and the captain broke down while reading the service. . . ."
It was surely a bond of real brotherhood that brought the shattered
remnants of the complement she had landed earlier in the day to meet
their last discharge at the hands of the troopship's seamen--their
committal to the deep at the broken words of the vessel's master.

While the transport of troops in the Channel and the narrow seas was
no