Post by Admin on Sept 8, 2013 14:46:43 GMT -5
The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954)
Saturday 21 March 1942
RED ENSIGN
"The Red Duster at War" by Warren Armstrong.-Collancz.
The Merchant Navy has one thing in common. It is the spirit-the daring and fidelity-of the hardy venturers who sail beneath its flag. The men of the Red Ensign hold the lifeline of Britain, and this book, "The Red Duster at War," is a fervent eulogium of the service and its personnel. It shows us the authentic oak of British courage.
The range of the book is wide, sympathetic, understanding. The author, Mr. Warren Armstrong, has served under the Red Duster, and knows intimately many of the men who fly it from their staffs. He tells us of their humour, Neptunian superstitions, endurance, bold expedients: of one Hawkins, and some others, who, with-out chart or sextant, sailed the abandoned tanker, San Demetrio, safely into port from mid-Atlantic. When asked by the Judge of the Salvage Court how he managed to navigate the vessel, Hawkins replied "that he kept an easterly course, with a check by the sun and moon" . . . and he added, "I always knew that Ireland was there." Somehow, British sea history would hardly be complete without a Hawkins figuring occasionally in Its, scroll of fame.
Some Grievances
Mr. Armstrong tells the story of the Jervis Bay, Captain Fegen, V.C. Apparently the old armed merchant cruiser was the sole escort of a convoy of 38 ships, bound for the United Kingdom. She was a flaming mass of twisted wood and steel when she went down, heavily outgunned by a German pocket-battleship. But Fegen and his men had done their Job-they had given time for the ships to scatter, and had thereby saved the greater part of the convoy.
But "The Red Duster at War" is something more than a graphic epic of British valour. The book puts before the public the grievances, right or wrong, of the merchant seamen, indicts the Government on its pre-war attitude to the Merchant Navy, and postulates a post-war policy.
"The spirit of the Merchant Navy,' says the author, "Has never failed. Because it has not failed, let there not be built a companion memorial to that which was erected on Tower Hill after the world war of 1914, to commemorate the bravery of our merchant seamen. Rather let Britain give her Merchant Navy a better, a far more practical memorial. Let us, at long last, give our merchant seamen a square deal."
LINK
Saturday 21 March 1942
RED ENSIGN
"The Red Duster at War" by Warren Armstrong.-Collancz.
The Merchant Navy has one thing in common. It is the spirit-the daring and fidelity-of the hardy venturers who sail beneath its flag. The men of the Red Ensign hold the lifeline of Britain, and this book, "The Red Duster at War," is a fervent eulogium of the service and its personnel. It shows us the authentic oak of British courage.
The range of the book is wide, sympathetic, understanding. The author, Mr. Warren Armstrong, has served under the Red Duster, and knows intimately many of the men who fly it from their staffs. He tells us of their humour, Neptunian superstitions, endurance, bold expedients: of one Hawkins, and some others, who, with-out chart or sextant, sailed the abandoned tanker, San Demetrio, safely into port from mid-Atlantic. When asked by the Judge of the Salvage Court how he managed to navigate the vessel, Hawkins replied "that he kept an easterly course, with a check by the sun and moon" . . . and he added, "I always knew that Ireland was there." Somehow, British sea history would hardly be complete without a Hawkins figuring occasionally in Its, scroll of fame.
Some Grievances
Mr. Armstrong tells the story of the Jervis Bay, Captain Fegen, V.C. Apparently the old armed merchant cruiser was the sole escort of a convoy of 38 ships, bound for the United Kingdom. She was a flaming mass of twisted wood and steel when she went down, heavily outgunned by a German pocket-battleship. But Fegen and his men had done their Job-they had given time for the ships to scatter, and had thereby saved the greater part of the convoy.
But "The Red Duster at War" is something more than a graphic epic of British valour. The book puts before the public the grievances, right or wrong, of the merchant seamen, indicts the Government on its pre-war attitude to the Merchant Navy, and postulates a post-war policy.
"The spirit of the Merchant Navy,' says the author, "Has never failed. Because it has not failed, let there not be built a companion memorial to that which was erected on Tower Hill after the world war of 1914, to commemorate the bravery of our merchant seamen. Rather let Britain give her Merchant Navy a better, a far more practical memorial. Let us, at long last, give our merchant seamen a square deal."
LINK