It was now somewhere about 3·30 a.m., and, as I did not feel inclined to sleep any more, they gave me some hot cocoa and some bread-and-cheese. I drank the former, but the bread-and-cheese was more than I felt equal to just then. About 6 o’clock the Lieutenant was transferred to another ship for medical treatment, as his back was badly bruised by drifting wreckage; and half-an-hour later the rest of the survivors were reembarked in H.M.S. Lord Nelson’s cutter, the same that had picked us up; and leaving the trawler she took us to the Lord Nelson.
When we got on board I was at once taken down to the gun-room, where I found four more of our “snotties” who had also been rescued. One more was reported as having safely swum ashore; but there was no news of the other three, and subsequently it transpired that they had been lost.
The survivors were mostly sleeping—the sleep of exhaustion. We had all had a pretty tough fight for it, and I realised then how uncommonly lucky we had been in escaping not only alive, but for the most part uninjured. Cunninghame had a nasty cut on his head, but the rest of us were only suffering from minor bruises, and of course to a certain extent from shock.
One of the Lord Nelson’s middies kindly lent me some old uniform, and after I had dressed I made a parcel of the clothes I had been lent on the trawler and took them to the ship’s corporal, and asked him to see that they were returned to their owner.
I remembered, with an odd sense of unreality, that the last time I had been in the Lord Nelson was at the manœuvres the previous July!
On my way up to the deck I met three more of our lieutenants, and we exchanged accounts of our experiences. From them I learned that our Commander had been saved, and was also on board; but there was no news of the Captain. Some days later I heard that his body had been picked up, and it was thought that he had been killed by the falling of the pinnace when the ship turned over just before she sank.
At 7·30 we put to sea and proceeded to Port Mudros. On the way, and after divisions, the lower deck was cleared, the whole ship’s company, together with the survivors from our ship, mustered on the quarter-deck, and then took place a mournful ceremony, which poignantly brought home to us the fate we had so narrowly escaped.
Through the battery—very softly—came the sound of muffled drums, growing gradually louder as the band advanced. Then appeared a procession of seamen from our lost ship, headed by the Lord Nelson’s chaplain, and carrying three stretchers, on each of which lay a body covered with the Union Jack. The first was that of our Fleet paymaster, and the other two those of a seaman and marine respectively. The bodies were lifted from the stretchers and laid reverently on a platform slanting towards the water, which had been erected on the port side. Clearly and solemnly the chaplain recited the beautiful Burial Service, and as he uttered the words “we therefore commit their bodies to the deep,” the staging was tilted and the weighted corpses slid feet foremost into the sea.
The service ended with three volleys fired over the side and then the long sobbing wail of the “Last Post” rang out across the still waters in final farewell.