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Description: | Photocopy of an ms diary (235pp) kept by an able seaman in the Royal Fleet Reserve during his service in the cruiser HMS LEVIATHAN and covering her presence at the Royal Review of the Fleet at Spithead (July 1914), her deployment with the 6th Cruiser Squadron on patrol and escort duties in the South West Approaches and the South Atlantic (August - October 1914), as the flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron, Grand Fleet (November 1914 - March 1915), as the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, North America and West Indies Station when she was principally based on Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia and employed on patrol duties to intercept any German ships breaking out of American ports (April 1915 - January 1918) and as a private ship on the North America and West Indies Station, latterly employed on North Atlantic convoy escort duty (January - May 1918); together with copies of some poems written by Jenkins about the Royal Navy and the First World War, examples of naval slang and presscuttings about the war service and deaths in action of relatives and other men from his home town of Mumbles near Swansea. The diary includes interesting entries concerning the Christmas Day 1914 sweep to the Heligoland Bight, the Battle of the Dogger Bank, celebrations in LEVIATHAN on Christmas Day 1916, visits to New York in October 1917 and to Halifax, Nova Scotia in March 1918 after the explosion and contacts with the United States Navy, but is perhaps of most value for its amusingly expressed criticisms of the competence and behaviour of some of LEVIATHAN's officers (see, for instance, February - April 1915), in particular her original Commander (November 1914 - April 1915) and Captain, M R Hill (October 1915 - May 1916) and a later Commander (January - July 1917), the lack of consideration often shown for the ship's company by the officers (July 1917 - March 1918) and the disciplinary problems within the ship's company possibly as a result of their treatment (February 1915 and October 1917, for example).
Cataloguer RWAS
Catalogue date 2003-01 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Jenkins, W A | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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