I02 CHALLENGER 



all these discomforts, with nightly bombing by the enemy as 

 well. 



Conditions were so uncomfortable that arrangements were made 

 to keep only the minimum number of men onboard at night ; an 

 officer and ten men formed the fire party to deal with the incen- 

 diary bombs which fell nightly over London. Except for this small 

 party the ship was deserted from £ o'clock on these winter after- 

 noons until 7.30 the following morning. As the bombs crumped 

 and the ack-ack guns thumped away around the docks the fire 

 party gathered in the ill-lit galley to cook a communal supper. 

 Alone in the cold wardroom sat the duty officer, huddled over 

 the tiny glow of the radiator — perhaps the loneliest man in all 

 London. He longed for the pale watery morning and the arrival 

 of the workmen and his relief. 



Amidst the hammering and rattling of the rivetters in the un- 

 heated chart-room, the surveying officers daily worked on their 

 fair sheets of Iceland ; true, prints taken from the collector tracings 

 had been used to make the charts which had already been sup- 

 plied to the Fleet, but the fair sheets were required for the 

 permanent record of this important work. The days of the warm 

 drawing office ashore and the leisurely pace of draughtsmanship 

 were gone; it was hustle, hustle all the time with two or some- 

 times three officers taking it in turns to work on the same chart. 



But there were days of leave, quite a number of days, to 

 compensate for the dreariness of the ship at this time. The officers 

 and men packed their suitcases, and taking a last look at the grey 

 ship with the frayed ropes' ends from the dockyard stages blowing 

 in the keen wind, they walked out through the formidable dock 

 gates into the bustling, mean streets of the East End of London, 

 where daily they saw more signs of ruin and destruction. Four 

 who walked ashore so happily for leave never returned to their 

 ship ; they were killed by a direct hit from a bomb on an East 

 End milk bar. 



General Gordon paused in his drawing of the Iceland charts, 

 upon which he had now been employed for so long, and went to 

 the makeshift mortuary where the dead sailors were lying with 

 over a hundred other mangled bodies. It had been a terrible night, 

 and when he had done his dreadful duty of identifying the sailors 

 he stood outside the building; his legs shook, he felt sick, and 



