144 CHALLENGER 



Sergeant, who had come as the geologist of the team, struggled 

 alongside Croome to take sextant angles with the unfamiliar in- 

 strument as the boat bobbed like a cork or drifted broadside 

 with the wind. The Flight Lieutenant (Radar) wrote down the 

 angles and recorded the leadline soundings being taken by the 

 two A.B.s who still remained on their feet. The Major (Airfield 

 Siting) was pressed into service to record the rate of tidal streams 

 through the entrance channel of the lagoon, anchored there in 

 a native canoe. 



There were one or two occasions when the engine broke dovsm 

 while they were working outside the reef; luckily the wind 

 was blowing towards the reef, or the craft and its oddly assorted 

 crew would have been borne away to the middle of the Indian 

 Ocean. So steep were the sides of the reef that the anchor failed 

 to hold the boat until she lay pitching and plunging a few feet 

 from the breakers pounding upon the edge of the reef itself. 

 There, in this perilous position, praying that the anchor might 

 continue to hold, the surveyors remained while the Malay engine- 

 man coaxed his unwilling charge into action again. 



On returning to Ceylon Croome handed in his completed 

 survey. He was quite worn out with improvising and was happy 

 to be back. The bill for the hire of his boat at Cocos and the crew 

 that went with it came to about £200, and this was paid without 

 comment by the Naval Supply Staff, but a few days later Croome 

 received a bill for 145. 3^. in respect of crockery he had failed 

 to bring back with him from those distant isles. 



In April the approaches to the Naval Base at Trincomalee 

 were taken in hand for survey with H.M. Yacht Nguva, Motor 

 Launch No. 1 248 assisting. Eastern Fleet charts had now reached 

 well over twenty in number. These, like all charts, need constant 

 revision and correction and Notices to Mariners had to be estab- 

 lished to correct them. The Admiralty Notices to Mariners have 

 been published for many years and go forth weekly to all holders 

 of folios of Admiralty charts, bearing the corrections which 

 Mariners should make to keep them up to date. Local Notices to 

 Mariners supplied by the Hydrographic Office at Colombo carried 

 to users of the E.F. Charts such corrections as became necessary 

 week by week and the first copies of these notices were printed 



