Diary of the 1917 voyage of HMA Troop ship TSS Ulysses from Australia to Great Britain – Part V

On July 9, all the ships of the convoy had big gun practise at targets towed by our escort. We got our orders on Saturday July 14 and weighed anchor at noon and sailed to sea on what we hope is our final stage. We got our new escort, HMS King Alfred, the rest of us taking our position as before.

We are now in the danger zone and have a guard posted along the ship with loaded rifle on the lookout for submarines.

The course we are steering is very erratic and zig zags to put submarines off the scent and also to offer a lesser target for torpedoes. On Wednesday July 25 two steamers loomed upon the horizon behind us, but kept their distance until evening. When asked to follow the convoy or clear off, they then cleared off and went on their own.

We had some anxious souls looking out all day as the rumour got about that we had to pick up an escort of Torpedo Boat Destroyers. We picked them up just after dark; there were 11 in all.

Most were early astir on the Thursday morning July 26 to see the manoeuvring of the destroyers and how they did twist and zig zag. At 9am there was a lot of signalling going on and our battleship and the Walmar Castle accompanied by two of the destroyers left us. We saw them no more.

Much earlier that morning, about four o’clock, we got an SOS by wireless from one of the ships sighted the previous Wednesday that she was being attacked by submarines. Three destroyers were told off to help. We learned afterwards that she’d been sunk.

We were now only six vessels of the convoy and six destroyers. In the evening we got wireless of another vessel being sunk off the Sierra.

These were very exciting times, all astir early on the Friday as we expected to reach an English port about eight o’clock. There were numerous pieces of wreckage – soldiers’ helmets, hammocks, hatch covers and two bodies floated past.

At nine o’clock we got our eyes fixed on something coming out of the water on our port bow some four miles away – our first submarine.

We on our ship were the first to pick it up and with four shouts from the siren we gave the signal to the destroyers and our sister ships.

Then we saw the British Navy in action – at least the Mosquito craft. There were three shots on the rapidly-disappearing object and another projectile for subs put an end to one more underwater craft.

We were now dismissed from our stations and things became normal once more, except the talk about the marvellous smartness of how things are done in the Navy.

We found out afterwards that earlier that morning, before our encounter with the sub, it had sunk a sailing vessel which we had sighted in the distance. The Destroyer 86 which sank the sub saved the crew from the vessel.

At almost one o’clock we sighted a seaplane in the distance coming towards us. This made things lively again till we saw more signals go up. Then the siren went off again – another submarine had been sighted. We had to stand by stations once more while our destroyer got to work.

But they seemed to have lost their prey. Things became normal again until at three o’clock we sighted land and gradually zig zagged our way with the destroyers and seaplane accompaniment.

After slowly wending our way up the Sound we anchored in Plymouth at 6pm to await orders and disembark troops.

Our long journey was over.