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Description: | Notebook containing an ms diary (67pp), with ts transcript (12pp), kept during his service as a seaman on the SS FRANCONIA, February - June 1915, (but also later used as a recipe book by his mother and sister) and covering her voyage as a troopship from the United Kingdom via Malta to Mudros (February - March), her onward journey to Port Said in Egypt where the troops were disembarked for further training (March - April), their preparations for the Gallipoli landings and FRANCONIA's part in the feint landing demonstration in the Gulf of Saros (25 April), her deployment off the Anzac and Cape Helles beachheads and temporary use as a hospital ship, evacuating casualties to Egypt and embarking reinforcements for Gallipoli, before proceeding back to the United Kingdom in mid-June (April - June). The diary, which is accompanied by some notes recording slightly exaggerated atrocity stories from the fighting ashore on the peninsula, two photographs of the torpedoing of FRANCONIA in October 1916 and one of Wyatt in Merchant Navy uniform in 1940, includes interesting entries reflecting Wyatt's awe at the power of the battleship HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH and the intensity of the fighting ashore and the supporting naval bombardments, and his distress at the condition of the wounded.
Cataloguer RWAS
Catalogue date 2006-01 | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Wyatt, E | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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