Naval Secrets: ‘The Tale’

Abstract

On 7 September 1916, Conrad had announced to Macdonald Hastings that he had ‘taken up some work for the Admiralty’ and would be ‘flying about the country for the next fortnight’ (CL5, 658).¹ He began his war service on Thursday 14 September in Lowestoft. He travelled there via London, where he had dinner, the evening before, with Jane Anderson.² He spent the first day ‘in engine rooms, up masts[,] down magazines, on bridges, down forepeaks[,] on gun- platforms (practicing aiming – great fun) in sheds, storerooms, work- shops’.³ On Friday, after inspecting ‘all the anti-aircraft artillery’, he ‘went out in a vessel of a special kind’ – presumably a Special Services ship – ‘to try a new 13-pounder gun’.⁴ On the Saturday, he wrote a letter to Pinker, to tell him that he was ‘having the most interesting time of my life’ and that he was about to go to sea on HM Mine Sweeper Brigadier for a three-day trip, followed on the Monday by a ‘flight on patrol duty’ from Yarmouth (CL5, 663–4). He hadn’t told his wife, Jessie, about this flight, and it is clear from the instructions he gives Pinker (about the money he had left in the hotel safe) that the undertaking was not without some danger.