A good yarn

Rich Horne wrote this account of experiences had as a toiler of the sea on a naval ship, the HMAS Sydney, before and at the beginning of WWI. He describes the Pacific during 1913 -1914 from his perspective. His active service was cut short as he lost half a foot in the "Battle of Cocos", the first naval battle of the war, the first ship to ship engagement of the Australian Navy. The only gun on the Sydney which was damaged was the one staffed by Rich.

The conflict took place near Cocos Island off north-west Australia. The other ship was the very effective German ship the Emden which was destroyed by the larger and faster Sydney. A significant part of the crew of the Emden were on Cocos Island when the battle took place, so the ship was not fully-staffed. Many sailors lost their lives or were injured on the Emden and some also on the Sydney. The sailors on the island were never captured but returned to Europe by various means across sea and land.  Their journey is documented in a film The Men of the Emden.
 
Rich's portrait hangs in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Milly Horne, Rich's wife, commented when transcribing the account from the book into a letter that she got quite excited. That letter and the book are reproduced here, "a good yarn".
Image of HMAS Sydney from Gutenberg,
Image of Victor Hugo's Octopus from Toilers of the Sea via Wikipedia

7. Australian First Expeditionary Force

We weren’t in Fiji long, before we were sent to Sydney at full speed to dock, coal, provision and paint ship, as quickly as possible (we couldn’t do it under 4 days) and proceed to Albany W.A. to pick up and convoy the Australian First Expeditionary Force, after a big rush and a few spasms, we arrived in W.A. and we all started out early morning for Europe, there was the finest collection of ships I have ever seen, there were 42 ships altogether, and it took a whole day to get the whole convoy into position, there were 28 Australian Transports, 10 New Zealand, distinguished by being painted all one colour and 4 men-of-war, the “Minotaur” English ship, “Sydney” and “Melbourne” Australian Cruisers and the “Ibuki” Jap ship, it was a great convoy we were  making for Colombo and about 36 hours before we were off Cocos Is. the “Minotaur” had to leave us for “more important work” and the “Melbourne” took full convoy so that when we got the news of enemy ship near Cocos, it fell to us the “Sydney” to go after her.

Image 1: British Grand Fleet via Wikipedia
Image 2: Predecessor of the Minotaur via Wikipedia