Explore "The Navy Eternal" by Bartimeus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Looking back on a kaleidoscope of great events, one is apt to be struck by the wealth of insignificant detail with which memory burdens itself. Of all the thunderous panorama in which a Fleet Action presents itself to the imagination, very little is recorded in the mind of a participant at the time. Later on a man may fit the details together into an orderly comprehensive tableau for the benefit of relations and others, supplying from hearsay and imagination all that he missed as an insignificant actor in the great drama.
Groping among the memories of the Battle of Jutland and the part played therein by the fleet flagship, it is not unnatural, therefore, that a private of marines should come most readily to mind. He it was who in enjoyment of his office of servant jerked aside the curtain of a cabin door about 3.15 p.m. on May 31st, 1916, and announced in laconic tones that the fleet was going to "Action Stations" in half an hour's time.