In WW2, when HMS Dorsetshire left Cape Town for Devonport, she was sent to help convince the French sailors in East Africa to either hand over their ships or scuttle them. Whether the sailors agreed with the Vichy government or not, sailors become attached to their ship and their shipmates and the idea of deliberately sinking her, or even handing her over without a fight is abhorrent. The French naturally resisted and sent out two submarines to teach the intruders a lesson but the captain was to crafty and Dorsetshire to quick and agile to be caught and survived. The French then sent a few aircraft out and it was in chasing those off that Vernon Brill's gun, P1, the first 4" on the port side, suffered a misfire and, instead of calling 'misfire and letting it cool, Vernon opened the breach and the shell fell out and burned his legs badly. That's how he came to be airlifted in an old Walrus float plane to hospital, as I mentioned earlier. It is when you start putting down notes like this that you realise you have a story on your hands.

I've found the notes I made about the chap who became involved in the Bismark, so let me start at the beginning. The dorsetshire heavy cruiser was on her way from her station in China to a refit in Devonport, when she called in at Cape Town. She was short of 15 gunnery ratings and Vernon Brill transferred from the South African Navy to the Royal Navy as a rating. His first 'adventure' was climbing the mast to the lookout position in a kind of barrel half way up the mast. To get up there, he had to climb up the mast on metal rungs till he reached the crosstrees - a wooden boom held horizontal by wire stays. Once up he had to grab a stay and hang on while the chap he was relieving told him anything of interest, then climbed out of the barrel and allowed Vernon to climb in. It wasn't much better when you got in, Vernon told me.
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