Another trying incident was that which occurred to the 1,295-ton steamer _Mavis_ (alias Q 26 and _Nyroca_), armed with a 4-inch and two 12-pounders. This vessel had been fitted out at Devonport, her Merchant Service cranes being landed and replaced by dummy derricks. The hatches to her holds were plated over, access to the same being provided by manholes. In order to give her the maximum chance should she ever be torpedoed, she was ballasted with closely packed firewood; and only those who have seen torpedoed ships carrying a cargo of timber can realize for what a long time such an apparently sinking ship will keep afloat, though necessarily deep in the water. I remember, during the war, the case of a steamer torpedoed off Brow Head (south-west Ireland) after she had just arrived from across the Atlantic. She was deserted by her crew, the sea was over the floors of her upper-deck cabins, and she was obviously a brute to steer in such an unseaworthy condition, but with great difficulty and some patience we managed to tow her into port, where, owing to her sinking condition, she drew so much water that she touched the ground every low tide. But she was salved and eventually patched up. It was her timber cargo which had kept her afloat just long enough, and inasmuch as ship and freight were worth no less than £250,000, this was more than worth while. So it was with _Mavis_. On the last day of May, 1917, under command of Commander Adrian Keyes, R.N., this Q-ship had left Devonport to cruise in the Atlantic. At 6.45 a.m. on June 2 she sighted a ship’s lifeboat coming along under sail and found it contained three men who were in a very exhausted condition. These were the survivors from the Greek S.S. _N. Hadziaka_, which had been torpedoed and sunk a little further to the westward. This torpedoing had occurred in a heavy sea, and in lowering away the boats, one of them had been smashed and the other swamped. The captain and twenty-two men had clung to the wreckage when the German submarine broke surface, approached, but made no attempt at rescue, and then went away. For forty-eight hours these wretched men kept more or less alive in the water and then gradually dropped off one by one until only three remained. These then managed to patch one boat, upright her, bale her out, and make sail. They had been sailing for ten hours during the night when they had the good luck to be picked up by _Mavis_, having been fifty-eight hours without food or water.