From the time I read these Admiralty announcements I had the feeling that some, if not all, of those ten survivors of the _Mary Rose_ would surely be able to offer more of an explanation of why her captain took her into battle against such hopeless odds than any that had yet been suggested to the public, and in the months which followed I made what endeavour I could to locate and have a talk with one of them. It was not long before the ten were scattered in as many different ships, however, and though I had the names and official numbers of two or three, almost a year went by before I chanced upon the first of them. Indeed, it was but a day or two previous to the first anniversary of the loss of the _Mary Rose_ and _Strongbow_ and the destruction of the Norwegian convoy that, in the course of a visit to a Submarine Depot Ship at one of the East Coast bases, I sauntered forward one evening and fell into conversation with a sturdily built, steady-eyed young seaman--some kind of torpedo rating, evidently, by the red worsted "mouldie" on his sleeve--who had just clambered up to the forecastle from the deck of a hulking "L" moored alongside. "How do you like submarin-ing?" I had asked him, by way of getting acquainted. "Not so bad, sir," he replied with a smile, "though it's a bit stuffy and rather slow after destroyers. With them there's something doing all the time. I was in one of the 'M' class before I volunteered for submarines. P'raps you've heard of her--the _Mary Rose_, sunk a year this month, in----" "Wait a moment," I cut in, as the ribbon he was wearing caught my eye; "you're one of the men I've been looking for for a number of months. Ten to one you're Able Seaman Bailey, who received the D.S.M. for his part in the action, and who is specially mentioned in the Admiralty story" (refreshing my memory from a note-book) "for having, 'despite severe shrapnel wounds in the leg, persisted in taking his turn at an oar' of the Norwegian lifeboat which picked up the _Mary Rose_ survivors, and for his 'invincible light-heartedness throughout.'" A flush spread under his "submarine pallor" at that broadside, but he admitted, with an embarrassed grin, that his name was Bailey, and that his decoration was awarded for something or other in connection with the last fight of the _Mary Rose_, though for just what he had never quite been able to figure out. In the hour we leaned over the forecastle rail and watched the North Sea fog-bank roll up the estuary with the incoming tide, this is the account he gave me of the things which he himself saw of what is perhaps the most gallantly tragic of all the naval actions of the war. * * * * *