Shortly after my arrival I was appointed to a ship engaged in bombarding enemy gun positions and trenches off the left flank of the army at Helles. To those unacquainted with warships perhaps a short description of the ship may be of interest, though I cannot of course enter into an exhaustive account of our particular form of defence which has been evolved through the advent of the submarine. The ship I joined is known in the Navy, since her re-incarnation, as a "blister" ship. She belongs to the _Blake_ and _Blenheim_ type, which were in their day the finest cruisers turned out by any naval power; handsome vessels, good sea-boats, and generally a crack class; but on the outbreak of hostilities they were a back number and practically ready for the ship-breaker. One of the surprises of this war, however, has been the amount of active work done by the older vessels, many of them good enough ships, though not fit to lie in the battle-line, but excellent for bombardment purposes, for which they have been extensively used. Amongst these the cruiser I have mentioned came in for special protective treatment. Since the German submarine had driven our battle fleet into protective harbours, and the Army must be supported at any cost, a scheme for rendering these vessels proof against the torpedo had to be devised. Torpedo nets had failed in the case of the _Triumph_, and were apt to render a ship extremely unhandy in the event of the enemy batteries successfully getting the range. The first day on which the ship saw any action we left Kephalo at nine o'clock in the morning to relieve the _Endymion_, our sister-ship on the left flank, each of us doing forty-eight hours on patrol and forty-eight in harbour. I must say my feelings were somewhat strange at being actually on a war vessel for the first time about to come under fire.