At the conclusion of all manoeuvres, Sir George Tryon invariably gave a critical lecture upon them to his officers; a method which I adopted in later years. No practice can be more useful; for, while the events are fresh in mind, it demonstrates what was wrong, and why. Often what looks wrong at first, turns out to have been a good idea. But for years all reports of manoeuvres remained locked in the Admiralty. Many of the manoeuvres were useless; but for lack of information admirals afloat continued to repeat them. During my time in the _Undaunted_, my knowledge of signalling saved Captain Harry Rawson (afterwards Vice-Admiral Sir H. H. Rawson, K.C.B.) and myself a deal of trouble on one occasion. We had been out shooting all day, had missed the way, and as darkness fell, found ourselves on the wrong side of the bay in which the Fleet lay at anchor, with the prospect of a further tramp of twelve or fourteen miles. Rawson used to chaff me for doing what he called "boatswain's work." "You always want," he used to say, "to go down to the store-room and cut off 30 fathoms of rope yourself." To which I used to reply that I wanted to do nothing of {376} the sort; but what I did want to do was to see that a piece of 30 fathoms of rope _was_ cut off. On the same principle, Rawson used to deride my acquaintance with signals. Now that we either had to attract the attention of the Fleet or walk for another three or four hours, I told Rawson that if I could find a shepherd's hut I would get a boat over. He did not believe me. But we found a hut, and in the hut, an oil lamp and a bucket, out of which I constructed a signalling apparatus. I had hardly made the _Undaunted_ pennant, when it was answered from the ship, and inside a quarter of an hour the boat waiting for us on the other side of the bay had been recalled, and another boat was rapidly approaching us. Rawson left off chaffing me after that.