And we did the trials, at the Isle of Aran while I was
there .... and ah …..
Question:
Were you on board then?
Yes, we had the trials before we arrived at
Southampton.
Question:
What was that like?
Well, we did this basic mile and I happened to be looking out one
of the portholes, and there was an engineer with a stopwatch and so
I said to him, I said, 'how fast did she go then?' because you
could tell she was going ever so fast when she was going, and he
reckoned that in the ordinary miles that was some ... somewhere
around 60 miles an hour but he said it in knots, you know, but she
was really going. And then of course they had the stability trials
which was, you know, how fast she could stop and how big a turn she
could take, but the Admiralty was on board as well and they was
watching, you know, what she do.
While it is not known
at the time that she had gun emplacements and all sorts of things
like that on which had been put on in preparation for the war.
