It was to be 9 November when our Temeraire steamed into Holyhead. I couldn't wait to get aboard and introduce myself to her Captain. He was a massive Yorkshire man and had been trawling out of Hull all his life, and his ship was called Acrasia. The unit had gathered round and were looking her over with delight. She was the realisation of all our hopes that the frustrations of the last weeks were now over. I asked the Captain to come down and meet the unit. This he most willingly did. And when it came to Phil Ross, her auburn hair down to her shoulders and her perky impish smile beaming up at him, he was struck with awe as he swallowed her hand in his massive fist. ‘What's thy job, lass? Not putting paint ont’ this mob, surely?’

‘Not quite, Captain. I sort of keep the log, keep track of things, the day's events. Quite complicated, really. You'll see as the days go by.’

‘But you don't get int’ boat with all this lot, do you?’

‘Certainly I do.’

‘How many hours are you out there, lass?’

‘Depends on the weather. On a good day, five or six.’

‘I've never heard the like. How long you been doing this?’

‘September 18th we started; about seven weeks I suppose.’

‘My word, but I reckon you've earned the V.C. twice over.’

‘And so say all of us, Captain’, I added, and meant it.

‘Now what's to be done today, like?’

‘We have to get our equipment aboard, if that's all right with you.’ And then we explained our bits and pieces of equipment and what each one did, how and why. We put him in the picture so far as it was possible, and from his occasional blank stare, he would have identified better with us if we had walked out of a circus tent in our various garbs: clown, juggler, trapeze, equestrian, but this lot? A bit rum, no question.

At the end of the day Charlie found himself and his sound camera somewhere down in one of the holds—none too salubrious—whilst Kay lorded it, perched imperiously astern, his recorder nestling in a cradle that Harry knocked up for him.