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If you are into caches from the War Memorial series, you will be aware that there is a souvenir for finding a WM cache or attending a WM event over this weekend. So there were two WM multis on my list for today.
I started early and pulled up outside the gates of Erith Cemetery only to find that the gates weren’t opened until 0900.🥴 So I drove down to Bexley Woods to the second WM on my list. This 3.5/2.5 multi commemorates the Boy Scouts from the 1st Bexleyheath Troop who died in World War 1.
Once I had found the cache, I headed towards Crayford picking up the stumpy nun returns trad as well as the 3/1.5 Gasometer View trad. I had a bit of a walk from here but dipped the Martens Grove 2 trads as well as the Princess‘s Theatre Lamp Posts multi. The CO checked out the latter and it’s still there so I still have work to do.
I briefly stopped off in Crayford to have another try for the Graft mystery and this time I was successful. I was going north to Bostall Heath as there were a few trads here. I had mixed fortunes here finding two and dipping two so I headed back to Erith Cemetery to have another try for the multi. It was open so I visited each of the three bases to gather the info. I worked out the coords but there was no joy in the search area for me.
There were some military gravestones nearby so I took a photograph of the Royal Navy one to use in this blog. I decided to look up HMS Curaçao and learnt that it had been sunk in a tragic accident. The light cruiser was a convoy escort and on the fateful night was escorting SS Queen Mary across the Atlantic.
The Queen Mary had been converted to a troop ship and was bringing 10 thousand troops over from the USA. It was the holder of The Blue Riband and was the fastest ship afloat. Its orders were to hit top speed and zig zag but most of all stop for nothing because of the U-boat threat.
Whilst zigzagging, it hit the Curaçao slicing through its six inch plate like a knife through butter. The captain carried out his orders but alerted other ships of the accident. 339 sailors died and the tragedy was hushed up until after the war so as not to affect morale. As a Stoker, H. G. Hunter stood no chance.
1 Multi 1 Mystery 5 Traditional
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