大象传媒

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Prince Of Wales was [my] first ship

The signing of the Atlantic Charter. It was a routine thing, going across the Atlantic. It was quite rough, the destroyer escorts had to leave us because of the weather. We met up in Newfoundland at a place called Palcentia Bay. There was a there was a Jap cruiser, I mean an American cruiser, the USS Augusta, and Roosevelt was on it. And then it eventually finished with FDR coming, Churchill first of all went to see President Roosevelt, and then on a Sunday I think it was, FDR came over to the Prince Of Wales and we had a service on the quarter-deck with the American Navy men from all the American ships coming aboard and ourselves having a Sunday service. It's quite on record, on film and so on.

[James didn't get speaking to WC and FDR.] They were very high profile.

[re: chasing the Bismark.]
The sinking of the Hood happened previous to the Atlantic Charter, up in the Iceland Straits between Iceland and Greenland, when the Hood blew up. It was our maiden voyage. At one time, of our 10 guns, we had only 3 of them working. We still had the civilian workmen aboard us.

After repairs we took Churchill across, and after that we ran a convoy through to Malta, which was quite good. We thought we had got the Italian fleet. The Nelson and Rodney were with us. We got within 50 miles of the Italian Fleet, then they turned.
Then we came back to Scapa Flow, and then we headed out. We didn't know where we were going. Then we were told we were going to Singapore.

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